Herman Wouk - War and Remembrance

Author of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance

Wouks real genius lies not just in the narrative power of his books, but in his empathy with the people and the times of which he writes. The genius of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance is that they not only tell the story of the Holocaust, but tell it within the context of World War II, without which there is no understanding it.

Ken Ringle, Washington Post

Herman Wouk is an American legend

Gerald F. Kreyche, USA Today

The whole two-volume work constitutes a very good popular history of the Second World War and the Holocaust. The quality of the military reasoning in this document is impressive, and so is Wouks scholarship in contemporary history. As a historian of naval warfare Wouk is as good as Samuel Eliot Morison, while as an analytic narrator of land battles, particularly Soviet here, he invites comparison with someone like B. H. Liddell Hart When he turns from people to significant public environments and things Wouk is also wonderful. He does even the inside of the cattle cars superbly: give him an environment of any kind the Kremlin, Hitlers Wolfsschanze in the East Prussian forest, the presidents private quarters in the White House, a gas chamber posing as a mass showerbath, the flagplot room on a battleship, an atomic pile, the interior of a submarine or a bomber and he renders it persuasively. Theres hardly a contemporary writer so good at depicting locales authentically, places as varied as Honolulu, Bern, Lisbon, Leningrad, Columbia University, and London. They are perfect.

Paul Fussell, New Republic

Herman Wouk has the touch the ability to tell a story that grips you from beginning to end.

Donna Levin, San Francisco Chronicle

Novels

AURORA DAWN

CITY BOY

THE CAINE MUTINY

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR

YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE

DONT STOP THE CARNIVAL

THE WINDS OF WAR

WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

INSIDE, OUTSIDE

THE HOPE

THE GLORY

Plays

THE TRAITOR

THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL

NATURES WAY

Nonfiction

THIS IS MY GOD

THE WILL TO LIVE ON

COPYRIGHT 1978 BY HERMAN WOUK

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE U.S. COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1976, NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, OR STORED IN A DATABASE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

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Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown, October 1978

First eBook Edition: January 2010

Back Bay Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The Back

Bay Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is grateful to the following publishers for permission to reprint excerpts from selected material as noted below: Chappell Music Company for Hut-Sut Song by Leo V. Killion, Ted McMichael, and Jack Owens. Copyright 1941 by Schumann Music Co. Copyright renewed, assigned to Unichappell Music, Inc. (Belinda Music, publisher). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission; Edward B. Marks Music Corporation and Chappell Music Company for Lili Marlene by Norbert Schultze. All rights for the United States copyright by Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Used by permission. All rights for Canada copyright by Chappell Music Co., Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. All rights for the Philippines reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd. 138-140 Charing Cross Road, London WC2N OLD; Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc. for Der Fuehrers Face by Oliver Wallace. Copyright 1942 by Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright renewed. Used by permission; United Artists Music Publishing Group, Inc. and Wests Ltd. for Three OClock in the Morning by Dorothy Terriss and Julian Robledo. Copyright 1921, 1922, renewed 1949, 1950 by Wests Ltd. All rights for North America administered by Leo Feist, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. All rights for the Philippines administered by Wests Ltd. 138-140 Charing Cross Road, London WC2N OLD.

ISBN: 978-0-316-09776-5

In Remembrance

Abraham Isaac Wouk

Abe

firstborn son of

Betty Sarah and Herman Wouk

September 2, 1946-July 27, 1951

He will destroy death forever.

Isaiah 25

WRITE THIS FOR A REMEMBRANCE IN A BOOK THAT THE LORD HAS A WAR WITH AMALEK FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION.

Exodus 17

Contents

Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, has requested a special authors introduction to this new edition of the novels in a changed format. The two books tell one overarching story how the American people rose to the challenges of World War II, the first global war, after fearsome setbacks forgotten today in the shining memory of final victory.

As I write these words late in October 2001, a new war is just beginning, global again in scope but totally different in character. In the last global war, before VE day and VJ day came, there befell the collapse of France, the Bataan death march, the fall of Singapore, the siege of Stalingrad, bloody Tarawa, and bloodier Guadalcanal; and at the hidden heart of that global war, concealed by the smoke of battle, there burned the Holocaust. That eternal benchmark of barbarism, let us remember, was set not by a Third World country, not by Orientals, not by the Muslims, but by the Germans, an advanced European nation. The evil in human hearts knows no boundary, except the deeper, stronger human will to freedom, order, and justice. In the very long run, that will so far has prevailed.

Now it is the destiny of America for all its faults and weaknesses, the greatest free society in history to lead the world against a new grim outbreak of evil, a savage stab at the core of freedom on earth, a dark, shocking start to a new millennium. May the Father of all men prosper our arms in the new fight, as He prospered in the end the cause of men of good will in World War II, the great and terrible global battle that these two novels portray.

Herman Wouk

War and Remembrance is a historical romance. The subject is World War II, the viewpoint American.

A prologue, The Winds of War, published in 1971, set the historical frame for this work by picturing the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. This is a novel of America at war, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima.

It is the main tale I had to tell. While I naturally hope that some readers, even in this rushed age, will find the time for both novels, War and Remembrance is a story in itself, and can be read without the prologue.

The theme of both novels is single. The last words of Victor Henrys commentary on the Battle of Leyte Gulf give it plainly enough:

Either war is finished, or we are.

I have put this theme in the colors and motion of the fiction art, so that he who runs may read, and remember what happened in the worst world catastrophe. As to the history in both tales, I trust that knowing readers will find it has been presented responsibly and with care.

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