Best of
World-War-Ii

1976

Admiral Halsey's Story


William F. Halsey - 1976
    “Bull” Halsey earned a legendary reputation for daring and boldness as commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. Admiral Halsey’s Story is this admiral’s record of his actions through the course of his remarkable career in the U.S. Navy. The account begins with a brief overview of his years in school and early years with the navy where he fought in the First World War and served in Mexico and Greece as he rose through the ranks to become vice admiral just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Halsey’s life was dramatically altered with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as through the next four years he rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most famous allied naval figures in the war. The events of Halsey’s life through World War Two are split into three sections in the book and are covered in wonderful detail: Firstly he uncovers the details of his command of a carrier task force in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor until May 1942. Next the book discusses his life as Commander of the South Pacific Area and its forces which lasted until June 1944. And finally the book gives an in-depth overview of the final year of the war when Halsey was commander of the U.S. Third Fleet. During the war Halsey had continually acted with bravery and speed and all of his most famous actions are covered through the book such as how he directed the campaigns in the Solomons and led the attacks on the Carolines and New Britain. “The book is pure Halsey — the personal yarn of a seagoing, fighting admiral who was forthright, honest, often brilliant, sometimes rash, but who possessed above all else, a natural modesty that enhanced his uncommon valor.” Naval War College Review “To learn what went on behind the wartime newspaper reports, her is an incomparable document. Admiral Halsey has written simply and modestly a book that will further enhance the Halsey legend.” The Saturday Review “he knew far better than armchair historians do that the best defense is a good offense. That is the legacy of Bull Halsey.” Warfare History Network William F. Halsey was an American admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. In 1943 he was made commander of the Third Fleet, the post he held through the rest of the war. He was promoted to fleet admiral in December 1945 and retired from active service in March 1947. Admiral Halsey's Story was first published in 1947 and Halsey passed away in 1959. The book was written with Lieutenant Commander J. Bryan III, USNR, who during the war had served a lieutenant commander assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific. In civilian life he was a journalist and writer who was born into the influential Bryan family of newspaper publishers and industrialists. He passed away in 1993.

Adolf Hitler


John Toland - 1976
    At a certain distance yet still with access to many of the people who enabled and who opposed the führer and his Third Reich, Toland strove to treat this life as if Hitler lived and died a hundred years before instead of within his own memory. From childhood and obscurity to his desperate end, Adolf Hitler emerges as, in Toland’s words, “far more complex and contradictory . . . obsessed by his dream of cleansing Europe Jews . . . a hybrid of Prometheus and Lucifer.”

Playing For Time


Fania Fénelon - 1976
    Captured by the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz, and later, Bergen-Belsen. With unnerving clarity and an astonishing ability to find humor where only despair should prevail, the author charts her eleven months as one of "the orchestra girls"; writes of the loves, the laughter, hatreds, jealousies, and tensions that racked this privileged group whose only hope of survival was to make music.

U-Boat War


Lothar-Günther Buchheim - 1976
     No comparable record of the war at sea exists anywhere... Buchheim's pictures are unique. Ordered on board a submarine as an official artist to send back suitably inspiring renderings of the German Navy in action for propaganda purposes, he was granted a camera and unlimited supplies of film to aid his work , as well as opportunity to use them that was unthinkable for any member of a regular crew. Caught up in the lives of those around him, appalled by what he saw, he began photographing constantly... to capture not the conventional Historical Moments of victory and defeat but the truth of what was taking place, moment by moment, detail by detail. Over 5,000 of his photographs, smuggled into safekeeping, survived World War II. Of these, 205 form this epic photo-essay. 'U-Boar War' reveals the world of its fighting men in long 'takes,' almost like a movie camera... battles above and below the surface; destroyers and merchant vessels exploding and sinking; the agonized tension and concentration of commander and crew struggling to save their sub in the midst of a depth-charge attack; eloquently subjective shots of young sailors as the leave port, their face betraying the awareness that they are being sent on a voyage with no hope of return.The photographs are interwoven with Buchheim's narrative text...the stark data out of which his novel, 'The Boat' first grew.. .and rounded out with an essay by the distinguished German historian Michael Salewski that sets the book in the political and military context of the war as a whole.

Convoy: The Greatest U-Boat Battle of the War


Martin Middlebrook - 1976
    Here, using extensive primary research, he follows the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of two convoys eastbound from the U.S. in 1942. A detailed blow-by-blow record of the perilous crossing captures the danger as the vital convoys face U-Boat wolf packs. On-board accounts reveal what it was like as torpedoes hit, boats sank, men were rescued, and submarines went on the hunt.

The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War Two


Barrett Tillman - 1976
    and Japan.

Men at Arnhem


Geoffrey S. Powell - 1976
    Geoffrey Powell, himself a veteran of the Arnhem operation, drew on conversations with many other survivors of the battle to write one of the most dramatic of all accounts of the battleWhen the book was first published in 1976 under a pseudonym, it was at once recognized as one of the finest evocations of an infantryman's war ever written.

The Morning Deluge 2: From The Long March to Liberation


Han Suyin - 1976
    Volume I, also available in Panther Books, covers the period from the childhood of Mao to the Long March.

US Navy and Marine Corps Fighters


William Green - 1976
    Navy in the period 1941-1945, only three played a major role in combat operations, these being the Grumman F4F Wildcat, Grumman F6F Hellcat and Chance Vought F4U Corsair. A fourth, the Brewster F2A Buffalo, was significant as the first monoplane fighter aircraft to enter service with the U.S. Navy, but most of its combat use was in the hands of other services, as described. The other nine types either failed to pass the prototype testing stage and achieve production, or entered production too late to see active service, but it is noteworthy that one of these fighters, the McDonnell Phantom, was the first jet fighter for the U.S. Navy; thus, the service that entered the war in December 1941 with its first monoplane fighter still in service, ended it less than four years later with its first jet fighter being readied for operations.