Groom Winston - Eyewitness to World War II: unforgettable stories from historys greatest conflict

Almost everyone directly involved in the war is gone now, but their stories still resonate in history.

World War II was the greatest calamity ever to befall humanity. An estimated 75 million people died3 percent of Earths populationincluding 25 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Entire cities were destroyed, leveled almost to the ground, while others were so seriously bombed it took 30 years to repair the damage. Whole races of people were nearly wiped out in attempts at ethnic cleansing. The carnage was finally brought to an end with nuclear weapons so powerful they could annihilate large metropolises in a single flash and bang.

We are now at the 80th year since the wars outbreak in 1937 when imperial Japan invaded the Republic of China. Subsequently, Nazi Germany began taking countries in Europe before finally facing a declaration of war by France and Great Britain after invading Poland in 1939. Germany went on to conquer Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. For nearly a year, Great Britain stood alone against Hitlers vast armies while they turned on the Balkan states and North Africa. Then the Japanese conducted a surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the entire world was at war.

Eyewitness to World War II follows the action across both Atlantic and Pacific fronts, in the air, on the sea, under the sea, and on land, where infantry grapples with infantry from the steaming jungles of the South Pacific to the Italian Alps. This book portrays all the major theaters of war in North Africa, Russia, and the Allied invasion and victory in Europe, along with the mostly American push up the Pacific from New Guinea to the home islands of Japan.

The war produced great deeds of heroism as well as cowardly acts like the mass execution of unarmed civilians, including women and children, because they belonged to a particular race or ethnic group. In the end, the Allied nations prevailed. The Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide and the Japanese leader, Hideki Tojo, was executed for war crimes. Peace returned to the world. But none who lived through it could ever forget it, no matter where they were.

The war touched almost everyone, from the disruption of traffic and the rationing of food and other desirable goods in many countries to the ravages of war in mainland Europe, the Soviet Union, and, ultimately, Japan. For generations, people defined themselves and their lives as before the war, or during the war, or after the war.

Almost everyone directly involved in the war is gone now, but their stories still resonate in history, and some of the finest are reproduced in these pages. Louise Whatley, now of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for instance, lived near Pearl Harbor and vividly describes the day of the attack. It was 7:30 on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1942, she remembered, and I was still asleep when all at once the sky was full of planes and a million guns going off. She threw on her red robe and rushed outside with all the other crazy people, standing in the streets to watch what they all thought was the armys latest battle practice, when just then a plane went down in flames and flew over our heads, spitting bullets from a machine gun, so low we could see the Jap pilot and the markings of the rising sun on its wings.

Lt. Cmdr. Wade McClusky describes being chased by two Japanese fighter aircraft Zeros after dropping the bombs that sank enemy carriers Akagi and Kaga during the desperate Battle of Midway in late 1942. He was skimming the water about 20 feet above the waves when a sudden burst seemed to envelop the whole plane. The left side of the cockpit was shattered, and my left shoulder felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer. It seemed like the end. Then for a few seconds there came an unusual quietness. He turned painfully to see if his tail gunner had been hit. He was facing aft, guns at the ready and unharmed, McClusky said. He had shot down one Zero and the other one decided to call it quits.