Military Snapshots - Antiemplacement assaults on Iwo Jima

Closely coordinated antiemplacement attacks using combined arms and split-second timing were a significant feature of preassault training for Iwo Jima. The lessons behind the training had come at a high price over the course of the Pacific War. First, one or two flamethrower assaultmen directed their fire at one position, then infantrymen pelted the position with hand grenades and gunfire, and finally demolitions assaultmen blew up the emplacement with satchel charges. Photo courtesy of Official USMC Archives, from Iwo Jima: Portrait of a Battle by Eric Hammel.

Beyond the Book - Q & A with Steve Karras, author of "The Enemy I Knew"

In October 1999, writer and filmmaker Steven Karras began interviewing German and Austrian Jews who fled their native countries in the years leading up to World War II, only to return years later as members of the Allied military. The result was the documentary film “About Face: The Story of the Jewish Refugee Soldiers of WWII.”

Now, ten years after his first interview, Karras has brought these stories to paper with the release of his new book, The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II. In the following interview, Karras talks about what writing this book meant to him, why the stories of these veterans needed to be told, and how each story helps to alter the understanding of the Jewish experience during World War II.
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ZENITH PRESS: What first attracted you to the stories of the unique veterans featured in “About Face” and The Enemy I Knew?

KARRAS: At first glance, these are stories that haven’t been told in any great detail and that, to me, was worthy of the attention. At first, I was only interested in reading about these stories but couldn’t really find them on library or bookstore shelves. There was certainly this intense curiosity I had about what it must have been like for these refugees from Nazism who were given the extraordinary opportunity to exact revenge on their former countrymen who had forsaken them, struck such intense fear in them and their families and held their lives in the balance in the early years of the Hitler regime. However, within moments of any interview I was drawn in by the overwhelming positive tenor of each story—that these weren’t stories of victimization and only about loss, but of rebirth and belonging—something unexpected when exploring the Jewish experience during the Second World War. There was certainly something exotic about hearing strong German accents (some more than others) discussing the American and British experience with such enthusiasm.

Military Snapshots - Bird Dog over the DMZ

From 1968-1969, the "Catkillers" of the 220th Recon Airplane Company strapped into the cockpits of their two-seat, propeller-driven Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs and went to war in Vietnam. As forward observers, they flew hundreds of feet above one of the deadliest battlefields in modern history, all in an airplane no larger than a small pickup truck. In the process, they saved the lives of thousands of American servicemen. Here, a Bird Dog makes a low pass for a bomb damage assessment after an air strike in the DMZ. Photo courtesy of Don Long, from A Hundred Feet Over Hell: Flying With the Men of the 220th Recon Airplane Company Over I Corps and the DMZ, Vietnam 1968-1969 by Jim Hooper

Award Winner! - Hope: A Collection of Obama Posters and Prints

It's official! Hope: A Collection of Obama Posters and Prints (Zenith Press) is the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Franklin Award™ in the "Political/Current Events" category. 

Research, compiled and written by Hal Elliott Wert, a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, Hope offers a visually striking and comprehensive chronology of the posters created for Obama's historic presidential bid. Selected from the largest Obama poster collection known to exist, the 160 full-color images visually emphasize Obama's inspirational messages of change, hope, and inclusion, solidifying a campaign unlike anything ever seen in U.S. history and elevating the man behind the message to the status of cultural icon.

Awarded each year at Book Expo America from the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Benjamin Franklin Awards™ recognize "excellence in independent publishing."

Military Snapshots - 82nd Airborne at Operation Market Garden

Members of the 2nd Battalion, 505th, parachute onto DZ "T" in Holland during Operation Market Garden. Because a navigation error put serial A-5 on course to arrive on DZ "N" at the same time as the 3rd Battalion, 505th serial, Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin H. Vandervoort and the pilot of the lead plane in the serial were forced to do some fast thinking and divert the serial to DZ "T." Photo by William H. Jenks, courtesy of the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum, from All American, All the Way: From Market Garden to Berlin by Phil Nordyke

From the Pages - Fighting to Leave

In early 1972, the North Vietnamese kicked off the Nguyen Hue Offensive, also known as the Easter Offensive--a campaign designed to capture as much of the invaluable province of Quang Tri as possible and substantially weaken the South Vietnamese forces. Included in the offensive was the goal of capturing the provincial capital of Quang Tri City, opening an avenue of attack straight through the strategically important city of Hue. After an arduous, month-long battle, Quang Tri City finally fell to the North Vietnamese.

In the following excerpt from Fighting to Leave: The Final Years of America's War in Vietnam, 1972-1973, Col. Robert E. Stoffey, USMC (Ret.) details the retaking of Quang Tri City by the South Vietnamese (supported by U.S. air and sea power) and the events that followed.
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The 325th NVA Division, reinforced by elements of the 308th and 320th NVA divisions, defended their hold on Quang Tri City.

Each day of July and August 1972, the VNMC Brigade 258 slowly fought forward as they increased their attacks against the now-defending NVA at the Quang Tri Citadel.

As the Lam Son 72 attacks by the Vietnamese Marines began with the objective of retaking Quang Tri City, the 1st VNMC Battalion, commanded by Maj. Nguyen Dang Hoa, landed in a landing zone beside the city. They immediately encountered heavy NVA fire and began taking casualties as they fought elements of the 320B NVA Division.

Military Snapshots - The Javelin anti-tank missile

The Javelin is the first "fire-and-forget" shoulder-fired anti-tank missile now fielded to the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, replacing Dragon. Javelin's unique top-attack flight mode, superior self-guiding tracking system, and advanced warhead design allows it to defeat all known tanks out to ranges of 2,500 meters. U.S. Army photo, from 10th Mountain Division by Fred Pushies

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