But what if this was not the case? What if the war had its roots in Germany's weakness, not its strength? This is the radical argument in this pathbreaking book, the first account of the Nazi era for the twenty-first century and our globalized world.There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics, yet Adam Tooze is the first to place economics alongside race and politics at the heart of the story of the Third Reich. And America, in Tooze's view, is the true pivot for Hitler's epic challenge to a shift in the world order. Hitler intuitively understood how Germany's relative poverty in the 1930s was the result not just of global depression, but also of Germany's limited resources. He predicted the dawning of a globalized world in which Europe would be crushed by America's overwhelming power, against which he saw only one last chance: a German super-state dominating Europe. Doing what Europeans had done for three centuries, he sought to carve out an imperial hinterland through one last land grab to the east, to give him the self-sufficiency to prevail in the coming superpower competition. With the odds stacked against him, he launched his underresourced armies on their unprecedented and ultimately futile rampage across Europe.Hitler knew by the summer of 1939 that his efforts to prepare for a long war with the West were doomed to failure. Ideology drove him forward. Hitler became convinced that Jewish elements in Washington, London, and Paris were circling round him, and from 1938, the international "Jewish question: was synonymous with America in his mind. Even in the summer of 1940, at the moment of Germany's greatest triumphs, Hitler was still haunted by the looming threat of Anglo-American air and sea power, orchestrated by, he believed, the world Jewish conspiracy.Tooze also casts a stark new light on Albert Speer's role in sustaining the Third Reich to its bloody end, after the catastrophe of the Soviet invasion. Speer, Tooze proposes, was no apolitical agent of technocratic efficiency but a Hitler loyalist who would stop at nothing to continue a hopeless battle of attrition, at the cost of tens of millions of lives.The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that will fundamentally change the way in which we view Nazi Germany and the Second World War.

    Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the 'special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas chambers and burning their bodies.Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks, evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria, 'Angel of Death' Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October 1944.It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale - but, as a member of a 'Sonderkommando', Shlomo Venezia was given this horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable, he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever told his tale. He survived: this is his story. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    William "Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward "Babe" Heffron were among the first paratroopers of the U.S. Army—members of an elite unit of the 101st Airborne Division called Easy Company. The crack unit was called upon for every high-risk operation of the war, including D-Day, Operation Market Garden in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge, and the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden. Both men fought side by side—until Guarnere lost his leg in the Battle of the Bulge and was sent home. Heffron went on to liberate concentration camps and take Hitler's Eagle's Nest hideout. United by their experience, they reconnected at the war's end and have been best friends ever since. Their story is a tribute to the lasting bond forged between comrades in arms—and to all those who fought for freedom.

    A companion volume to his best-selling Armageddon, Max Hastings' account of the battle for Japan is a masterful military history.Featuring the most remarkable cast of commanders the world has ever seen, the dramatic battle for Japan of 1944-45 was acted out across the vast stage of Asia: Imphal and Kohima, Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Soviet assault on Manchuria.In this gripping narrative, Max Hastings weaves together the complex strands of an epic war, exploring the military tactics behind some of the most triumphant and most horrific scenes of the 20th century. The result is a masterpiece that balances the story of command decisions, rivalries, and follies with the experiences of soldiers, sailors, and airmen of all sides as only Max Hastings can.

    They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced--and helped to win--the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost.Focusing on the citizens of four towns-- Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama;--The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Woven largely from their memories, the compelling, unflinching narrative unfolds month by bloody month, with the outcome always in doubt. All the iconic events are here, from Pearl Harbor to the liberation of the concentration camps--but we also move among prisoners of war and Japanese American internees, defense workers and schoolchildren, and families who struggled simply to stay together while their men were shipped off to Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa.Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, including many never published before, this is an intimate, profoundly affecting chronicle of the war that shaped our world.

    CRACK! AND THUMP is Scheffel's chilling account of ground combat of a young company-grade officer who fought with the 9th Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium, and Germany. Scheffel vividly recalls the terror, mind-numbing fatigue, raw emotions, and horrific conditions fighting men endured to achieve victory in World War II.

    Biff and Rosemary are honeymooning in Sorrento.They meet Konrad and Anna, a charming couple who also happen to be newlyweds.They seem to have so much in common — Biff is a pilot in the RAF and Konrad is in the German Navy. Soon things will be very different. . .They tour the Amalfi coast, and visit the ruins at Pompeii. When their holiday comes to an end, they swear to meet again in a year’s time.But their countries and their allegiances will be torn apart by war.Konrad and Anna seem so nice. They can’t possibly be the enemy, can they?Each of them is drawn further into the chaos of conflict. Who will survive? And what will fate hold for these couples?ONE LAST HOLIDAY BEFORE THE WAR THAT WILL CHANGE THEIR LIVES FOREVERA breathtaking wartime saga perfect for fans of Josephine Cox, Kate Eastham, Dinah Jefferies, Pam Howes and Tania Crosse.

    On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's government and also of Britain--indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olson's fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain government's defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europe's tyrants and eventually forced the prime minister's resignation.Some historians dismiss the "phony war" that preceded this turning point--from September 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill became prime minister--as a time of waiting and inaction, but Olson makes no such mistake, and describes in dramatic detail the public unrest that spread through Britain then, as people realized how poorly prepared the nation was to confront Hitler, how their basic civil liberties were being jeopardized, and also that there were intrepid politicians willing to risk political suicide to spearhead the opposition to Chamberlain--Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, and Lord Robert Cranborne among them. The political and personal dramas that played out in Parliament and in the nation as Britain faced the threat of fascism virtually on its own are extraordinary--and, in Olson's hands, downright inspiring.

    But what of the sailors who manned the landing craft, going back and forth under fire with nowhere to take cover, their craft the special targets of enemy gunners?In this book, Ken Wiley, a Coast Guardsman on an Attack Transport in the Pacific, relates the intricate, often nerve wracking story of how the United States projected its power across 6,000 miles in the teeth of fanatical Japanese resistance. Each invasion was a swirl of moving parts, from frogmen to fire support, transport mother ships to Attack Transports, the smaller Higgins boats (LCVPs), and during the last terrifying stage the courageous men who would storm the beaches.The author participated in the campaigns for the Marshall Islands, the Marianas the Philippines and Okinawa, and with a precise eye for detail relates numerous aspects of landing craft operations, such as ferrying wounded, that are often discounted. He conveys the terror and horrors of war, as well as, on occasion, the thrill, while not neglecting the humor and cameraderie of wartime life.An exciting book, full of harrowing combat action, Lucky 13 also provides a valuable service in expanding our knowledge of exactly how World War II's massive amphibious operations were undertaken.

    Full color.

    There she is trained to be a "proper German" for adoption by a German family, and all the while she struggles to remember her true identity.

    They intend to destroy a German troop transport, but Gretl’s unscheduled train reaches the bomb first.Gretl is the only survivor. Though spared from the concentration camp, the orphaned German Jew finds herself lost in a country hostile to her people. When Jakób discovers her, guilt and fatherly compassion prompt him to take her in. For three years, the young man and little girl form a bond over the secrets they must hide from his Catholic family.But she can’t stay with him forever. Jakób sends Gretl to South Africa, where German war orphans are promised bright futures with adoptive Protestant families—so long as Gretl’s Jewish roots, Catholic education, and connections to communist Poland are never discovered.Separated by continents, politics, religion, language, and years, Jakób and Gretl will likely never see each other again. But the events they have both survived and their belief that the human spirit can triumph over the ravages of war have formed a bond of love that no circumstances can overcome.

    In December 1944, America’s most popular and colorful naval hero, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, unwittingly sailed his undefeated Pacific Fleet into the teeth of the most powerful storm on earth. Three destroyers were capsized sending hundreds of sailors and officers into the raging, shark infested waters. Over the next sixty hours, small bands of survivors fought seventy-foot waves, exhaustion, and dehydration to await rescue at the hands of the courageous Lt. Com. Henry Lee Plage, who, defying orders, sailed his tiny destroyer escort USS Tabberer through 150 mph winds to reach the lost men. Thanks to documents that have been declassified after sixty years and dozens of first-hand accounts from survivors—including former President Gerald Ford—one of the greatest World War II stories, and a riveting tale of survival at sea, can finally be told.

    It is a gripping story of heroism, sacrifice, and death in the largest land-sea-air operation in US history.

    Britain is at war and Ruth Aspinall, a gifted pilot, is determined to join the Air Transport Auxiliary, an organisation of civilian pilots who ferry aircraft to wherever they're needed. Meanwhile over in America, siblings Jack and Lucy Nelson, both experienced pilots themselves, are keen to join too.After a perilous journey by sea, Jack is soon having his first experience of the London Blitz before being posted to White Waltham, where he quite literally bumps into Ruth and romance soon blossoms. On D-Day, Jack is sent to France to deliver a Spitfire, but he is declared missing in action after his plane fails to arrive. Heartbroken, Ruth must accept that the love of her life may never return . . .

    Abandoned and Forgotten is the memoir of a young girl growing up in the then-German province of East Prussia by the Baltic Sea. Orphaned at the age of nine and left to fend for herself in a hostile world, Evelyne Tannehill witnessed firsthand what happens when law and order break down and self-preservation becomes the only thing that matters. Her journey is a poignant example of how resilient the human spirit can be, even in the face of war's greatest horrors.

    His father, desperate to settle his business affairs, travels to France, leaving Michael in the care of his mother and Gertruda Bablinska, a Catholic nanny devoted to the family. When Michael's mother has a stroke, Gertruda promises the dying woman that she will make her way to Palestine and raise him as her own son. Written with the invaluable assistance of Michael, now seventy-two and living in New York City, GERTRUDA'S OATH re-creates Michael and Gertruda's amazing journey. Gripping vignettes bring to life the people who helped ensure their survival, including SS officer Karl Rink, who made it his mission to save Jews after his own Jewish wife was murdered; Rink's daughter, Helga, who escaped to a kibbutz, where she lived until her recent death; and the Jewish physician Dr. Berman, who aided Michael and Gertruda through the worst of times. GERTRUDA'S OATH is a story of extraordinary courage and moral strength in the face of horrific events. Like "Schindler's List," it transcends history and religion to reveal the compassion and hope that miraculously thrives in a world immersed in war without end.

    In this major reevaluation of that crucial year, Robert Citino shows that the German army's emerging woes were rooted as much in its addiction to the war of movement-attempts to smash the enemy in short and lively campaigns-as they were in Hitler's deeply flawed management of the war. From the overwhelming operational victories at Kerch and Kharkov in May to the catastrophic defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad, Death of the Wehrmacht offers an eye-opening new view of that decisive year. Building upon his widely respected critique in The German Way of War, Citino shows how the campaigns of 1942 fit within the centuries-old patterns of Prussian/German warmaking and ultimately doomed Hitler's expansionist ambitions. He examines every major campaign and battle in the Russian and North African theaters throughout the year to assess how a military geared to quick and decisive victories coped when the tide turned against it. Citino also reconstructs the German generals' view of the war and illuminates the multiple contingencies that might have produced more favorable results. In addition, he cites the fatal extreme aggressiveness of German commanders like Erwin Rommel and assesses how the German system of command and its commitment to the independence of subordinate commanders suffered under the thumb of Hitler and chief of staff General Franz Halder. More than the turning point of a war, 1942 marked the death of a very old and traditional pattern of warmaking, with the classic German way of war unable to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. Blending masterly research with a gripping narrative, Citino's remarkable work provides a fresh and revealing look at how one of history's most powerful armies began to founder in its quest for world domination.

    At the heart of this story is the maverick general Tadamichi Kuriyabashi, devoted family man, brilliant leader and the first man on the island to know they were all going to die. Kumiko Kakehashi's heart rending account is based on letters written home by the doomed soldiers on the island, most family men, conscripted late in the war. She reveals a very different Japanese army from the popular image. It is an incredibly moving portrayal of men determined to resist to the last breath.

    Together, they present a panoramic view of four tumultuous days that fateful spring: Hitler’s birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler’s suicide on April 30, and the German surrender on May 8. An extraordinary account of suffering and survival, Swansong 1945 brings to vivid life the end of World War II in Europe.

    Musically very gifted, by her mid-teens Alice was one of the best-known pianists in Prague. But as the Nazis swept across Europe her comfortable, bourgeois world began to crumble around her, as anti-Jewish feeling was legitimised. This book tells her story.

    For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month and were visible for 200 miles.The people of Hamburg had no time to understand what had hit them. As they emerged from their ruined cellars and air raid shelters, they were confronted with a unique vision of hell: a sea of flame that stretched to the horizon, the burned-out husks of fire engines that had tried to rescue them, roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac. Even the canals were on fire.Worse still, they had to battle hurricane-force winds to escape the blaze. The only safe places were the city's parks, but to reach them survivors had to stumble through temperatures of up to 800C and a blizzard of sparks strong enough to lift grown men off their feet."Inferno" is the culmination of several years of research and the first comprehensive account of the Hamburg firestorm to be published in almost thirty years. Keith Lowe has interviewed eyewitnesses in Britain, Germany, and America, and gathered together hundreds of letters, diaries, firsthand accounts, and documents. His book gives the human side of an inhuman story: the long, tense buildup to the Allied attack; the unparalleled horror of the firestorm itself; and the terrible aftermath. The result is an epic story of devastation and survival, and a much-needed reminder of the human face of war. Includes nineteen maps and thirty-one photographs, many never seen before.350 pages narrative, 489 pages in total

    Hiding out with a gentile family, her very life at risk every day, Ruth struggled to remain strong and sane. And though she was destined to live, her struggle continued after the war, when she began a new life in America, as a teenager who had been through horrors. This memoir will inspire countless readers and bestow important lessons about life, hope, and memory.

    Patrick Bishop looks back at the lives, human realities and the extraordinary risks that the painfully young pilots took during the strategic air-offensive against Germany from 1939-1945.

    Now, drawing on sources newly available since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, historian and journalist Chris Bellamy presents the first full account of this deadly conflict.Bellamy outlines the lead-up to the war—in which the fragile alliance between Hitler and Stalin was unceremoniously broken—and takes us headlong into the hostilities. He presents a shocking picture of battle in which the traditional restraints of “civilized” warfare were shed. He makes clear how the Soviets quickly rallied against Hitler, choosing homegrown despotism over foreign domination in a struggle that the Russian people call the Great Patriotic War.Bellamy charts the early gains of the German army, whose advances into Soviet territory were brought to a halt in Moscow in the winter of 1941, and whose defeat was sealed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the most merciless campaign of the bloodiest front. He shows how Soviet men—and women—joined to fight a war whose casualties were later steeply underestimated by their government, and how even the true death toll, at 27 million, does not take into account the millions of lives on both sides that lay shattered in the aftermath.Finally, Bellamy examines the far-reaching consequences of the battle’s outcome—the reverberations of which are still felt today—and argues that the cost of victory was ultimately too much for the Soviet Union to bear.A magisterial study, and an essential addition to our understanding of contemporary world history.

    Jones' new history of Stalingrad offers a radical reinterpretation of the most famous battle of the Second World War. Combining eye witness testimony of Red Army fighters with fresh archive material the book gives a dramatic insight into the thinking of the Russian command and the mood of the ordinary soldiers.

    In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, an experimental rabbit job, eyewitness accounts of cannibalism, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually candid view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people. the Germans occupy western Poland. A year later they marry in the ghetto; by 1942 deportations have wasted both families. After Rosalie is saved by Oskar Schindler, the husband and wife end up at the Plaszow work camp under Amon Goeth, the bestial commandant played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. ...

    Afire, listing heavily to starboard, and with over 1,000 killed or wounded, it appeared as if the USS Franklin would find her end among the waters of the Pacific. The events that followed, however, would make the story of Big Ben one of the most dramatic and inspiring in naval history. Now available in paperback from historian Joseph Springer, Inferno: The Epic Life and Death Struggle of the USS Franklin in World War II tells the heroic tale of the near-miraculous efforts that went into saving the USS Franklin—from the selfless contributions of the hundreds of officers and enlisted men who voluntarily remained onboard to the assistance of the USS Santa Fe in rescuing crewmen from the sea, fighting the fires, and closing in alongside the Franklin to take off the numerous wounded and nonessential personnel. Told in the survivors’ words, the story of the legendary ship’s arduous journey from Okinawa to the Brooklyn Navy Yard unfolds in harrowing detail. It is a tremendous tale of endurance and seamanship, and unlike any in the proud history of the U.S. Navy.

    On April 10, when the German troops marched into Zagreb, the Croatian capital, they were greeted as liberators by the Croats. Three days later, Ante Pavelić, the future leader of the Independent State of Croatia, returned from exile in Italy and Goldstein’s father, the proprietor of a leftist bookstore in Karlovac—a beautiful old city fifty miles from the capital—was arrested along with other local Serbs, communists, and Yugoslav sympathizers. Goldstein was only thirteen years old, and he would never see his father again.   More than fifty years later, Goldstein seeks to piece together the facts of his father’s last days. The moving narrative threads stories of family, friends, and other ordinary people who lived through those dark times together with personal memories and an impressive depth of carefully researched historic details. The other central figure in Goldstein’s heartrending tale is his mother—a strong, resourceful woman who understands how to act decisively in a time of terror in order to keep her family alive.   From 1941 through 1945 some 32,000 Jews, 40,000 Gypsies, and 350,000 Serbs were slaughtered in Croatia. It is a period in history that is often forgotten, purged, or erased from the history books, which makes Goldstein’s vivid, carefully balanced account so important for us today—for the same atrocities returned to Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s. And yet Goldstein’s story isn’t confined by geographical boundaries as it speaks to the dangers and madness of ethnic hatred all over the world and the urgent need for mutual understanding.

    Based on thousands of pages of public and previously classified documents, it makes an utterly convincing case that when the American government withdrew its forces from Vietnam, it knowingly abandoned hundreds of POWs to their fate. The product of twenty-five years of research by former Congressman Bill Hendon and attorney Elizabeth A. Stewart, "An Enormous Crime "brilliantly exposes the reasons why these American soldiers and airmen were held back by the North Vietnamese at Operation Homecoming in 1973 and what these men have endured since. Despite hundreds of postwar sightings and intelligence reports telling of Americans being held captive throughout Vietnam and Laos, Washington did nothing. And despite numerous secret military signals and codes sent from the desperate POWs themselves, the Pentagon did not act. Even in 1988, a U.S. spy satellite passing over Sam Neua Province, Laos, spotted the twelve-foot-tall letters "USA" and immediately beneath them a huge, highly classified Vietnam War-era USAF/USN Escape & Evasion code in a rice paddy in a narrow mountain valley. The letters "USA" appeared to have been dug out of the ground, while the code appeared to have been fashioned from rice straw (see jacket photograph). Tragically, the brave men who constructed these codes have not yet come home. Nor have any of the other American POWs who the postwar intelligence shows have laid down similar codes, secret messages, and secret authenticators in rice paddies and fields and garden plots and along trails in both Laos and Vietnam. "An Enormous Crime" is based on open-source documents and reports, and thousands of declassified intelligence reports and satellite imagery, as well as author interviews and personal experience. It is a singular work, telling a story unlike any other in our modern history: ugly, harrowing, and true. From the Bay of Pigs, where John and Robert Kennedy struck a deal with Fidel Castro that led to freedom for the Bay of Pigs prisoners, to the Paris Peace Accords, in which the authors argue Kissinger and Nixon sold American soldiers down the river for political gain, to a continued reluctance to revisit the possibility of reclaiming any men who might still survive, we have a story untold for decades. And with "An Enormous Crime" we have for the first time a comprehensive history of America's leaders in their worst hour; of life-and-death decision making based on politics, not intelligence; and of men lost to their families and the country they serve, betrayed by their own leaders.

    'Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world will move forward into broad, sunlit uplands,' said Churchill. The future of Europe depended on Britain. A self-confident Herman Göring thought that it would be only a matter of weeks before his planes had forced Britain to surrender. The courage, resourcefulness and brilliant organisation of the RAF were to prove him wrong. By late September 1940, the RAF had proved invincible, thanks to the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire. It exceeded anything that any other air force possessed. RJ Mitchell, a shy and almost painfully modest engineer, was the genius behind the Spitfire. On the 5th March 1936, following its successful maiden flight, a legend was born.Prize-winning historian Leo McKinstry's vivid history of the Spitfire brings together a rich cast of characters and first hand testimonies. It is a tale full of drama and heroism, of glory and tragedy, with the main protagonist the remarkable plane that played a crucial role in saving Britain.

    In "Partners in Command," acclaimed historian and journalist Mark Perry gets to the heart of arguably the most fateful partnership in American military history, a union of two very different men bound by an epic common purpose. He follows Marshall and Eisenhower's collaboration from the major battles in North Africa and Italy to the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, the crisis of the Battle of the Bulge, and the postwar implementation of the Marshall Plan, and the establishment of Eisenhower's leadership of NATO. erry shows that Marshall and Eisenhower were remarkably close colleagues who brilliantly combined strengths and offset each other's weaknesses in their strategic planning, on the battlefields, and in their mutual struggle to overcome the bungling, political sniping, and careerism of both British and American commanders that infected nearly every battle and campaign. Finally, Marshall and Eisenhower collaborated in crafting the foreign policy and military infrastructure that became the foundation for winning the Cold War. From their first meeting after Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marshall and Eisenhower recognized in each other an invaluable military partner-by February 1942, Marshall, who was Army chief of staff, had promoted Eisenhower to head the War Plans Division, where his first job was to write the initial plan to win the war against Japan. Within a few months, Marshall selected Eisenhower as commander of all U.S. forces in the European theater. By early 1944, however, a subtle but major shift had occurred: Marshall the teacher had become Eisenhower's student, Eisenhower having developed the superior grasp of command challenges. "Partners in Command" is an extraordinary portrait of an often ignored alliance between two iconic military figures and the ways in which their unusual collaboration would ultimately shape fifty years of successful American foreign policy.

    Nineteen-year-old Jim Yoder is an ocean away from his childhood home in Elkhart, Indiana, and his pretty friend, Margo Lace. He is serving in the United States Air Corps as a waist gunner flying on a B-24 high above the battlefield. Through a strange chain of events, Jim finds himself back on the ground and trapped behind enemy lines. As Jim is running across Nazi Germany to reach the safety of Allied soil, he discovers that to survive he will have to trust the God he once rejected. This Christian fiction book is full of excitement, danger, and realistic details about World War II Europe.

    Alamo in the Ardennes provides a compelling, day-by-day account of this pivotal moment in America's greatest war.

    He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all.In Their Darkest Hour he presents 35 of his most electrifying encounters.

    Army in World War II. Taking a new approach to an old story, Harold Winton widens our field of vision by showing how victory in this legendary campaign was built upon the remarkable resurrection of our truncated interwar army, an overhaul that produced the effective commanders crucial to GI success in beating back the Ardennes counteroffensive launched by Hitler's forces.Winton's is the first study of the Bulge to examine leadership at the largely neglected level of corps command. Focusing on the decisions and actions of six Army corps commanders--Leonard Gerow, Troy Middleton, Matthew Ridgway, John Millikin, Manton Eddy, and J. Lawton Collins--he recreates their role in this epic struggle through a mosaic of narratives that take the commanders from the pre-war training grounds of America to the crucible of war in the icy-cold killing fields of Belgium and Luxembourg.Winton introduces the story of each phase of the Bulge with a theater-level overview of the major decisions and events that shaped the corps battles and, for the first time, fully integrates the crucial role of airpower into our understanding of how events unfolded on the ground. Unlike most accounts of the Ardennes that chronicle only the periods of German and American initiative, Winton's study describes an intervening middle phase in which the initiative was fiercely contested by both sides and the outcome uncertain. His inclusion of the principal American and German commanders adds yet another valuable layer to this rich tapestry of narrative and analysis.Ultimately, Winton argues that the flexibility of the corps structure and the competence of the men who commanded the six American corps that fought in the Bulge contributed significantly to the ultimate victory. Chronicling the human drama of commanding large numbers of soldiers in battle, he has produced an artful blend of combat narrative, collective biography, and institutional history that contributes significantly to the broader understanding of World War II as a whole. With the recent modularization of the U.S. Army division, which makes this command echelon a re-creation of the corps of World War II, Corps Commanders of the Bulge also has distinct relevance to current issues of Army transformation.

    Among these men was prisoner number 1418 Andrei Pogozhev. He survived, and this is his story.

    Surviving by his wits, Englishman escaped death time and again, committing daring acts of bravery to do what he thought was right--helping other prisoners escape and actively participating in the underground resistance.A man who refused to surrender his spirit despite the loss of his wife and his entire family to the Nazis, Englishman kept a promise he had made to a friend, and sought his friend's children after the war. With the children's mother, he made a new life in Canada, where he continued his resistance, tracking neo-Nazi cells and infiltrating their headquarters to destroy their files.Until his death in August 2007, Englishman remained active, speaking out against racism and hatred in seminars for young people. His gripping story should be widely read and will be of interest to scholars of auto/biography, World War II history, and the Holocaust.

    military could certainly have used that bit of wisdom in 2003, as violence began to eclipse the Iraq War’s early successes. Ironically, had the Army only looked in its own archives, they would have found it—that piece of advice is from a manual the U.S. War Department handed out to American servicemen posted in Iraq back in 1943.The advice in Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II,presented here in a new facsimile edition, retains a surprising, even haunting, relevance in light of today’s muddled efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds. Designed to help American soldiers understand and cope with what was at the time an utterly unfamiliar culture—the manual explains how to pronounce the word Iraq, for instance—this brief, accessible handbook  mixes do-and-don’t-style tips (“Always respect the Moslem women.” “Talk Arabic if you can to the people. No matter how badly you do it, they will like it.”) with general observations on Iraqi history and society. The book’s overall message still rings true—dramatically so—more than sixty years later: treat an Iraqi and his family with honor and respect, and you will have a strong ally; treat him with disrespect and you will create an unyielding enemy.With a foreword by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl reflecting on the manual’s continuing applicability—and lamenting that it was unknown at the start of the invasion—this new edition of Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq will be essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of Iraq and the fate of the American soldiers serving there.

    It covers the individual destinies, the famous and notorious raids like Schweinfurt-Regensburg and Dresden, the social transformation of east Anglian villages by an influx of good-time Yanks, the POW camps, and the endless controversy about the ethics of bombing.

    James H. Madison provides information about her life, the activities of the Red Cross Clubmobiles, and the war.

    I'm 92 years old and survived one of the worst catastrophes of World War II. On August 14, 1945, eight days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, I was aboard the U.S.S. YMS – 472, ready to come home from serving my country. The weight of the war had finally been lifted but I was never prepared for what came next. An epic storm with 140 mph winds and 45 foot waves ripped apart our ship and I was hurled over 40 miles away on the life raft I used to escape our sinking ship. When the storm subsided only nine of us survived and landed in shark infested waters with no food or water. The next six days I watched my friends lose hope and one by one they slipped into the ocean, I fought impossible odds to survive and hold on to my sanity while battling the raging demons of fear, hunger, depression and hopelessness. This is my true story and I want to share it with you.

    Another 7,300 prisoners held in NKVD jails in Ukraine and Belarus were also shot at this time, although many others disappeared without trace. The murder of these Poles is among the most monstrous mass murders undertaken by any modern government. Three leading historians of the NKVD massacres of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn, Kharkov, and Tver—now subsumed under “Katyn”—present 122 documents selected from the published Russian and Polish volumes coedited by Natalia S. Lebedeva and Wojciech Materski. The documents, with introductions and notes by Anna M. Cienciala, detail the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up, the admission of the truth, and the Katyn question in Soviet/Russian–Polish relations up to the present.

    We'd heard of war in far-off places, places like Italy and Africa, and the faraway Pacific, but we were in England. We thought life would go on like this with excitement, new places to see, friends we'd never otherwise have met, a sense of manhood new to most of us . . . how little we knew. Barely more than children, soon to suffer the death of innocence. Carver McGriff was 19 years old when he left Indiana and his innocence behind to join in the battle for freedom on one of the most important and bloodiest battlefields of World War II. In Making Sense of Normandy: A Young Man's Journey of War and Faith, McGriff gives a rare veteran first-hand account of the harsh realities of WWII combat - not only the struggle for physical survival but for emotional and spiritual survival as well. It is a timeless story for all generations, a rare treasure that will touch the hearts and minds of all the Greatest Generations - yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's.

    After joining the resistance, she was arrested, sentenced to death, and held in Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she taught art history to other women who, like her, might be dead in a few days. This brilliantly written memoir records a neglected side of World War II: the mass murder of Poles, the serial horrors inflicted by both Russians and Nazis, and the immense courage of those who resisted.

    In fact, many of its rules and guidelines could still be applied today. Make Do and Mend focuses on clothes rationing, which was introduced in June 1940. With the nation's industrial output concentrated on the war effort, basic clothes were in short supply and high fashion was an unknown commodity. Adults were issued as little as 36 coupons a year to spend on clothes. But a man's suit could cost 22 coupons, a coat 16 and a lady's dress 11, so the need to recycle and be inventive with other materials became more and more necessary. The government issued the leaflets included in Make Do and Mend to advise on how best to avoid wasting valuable resources by recycling curtains into dresses and old sheets into underwear; in short how to 'make do and mend' rather than buying new clothes. Produced from original material held in archives the leaflets are also a nostalgic showcase of 1940s' style, which makes them the perfect gift.

    . . . Schultz combed an impressive body of material for this account." —Washington Times"This bittersweet tale of arrogance, wishful thinking, sacrifice, and heroism is recounted with grace and empathy." —Military.com"Schultz combines a historian's meticulous research and a novelist's hypnotic prose to produce this memorable popular history... Shultz's intimate account of this controversial episode is a timely reminder of the horrors of war and a moving tribute to Ploestl's heroes." —Publishers Weekly"We knew it was a disaster and knew that in the flames shooting up from those refineries we might be burned to death. But we went right in." —Lt. Norman Whalen"We were dragged through the mouth of hell."—from a Ploesti Mission debriefing reportPlanned by Winston Churchill, authorized by Dwight D. Eisenhower, and executed by five specially trained American bomber units, the attack on the oil refineries of Ploesti, Romania, was among the most daring and dangerous missions of World War II. If the raid succeeded, the Nazi war machine would suffer a devastating blow. On August 1, 1943, nearly two hundred B-24 bombers flew from Benghazi, North Africa, with directions to descend on Ploesti at treetop level, bomb the refineries, and return. The low-level bombers could evade enemy radar and were thought to be more difficult to shoot down. But despite warnings that a German heavy flak train had been moved into the area and that the secrecy of their mission had been compromised, the bombers were sent out. Minutes from the target, one of the commanders made a wrong turn, leading the formations away from Ploesti. Recovering from this mistake, most of the bombers relocated the refineries, but the mission was doomed. The ensuing air-ground battle claimed dozens of the bombers, and many of those that survived the ordeal were forced to ditch in the ocean or in remote areas due to lack of fuel or structural damage.In Into the Fire: Ploesti, The Most Fateful Mission of World War II, Duane Schultz re-creates this great battle, combining original research and interviews with survivors in order to capture the tension, drama, and heroics of the warring sides. More Medals of Honor were awarded for this mission than any other aerial combat enterprise in the history of the United States. But the medals are bittersweet testimony to the courage of the 1,726 young men who risked all on a fateful attempt to cut off the Nazi supply of "black gold.

    From the major Japanese drives in 1937 to Japan's surrender, detailed maps delineate the course of the many conflicts that defined World War II. Thye also create a fascinating visual tribute to the ingenuity of troop movements by detailing the progress of forces from day to day (and sometimes from hour to hour). The accompanying text provides insight into the many twists and turns of the war, as well as the motivation of the leaders directing the troops who carried them out. Considered a classic of military history, the original volumes were prepared by distinguished members of the Department of Military Art and Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy and used as instructional tools for the cadets. This mammouth and invaluable work was created under the direction of Brigadier General Vincent J. Esposito, a faculty member at West Point for more than twenty years. His highly respected endeavor allows readers to easily follow the entire course of a campaign or battle in detail while gaining a greater understanding of the Pacific theater during World War II.

    Also included are popular items, such as lighters, that were carried by many troops but were not standard issue. The accompanying text describes the items and also compares them to those of other armies. The result is a complete picture of the daily life and conditions of the fighting men of all countries. It is an essential reference work for all military historians, collectors, and general readers. A second volume covering the Allies will be published in Fall 2008.

    At the end of the read one feels both hope and admiration for the human spirit.” Holocaust Center of Toledo“And I Cried… This book brings the Holocaust to life and evokes emotions not found in many history books. Weaving together a story of love, passion, horror, and history, Weinblatt left nothing out.” Sylvania (OH) Historical Society“A tender, coming of age tale. This book shows the critical roles that love, determination, and steadfast belief play toward battling one’s demons both physically and mentally. Jacob’s Courage is ultimately a tribute to the triumphant human spirit.” Jewish Book World“The reader sees events through the eyes of archetypal participants… a doctor forced to experiment on his own, a Sonderkommando and a hero.” The Association of Jewish Libraries“The author maintains a driving, relentless pace. Jacob and his beloved Rachael try to escape the madness of Nazi Germany while maintaining their humanity; in the end, the visionary protagonist comes to echo his Biblical counterpart who fled danger in his own country and saw a life-changing vision in his dreams.” The University of Toledo“Jacob’s Courage follows the young couple from the forced ghettos to the concentration camps and beyond, with several harrowing twists and turns that allow Weinblatt to illustrate the myriad tragedies Holocaust victims faced.” Toledo Free Press“The love story was beautiful and touching. This was such an emotional read. Weinblatt’s vivid descriptions of the time beautifully entwines with the love story. Jacob’s Courage is a powerful story of how love does conquer all. No matter how hard the times are, love and humanity never lose their power.” My Love Affair with Books“Weinblatt has painted a picture with words of the horrors of the holocaust. He has done so in a haunting and evocative way. Weinblatt has the talent to convey the terror of the Jews.” James E. Vigiletti, Attorney at Law.“You see hear and smell… Hitler’s Third Reich.” Ron Braithwaite, author“Jacob’s Courage reminded me of one of the greatest books of the 20th Century, Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. Weinblatt has painted a picture with words of the horrors of the holocaust. Jacob’s Courage is a personal, real life example of holding on to something greater than one’s self. The love that grows between Jacob and Rachael sustains them through the horrors of life in a Nazi death camp. We all could learn a lesson from these two teenagers, coming of age and faced with the greatest existential threat to life.” Frank Fiore, author“Not since Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place have the horrors of the holocaust been brought to life in such vivid detail. Charles Weinblatt takes you to Nazi Germany through the lives of two young people whose world is torn apart at a time in their lives when it should be blossoming. Weinblatt does a masterful job of touching your emotions throughout the book by placing you inside the lives of Jacob and Rachel. I recommend you pick up a copy of this book and a box of tissues. Get ready for a good cry and a heartwarming ending as Jacob and Rachel find the courage to live.” Rick Rodgers, author” Weinblatt weaves such detail into his story that the reader comes away with a powerful sense of what life was like for the Jews during this horrible period in history. Jacob’s Courage shines a spotlight on the truth. Anyone interested in World War II, the Holocaust, Jewish history, or a love story, should pick up Jacob’s Courage.” Darcia Helle, author.“This is an amazing book… one of the best reads that I’ve had in a long while and I literally could not put it down.” Jodi Shepard.“For a clear and no-holds-barred description of life as a Jew in Nazi Germany, you can’t beat Jacob’s Courage, by Charles Weinblatt.” Jennifer Feddersen, Editor.

    I couldn't put it down!"Zella Brown, Cofounder of One By One Jewish German Reconciliation Through Dialogue"A compelling and sensitive personal account, at times charming and tender, at times grimly upsetting . Honest, painful and necessary, this book offers an important perspective rarely read in America. . An important addition to the human saga of war and the tragic condition of mankind in all it's paradoxical complexity."Lawrence Lowenthal, Director of the New England Region American Jewish Committee"Marga Dieter captures so well the thinking and heart of a little German girl caught in the ravages of the Second World War."Joan Ecklein, Former Co-Chair of the Boston Chapter Women's International League for Peace and Freedom"These poignant experiences of an innocent, bright and lively young girl, acutely remembered by an adult woman, and told with sensitivity and a wonderful sense of drama, will fill the void left by the silent generation of Germany's war children."Barbara Eskin, Moderator of the German Book Club Goethe Institute, BostonBombs, destruction and emotional devastation form the backdrop for Aamie's childhood on the homefront in Germany during World War II. What might seem crushing to most little girls is just everyday life for her.In a neighborhood where the walls are plastered with posters proclaiming "THE ENEMY IS ALWAYS LISTENING!" and people live by the secrets they keep, any revelation of her mother's sentiments against the Nazis is a danger to her family's very survival.Her father, in the Navy, is eventually captured and serves as a POW, until Aamie is nine years old.Her mother's struggle to maintain their family and raise two teenage boys, who are members of the mandatory Hitler Youth program, within the turmoil of war-torn Germany drives her to physical and nervous breakdown.Yet Aamie, with the support of her Greek Chorus of celluloid dolls, ponders and overcomes these obstacles with an irrepressible tom-boy spirit.An intensely told story of a wartime childhood, this book is a reminder of how children's emotional lives play out against the horror and destruction of war.

    Kennedy. Written in graphic-novel format.

    Going far beyond accounts of the major battles, "The Library of Congress World War II Companion "examines, in a unique and engaging manner, this devastating conflict, its causes, conduct, and aftermath. It considers the politics that shaped the involvement of the major combatants; military leadership and the characteristics of major Allied and Axis armed services; the weaponry that resulted in the war's unprecedented destruction, as well as debates over the use of these weapons; the roles of resistance groups and underground fighters; war crimes; daily life during wartime; the uses of propaganda; and much more.Drawn from the unparalleled collections of the institution that has been called "America's Memory," "The Library of Congress World War II Companion" includes excerpts from contemporary letters, journals, pamphlets, and other documents, as well as first-person accounts recorded by the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. The text is complemented by more than 150 illustrations. Organized into topical chapters (such as "The Media War," "War Crimes and the Holocaust," and two chapters on "Military Operations" that cover the important battles), the book also include readers to navigate through the rich store of information in these pages. Filled with facts and figures, information about unusual aspects of the war, and moving personal accounts, this remarkable volume will be indispensable to anyone who wishes to understand the World War II era and its continuing reverberations.

    

    Contains firsthand accounts and photographs of the Normandy campaign written by soldiers and journalists.

    Once a happy child in a well-to-do German family, as the years passed Bachner faced first ridicule and persecution, then imprisonment and deprivation. Attributing his survival to a combination of strength and being in the right place at the right time, Bachner's memoir is a poignant and often horrific account of Jewish struggles during the days of World War II. Beginning with his idyllic childhood, Bachner expresses the range of emotions he experienced as the Nazis transformed his homeland into a nation where he and his fellow Jews were no longer welcome. He describes the volatile political atmosphere and the fears inspired in all Germans by tales of the concentration camps. In addition, he tells of the belief many Jews held that the West would step in and put an end to Hitler's reign. The work then details the realities of life in a concentration camp. The end of the war, Bachner's reunion with his remaining family members and his eventual relocation to America are also discussed.

    Lest We Forget brings together first-hand recollections from the Great War to World War II, to vividly illustrate the impact of war. Told in the actual words of the men, women, and children who lived through a century of war it is a moving insight into the greatest conflicts of the 20th century. The testaments of those who were there depict the horrors of war, yet also provide inspiration with tales of enduring courage, sacrifice, and daring. Arranged thematically into chapters such as hope, fear, the kindness of strangers, the human cost, and brothers in arms, it reveals the full scope of war in all its stark reality. Evocatively illustrated throughout with line drawings from the Imperial War Museum's archives, it will appeal to anyone wanting to gain an insight into not only specific conflicts, but the overarching and sometimes surprising effects of war in general. Lest We Forget vividly ensures that the wartime experiences of ordinary people will never be forgotten.

    The nation waited, breathless with tension, for the Nazi threat to become real.Acclaimed author Midge Gillies gathers together the personal accounts of those who still remember this time, with written sources from contemporary press reports, to diaries and letters, to illustrate and recreate the fear, suspense and even excitement of living in England in the shadow of the Nazis. A pair of sisters, determined that life should go on as normally as possible, carry on swimming and playing tennis - only to find themselves under suspicion of being sympathisers because of their seemingly carefree attitude. A group of former poachers and gamekeepers huddle in a woodland hideout, newly trained and prepared to blow up bridges and slit German throats. Citizens hide their most treasured possessions from the Nazis in biscuit tins, or bury them in graveyards.Over the weekend of September 7th, the code word for high alert flashed round the country, and with tensions at their height many assumed it to mean that the Nazis had already landed. Sunday September 8th was declared a National Day of Prayer - and seemed to many to be the beginning of the end.This is a compelling and evocative account of what it was like, for that short period in 1940, to be waiting for Hitler.

    Four Navy Underwater Demolition Teams (predecessor to the SEALS) and twenty-two Marine observers-backed by battleships Tennessee and Nevada, a cruiser, several destroyers, and twelve Landing Craft Infantry ships configured as gunboats proceeded with the operation. The story of what followed - the battle for Iwo Jima that no one knows - is fully told for the first time in this book, a heart-stopping account of ill-equipped but heroic forces under fire from an unexpected, overwhelming enemy. Drawing on first-person accounts, deck logs, and after-action reports, Dick Camp brings the action to harrowing life: the thin-skinned reconfigured LCIs fighting it out with the Japanese in a valiant effort to protect the swimmers caught five hundred yards off the beach; the battleship Nevada ignoring orders to withdraw and moving in to knock out the enemys heavy caliber guns; the devastating action - casualities of 40 percent - that very likely saved the actual landing on the 19th.

    To imply that Hitler had a rational plan to win the war flies in the face of widely accepted interpretations, but historian Howard D. Grier persuasively argues here that Hitler did possess a strategy to regain the initiative in 1944-45 and that the Baltic theater played the key role in his plan. In examining that strategy, Grier answers lingering questions about the Third Reich's final months and also provides evidence of its emphasis upon naval affairs and of Admiral Karl Dönitz's influence in shaping Hitler's grand strategy. Dönitz intended to starve Britain into submission and halt the shipment of American troops and supplies to Europe with a fleet of new Type XXI U-boats. But to test the new submarines and train their crews the Nazis needed control of the Baltic Sea and possession of its ports, and to launch their U-boat offensive they needed Norway, the only suitable location that remained after the loss of France in the summer of 1944. This work analyzes German naval strategy from 1944 to 1945 and its role in shaping the war on land in the Baltic. The first six chapters provide an operational history of warfare on the northern sector of the eastern front and give evidence of the navy s demands that the Baltic coast be protected in order to preserve U-boat training areas. The next three chapters look at possible reasons for Hitler's defense of the Baltic coast, concluding that the most likely reason was Hitler's belief in Dönitz's ability to turn the tide of war with his new submarines. A final chapter discusses Dönitz's personal and ideological relationship with Hitler, his influence in shaping overall strategy, and the reason Hitler selected the admiral as his successor rather than a general or Nazi Party official. With Grier's thorough examination of Hitler's strategic motives and the reasons behind his decision to defend coastal sectors in the Baltic late in the war, readers are offered an important new interpretation of events for their consideration.

    She does not understand the threat to her Jewish family nor the harrowing escape that follows which will bring her to Riga, Latvia, through Russia and Japan, over the Pacific Ocean, and finally end in Portland, Oregon. Although the family is safe at last, author Alice Rene tells us in this book about the emotional impact of Nazi tyranny on a young child, just how it effected her personally.Ilse is ashamed of herself for being different and becomes anxious and withdrawn. The antics of an outrageous aunt and uncle, though comical, only add to her humiliation. Changing her name to Alice does not alter her feelings of isolation. She realizes that she must somehow make peace with her history and identity. With both pathos and humor, Becoming Alice showcases Alice’s triumph over adversity, identity crisis and the sometimes debilitating power of family ties.

    Wood challenges the received wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable. He argues instead that it was only when the Japanese military prematurely abandoned its original sound strategic plan--to secure the resources Japan needed and establish a viable defensible perimeter for the Empire--that the Allies were able to regain the initiative and lock Japanese forces into a war of attrition they were not prepared to fight. The book persuasively shows how the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war in the Pacific that could have influenced the course and outcome of World War II. It is therefore a study both of Japanese defeat and of what was needed to achieve a potential Japanese victory, or at the very least, to avoid total ruin. Wood's argument does not depend on signal individual historical events or dramatic accidents. Instead it examines how familiar events could have become more complicated or problematic under different, but nevertheless historically possible, conditions due to changes in the complex interaction of strategic and operational factors over time. Wood concludes that fighting a different war was well within the capacities of imperial Japan. He underscores the fact that the enormous task of achieving total military victory over Japan would have been even more difficult, perhaps too difficult, if the Japanese had waged a different war and the Allies had not fought as skillfully as they did. If Japan had traveled that alternate military road, the outcome of the Pacific War could have differed significantly from that we know so well--and, perhaps a little too complacently, accept.

    In 1944, "Slim Jim" Gavin, as he was known to his troops, at the age of thirty-seven became the 82nd's commanding general--the youngest Army officer to become a major general since the Civil War. At war's end, this soldier's soldier had become one of our greatest generals--and the 82nd's most decorated officer.Now James Gavin's letters home to his nine-year-old daughter Barbara provide a revealing portrait of the American experience in World War II through the eyes of one of its most dynamic officers. Written from ship decks, foxholes, and field tents--often just before or after a dangerous jump--they capture the day-to-day realities of combat and Gavin's personal reactions to the war he helped to win. And provide an invaluable self-portrait of a great general, and a great American, in war and peace.The book's more than 200 letters begin at Fort Bragg in 1943 and continue to December 1945, as Gavin came home to lead the 82nd at the head of the Victory parade in New York. This correspondence constitutes the majority of Gavin's private wartime letters, but except for rare appearances in regimental newsletters, it has never before been published.In her Introduction, Epilogue, and Notes, Barbara Gavin Fauntleroy gives a privileged glimpse of the private man. Edited by Gayle Wurst, the book features historical overviews by Starlyn Jorgensen, a preface by noted Gavin biographer Gerard M. Devlin, and a foreword by Rufus Broadaway, Gavin's aide-de-camp.

    Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

    It spans the period between 1942 and 1945 and covers the encounters between the audacious Luftwaffe fighter pilots and the Fortress and Liberator bomber crews of the American 8th Air Forces flying from East Anglia.Many unique experiences are recounted from both the night and day bombing raids that were hurled against Hitlers war machine. What was it like to fly through the dense flak over the Ruhr and against the German Experten and to be hit by machine gun and cannon fire from Focke Wulf 190s and Bf 109s? How did so many badly damaged bombers manage to struggle back, against all odds, to their East Anglian bases?The author has sought the experiences of German fighter pilots, who explain how they stalked their prey in the sky over the Reich and how they pounced on their four engine victims from 12 oclock high. This book contains vivid accounts of some of the most heroic actions in the history of air warfare and contains many previously unpublished action photographs.

    From Winchester, where he occasionally flummoxed the authorities, Michael Burn won a classics scholarship to Oxford, pulled out from there, dabbled in high and sometimes less high life, then in 1933, troubled by the social injustice attending mounting unemployment, went to Germany to weigh up the ideals of National Socialism. He met Hitler, was shown Dachau, was a guest at the Nuremberg party rally. Soon disenchanted, he returned to work for Geoffrey Dawson on The Times. A Commando in the war, he took part in the assault on St Nazaire, where he won the MC and was taken prisoner, to be interned in Colditz.After the war The Times sent him as staff correspondent, first to Vienna, then to Budapest with responsibility for the Balkans. He reported the fake trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, admiring his courage but unable to represent him as a champion of democratic liberty. Then, after leaving The Times, he moved, with his wife Mary, to Wales. The concluding chapters are in essence his love-story with Mary, the more unusual because he was predominantly homosexual. It is a remarkable analysis of a profound relationship. The book has many different facets: it is witty, intelligent, sometimes bruisingly frank, principled and oddly affecting.'

    Canadian forces played a major role in this campaign, whose goal was to open a second front in order to ease the pressure on Russian forces in the east. Canada fought under British command alongside British and American units, but our soldiers saw some of the fiercest fighting and achieved glory many times, including at the Battle of Ortona, one of Canada’s greatest military accomplishments.The pictorial history examines the Italian Campaign from the view of the soldiers serving there. Regiments represented in interviews in this book include the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry, the Perth Regiment, the Governor-General’s Horse Guards, the Ontario Regiment, the 48th Highlanders, the Calgary Regiment, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, and the Royal Canadian Navy.

    Focuses on the 92nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force and includes missions to the Schweinfurt ball-bearing plant and Berlin. One of the first accounts of being shot down over Sweden.The Savage Sky is as close as you can get to experiencing aerial combat while still staying firmly planted on the ground. The writing is vivid and intimate, describing the bitter cold at high altitudes, gut-wrenching fear, lethal shrapnel from flak, and German fighters darting through the bomber formation like feeding sharks.

    We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

    The Imperial Japanese forces needed to protect and maintain the air base that gave them the ability to interdict enemy supply routes. The Allies were desperate to halt the advance of a foe that so far had inflicted crippling losses on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, then seized the Philippines, Wake Island, the Dutch East Indies, Guam, and other Allied territory. After months of relentless battle, the U.S. troops forced back the determined Japanese, providing what many historians believe was the decisive turning point in the Pacific theater of operations. Stanley Coleman Jersey, a medical air evacuation specialist in the South Pacific during World War II, has spent countless hours combing Australian, Japanese, and U.S. documents and interviewing more than 200 veterans of the Guadalcanal campaign, both Allied and Japanese. Beginning with the events that preceded the battle for Guadalcanal during the Australian defense of the southern Solomon Islands in late 1941, Jersey details the military preparations made in response to intelligence describing the creation of an enemy air base within striking distance of American supply lines and recounts the civilian evacuation that followed the Japanese arrival in New Guinea. With the stage set, he turns to the campaign itself, with particular emphasis on the combat during the critical period of August to December 1942. While Guadalcanal is his primary focus, Jersey also covers the roles played by forces occupying the other Solomon Islands, including the plight of construction laborers, air crews, and ground units. This book, chock-full of gripping battlefield accounts and harrowing first-person narratives, draws together for the first time Allied and Japanese perspectives on the bloody contest. It is certain to become an indispensable asset to historians of World War II.

    The daylight air struggles over Germany during World War II involved thousands of aircraft, dozens of units, and hundreds of aerial engagements. Until now, there has been no single book that covers the complete story, from the highest levels of air strategy to the individual tales of Fw 190s, Bf 109s and Me 262s in air combat against the American bomber streams. This work explores the German air defense system until its collapse in 1945. It examines the detrimental effect of Luftwaffe theory and doctrine on the German air arms ability to defend the homeland once the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive began in earnest. The hard-pressed Luftwaffe leadership attempted to cobble together an air-defense network while at the same time tending to the combat fronts in Russia and the Mediterranean. Units developed specialized tactics and weapons for dealing with heavily defended bomber formations, while senior commanders sought to construct an elaborate command and control system integrating radar, observers, anti-aircraft guns, and fighters. By mid-1944, they had lost the battle - but had exacted a terrible price from the Americans in the process. The product of a ten-year collaboration between two noted Luftwaffe historians, this work fills a major gap in the literature of World War II. The authors have examined original war diaries, logbooks, doctrine manuals, after-action reports, and interviews with many combat veterans to produce a richly detailed account. Illustrated with nearly two hundred photographs, as well as new maps and diagrams, Luftwaffe Over Germany is certain to become the standard work on the subject.

    Six months later, Hitler's troops marched unopposed into Prague and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - the first non-German territory to be occupied by Nazi Germany. Although Czechs outnumbered Germans thirty to one, Nazi leaders were determined to make the region entirely German. Chad Bryant explores the origins and implementation of these plans as part of a wider history of Nazi rule and its consequences for the region. To make the Protectorate German, half the Czech population (and all Jews) would be expelled or killed, with the other half assimilated into a German national community with the correct racial and cultural composition. With the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich, Germanization measures accelerated. People faced mounting pressure from all sides. The Nazis required their subjects to act (and speak) German, while Czech patriots, and exiled leaders, pressed their countrymen to act as good Czechs.By destroying democratic institutions, harnessing the economy, redefining citizenship, murdering the Jews, and creating a climate of terror, the Nazi occupation set the stage for the post-war expulsion of Czechoslovakia's three million Germans and for the Communists' rise to power in 1948. The region, Bryant shows, became entirely Czech, but not before Nazi rulers and their post-war successors had changed forever what it meant to be Czech, or German.

    How were these decisions made? What were the options facing these leaders as they saw them? What intelligence, right and wrong, did they have? What was the impact of personality, what that of larger forces? In a brilliant work with haunting contemporary relevance, Ian Kershaw tells the connected stories of these ten fateful decisions from the shifting perspectives of the protagonists, and in so doing rescues them from the sense of inevitability that now envelops them and restores to them a feeling of vivid drama and contingency-the feeling that things could have turned out very differently indeed. Each chapter follows the process of arriving at one decision, from the viewpoint of the leader who made it: Decision 1: May 1940. The British War Cabinet, driven by Churchill, agrees to fight on after the German blitzkrieg defeat of France, despite loud calls for negotiated settlement. Decision 2: Hitler decides to attack the Soviet Union. Decision 3: Japan decides to seize the "Golden Opportunity" and turn south, going after the colonial empires of the countries that have fallen to Hitler. Decision 4: Mussolini decides to join the war on Hitler's side to grab a share of the spoils. Decision 5: Roosevelt decides to lend a helping hand to England. Decision 6: Stalin decides he knows best and ignores all the clear signals that Germany is going to invade. Decision 7: Roosevelt decides to wage undeclared war. Decision 8: Japan decides to go to war against the United States. Decision 9: Hitler decides to declare war on the USA. Decision 10: Hitler decides to kill the Jews. Decision relates to subsequent decision, though never simply or necessarily as expected. The clash of personalities, the various weaknesses of the different political systems, the challenge of intelligence, the misdiagnosis of risk and possibility: all play their part. And after nineteen months, though much remained to be decided, the world's fate had been profoundly altered by these ten choices.