World War II (American Heritage Library)

From Hitler's rise to power to the Japanese surrender on the deck of the Missouri in 1945, World War II is brought into sharp focus in this dramatic book. Over a third of World War II consists of eyewitness accounts, as Sulzberger emphasizes the people involved in this historic event--the leaders, the victims, and the fighters.

Cyrus Leo Sulzberger II (October 27, 1912 - September 20, 1993) a prize-winning foreign correspondent and foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times for nearly 40 years and the author of two dozen books, most of them on foreign policy and world leaders in the cold-war era. In a career that began in the Great Depression and spanned World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the rise and fall of nations, Mr. Sulzberger roamed the world from his longtime base in Paris to interview historic leaders and to chronicle and analyze the major events of his time. His columns offered portraits of leaders and nations, opinions on foreign news and critiques of American foreign policy. His career spanned 5 Decades After graduation from Harvard and five years with other news organizations, Mr. Sulzberger joined The Times in 1939 and was its chief foreign correspondent from 1944 to 1954, when he became a columnist. His column, "Foreign Affairs," appeared three times a week, on the editorial page until 1970, then on the Op-Ed page until his retirement in 1978. Mr. Sulzberger, who was banned from half a dozen countries for his reporting and won a special Pulitzer Prize citation in 1951, ranged over the field of foreign affairs, touching on military power, economics, diplomacy, industrial and agricultural production and especially the ideas and personalities of leaders. As a reporter and commentator, he had the inestimable gift of a quick study: the ability to land in the morning in Moscow or Beijing, Prague or Johannesburg, and, with the benefit of speedy access to top leaders, to write by nightfall a cogent report giving the impression he had steeped himself in a subject all his life. From presidents and Prime Ministers in their inner sanctums to royalty in palaces and rebels in mountain strongholds, he crisscrossed and circled the world to talk to and write with insight about Stalin, Nikita S. Khrushchev, Zhou Enlai, John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and many heads of government and state, ambassadors and foreign ministers, generals and secret agents. Praise and Criticism His contacts with the famous and the mighty produced many notable exclusive articles, and he readily took credit for them. And while he was widely praised for his ability to uncover news and to comment upon it in a voice of wide experience and intelligence, some reviewers of his books an academic c