There is no dearth of literature on World War II and the Holocaust. But events so cataclysmic, even 60 years later, continue to inspire research into stories not yet fully told. Such is the case with Roger Cohen’s Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble. In early 1945, as Allied bombers began to wreak havoc on Germany’s major cities, Nazi soldiers were ordered to construct a synthetic fuel facility outside the quaint East German village of Berga. To accomplish the necessary hard labor, 350 American GIs captured during the Battle of the Bulge were transferred to the construction site, along with a detail of Hungarian Jews who were otherwise destined for concentration camps.

Berga, it turns out, became little more than a concentration camp itself, where prisoners were beaten, starved and driven beyond their physical endurance, primarily doing the dangerous work of digging underground tunnels. Approximately 25 percent of the captured U.S. soldiers were Jewish, a fact that does not appear coincidental, and it is the intersection between the GIs and the Hungarian internees that drives this account beyond the mere numerical facts and recalls the ugly ghost of Nazi anti-Semitism.

Cohen, a former European bureau chief for The New York Times, followed the human trail of this story with the assistance of the late documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, whose work helped lead Cohen to Berga survivors. Their testimony fills in the blanks about the horrific experience and the fate of those who perished. Cohen also draws upon a few published accounts as well as the records of the National Archives, which well document the awful Berga reality. That evidence includes photographs of the camp when liberated by Allied troops, reproduced here in all their stark grimness. Cohen also provides some background on individual Nazi officers at Berga, and catalogs the policies of such heinous Third Reich figures as Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann. This volume certainly functions as yet another reminder of the horrors of war, but its ultimate value exists as a testament to the courage of the men who endured and learned to forge on with their lives.

For the United States, 1942 was both the first full year of active warfare in World War II, and the most crucial. Even with war raging in Europe and Japan savagely expanding its grip on Asia, the United States was woefully ill prepared. Its far-flung Pacific territories were inadequately defended and poorly supplied; its forces were vastly outnumbered, and counted far too many newly trained recruits. Even with the onrush of volunteers after Pearl Harbor, the Army was mostly a number on paper the Volunteers had no training, no experience and no equipment. Against the veteran forces of Japan and Germany, America offered novice troops trained with broomsticks instead of rifles.

Winston Groom’s 1942: The Year That Tried Men’s Souls gives a fascinating account of a nation turning from na•vetŽ and isolationism to a deep commitment to defeating foreign tyranny. Although the war in Europe does come into Groom’s narrative, he largely focuses on the American experience, which for most of 1942 centered on events in the Pacific. Groom follows the first year of the war, from the initial attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, through the losses of Wake Island, the Philippines and Corregidor, to the critical turning points of Midway and Guadalcanal.

Groom’s book is never dry nor dull; he keeps the action and emotion going strong. Each chapter leaves you wanting to read the next. I frequently found myself wondering “What’s going to happen?” even though I already knew. Groom achieves this effect both through his attention to action and his ability to present the story of the war on very personal levels. He includes anecdotes from soldiers and civilians of the time, telling the stories of many true heroes, some of which read like Hollywood movie plots (like the nightclub singer in Manila who ran her own spy network under the noses of her Japanese military clientele). The result is a page-turner that leaves you with humble gratitude for the men and women of the day. Groom helps us see again that 1942 is not only a year worth reading about, but worth remembering.