The information in this book came from hundreds of different sources; books, websites, newspaper articles, radio and television documentaries. The author would especially like to acknowledge and recommend the following sources:
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
General information
The First World War: An Illustrated History by A.J.P. Taylor (Penguin, 1970) is a highly readable account of the conflict by a world famous historian.
The Great War by Correlli Barnett (Penguin, 2000) is another accessible introduction.
The following three books are all haunting first-hand accounts of individuals who fought or lived through the war:
Death’s Men – Soldiers of the Great War by Dennis Winter (Penguin, 1978)
1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War by Lyn Macdonald (Penguin, 1991)
Voices from the Great War by Peter Vansittart (Pimlico, 1998)
Older readers might like to dip into Paul Fussell’s deeply moving The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford University Press, 2000).
The following books were also useful for these chapters:
The Angels of Mons
The First Casualty by Phillip Knightley (Prion Books, 2001)
Myths & Legends of the First World War by James Hayward (Sutton Publishing, 2002)
1914: The Days of Hope by Lyn Macdonald (Penguin, 1989)
Strange Meetings
Silent Night: The Remarkable 1914 Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub (Simon and Schuster, 2001)
The Great Zeppelin Campaign
Zeppelins of World War One by Wilbur Cross (Paragon House, 1991)
The Zeppelin in Combat by Douglas H. Robinson (Schiffer Publishing Ltd, 1994)
The Battle of Jutland
Jutland: The German Perspective by V.E. Tarrant (Cassells and Co., 1995)
The Battleships by Ian Johnston and Rob McAuley (Channel 4 Books, 2000)
The First Day of the Somme
Somme by Lyn Macdonald (Macmillan, 1983)
1914-1918: Voices and Images of the Great War by Lyn Macdonald (Penguin, 1991)
Accrington Pals by William Turner (Wharncliffe Publishing, 1987)
The Cellar House of Pervyse
The Cellar House of Pervyse: A Tale of Uncommon Things from the Journals and Letters of the Baroness T’Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm (A&C Black, 1917)
The Virago Book of Women and the Great War edited by Joyce Marlow (Virago, 1998)
Nightmare at Belleau Wood
The Doughboys – America and the First World War by Gary Mead (Penguin, 2000)
Poetry of the First World War
The war produced some extraordinary and moving poetry, be found in such books as:
Up the Line to Death by Brian Gardner (ed) (Methuen, 1964)
Some Corner of a Foreign Field by James Bentley (ed) (Little, Brown and Co., 1992)
History through Poetry – World War One by Paul Dowswell (Hodder Wayland, 2001)
The Poems of Wilfrid Owen Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1994
The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon (Faber & Faber, 1999)
For links to websites, where you can read poems from the First World War online, go to the Usborne Quicklinks Website at www.usborne.com/quicklinks and type in the keywords “first world war”. For safe Web surfing, please follow the safety guidelines given on the Usborne Quicklinks Website.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
General books
There are thousands of books on the Second World War. Here are two particularly useful ones.
Time-Life’s Shadow of the dictators (1989) gives a good introduction to both the rise of Hitler and the Second World War, and is illustrated with evocative photographs.
The Reader’s Digest The world at arms (1989) is a massive, highly illustrated and authoritative account of the war.
The First and Final Voyage of the Bismarck
Although there are several recent books which deal with the Bismarck’s ill-fated voyage, Pursuit by Ludovic Kennedy (Cassell Military paperbacks, 1974) is a brilliant, even-handed and compassionate account.
The Discovery of the Bismarck by Robert D. Ballard (Hodder and Stoughton, 1990) tells the story both of the voyage and the discovery of the ship by marine archaeologists 50 years later. It is full of fascinating photographs.
Death of a Salesgirl
Susan Ottaway’s Violette Szabo – The life that I have (Leo Cooper, 2002) is a clear, solid and up-to-date account of this often romanticized figure.
Cracking Enigma
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Enigma – The battle for the code (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000) is a readable history of this complex subject and contains first-hand accounts from surviving members of U-110.
The Book-keeper’s Storage Problem and The Lost Hero
There are reams of books on the Holocaust.
Never again – A history of the Holocaust by Martin Gilbert (Harper Collins, 2000) tells the story in a readable, highly illustrated, comprehensive account.
Nazi hunter – The Wiesenthal file by Alan Levy (Constable & Robinson, 2002) is also a very accessible introduction.
John Bierman’s Righteous Gentile (Penguin Books, 1981) and Danny Smith’s Lost hero (Harper Collins, 2001) are two solid biographies of Raoul Wallenberg.
Roman Vishniac’s To give them light (Viking, 1993) is a collection of photographs documenting the vanished world of Eastern European Jews before the war.
The War of the Rats
There are two especially readable accounts of the epic Battle of Stalingrad: Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad (Penguin, 1998) and William Craig’s Enemy at the gates (Penguin, 2000).
“…Like Running through Rain and Not Getting Wet.”
One of the most recent titles on the much-covered battle at Iwo Jima, James Bradley and Ron Powers’ Flags of our fathers (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 2000) is a beautifully written but harrowing account, which may not be suitable for younger readers.
The Destroyer of Worlds
Jack Rummel’s Robert Oppenheimer: Dark Prince (Facts on File Inc., 1992) is a gripping introduction to the Manhattan Project and its leading personality.
From Technicolor to Black and White…
The quote by Edith Kup comes from The women who won the war by Dame Vera Lynn (Sedgewick & Jackson, 1990).