The Human Cost

German leader Adolf Hitler was a staunch anti-Semite—he harbored an intense hatred for Jewish people. He and his Nazi Party (pronounced "NOHT-see"; taken from the full German name of the National Socialist German Workers' Party) blamed Germany's post-World War I (after 1918) political and economic woes on the Jews. After becoming chancellor (supreme leader) of Germany in 1933, Hitler instituted a ruthless campaign of terror against the Jews of Europe. As Germany invaded neighboring countries and became enmeshed in World War II (1939-45), the Nazis made plans for the "Final Solution" to what they called the "Jewish problem." The Final Solution was to completely eliminate European Jews through mass extermination. This murderous crusade is now referred to as the Holocaust.

The Nazi-engineered Holocaust resulted in the deaths of six million Jewish men, women, and children. The Cage, a powerful autobiographical account by Holocaust survivor Ruth Minsky Sender, gives voice to the overwhelming fear that swept through the Jewish communities of Europe during World War II. In the book, the author recounts with stunning clarity her haunting memories of abuse and segregation in a Jewish ghetto in Poland, the hellish week she spent at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, and the nightmare of life in Nazi-run work camps. Sender was liberated from Camp Grafenort, a forced labor camp in Germany, just as the Germans were preparing to surrender to the Allied Powers (the countries fighting against Germany, Italy, and Japan, primarily Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) in May of 1945.

After the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, Harry S. Truman was sworn into the office of the president of the United States. Only then did Truman learn of the Manhattan Project, a top secret venture to build and test an atomic weapon for use in war. The excerpt from Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, Volume 1: Year of Decisions traces the final stages in the evolution of the atomic bomb and Truman's intention to use the newly developed weapon to hasten the end of World War II.

The decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan came after the long and bloody battles for the Pacific islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Plans were being made for the much-dreaded U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands—an invasion that, according to military experts, would result in the injury or death of another five hundred thousand American soldiers and the prolongation of the war by at least another year. "I gave the final order," reflected Truman after the bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "I did what I thought was right."

An incredible amount of controversy accompanied the development and use of atomic weaponry during World War II. The effect of a nuclear power blast on human beings wasuncertain before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings but it became horribly apparent in the aftermath. The Hiroshima Maidens: A Story of Courage, Compassion, and Survival, written by Rodney Barker, chronicles the experiences of a group of Japanese women who were in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the fateful day of the bombing. They were among the thousands of Japanese whose lives were changed forever in a matter of seconds. The agonizing injuries sustained by the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic blast) has generated decades-long debate over the use of the bomb.

Excerpts from war correspondent Ernie Pyle's Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches offer firsthand insights into the horrors of war on the front lines. Pyle covered the war as it was being fought in England, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and the Pacific. His penetrating accounts of World War II combat brought the reality of the war home to the American people. Pyle was killed by a sniper's bullet on April 18, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Ie Shima. His last columns were published after his death.

Throughout the war the sixty thousand nurses of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) provided wounded soldiers with the best care possible under the very worst conditions. From the rain-soaked fields of France to the mosquito-infested islands of the Pacific, they healed and comforted GIs by the thousands—and jeopardized their own lives in the process. Their remarkable stories are collected in No Time for Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II, edited by Diane Burke Fessler .

Ruth Minsky Sender …101

Harry S. Truman …117

Rodney Barker …129

Ernie Pyle …143

World War II Nurses …159