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Every Civil War veteran had a story to tell. But few stories top the one lived by Wright Stephen Batchelor. Like most North Carolina farmers, Batchelor eschewed slaveholding. He also opposed secession and war, yet he fought on both sides of the conflict. During his time in each uniform, Batchelor barely avoided death at the Battle of Gettysburg, was captured twice, and survived one of the war's most infamous prisoner-of-war camps. He escaped and, after walking hundreds of miles, rejoined his comrades at Petersburg, Virginia, just as the Union siege there began. Once the war ended, Batchelor returned on foot to his farm, where he took part in local politics, supported rights for freedmen, and was fatally involved in a bizarre hometown murder. Michael K. Brantley's story of his great-great-grandfather's odyssey blends memory and Civil War history to look at how the complexities of loyalty and personal belief governed one man's actions-and still influence the ways Americans think about the conflict today.

The encirclement of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad in mid-November 1942 and its final collapse in February 1943 was a signature defeat for Hitler, as more than 100,000 of his soldiers were marched off into captivity. Frank Ellis tackles this oft-told tale from the unique perspective of the German officers and men trapped inside the Red Army's ever-closing ring of forces. This approach makes palpable the growing desperation of an army that began its campaign confident of victory but that long before the end could see how hopeless their situation had become. Highlighting these pages are three previously unpublished German army division accounts, translated here for the first time by Ellis. Each of these translations follows the combat experiences of a specific division-the 76th Infantry, the 94th Infantry, and the 16th Panzer-and take readers into the cauldron (or Kessel) that was Stalingrad. Together they provide a ground-level view of the horrific fighting and yield insights into everything from tactics and weapons to internal disputes, the debilitating effects of extreme cold and hunger, and the Germans' astonishing sense of duty and the abilities of their junior leaders. Along with these first-hand accounts, Ellis himself takes a new and closer look at a number of fascinating but somewhat neglected or misunderstood aspects of the Stalingrad cauldron including sniping, desertion, spying, and the fate of German prisoners. His coverage of sniping is especially notable for new insights concerning the duel that allegedly took place between Soviet sniper Vasilii Zaitsev and a German sniper, Major Konings, a story told in the film Enemy at the Gates (2001). Ellis also includes an incisive reading of Oberst Arthur Boje's published account of his capture, interrogation, and conviction for war crimes, and explores the theme of reconciliation in the works of two Stalingrad veterans, Kurt Reuber and Vasilii Grossman. Rich in anecdotal detail and revealing moments, Ellis's historical mosaic showcases an army that managed to display a vital resilience and professionalism in the face of inevitable defeat brought on by its leaders. It makes for compelling reading for anyone interested in one of the Eastern Front's monumental battles.

Soon after the close of military operations in the American Civil War, another war began over how it would be remembered by future generations. The prisoner-of-war issue has figured prominently in Northern and Southern writing about the conflict. Northerners used tales of Andersonville to demonize the Confederacy, while Southerners vilified Northern prison policies to show the depths to which Yankees had sunk to attain victory. Over the years the postwar Northern portrayal of Andersonville as fiendishly designed to kill prisoners in mass quantities has largely been dismissed. The Lost Cause characterization of Union prison policies as criminally negligent and inhumane, however, has shown remarkable durability. Northern officials have been portrayed as turning their military prisons into concentration camps where Southern prisoners were poorly fed, clothed, and sheltered, resulting in inexcusably high numbers of deaths. Andersonvilles of the North, by James M. Gillispie, represents the first broad study to argue that the image of Union prison officials as negligent and cruel to Confederate prisoners is severely flawed. This study is not an attempt to “whitewash” Union prison policies or make light of Confederate prisoner mortality. But once the careful reader disregards unreliable postwar polemics, and focuses exclusively on the more reliable wartime records and documents from both Northern and Southern sources, then a much different, less negative, picture of Northern prison life emerges. While life in Northern prisons was difficult and potentially deadly, no evidence exists of a conspiracy to neglect or mistreat Southern captives. Confederate prisoners’ suffering and death were due to a number of factors, but it would seem that Yankee apathy and malice were rarely among them. In fact, likely the most significant single factor in Confederate (and all) prisoner mortality during the Civil War was the halting of the prisoner exchange cartel in the late spring of 1863. Though Northern officials have long been condemned for coldly calculating that doing so aided their war effort, the evidence convincingly suggests that the South’s staunch refusal to exchange black Union prisoners was actually the key sticking point in negotiations to resume exchanges from mid-1863 to 1865. Ultimately Gillispie concludes that Northern prisoner-of-war policies were far more humane and reasonable than generally depicted. His careful analysis will be welcomed by historians of the Civil War, the South, and of American history.

Between 1939 and 1947, the Caribbean island of Jamaica - then a British colony - was haven or detention centre for thousands of displaced Europeans; an often under-recognized contribution to the Allied war effort. A civilian camp accommodated evacuees from Gibraltar and, belatedly, provided sanctuary for groups of mainly Jewish refugees. Others who had fled Europe ahead of looming fascist threats would be interned in military detention camps whose populations were swollen by German and Italian civilians from several British West African colonies, co-mingled for convenience with hundreds of German and Italian merchant mariners captured at sea during the early months of the war. World War II Camps in Jamaica disentangles the conditions under which these various populations were held, drawing on primary records, personal accounts and media coverage; noting differences and similarities in their management; considering the camps and their populations within the local context; and considering the extent of interface and interaction that ensued despite official efforts to keep the incoming populations separate and transitory.

A US Naval Aviator's odyssey through pivotal moments in 20th-century history The rise of Adolf Hitler, America's Great Depression in the heartland, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American life following World War II, the Korean War, America's development of atomic weapons in the Cold War age, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift. Captain Allen Brady not only witnessed all of these events but actually participated in them, in many instances as a US Naval Aviator. So many Americans and global citizens alike are not even aware of the importance of these pivotal moments; as generations age and pass on, without important accounts like this one, much is forgotten. More than just a memoir, Brady's book is an important document from one of the last of his generation, reminding us of the pivotal moments that should not be lost to history. Witnessing the American Century is Captain Brady's firsthand account of his incredible life, and his memories elucidate America's role in the most significant world events from the previous century. Capt. Allen Colby Brady is a retired Naval Aviator. Throughout his thirty-plus years of service, Capt. Brady found himself in the front row to all of the major events surrounding the emerging Cold War, nuclear proliferation, America's fight to defeat the Communists in Cuba, and, most notably, his long stint as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Following his retirement, Capt. Brady lived for over six years aboard a sailboat, even using his sailing expertise to liberate exiled communities of Cubans in the early 1980s.

\"Will break your heart, but Leah Weiss's beautiful writing will sew it back together again\" --Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II.

In 1861, Lt.Col.William Hoffman was appointed to the post of commissary general of prisoners and urged to find a suitable site for the construction of what was expected to be the Union's sole military prison.After inspecting four islands in Lake Erie, Hoffman came upon one in Sandusky Bay known as Johnson's Island.

Discusses an important yet often misunderstood topic in American History Camp Chase was a major Union POW camp and also served at various times as a Union military training facility and as quarters for Union soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Confederacy and released on parole or exchanged. As such, this careful, thorough, and objective examination of the history and administration of the camp will be of true significance in the literature on the Civil War.

By examining narratives about Spanish Mauthausen victims over the past seventy years, author Sara J. Brenneis provides a historical, critical, and chronological analysis of a virtually unknown body of work.

Though only one among hundreds of prison camps in which British servicemen were held between 1939 and 1945, Colditz enjoys unparalleled name recognition both in Britain and in other parts of the English-speaking world. Made famous in print, on film, and through television, Colditz remains a potent symbol of key virtues-including ingenuity and perseverance against apparently overwhelming odds-that form part of the popular mythology surrounding the British war effort in World War II. Colditz has played a major role in shaping perceptions of the prisoner-of-war experience in Nazi Germany, an experience in which escaping is assumed to be paramount and ‘Outwitting the Hun’ a universal sport. This book chronicles the development of the Colditz myth and puts what happened inside the castle in the context of British and Commonwealth POW life in Germany as a whole. Being a captive of the Third Reich-from the moment of surrender down to the day of liberation and repatriation-was more complicated and a good deal tougher than the popular myth would suggest. The physical and mental demands of survival far outweighed escaping activity in order of importance in most camps almost all of the time, and even in Colditz the reality was in some respects very different from the almost Boy's Own caricature that developed during the post-war decades. This book seeks to place Colditz-both the camp and the legend-in a wider historical context.