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

by James F Dunnigan

Overview

Dirty Little Secrets of World War II exposes the dark, irreverent, misunderstood, and often tragicomic aspects of military operations during World War II, many of them virtually unknown even to military buffs. Like its successful predecessor, Dirty Little Secrets, Dunnigan and Nofi's new book vividly brings to life all theaters and participants of the war. Revelations include:

- The real death count for the war, and why it has never been previously released.

- The "new age" general who refused to smoke or drink, who lived on a vitamin-enriched diet, who opposed animal experimentation, and who regularly consulted his astrologer.

- How equipment developed for the war led to such modern high-tech innovations as "smart bombs," electronic warfare, and nuclear missles.

- The lackadaisical relationship between Germany and Japan throughout the war.

- Tricky bits of information about the lingering effects of the war — like the thousands of live shells and mines that are still buried in Europe and off the East Coast of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780688122881
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/14/1996
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	675,164
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.04(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

This book is only partly about ``dirty little secrets''; it is mostly a collection of unfamiliar information about the war, presented in some 300 briefs. Typical of the entries in these entertaining pages is a succinct account of the German ``counterfeit offensive,'' in which an attempt was made to flood Britain with fake pound notes; and a comparison between American and German armies at squad, battalion and division level. In the intriguing trivia section, one learns that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was related to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that participants in the battle for Guadalcanal included a 12-year-old American sailor. As to the dirty little secrets, here are a few examples: Australian stevedores deliberately obstructed the U.S. war effort at times; disease was responsible for nearly half the war deaths; Allied bombers caused far less damage to the enemy than is generally supposed. Dunnigan is the author of The Complete Wargames Handbook; Nofi wrote Napoleon at War. Illustrations. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Don't be misled by this book's title. There is nothing dirty or secret to be revealed here. Dunnigan (How To Make War, Morrow, 1983. rev. ed.) and Nofi, a former editor of Strategy and Tactics magazine, apply the same format of their earlier history of the Cold War (Dirty Little Secrets, Morrow, 1992) to World War II to produce a book containing about 300 infobytes of little-known or obscure facts about the war-everything from the venereal disease rates of the American forces to a description of the only ice cream-making ship in the U.S. Navy. The text is divided into eight broad sections, most devoted to the European theater of the war. One does not approach this book for specific information; just open it to any page and begin reading fascinating fact after fact. A comparable title is Karl Roebling's Great Myths of World War II (Paragon Pr., 1985). World War II is a hot topic among readers today, and this book would make an excellent addition to most public library collections.-Richard Nowicki, Emerson Vocational H.S., Buffalo

Library Journal