Tonight's Lecture Is Cancelled (June 13, 2013)

The Lecture for tonight is cancelled due to the severe weather predicted for this evening.  The lecture will be rescheduled.

June Meeting to be Held on Thursday

PLEASE NOTE: Due to a scheduling conflict, the next meeting of the NJ World War II Book Club will be on THURSDAY June 13, 7 p.m., as usual  at the Millburn Library.

Our speaker will be Barbara Boyer. Barbara is currently a teacher at South Plainfield High School. A summa cum laude graduate of Rider University,  Barbara Boyer holds a Master's Degree in Spanish Linguistics from Penn State and a second Master's Degree from Kean University.

Barbara has a keen interest in Asian history and in the summer of 2012 she traveled to China on a scholarship to study Chinese history. The focus was on China and Japan during World War II. Barbara's presentation will focus on a little known but  profoundly disturbing book by Peter Williams and David Wallace,  Unit 731 Japan's Secret Biological Warfare in World War II.

During World War II Japanese scientists, with full knowledge and approval of their superiors,  secretly carried on a series of cruel and painful  medical experiments on prisoners of war, such as  injecting them with deadly bacteria, subjecting them to oxygen deprivation, submersing them in freezing water,  operating on them without anesthesia and much more, all in an effort to determine the outside limits of human endurance.   Thousands died from these callous experiments, yet the persons responsible were never punished after the war. Barbara will tell of of the secret agreement made between those responsible for these inhuman acts of torture and the Allies, and the reasons for the suppression of this story of man's inhumanity to man, and its legacy.

This is the last lecture of the season; we will resume our series in September.

David Ulbrich to Speak at May Meeting

David J. Ulbrich received his doctorate in history from Temple University in 2007.  The Naval Institute Press recently published his first book, Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Marine Corps, 1936-1943. This book won the 2012 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Prize for the outstanding book on Marine Corps history, and it also received an honorable mention for the 2012 Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.

Ulbrich has served as historical consultant and on-air segment host for the award-winning Echoes of War: Stories from the Big Red One television documentary and as co-director of the Cantigny First Division Oral History Project. Both these projects were funded by the McCormick Foundation. 

Ulbrich has lectured at the National World War II Museum, Army War College, Naval War College, Temple University, Delaware Military Heritage and Education Center, and Brookdale Community College’s Center for the Study of World War II.  He is currently command historian at the U.S. Army Engineer School at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, and senior instructor in Masters in Military History online program at Norwich University. Apart from his duties with the Army, Ulbrich is completing the manuscripts for two co-authored textbooks: Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Period to the 21stCentury; and Amphibious Warfare: An Interpretative History.

David Stroebel at Next Meeting

David G. Stroebel, in his first book, The Cannon King's Daughter, tells the fascinating story of how Alfred Krupp, head of the  powerful Krupp Dynasty, managed to suppress the very existence of his rebellious daughter Engelbertha, shipped her to America, and "wiped the records of her birth" from German documents and Church records. William Manchester, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book missed this critical fact. Stroebel's dislosure of Engelbertha is likely to have some interesting consequences when German scholars and historians hear the full story. Stroebel will also tell us about the history of the Krupp Dynasty and the part it played in both World War I and World War II.

The lecture will be videotaped and sent to Germany where we are informed some German scholars eagerly await it.

More Great Reviews

In his April 4, 2013 review, Cmdr. Aboul-Enein sums up John McLaughlin's book on Wedemeyer as "...an excellent read."  As Aboul-Enein notes, McLaughlin presents a Wedemeyer as both perceptive eye-witness to history and brilliant military strategist against a "... backdrop of inter-allied politics, pro-isolationist domestic political pressures..."

For the complete review in dcmilitary.com, click here »»

McLaughlin Book on Wedemeyer Gets Another Great Review

Dr. McLaughlin's book, General Albert C. Wedemeyer, America’s Unsung Strategist in World War II, has just received a very positive book review in On Point, The Online Journal of Army History.  The printed version of the journal is widely circulated in Nebraska, which happens to be Wedemeyer's home town.  Although the online version does not yet contain the recent review by Pete Ricketts, the book's publisher Casemate, contains an excerpt: 

“McLaughlin has produced an important study of a lesser known yet important general and the different prespectives on well known historical figures. It will also cause readers to think about the doctrines Wedemeyer advocated and how they apply to current US Foreign policy. This book is recommended to anyone who has an interest in geopolitical strategy.”

Not one to rest on his laurels, McLaughlin's newest project will find him in the classroom this fall, at the South Orange/Maplewood Adult School where he will be teaching a course about the China-Burma-India theater in World War II.  

April Speaker: David G. Stroebel

The next meeting of the NJ World War II Book Club will be on Tuesday, April 16, at  7 PM, as usual  at the Millburn Library.

Our speaker will be David G. Stroebel a local author who has just published his first book, The Cannon King's Daughter.

Mr.  Strobel, curious about his family history, began interviewing older family members and relatives about his Germanic roots. What started out as a personal quest for information about the family took a startlingly sharp turn when he stumbled on the very disturbing fact that his ancestors were the infamous Krupp family, the steel dynasty that supplied the German army in World War I and the Nazis in World War II with the U-Boat, machine guns, and massive cannon. 

This is a story told in exquisite detail by historian William Manchester in his prize winning The Arms of Krupp which provides the historical backdrop to Stroebel's family history. At the end of World War I the Allies sought unsuccessfully to punish the head of the Krupp dynasty. At the Nuremburg trials following World War II, Alfred Krupp was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for utilizing slave labor.  Mr. Stroebel, skillful using Ancestory.com and other research tools, brings to light many details of the family history never previously disclosed.  In the process of researching his own history, Stroebel also gives his reader what amounts to a mini-tutorial in genealogical research, of particular use to those of us also interested in looking into family history. 

Members are reminded to check our web site and view the many photos that our talented photographer Sharon Austin has posted on the site. These photos are available for sale. Contact Sharon Austin at: sharonannaustin@hotmail.com, for more information.

Thanks also to Dr. Richard Schoenberg, who videotaped our last lecture.  Click here for the link >>