The History Buff's Guide To World War II - Plot & Excerpts
Compelling as his words may be, reality speaks otherwise. Historically, wars tend to constrict if not consume incubators of innovation, such as laboratories, libraries, universities, and human beings. Over the course of major conflicts, everything from architecture to literature stagnates as resources are diverted to issues of more immediate security.Exceptions come from the science of survival, exemplified by inventions made between 1937 and 1945. Allied airmen witnessed the first pressurized cabins, autopilot systems, and rubber-coated “self-sealing” gas tanks that could take a bullet and not explode. Nutritionists synthesized vitamins and high-calorie meals. Although blood types were known since the beginning of the century, blood banks were used for the first time, as were nonperishable plasmas.1For every novelty made to preserve a body, there seemed a dozen invented to tear it apart. During the war, a team of Harvard researchers concocted a gummy liquid called Napalm. U.S. weapons designers fashioned handheld rocket launchers nicknamed “bazookas.”
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