Best of
World-War-Ii

1

The Noose


Mark H. Newhouse
     What Ann Frank's Diary did to put a face to the plight of Dutch Jews in WWII, The Devil's Bookkeepers does for the Jew in the Lodz ghetto. Rita Boehm, Award-Winning Author “We need this book now more than ever.” – Wanda Luthman, Award-Winning AuthorLove and courage in the face of unrelenting terror as four men in the Lodz Ghetto struggle to document the tightening of the noose under Nazi rule. Written by the son of Holocaust survivors, this stunning novel based on events described in the Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto (Yale University Press, 1984), asks what you would have sacrificed to be one of the few to survive.Desperate people do desperate things…“…an emotionally riveting account of life inside the ghetto… You cannot read this story and remain unaffected.” – Kimberlee J Benart, 5 Stars Readers’ Favorite “… a riveting, emotionally charged novel… an amazing accomplishment… This is a must-read...” Louis Emond, English Professor

Supernova in the East IV


Dan Carlin
    

D-Day / Citizen Soldier


Stephen E. Ambrose
    November '98 publication date.

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea


Michael Veitch
    In the ensuing Battle of the Bismarck Sea, a force of land-based Australian and American planes attacked a massive convoy of Japanese warships. The odds were against them. But a devastating victory was won and Japan's hopes of regaining the initiative in New Guinea destroyed. More importantly for Australians, the victory decisively removed any possibility that Australia might be invaded by Japanese forces. It was, for us, one of the most significant times in our history - a week when our future was profoundly in the balance. Bestselling author Michael Veitch tells the riveting story of this crucial moment in history - how the bravery of young men and experienced fighters, renegades and rule-followers, overcame some of the darkest days of World War II.

I'm Staying with My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC / With the Old Breed / Helmet for My Pillow


Jim Proser
    

Battle of the Bulge: Then and Now


Jean-Paul Pallud
    This is the first time that an attempt has been made to cover the entire salient in order to present the battle in our familiar 'then and now' format. Hundreds of miles have been traveled by the author throughout every corner of the battlefield to search out the scenes of past events -- every known photograph belonging to combatants, civilians, and in public collections and private sources has been sought or considered. all the cine film has been examined frame by frame and certain sequences illustrated and analyzed. In this way a number of classic pictures almost always used -- or misused -- in depicting the Ardennes battle are not only placed in their context in the German advance but are also shown to be not always quite what they seem!

GERMANY’S WAR: The Origins, Aftermath & Atrocities of World War II


John Wear
    Germany’s War by John Wear refutes this characterization of Germany, bringing history into accord with the facts.Germany’s War documents that the Allied leaders of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States were primarily responsible for starting and prolonging World War II—costing million of lives. Far from being the conqueror of Europe, Adolf Hitler saved it from Stalin.The leaders of Great Britain and America also adopted policies designed to force war with Germany. Britain’s unconditional guarantee to Poland led to horrific acts of violence against Poland’s ethnic Germans and, thus, Germany was forced to invade Poland to end these atrocities. Franklin Roosevelt’s numerous provocations, including a shoot-on-sight policy against German shipping and leaked plans of a U.S. invasion of Germany, forced Germany to declare war on the U.S. despite Hitler’s desire for peace.This book also reports the Allied mass murder of the German people after the end of World War II during which the Allies—led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower—murdered approximately 1.5 million German prisoners of war through intentional starvation and exposure to the elements. Probably a minimum 2.1 million ethnic Germans expelled from their homes also died in what was supposed to be an “orderly and humane” relocation. Finally, the Allies murdered millions of additional Germans through intentional starvation after the war ended—plus much, much more.

Fire on the Water (Maelstrom / Distant Thunders)


Taylor Anderson
    

The Cold Blue Sky: A B 17 Gunner In World War Two


Jack Novey
    This frank memoir recreates deadly combat as well as life in war-torn England.

Hitler’s Boy Soldiers: How My Father’s Generation Was Trained to Kill and Sent to Die for Germany


Helene Munson
    This is no ordinary historical document but a personal account of devastating trauma. During World War II, the Nazis trained some three hundred thousand German children to fight—and die—for Hitler. Hans was just one of those boy soldiers. Sent to an elite school for the gifted at nine years old, he found himself in the grip of a system that substituted dummy grenades for Frisbees. By age seventeen, Hans had shot down Allied pilots with antiaircraft artillery. In the desperate, final stage of Hitler’s war, he was sent on a suicide mission to Závada on the Sudetenland front, where he witnessed the death of his schoolmates—and where Helene begins to retrace her father’s footsteps after his death. As Helene translates Hans’s journal and walks his path of suffering and redemption, she uncovers the lost history of an entire generation brainwashed by the Third Reich’s school system and funneled into the Hitler Youth. A startling new account of this dark era, Hitler’s Boy Soldiers grapples with inherited trauma, the burden of guilt, and the blurred line between “perpetrator” and “victim.” It is also a poignant tale of forgiveness, as Helene comes to see her late father as not just a soldier but as one child in a sea of three hundred thousand forced onto the wrong side of history—and left to answer for it.

Hitler's Legions: The German Army Order of Battle, World War II


Samuel W. Mitcham Jr.
    

The Hundred Choices Department Store


Ginger Park
    The Pangs own The Hundred Choices Department Store, a thriving business in northern Korea that caters to wealthy Japanese. Thirteen-year-old Miyook Pang has spent two years serving in the war effort on behalf of Japan during the Japanese Occupation of her country. Miyook endures exhaustion and illness, but only when she is sent to work in the dreaded dye factory – a place deemed Hell’s Chamber by her older brother, Hoon - does she experience spiritual death. It is here where she meets Song-ho, an orphaned boy, and unbeknownst to her, the brief encounter will prove fateful. When Japan loses the war, Russian soldiers capture her beloved hometown and The Hundred Choices Department Store, leaving the city in ruin. With the Korean War looming, Miyook must take a dangerous flight south, across the 38th parallel now guarded by the newly formed North Korean Army. Here, once again, she encounters Song-ho, an event that will change the course of her life.

Anne Frank House: A Museum With A Story


Janrense Boonstra
    

Wenn Alle Bruder Schweigen (When All Our Brothers Are Silent): The Book Of Photographs Of The Waffen Ss


Various
    

Good Morning: But The Nightmares Never End


Charlie Dukes
    This is author Charlie Dukes' own story of his perilous, horrific and heart-breaking journey, but one that was also, ultimately, triumphant.

Unknown Seas (Into the Storm / Crusade)


Taylor Anderson
    Walker-a Great War-era destroyer-from pursuing Japanese, its captain Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Reddy leads his ship into a squall, hoping to find cover...only to emerge into an alternate world. A world where two species-the cat-like Lemurians and the reptilian Griks-are at war. With its advanced weaponry, the Walker's very existence could tip the balance of power. Soon, one thing becomes clear: They must determine whose side they're on. Because whichever species they choose is the winner.Crusade: Reddy and his crew have taken sides...with the species most likely to lose the war. Luckily, they're not alone-they've found the other American ship that passed through the rift. Together, the destroyers will teach their allies to make a stand. Or so they think. For a massive Japanese battleship has followed them through. And now that ship is in enemy hands.

Mercury Pictures Presents


Anthony Marra
    Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father's arrest.Fifteen years later, on the eve of America's entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won't speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can't escape the studio's narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria's only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European �migr�s: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father's past threatens Maria's carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father's fate--and her own.Written with intelligence, wit, and an exhilarating sense of possibility, Mercury Pictures Presents spans many moods and tones, from the heartbreaking to the ecstatic. It is a love letter to life's bit players, a panorama of an era that casts a long shadow over our own, and a tour de force by a novelist whose work The Washington Post calls "a flash in the heavens that makes you look up and believe in miracles."

Tin Can Soldiers: Uss Alabama (Bb 60) The National Association Of Destroyer Veterans


Robert F. Sumrall
    

Fly Boy Heroes: The Stories of the Medal of Honor Recipients of the Air War Against Japan


James H Hallas
    Finn, though suffering multiple wounds, continued to man his machine gun against waves of Japanese aircraft attacking the Kaneohe Bay Naval Station during the infamous Pearl Harbor raid. Just over three years later, as World War II struggled into its final months, a B-29 radioman named Red Erwin lingered near death after suffering horrific burns to save his air crew in the skies off Japan. They were the first and last of thirty U.S. Navy, Army, and Marine Corps aviation personnel awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions against the Japanese during World War II. They included pilots and crewmen manning fighters and dive bombers and flying boats and bombers. One was a general. Another was a sergeant. Some shot down large numbers of enemy aircraft in aerial combat. Others sacrificed themselves for their friends or risked everything for complete strangers. Who were these now largely forgotten men? Where did they come from? What inspired them to rise "above and beyond"? What, if anything, made them different? Virtually all had one thing in common: they always wanted to fly. They came from a generation that revered the aces of World War I, like Eddie Rickenbacker, the civilian flyer Charles Lindbergh, and the lost aviator Amelia Earhart--and then they blazed their own trail during World War II.

The Hitler Assassination Attempts: The Plots, Places and People that Almost Changed History


John Grehan
    While a few of these have become well known, particularly the bomb explosions at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in 1939 and the Stauffenberg Valkyrie attempt carried out at the Wolfsschanze on 20 July 1944, many others have received far less attention – until now.In this book, John Grehan has examined the known planned or proposed assassination attempts on Hitler, from Chicago to London and from Sweden to the Ukraine – some of which have not previously been presented to the general public by historians.All manner of methods were proposed by those willing to bring Hitler’s life to a premature and sticky end and Hitler was well aware of the danger which lurked potentially around every corner of every road, railway track, every building and even every individual. As a result, an immense, multi-layered security apparatus surrounded the Führer day and night. Despite this, and knowing the risks they faced, many people sought to kill the German leader, and some very nearly did. Yet Hitler survived, often by just a minute or a millimetre, to die ultimately of his own hand.These plots and conspiracies are detailed in this book, along with a unique collection of photographs of many of the proposed or actual assassination locations. All will be revealed in this fascinating compilation of the obscure, the fanciful and the carefully considered attempts to assassinate Hitler.

They Were On Omaha Beach


Laurent Lefebvre
    

The Woman with Two Shadows


Sarah James
    When she learns, on an unexpected phone call, that Eleanor is missing, Lillian takes a train from New York down to Oak Ridge to clear up the matter.It turns out that the only way into Oak Ridge is to assume Eleanor's identity, which Lillian plans to do swiftly and perfectly. But Eleanor has vanished without a trace—and she's not the only one. And how do you find someone in a town so dangerous it doesn't officially exist, when technically you don't exist either?Lillian is thrust into the epicenter of the gravest scientific undertaking of all time, with no idea who she can trust. And the more she pretends to be Eleanor, the more she loses her grip on herself.

Desperate Venture: The Story of Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of North Africa


Norman Gelb
    Its mission was to launch Operation Torch, the first massive Allied offensive operation of World War Two. This is the story of the most crucial campaigns of World War Two. It is an account of Operation Torch and of the start of the process that led to the destruction of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Torch — the Allied invasion and conquest of North Africa — was an intricate enterprise. More than five hundred American and British warships, supply vessels, and troop transports were taking part. It involved political intrigue, espionage, conspiracy, a massive disinformation campaign, a muddled coup d’état, the most momentous amphibious assault ever undertaken until then, and the transformation of half-trained, pummelled troops into victorious warriors. Norman Gelb masterfully weaves these various elements into an absorbing account of an historic moment. He describes how the Allies, their military prospects grim early in the war, agonised on how and where to expend their still slender resources on their first major offensive operation; how Winston Churchill 'hijacked’ the direction of Allied strategy from America’s generals who wanted to fight the war a different way; how Eisenhower, the Torch supreme commander, was often out of his depth but nevertheless forged an effective, harmonious Anglo-American military alliance; how the attitudes of Vichy France and Franco’s Spain distorted invasion calculations; how arch rivals Montgomery and Rommel influenced the course of events; and how, finally, for better or worse, Operation Torch determined the Allied strategy for most of the rest of the war. A senior American diplomat has called Operation Torch the most important decision made in the struggle against Hitler. Desperate Venture shows how and why in a meticulously researched and highly detailed narrative account of one of the most crucial operations in World War Two.  NORMAN GELB was born in New York and is the author of seven highly acclaimed books, including The Berlin Wall, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain, and Less Than Glory. He was, for many years, correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, first in Berlin and then in London. He is currently the London correspondent for New Leader magazine. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.