Dirty Little Secrets of World War II : Military Information No One Told You About the Greatest, Most Terrible War in History

398 Pages·1994·1.8 MB·English

by  James F. Dunnigan

1D. irty Little Secrets of WWII
2A. cknowledgements
3C. ontents
4I. ntroduction
5T. he Road to War
6T. he World at War
7T. he European War, 1939-1941
8T. he Eastern Front, 1941-1945
9T. he War in the West, 1941-1945
10T. he Pacific War, 1941-1945
11W. ar in the Shadows
12M. aking Peace
13W. WII Time Line
14R. ecommended Reading
15I. ndex

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS OF
WORLD WAR II
ALSO BY JAMES F. DUNNIGAN AND ALBERT A. NOFI Dirty
Little Secrets ALSO BY JAMES F. DUNNIGAN
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A. NOFI The Alamo and the Texas War for Independence The Civil War Treasury Eyewitness History of the
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DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS OF
WORLD WAR II
Military Information No One Told You
About the Greatest, Most Terrible War in
History
James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi
QUILL WILLIAM MORROW
New York
Copyright © 1994 by James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi All rights reserved. No part
of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, William Morrow and
Company, Inc., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10019.
It is the policy of William Morrow and Company, Inc., and its imprints and affiliates, recognizing the
importance of preserving what has been written, to print the books we publish on acid-free paper, and we
exert our best efforts to that end.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dunnigan, James F. Dirty little secrets of World War II
/ James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-688-12288-4
I. World War, 1939-1945-Miscellanea. I. Nofi, Albert A.
II. Title.
D744.D79 1994
940.53-dc20 94-16932
CIP
Printed in the United States of America 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
BOOK DESIGN BY BERNARD SCHLEIFER
For Marilyn J. Spencer and Lori Fawcett, In Loving Memory
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Barney Dombrowski, Dennis Casey, Richard L. DiNardo,
George Blagowidow, the editors and the staff of Strategy and Tactics magazine, the
members of the New York Military Affairs Symposium, Fun H. Fong, Jr., Brian
Sullivan, Patrick Abbazia, Wayne McKinney, Kathleen Williams, Steve Laroe,
Susan Leon, Bob Shuman, Richard Garczynski, John Boardman, David E.
Schwartz, Roger Covington, Linda Grant DePauw, Steven J. Zaloga, Norman
Friedman, Tom Holsinger, Mike Peterson, Tom Trinko, and Mary Spencer Nofi,
who has to put up with one of us.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1 1
1. The Road to War 1 3
2. The World at War 48
3. The European War, 1939-1941 130
4. The Eastern Front, 1941-1945 155
5. The War in the West, 1941-1945 183
6. The Pacific War, 1941-1945 276
7. War in the Shadows 345
8. Making Peace 366 DIRTY LITTLE WORLD WAR II TIME LINE 381 RECOMMENDED
READING 395 INDEX 401
INTRODUCTION
This is not a history of World War II , but revelations about many of the lesser-
known details. Because it is a book of facts, you don't read it from beginning to
end, but rather you jump in wherever it strikes your fancy. There are over three
hundred separate items, each a complete
story in itself.
As a rule, much of the information found in one section of the book will
usually also be applicable to the others as well. After all, although aircraft
carriers are inseparably associated with the Pacific war, they also performed
yeoman service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, while the problems of troop
transport transcended theater.
After reading this book, you'll never look at World War II the same way again.
We have not changed the story of that conflict; we are providing information
about it that is not generally known. We often look at the same subject from
several different angles, giving you a better appreciation of, for example, how a
blitzkrieg was conducted, what it took to supply partisans, and why the U.S.
Army had more ships than the U.S. Navy.
World War II was the most enormous human drama in history. No
one volume could ever really come close to examining all of the
unusual, and often important, aspects of this, history's greatest war. So
much has had to be left out, from the drama of Dunkirk to the U.S.
Navy's coal-burning, paddle-wheel aircraft carriers on the Great Lakes;
from the Marine Corps's Navaho communications specialists to the
INTRODUCTION
Japanese Navy's "American" pilots; not to mention the improbable adventures of
FDR's son, the extraordinary antiarmor tactics of the Finns, and the secret
missions of Harry Hopkins. Also left out are many interesting items from the
"secondary" theaters such as China, Burma, Finland, and the Middle East.
Moreover, the end of the Cold War has thrown open the Soviet World War II
archives. Much fascinating material is coming out. We were shown a volume (in
Russian) of some of the newly revealed material already being published in
Russia and realized that we could have added several dozen pages of previously
unknown goodies for this book from that one Russian volume alone. Well, if we
sell enough copies of this book, there may be more. We certainly have enough to
fill several more volumes.
This book undoubtedly displays an "American" bias. This is natural, given the
audience. Without much difficulty the authors could produce a book of similar
length with a "British" or "German" or "Chinese" bias which, while being
somewhat repetitive, would still manage to include a lot of unusual and
interesting material. World War II was the most enormous human drama in
history, and there is far
more to be told about it than can possibly be included between the covers of a
single book.
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