Toland, John Willard

▪ 2005

      American historian (b. June 29, 1912, La Crosse, Wis.—d. Jan. 4, 2004, Danbury, Conn.), wrote several best-selling historical books about World War II. After having served in the Army Air Corps during that war, Toland became a freelance journalist. His first nonfiction book, Ships in the Sky (1957), was about dirigibles. More notable were The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (1970), written from the Japanese point of view and the recipient of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction; Adolf Hitler (1976), widely held to be one of the most comprehensive biographies of the German leader; and Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (1982), in which Toland claimed that U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the planned attack on Pearl Harbor in advance but allowed it to take place to provide a reason for the U.S. to enter the war. Toland's memoir, Captured by History, was published in 1997.

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