Gill Paul - World War II Love Stories: At a Time of Global Conflict and Upheaval, the True Stories of 14 Couples Who Found Love

WORLD
WAR II

Love Stories

At a time of global conflict and upheaval, the true stories of 14 couples who found love

Gill Paul

Introduction by
Andrew Roberts

September 1939 saw Adolf Hitler lead the world into one of the greatest conflicts the world had ever known. The atrocities unleashed by the Nazi regime were unprecedented: families were torn apart, millions were murdered, and a cloud of fear cast over the world. But throughout all this, love and hope remained ignited.

World War II Love Stories tells the unforgettable stories of those couples brought together by war. They are enduring tales of great love, intense passion, and often tragedy, but most of all they are tales that celebrate the human spirit at its time of greatest trial.

CONTENTS

French fashion designer Coco Chanels affair with an aristocratic German attach was fiercely controversial and led to her arrest at the wars end.

William and Kathleens unyielding love for each other helped him to survive imprisonment in Colditz.

Romantic Bill went AWOL so he could spend his first wedding anniversary with his wife, Norma.

Desmond and Louisas love blossomed after a chance encounter, and this love would save his life on two occasions.

Married barely a month after they met, tienne and Violette tragically had very little time together.

Charley and Jeans deep love helped her to survive the tough realities of life on a Tobique reserve in the wilds of Canada.

Despite his elevated position and a wife back home, Dwight clearly had strong feelings for Kay.

Roger and Rosemarie met in northern Germany as the Russian army approached and the Iron Curtain split her family in two.

Marys affair with Allen, a spy, was unconventional, thrilling and potentially dangerous.

Betty wrote 300 letters to GI Hudson and always hoped hed come back to marry her.

Bob was unhappily married and when he met cheerful, friendly Rosie he knew he had found the true love of his life.

Raymond and Lucie were intrepid members of the Resistance, willing to risk all for their countrys freedom.

Hedley and Dorrit were opposites in every way, except the fact that they were both outsiders in a foreign land.

Roy and Pill had an intense Pacific island romance, and both hoped that they would spend the rest of their lives together.

The Nazi Threat

W hen Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, few people predicted that this event would lead to a second world war by the end of the decade.

World War Ithe Great Warhad ended less than 15 years earlier, and no one believed that someone who had himself served in the trenches of the Western Front would seek to provoke another conflict on such a terrible scale. Yet the program of Hitlers National Socialist (Nazi) Party was one of pure aggression, born of resentment at Germanys ill-treatment at the Versailles Conference that had formally brought World War I to an end. Germany rearmed, and within three years her industrial and military might allowed Hitler to force the Western Powersmainly Britain and France, along with the United Statesinto a series of humiliating diplomatic defeats.

Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in March 1936 (flouting the terms of the Versailles Treaty), forced Austria into Anschluss (union) with his Third Reich in March 1938, and threatened to invade the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia (called the Sudetenland) in September of that same year, while also supporting the efforts of two fellow fascists: Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and Benito Mussolini in the invasion of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia). Meanwhile, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, the ineffectual forerunner of the United Nations.

Hitler receives an enthusiastic ovation at the Reichstag after forcing Austria into Anschluss in March 1938.

In each of these cases, and in many other areas of diplomacy, Britain and France permitted the Nazis to get what they wanted, believing that Germany had been ill-treated by the victorious powers at Versailles. They hoped that by appeasing the Third Reich, its anger and bitterness would diminish. Instead, the lesson Hitler drew from his successes was that the Western democracies were inherently feeble and would let him get away with further territorial inclusions. In March 1939, he invaded those parts of Czechoslovakiaprincipally Bohemia and Moraviathat were not German-speaking, while the government-controlled German press began making threats against Poland.