Frank E. Vandiver

“This book contains loads of valuable and often surprising information.” Booklist

Excerpts from entries 1, 738, and 951:
p. 2 [entry 1] Adolf Hitler sent five armies into Poland on September 1, 1939, in a surprise attack. Of Poland’s two million first-line troops, only a third were in the field. Poland’s cavalry was chopped up by German armor, and its few planes were smashed on the ground in a massive sweep by the Luftwaffe. . . . Warsaw held out until September 27—the blitzkrieg had triumphed in one month.
p. 178 [entry 738] As the Allies moved toward victory, they began serious consideration of a postwar world. Outlines of a world peace organization had been discussed in the Atlantic Charter (August 1941), the Four-Power Declaration (signed at the Moscow Conference of October 1943), and at the Tehran Conference (November-December 1943). Representatives of the U.S., the U.K., China, and the Soviet Union gathered at an estate named Dumbarton Oaks near Washington, D.C., and in various sessions held from August 21 to October 7, 1944, thrashed out some key issues crossing the path of what would become the United Nations. . . . .
p. 234 [entry 951] On Friday January 12, 1945, the greatest World War II drive began when Zhukov’s and Ivan Konev’s fronts erupted from Vistula bridgeheads with a ten-to-one superiority in troops. Hitler scrambled to find someone to stop the drive against Army Group A; finally in a flight of lunacy he gave command of a scratch new group to Heinrich Himmler. Again nothing helped. . . .