Renowned Military Scholar Donald Goldstein Available to Comment on Anniversaries of D-Day Invasion, Battle of Midway

PITTSBURGH—Leading military scholar Donald Goldstein, professor emeritus in the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, is available to discuss the upcoming anniversaries of two of the most crucial military victories won by the Allies during World War II.

June 4-7 will mark the 71st anniversary of the Battle of Midway, considered the most important naval battle in the Pacific theater of World War II. During those days in 1942, the U.S. Navy defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on the strategically important Midway Atoll, sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers in the process.

June 6 is the 69th anniversary of D-Day, the decisive landing of Allied troops along the coast of Normandy, France, that took place in 1944. More than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded in the invasion, which allowed the Allies to begin their march across Europe.

Goldstein is the former interim director of Pitt’s Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies and a leading expert on the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He is the author or coauthor of 25 books, including the best-seller Miracle at Midway (McGraw-Hill, 1983), D-Day Normandy: The Story and the Photographs (Potomac Books, 1999), and the bestselling At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (McGraw-Hill, 1981). 

In 2006, Goldstein donated his private collection of historical World War II materials to Pitt, including about 4,400 books, 13,000 photographs, 300 films and videotapes, and transcripts of 200 interviews with Japanese and American participants in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Goldstein can be contacted at 412-417-9812 or goldy@pitt.edu.

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5/30/13/mab