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

Dunnigan, James F.; Nofi, Albert A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688122353 ISBN 13: 9780688122355

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1994

Synopsis

Historical entries capture little-known aspects of World War II, exposing the dark, misunderstood, and tragicomic aspects of the war

About this title

Review:

There aren't many "dirty secrets" in this addictively readable book. Really, it's a compendium of fun facts about horrors arranged in bite-size prose bits and written under the influence of lead author Dunnigan's favorite book, Will Cuppy's irreverent historical classic The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. The minichapters have titles like "Killer Vegetables and the Farts from Hell" (at 20,000 feet, gas caused by eating cabbages expanded, killing airmen). Did you know that every single German spy who infiltrated England became an Allied double agent? That MacArthur, Churchill, and Roosevelt all descended from one Sarah Belcher of Taunton, Massachusetts? That World War II killed about 100 million, or five percent of humanity? That a Russian was 100 times likelier to die than an American? (A USSR boy born in 1923 had an eighty-percent chance of dying by 1945.) We learn the origin of the term "rock & roll" (all weapons firing on automatic), the superiority or stupidity of tracer bullets, Göring's air-war policy, and U.S. troop-replacement policy. Some will argue with this book's rather simple answers to complex questions--was Chamberlain smart to cave to Hitler in the Munich pact because it bought a year to build planes and invent radar, which won the Battle of Britain? Other books come to different conclusions, but few so ably honor the master of snappy history, Will Cuppy. --Tim Appelo

About the Author:

James F. Dunnigan is the author of many books and over a hundred historical simulations. He has been a lecturer to the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. Army War College. He lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0688122353
• ISBN 13: 9780688122355
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416