A Jewish rebel. A little girl. Each one will fight for freedom—or die trying. Imprisoned in the Lodz Ghetto, Elsi discovers her mother’s desperate attempt to end her pregnancy and comes face-to-face with the impossibility of their situation. Risking her own life, Elsi joins a resistance group to sabotage the regime.Blonde, blue-eyed Matilda is wrenched from her family in Romania and taken to Germany, where her captors attempt to mold her into the perfect Aryan child. Spirited and brave, she must inspire hope in the other stolen children to make her dreams of escape a reality.Willem, a high-ranking Nazi doctor, plans to save lives when he takes posts in both the ghetto and Auschwitz. After witnessing unimaginable cruelties, he begins to question his role and the future of those he is ordered to destroy.While Hitler ransacks Europe in pursuit of a pure German race, the lives of three broken souls—thrown together by chance—intertwine. Only love and sacrifice might make them whole again.

    The first memoir ever published by a USS Arizona survivor.At 8:10 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all around him the world tore itself apart.In this extraordinary, never-before-told eyewitness account of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight.Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half the American fatalaties at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus earning the distinction of having been present for the opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second World War.As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of six living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent years.

    Befriend. Sabotage.World War II is raging. Michael O'Shaunessey, originally from Ireland, now lives in Nazi Germany with his parents. Like the other boys in his school, Michael is a member of the Hitler Youth.But Michael has a secret. He and his parents are spies.Michael despises everything the Nazis stand for. But he joins in the Hitler Youth's horrific games and book burnings, playing the part so he can gain insider knowledge.When Michael learns about Projekt 1065, a secret Nazi war mission, things get even more complicated. He must prove his loyalty to the Hitler Youth at all costs -- even if it means risking everything he cares about.Including... his own life.From acclaimed author Alan Gratz (Prisoner B-3087) comes a pulse-pounding novel about facing fears and fighting for what matters most.

    World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon. And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.

    Navy to the apex of its strength and supremacy and established the foundation for America to become a dominant global superpower Here is the extraordinary story of the most consequential campaign of the Pacific War: the U.S. Fifth Fleet’s seizure of the Marianas, a relentless deployment of overwhelming force on air, land, and sea that opened the path to total victory over Japan and established a new state of the art in warfare: the first use of the forerunners of today’s SEALs; the emergence of massive cross-hemispheric expeditionary operations; the flowering of American naval aviation and carrier power; and the secret training of Marianas-based air crews who would first unleash nuclear fire. From the epic seaborne invasion of Saipan, to the stunning aerial battles of the Marianas Turkey Shoot, to the grinding combat ashore—and the largest suicide attack of the war—to the devastating bombing campaign that culminated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Marianas were the fulcrum of the Pacific. Filled with memorable action set pieces and closely observed portraits of the naval, air, and ground-force warriors and commanders who revolutionized warfare, The Fleet at Flood Tide is the broadly encompassing story of the full materialization of America as a world-class military power.

    Physics professor Alfred Mendl is separated from his family and sent to the men’s camp, where all of his belongings are tossed on a roaring fire. His books, his papers, his life’s work. The Nazis have no idea what they have just destroyed. And without that physical record, Alfred is one of only two people in the world with his particular knowledge. Knowledge that could start a war, or end it.Nathan Blum works behind a desk at an intelligence office in Washington, DC, but he longs to contribute to the war effort in a more meaningful way, and he has a particular skill set the U.S. suddenly needs. Nathan is fluent in German and Polish, he is Semitic looking, and he proved his scrappiness at a young age when he escaped from the Polish ghetto. Now, the government wants him to take on the most dangerous assignment of his life: Nathan must sneak into Auschwitz, on a mission to find and escape with one man.This historical thriller from New York Times bestseller Andrew Gross is a deeply affecting, unputdownable series of twists and turns through a landscape at times horrifyingly familiar but still completely compelling.

    The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now, his talents were put to more devious use: he built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich. Another, William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world's leading expert in silent killing, hired to train the guerrillas being parachuted behind enemy lines. Led by dapper Scotsman Colin Gubbins, these men—along with three others—formed a secret inner circle that, aided by a group of formidable ladies, single-handedly changed the course Second World War: a cohort hand-picked by Winston Churchill, whom he called his Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.Giles Milton's Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.

    For many years after the atrocities had been committed, both sides – the abusers and the abused – still vehemently denied certain aspects of the Holocaust, and even the victims refused to admit the ugly truth about their incarceration, some out of fear, some out of shame, until several women decided to break an unofficial oath of silence, and brought their stories to life. This book is based on one of those stories. Emilia is a young Jewish woman, whose life slowly turns into a nightmare as she finds herself facing a dreadful choice: to secure her family’s very existence by offering herself to one of the men who had put her behind the walls with barbed wire, or perish together with the least fortunate ones. Only, the Krakow ghetto and her very first abuser pale in comparison to what is yet to come, as she’s being sent to a place that soon will turn into her own personal hell and that will scar her for life…

    But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.   An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.   For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.   The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

    So began the most celebrated and mysterious military organisation in the world: the SAS.Now, 75 years later, the SAS has finally decided to tell its astonishing story. It has opened its secret archives for the first time, granting historian Ben Macintyre full access to a treasure trove of unseen reports, memos, diaries, letters, maps and photographs, as well as free rein to interview surviving Originals and those who knew them.The result is an exhilarating tale of fearlessness and heroism, recklessness and tragedy; of extraordinary men who were willing to take monumental risks. It is a story about the meaning of courage.

    -From the author of 'The Things Our Fathers Saw' World War II narrative history trilogy- ~THE HOLOCAUST was a watershed event in history. In this book, Matthew Rozell reconstructs a lost chapter--the liberation of a 'death train' deep in the heart of Nazi Germany in the closing days of the World War II. Drawing on never-before published eye-witness accounts, survivor testimony and memoirs, and wartime reports and letters, Rozell brings to life the incredible true stories behind the iconic 1945 liberation photographs taken by the soldiers who were there. He weaves together a chronology of the Holocaust as it unfolds across Europe, and goes back to literally retrace the steps of the survivors and the American soldiers who freed them. Rozell's work results in joyful reunions on three continents, seven decades later. He offers his unique perspective on the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, and the impact that one person, a teacher, can make. -Featuring testimony from 15 American liberators and over 30 Holocaust survivors -10 custom maps -73 photographs and illustrations, many never before published. 502 pages-extensive notes and bibliographical references Included: BOOK ONE-THE HOLOCAUST BOOK TWO-THE AMERICANS BOOK THREE-LIBERATION BOOK FOUR-REUNION From the book: - 'I survived because of many miracles. But for me to actually meet, shake hands, hug, and cry together with my liberators--the 'angels of life' who literally gave me back my life--was just beyond imagination.'-Leslie Meisels, Holocaust Survivor - 'Battle-hardened veterans learn to contain their emotions, but it was difficult then, and I cry now to think about it. What stamina and regenerative spirit those brave people showed!'-George C. Gross, Liberator - 'Never in our training were we taught to be humanitarians. We were taught to be soldiers.'-Frank Towers, Liberator - 'I cannot believe, today, that the world almost ignored those people and what was happening. How could we have all stood by and have let that happen? They do not owe us anything. We owe them, for what we allowed to happen to them.'-Carrol Walsh, Liberator - '[People say it] cannot happen here in this country; yes, it can happen here. I was 21 years old. I was there to see it happen.'-Luca Furnari, US Army - '[After I got home] I cried a lot. My parents couldn't understand why I couldn't sleep at times.'-Walter 'Babe' Gantz, US Army medic - 'I grew up and spent all my years being angry. This means I don't have to be angry anymore.'-Paul Arato, Holocaust Survivor - 'For the first time after going through sheer hell, I felt that there was such a thing as simple love coming from good people--young men who had left their families far behind, who wrapped us in warmth and love and cared for our well-being.'-Sara Atzmon, Holocaust Survivor - 'It's not for my sake, it's for the sake of humanity, that they will remember.'-Steve Barry, Holocaust Survivor

    While there, she reached out to the trapped Jewish families, going from door to door and asking the parents to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling them out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept secret lists buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On them were the names and true identities of those Jewish children, recorded with the hope that their relatives could find them after the war. She could not have known that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.

    An epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption, Pamela Rotner Sakamoto’s history is a riveting chronicle of U.S.-Japan relations and of the Japanese experience in America.After their father’s death, the Fukuhara children—all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest—moved with their mother to Hiroshima, their parents’ ancestral home. Eager to go back to America, Harry and his sister, Mary, returned there in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Harry and Mary were sent to an internment camp until a call came for Japanese translators, and Harry dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, their brothers, Frank and Pierce, became soldiers in the Imperial Japanese Army.As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy—and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face one another in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of the Fukuhara family.Alternating between American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting, as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima—never depicted before in English—and provides a fresh look at the events surrounding the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, here is an indelible portrait of a resilient family, a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.

    Bruning, a renegade American pilot fights against all odds to rescue his family -- imprisoned by the Japanese--and revolutionizes modern warfare along the way. From the knife fights and smuggling runs of his youth to his fiery days as a pioneering naval aviator, Paul Irving "Pappy" Gunn played by his own set of rules and always survived on his wits and fists. But when he fell for a conservative Southern belle, her love transformed him from a wild and reckless airman to a cunning entrepreneur whose homespun engineering brilliance helped launch one of the first airlines in Asia. Pappy was drafted into MacArthur's air force when war came to the Philippines; and while he carried out a top-secret mission to Australia, the Japanese seized his family. Separated from his beloved wife, Polly, and their four children, Pappy reverted to his lawless ways. He carried out rescue missions with an almost suicidal desperation. Even after he was shot down twice and forced to withdraw to Australia, he waged a one-man war against his many enemies -- including the American high command and the Japanese--and fought to return to the Philippines to find his family. Without adequate planes, supplies, or tactics, the U.S. Army Air Force suffered crushing defeats by the Japanese in the Pacific. Over the course of his three-year quest to find his family, Pappy became the renegade who changed all that. With a brace of pistols and small band of loyal fol,lowers, he robbed supply dumps, stole aircraft, invented new weapons, and modified bombers to hit harder, fly farther, and deliver more destruction than anything yet seen in the air. When Pappy's modified planes were finally unleashed during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the United States scored one of the most decisive victories of World War II. Taking readers from the blistering skies of the Pacific to the jungles of New Guinea and the Philippines to one of the the war's most notorious prison camps, Indestructible traces one man's bare-knuckle journey to free the people he loved and the aerial revolution he sparked that continues to resonate across America's modern battlefields.

    The policemen want to haul away her gypsy husband and their five children. The police tell Helene that as a German she does not have to go with them, but she decides to share the fate of her family. After convincing her children that they are going off to a vacation place, so as to calm them, the entire family is deported to Auschwitz. For being German, they are settled in the first barracks of the Gypsy Camp. The living conditions are extremely harsh, but at least she is with her five children. A few days after their arrival, Doctor Mengele comes to pay her a visit, having noticed on her entry card that she is a nurse. He proposes that she direct the camp’s nursery. The facilities would be set up in Barrack 29 and Barrack 31, one of which would be the nursery for newborn infants and the other for children over six years old.Helene, with the help of two Polish Jewish prisoners and four gypsy mothers, organizes the buildings. Though Mengele provides them with swings, Disney movies, school supplies, and food, the people are living in crowded conditions under extreme conditions. And less than 400 yards away, two gas chambers are exterminating thousands of people daily.For sixteen months, Helene lives with this reality, desperately trying to find a way to save her children. Auschwitz Lullaby is a story of perseverance, of hope, and of strength in one of the most horrific times in history.

    But the memories of that childhood ordeal have proven impossible to sweep away.For most of her new life spent settled in sleepy North Carolina, the flashbacks have been a lonely obsession—one she has hidden from her family, and about which her heart is torn. Because for all the pain and the cruelty of those terrible years, she harbours sweet memories too, of unexpected friends who risked their own lives in order to save hers. As Susannah’s time on earth draws to a close, her innermost thoughts of those long-gone days become questions—ones that demand answers.Against the wishes of her children, Susannah returns to Germany and the scene of unspeakable crimes. There she will come face to face with the Holocaust’s terrible, wretched legacy, and will finally make peace with the ghosts of her past.

    They have the physicists. They have the will. What they don’t have is enough “heavy water," an essential ingredient for their nuclear designs. For two years, the Nazis have occupied Norway, and with it the Vemork hydroelectric plant, a massive industrial complex nestled on a precipice of a gorge. Vemork is the world’s sole supplier of heavy water, and under the threat of death, its engineers pushed production into overtime. For the Allies, Vemork must be destroyed. But how would they reach the castle fortress high in a mountainous valley? The answer became the most dramatic commando raid of the war. The British Special Operations Executive together a brilliant scientist and eleven refugee Norwegian commandos, who, with little more than parachutes, skis, and Tommy Guns, would destroy Hitler’s nuclear ambitions and help end the reign of the Third Reich. Based on exhaustive research and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is a compulsively readable narrative about a group of young men who endured soul-crushing setbacks and Gestapo hunts and survived in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth to save the world from destruction.

    The city of Kiev was bombed in Hitler's blitzkrieg across the Soviet Union, but the constant siege was only the beginning for her citizens. In this sweeping historical saga, Kelli Stuart takes the reader on a captivating journey into the little--known history of Ukraine's tragedies through the eyes of four compelling characters who experience the same story from different perspectives.Maria Ivanovna is only fourteen when the bombing begins and not much older when she is forced into work at a German labor camp. She must fight to survive and to make her way back to her beloved Ukraine.Ivan Kyrilovich is falsely mistaken for a Jew and lined up with 34,000 other men, women, and children who are to be shot at the edge of Babi Yar, the "killing ditch." He survives, but not without devastating consequences.Luda is sixteen when German soldiers rape her. Now pregnant with the child of the enemy, she is abandoned by her father, alone, and in pain. She must learn to trust family and friends again and find her own strength in order to discover the redemption that awaits.Frederick Hermann is sure in his knowledge that the Fuhrer's plans for domination are right and just. He is driven to succeed by a desire to please a demanding father and by his own blind faith in the ideals of Nazism. Based on true stories gathered from fifteen years of research and interviews with Ukrainian World War II survivors, Like a River from Its Course is a story of love, war, heartache, forgiveness, and redemption.

    Stewart, beginning with his family “mission” passed on from his grandfather (a Civil War hero) and father (who served in World War I) that military service in time of war was mandatory for the Stewarts. Jim tailored his life to this eventual outcome, learning to be a pilot so he could serve as an aviator in the war.MISSION describes Stewart’s childhood, college years at Princeton, Broadway career, and meteoric rise to Academy Award-winning actor in Hollywood. People today can’t imagine that Stewart was a ladies’ man, but he had a reputation as one of the most active bachelors in Hollywood, with a list of lovers that includes the A-list of female movie stars.In 1941, before America entered World War II, Jim was drafted into the Army and gleefully left Hollywood behind to fulfill that family mission. What happened to him in the service has never been covered in detail because he refused to talk about his experiences afterward. MISSION begins and ends with production of the first film Stewart made after returning from the war: It's a Wonderful Life, which in December 2016 will celebrate its 70th anniversary.MISSION also includes the stories of three other supporting characters, a radio man who flew with Stewart, a German civilian girl, and the German general in charge of fighter aircraft. They provide perspective on what Stewart was attempting to do and why.

    Lee. But he was also one of America’s most divisive figures, a man whose entire career was steeped in controversy. Was he an avatar or an anachronism, a brilliant strategist or a vainglorious mountebank? Drawing on a wealth of new sources, Arthur Herman delivers a powerhouse biography that peels back the layers of myth—both good and bad—and exposes the marrow of the man beneath.MacArthur’s life spans the emergence of the United States Army as a global fighting force. Its history is to a great degree his story. The son of a Civil War hero, he led American troops in three monumental conflicts—World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. Born four years after Little Big Horn, he died just as American forces began deploying in Vietnam. Herman’s magisterial book spans the full arc of MacArthur’s journey, from his elevation to major general at thirty-eight through his tenure as superintendent of West Point, field marshall of the Philippines, supreme ruler of postwar Japan, and beyond. More than any previous biographer, Herman shows how MacArthur’s strategic vision helped shape several decades of U.S. foreign policy. Alone among his peers, he foresaw the shift away from Europe, becoming the prophet of America’s destiny in the Pacific Rim.Here, too, is a vivid portrait of a man whose grandiose vision of his own destiny won him enemies as well as acolytes. MacArthur was one of the first military heroes to cultivate his own public persona—the swashbuckling commander outfitted with Ray-Ban sunglasses, riding crop, and corncob pipe. Repeatedly spared from being killed in battle—his soldiers nicknamed him “Bullet Proof”—he had a strong sense of divine mission. “Mac” was a man possessed, in the words of one of his contemporaries, of a “supreme and almost mystical faith that he could not fail.” Yet when he did, it was on an epic scale. His willingness to defy both civilian and military authority was, Herman shows, a lifelong trait—and it would become his undoing. Tellingly, MacArthur once observed, “Sometimes it’s the order you don’t obey that makes you famous.”To capture the life of such an outsize figure in one volume is no small achievement. With MacArthur Arthur Herman has set a new standard for grappling with the legacy of this American legend.

    David Render was a nineteen-year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France to join a veteran armoured unit that had already spent years fighting with the Desert Rats in North Africa. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy, in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank commanders became casualties, his ability to emerge unscathed from countless combat engagements defied expectations and earned him his squadron's nickname of the 'Inevitable Mr Render'.In Tank Action David Render tells his remarkable story, spanning every major episode of the last year of the Second World War in Western Europe, from the invasion of Normandy to the fall of Germany. Ultimately it is a story of survival, comradeship and the ability to stand up and be counted as a leader in combat.

    Never a supporter of National Socialism, she takes pleasure in passive resistance, but must exercise caution around neighbors who delight in reporting to the Gestapo. Flying cadet Paul Braedel's wife dies while he trains for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Following bereavement leave, he returns to B-17 "Flying Fortress" Bomber navigator training but he's lost his zest for life and heads to England, not caring if he lives or dies. When he and his crew are shot down over Germany, he evades capture and, for the first time since Rachel's death, hears the voice of God whisper guidance: Find Heidi. When Heidi stumbles into a man she recognizes, she is shocked to realize he is a friend from her high school days in the United States, and the husband of her best friend Rachel. Aiding an enemy downed airman is punishable by execution, but she agrees to help. Then they're betrayed. A war-time adventure with romantic second chances.

    While US Marines claw their way across Guadalcanal, small contingents of US Army Airmen make their way to the lonely, embattled Allied airbase on Papua New Guinea. Their mission: to defend Australia from invasion, harass Japanese supply lines, fly perilous bombing missions over enemy-held strongholds, and make reconnaissance runs to provide intelligence for America’s nascent island-hopping campaign. Among these men are the pilot Captain Jay Zeamer and the bombardier Sergeant Joseph Raymond Sarnoski, whose swashbuckling reputations precede them. Zeamer, who cannot convince his superiors to give him his own plane, teams up with Sarnoski to recruit a crew of fellow misfits to rebuild a dilapidated B-17 bomber from spare parts in the base’s junkyard. They christen the plane Old 666, naming it from its tail identification numbers. In June 1943, Zeamer and Sarnoski and their crew volunteer for a 1200-mile suicide mission into the heart of the Japanese Empire that may well change the course of the war—but which only one of the two friends will survive. In Lucky 666, Drury and Clavin bring to vivid life one of the last great untold stories of World War II. Featuring personal letters, diaries, US Army Air Force after-action reports, even the translated Japanese Imperial Air Force’s official account of the longest dogfight in history, Lucky 666 is a tale of friendship, heroism, and sacrifice set against the horrific backdrop of vicious aerial warfare, wounded crewmates, and a white-knuckle emergency landing in the jungles of New Guinea—a must-read for anyone who loves pulse-pounding narrative nonfiction.

    They think precautions are being taken, but never check to see if they are. A key intelligence officer wants more warnings sent, but he is on the losing end of a bureaucratic battle and can’t get the message out. American sleuths have pierced Japan’s most vital diplomatic code, and Washington believes it has a window on the enemy’s soul—but it does not.In a small office at Pearl Harbor, overlooking the battleships at the heart of America’s seafaring power, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tries to figure out how much danger he really faces. His intelligence unit has lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, but assumes they are resting in a port far away. The admiral thinks Pearl is too shallow for torpedoes, so he never puts up a barrier. As he frets, a Japanese spy is counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo.There were false assumptions, and racist ones: The Japanese aren’t very good aviators and they don’t have the nerve or the skill to attempt a strike so far from their home. There were misunderstandings, conflicting desires, painful choices. And there was a naval officer who, on his very first mission as captain of his very first ship, did exactly the right thing. His warning could have averted disaster, but his superiors reacted too leisurely. Japanese planes arrived moments later.Twomey’s telescoping of the twelve days leading to the attack unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

    After three years of WWII, Britain is showing the scars. But in this darkest of days, three lives intertwine, changing their destinies and those of many more.Dr Archibald McIndoe, a New Zealand plastic surgeon with unorthodox methods, is on a mission to treat and rehabilitate badly burned airmen – their bodies and souls. With the camaraderie and support of the Guinea Pig Club, his boys battle to overcome disfigurement, pain, and prejudice to learn to live again.John ‘Mac’ Mackenzie of the US Air Force is aware of the odds. He has one chance in five of surviving the war. Flying bombing missions through hell and back, he’s fighting more than the Luftwaffe. Fear and doubt stalk him on the ground and in the air, and he’s torn between his duty and his conscience.Shy, decent and sensible Stella Charlton’s future seems certain until war breaks out. As a new recruit to the WAAF, she meets an American pilot on New Year’s Eve. After just one dance, she falls head over heels for the handsome airman. But when he survives a crash, she realises her own battle has only just begun.Based on a true story, "The Beauty Shop" is a moving tale of love, compassion, and determination against a backdrop of wartime tragedy.

    He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as “Harmful Lil Armful” who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground.   After fleeing the wreck, Arthur knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse, whose owners hastily took him in. Fortunately, his hosts not only despised the Nazis but had a tight connection to the French resistance group Morhange and its founder, Marcel Taillandier. Arthur and Taillandier formed an improbable bond as the resistance leader arranged for Arthur’s transfers among safe houses in southern France, shielding him from the Gestapo.   Based on recently declassified material, exclusive personal interviews, and extensive research into the French Resistance, The Lost Airman tells the tense and riveting story of Arthur’s trying months in Toulouse—masquerading as a deaf mute and working with a downed British pilot to evade the Nazis—and of his hair-raising journey to freedom involving a perilous trek over the Pyrenees and a voyage aboard a fishing boat with U-boats lurking below and Luftwaffe fighters looming above. With photographs and maps included, this is a never-before-told true story of endurance, perseverance, and escape during World War II.

    But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. After years of slave labor, starvation, disease, and torture, their worst fears were about to be realized. On December 14, with machine guns trained on them, they were herded underground into shallow air raid shelters—death pits dug with their own hands. Japanese soldiers doused the shelters with gasoline and set them on fire. Some thirty prisoners managed to bolt from the fiery carnage, running a lethal gauntlet of machine gun fire and bayonets to jump from the cliffs to the rocky Palawan coast. By the next morning, only eleven men were left alive—but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun. As Good as Dead is one of the greatest escape stories of World War scrounged for food and water, swam shark-infested bays, and wandered through treacherous jungle terrain, hoping to find friendly Filipino guerrillas. Their endurance, determination, and courage in the face of death make this a gripping and inspiring saga of survival.

    A dark shadow is about to fall over the golden cupolas of Kiev…As the Red Army retreats in the face of Hitler’s relentless advance across Eastern Europe, the lives of sisters Natasha and Lisa are about to change forever.While Lisa’s plans to marry her childhood sweetheart turn to tragedy under the occupation, Natasha grows close to Mark, a Hungarian soldier, enlisted against all his principles on the side of the Nazis.But as Natasha fights for the survival of the friends and family she loves, the war threatens to tear them apart.Sisters of War is a powerful tale of love, loss, and the power of hope set in Kiev during the Second World War.

    Roosevelt of the charge that he knew the attack was coming.The Japanese onslaught on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 devastated Americans and precipitated entry into World War II. In the aftermath, Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, was relieved of command, accused of negligence and dereliction of duty—publicly disgraced.But the Admiral defended his actions through eight investigations and for the rest of his long life. The evidence against him was less than solid. High military and political officials had failed to provide Kimmel and his Army counterpart with vital intelligence. Later, to hide the biggest U.S. intelligence secret of the day, they covered it up.Following the Admiral’s death, his sons—both Navy veterans—fought on to clear his name. Now that they in turn are dead, Kimmel’s grandsons continue the struggle. For them, 2016 is a pivotal year.With unprecedented access to documents, diaries and letters, and the family’s cooperation, Summers’ and Swan’s search for the truth has taken them far beyond the Kimmel story—to explore claims of duplicity and betrayal in high places in Washington.A Matter of Honor is a provocative story of politics and war, of a man willing to sacrifice himself for his country only to be sacrificed himself. Revelatory and definitive, it is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this pivotal event.The book includes forty black-and-white photos throughout the text.

     It was a time for America and her heroes: men like Michael and Andrew O'Connor, rival brothers fresh out of Annapolis, men who left all they knew and loved to seek glory in a world at war. Mike beneath the ocean aboard the USS Tigerfish. Andrew in the air as a fighter pilot ace. Theirs was a baptism by fire, yet they rose to confront a brutal enemy across the sea — and to chase the explosive dreams that could ultimately destroy them. From Harry Homewood, bestselling author of Final Harbor, Silent Sea, and Torpedo! , comes the epic novel of a family at war. A novel of family, duty, pride — and of two brothers, competitors in both love and war, whose inner struggles provided them with the courage that could mean the difference between life and death. Harry Homewood was a qualified submariner before he was seventeen years old, having lied to the Navy about his age, and serving in a little "S"-boat in the old Asiatic Fleet. After Pearl Harbor he reenlisted and made eleven war patrols in the Southwest Pacific. He later became Chicago Bureau Chief for Newsweek, chief editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and for eleven years had his own weekly news program syndicated to thirty-two PBS television stations.

    All this is only the tip of the iceberg in the myriad of emotions for Ernst, former leader of the Austrian SS incarcerated in Nuremberg prison, who already knows what fate awaits him. Day after day he recollects his life, trying to understand where he made that wrong turn that changed his whole life and brought him into service of his new masters, who soon dragged his whole country into the most blood-shedding war in history. With agonizing sincerity he analyzes his past, which made him, a former promising lawyer, into a weapon of mass murder in the hands of his new leaders. Self-loathing and torturous doubts are plaguing Ernst’s mind, which together with unwanted hopes for salvation, terrifying visions of the nearing end, and ghosts from the past turn his incarceration into a never-ending nightmare. And yet, at the very edge of the abyss, he’s still clinging to life, because a woman is waiting for him, a woman, whose secret he’s still carefully guarding, and the one who he still hopes to see… Reviewed By Sarah Stuart for Readers’ Favorite The Austrian: A War Criminal’s Story by Ellie Midwood opens with a short prologue entitled “Nuremberg prison, October 1946.” Ernst Kaltenbrunner, a former leader of the Austrian SS, has been tried by the International Military Tribunal and sentenced to hang. He is preparing to meet his death, ten minutes ahead, with dignity. The chapters that follow recount the events that led to his trial and the verdict. The author has based this novel not only on actual historical events, but has fictionalized many of the main characters who lived and fought for the Third Reich, such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner himself, Martin Bormann, Adolph Hitler’s private secretary, and Heinrich Muller, the Chief of the Gestapo. Ellie Midwood’s historical novel, The Austrian: A War Criminal’s Story, has a prologue that features the last ten minutes of Ernst Kaltenbrunner's life. It seemed an unlikely start to the story, but the drama had me gripped instantly. The secret lies in the sixteen chapters being sub-divided into sections, each with the place and date stated. This makes it incredibly easy to follow a book written almost entirely in flashbacks. Some of them are set in the years immediately prior to WW2; others recount Ernst’s earliest childhood memories, including the departure of his father to fight in WW1. Still more show him growing to adulthood and his love life, his first interest being a girl with golden hair who is actually a Jewess. Well-written and researched, the whole book is vivid and intriguing. I recommend it to anyone, whether or not they have a special interest in war stories.

    The new novel from the author of international bestsellers The Sweetness of Forgetting and The Life Intended shows why her books are hailed as “engaging” (People), “absorbing” (Kirkus Reviews) and “enthralling” (Fresh Fiction).Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was a just a kid, her mom died when she was seventeen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she’s laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea…until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother—and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, “He always loved her.”Emily is hungry for roots and family, so she begins to dig. And as she does, she uncovers a fascinating era in American history. Her trail leads her to the POW internment camps of Florida, where German prisoners worked for American farmers...and sometimes fell in love with American women. But how does this all connect to the painting? The answer to that question will take Emily on a road that leads from the sweltering Everglades to Munich, Germany and back to the Atlanta art scene before she’s done. Along the way, she finds herself tempted to tear down her carefully tended walls at last; she’s seeing another side of her father, and a new angle on her painful family history. But she still has secrets, ones she’s been keeping locked inside for years. Will this journey bring her the strength to confront them at last?

     Each of the Mulligan sisters Bridget, Margaret, Colleen and Molly strives to find her place in the rapidly changing world in these early days of World War II. With their father ailing, Margaret takes over management of the family's grocery store trying to keep hoarders at bay while daydreaming of a June wedding. Meanwhile Bridget focuses on her board exams and hopes to be accepted as an Army nurse. Beautiful Colleen, the "family flibbertigibbet" just wants to have fun despite the dire news of the war. But it's the "baby" fifteen-year-old Molly who seems to be the glue that holds the family together. With siblings, friends, and beaus being shipped out weekly, the remaining Mulligans quickly realize that this war will be fought on two fronts at home and overseas. Each of the strong, hopeful Mulligan sisters will do their part if they hope to see victory and the end of the war.

    The speech galvanized and inspired the country as it prepared for the cataclysm that was upon them. This thrilling and compendious account of the first years of World War Two chronicles the coming of the war, the fall of France, and the pivotal Battle of Britain, ending with America's entrance into the struggle. Not only tales of battle but stories of industrialization, full employment, food rationing, Westminster politics, and the mobilization of a global empire are woven together to show just how desperately high the stakes of the struggle and how uncertain its outcome. Here are the Blitz, political turmoil, the Home Front, and more, linking together cultural, economic, and military history. Here, also, are Churchill, the pilots of the RAF, and the sailors at Dunkirk, not pursuing a pre-determined outcome but caught up in the maelstrom. Todman brings to vivid life the many dramatic and unexpected disruptions that changed the course of the war in ways none at the time could foresee. This first volume of a brilliantly fresh retelling of a story most of us know only in parts, Britain's War: I: Into Battle,1937-1941, gives readers a full account of the entire conflict as it was experienced by all the people of Britain and its Empire.

    Douglas MacArthur changed the course of World War II. MacArthur at War will go deeper into this transformative period of his life than previous biographies, drilling into the military strategy that Walter R. Borneman is so skilled at conveying, and exploring how personality and ego translate into military successes and failures.Architect of stunning triumphs and inexplicable defeats, General MacArthur is the most intriguing military leader of the twentieth century. There was never any middle ground with MacArthur. This in-depth study of the most critical period of his career shows how MacArthur's influence spread far beyond the war-torn Pacific.

    Long before, Franklin D. Roosevelt had been supporting the Allies. While Americans were sympathetic to the people being crushed under the Axis powers, they were unwilling to enter a foreign war. FDR knew he had to fight against isolationism, anti-Semitism, and the scars of World War I, and win the war of public sentiment. In 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, A Divided America in a World at War Marc Wortman explores the "complex, contentious, and portentous" journey of America’s entry into World War II.FDR used all the powers at his disposal, from helping Winston Churchill and the British Navy with loans, to espionage at home and abroad, to battle with Hitler in the shadows. To gain public opinion, the largest obstacle was Charles Lindberg and his Committee for America First with its following of thousands. Wortman tracks journalist Philip Johnson and William Shirer as they report on the invasion of Poland: one a Nazi sympathizer, the other fervently anti-Nazi. Johnson and Shirer’s story are threads woven throughout the book. Combining military and political history, 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, A Divided America in a World at War tells the story of how FDR led the country to war.

    Judy, who became the war's only official canine POW, was a fiercely loyal dog who sensed danger-warning her fellow prisoners of imminent attacks and, later, protecting them from brutal beatings. Frank and Judy's friendship, an unbreakable bond forged in the worst circumstances, is one of the great recently uncovered stories of World War II.As they discover Frank and Judy's story in this specially adapted text, young readers will also learn about key World War II moments through informative and engaging sidebars, maps, photographs, and a timeline.

    This is not surprising as from its creation in late 1940 at Prime Minister Winston Churchill's command 'to set Europe ablaze', Gubbins was the driving force behind SOE. Over the next four years as, first, Operations and Training Director (codename M) and, from 1943, its Commander (CD) he masterminded every aspect of its worldwide covert operations. Remarkably this is the first full biography of the man whose contribution to victory ranks in the premier league. The Author's research and access to family archives reveal the experiences in The Great War and later in Russia, Ireland, Poland and as Head of British Resistance that made Gubbins such a pivotal and influential wartime figure. The result is a fascinating biography that reveals as much about SOE's extraordinary activities as it does about the man who inspired and commanded them.

    The second Anne only speaks out in her diary and never lets herself be seen in company. Anne’s diary clearly shows how much she developed in the Secret Annexe, how she dealt with the constant anxiety and with her anger, where she found comfort, and what gave her joy.After the war, her father Otto Frank said he was surprised by the depth of Anne’s thought. This was a side of his daughter he did not know at all. This book provides an accurate picture of Anne’s life and shows how she changed from a girl who dreamt of a Hollywood career to a serious writer with a sharp pen.

    This unlikely group of believers, later honored by the nation of Israel as "The Righteous Among the Nations," includes ordinary teenage girls, pastors, priests, a German army officer, a former Italian fascist, an international spy, and even a princess. In one gripping profile after another, these extraordinary historical accounts offer stories of steadfast believers who together helped thousands of Jewish individuals and families to safety. Many of these everyday heroes perished alongside the very people they were trying to protect. There is no doubt that all of their stories showcase the best of humanity -- even in the face of unthinkable evil.

    Many abandoned their land. Many gave up their personal property. Each one of them lost a part of their lives.Amazingly, the government hired famed photographers Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and others to document the expulsion—from assembling Japanese Americans at racetracks to confining them in ten camps spread across the country. Their photographs, exactly seventy-five years after the evacuation began, give an emotional, unflinching portrait of a nation concerned more about security than human rights. These photographs are more important than ever.Authors Richard Cahan and Michael Williams—noted photo historians—took a slow, careful look at each of these images as they put together a powerful history of one of America’s defining moments. Their book consists of photographs that have never been seen, many of them impounded by the U.S. Army. It also uses primary source government documents to explain and place the pictures in context. And it relies on firsthand recollections of Japanese Americans survivors to offer a complete perspective.The result is one of the first visual looks at the Japanese-American internment. The story is told with brilliant pictures that help us better understand this important chapter in U.S. history.

    Newly-edited corrected version. Danzig is a gripping historical novel in the grand tradition. It has generated rave reviews (90% 4 and 5 stars) for its authenticity and its realistic portrayal of high pressure diplomatic clashes between Hitler and Western nations in the 1930s. The story encompasses fast-paced events in Geneva, Berlin, Warsaw and London, as well as Danzig itself, capturing the drama of unfolding crisis that engulfed Europe on what we now know was the path to war. * "A smartly written, engrossing read. * “Channeling the best of Alan Furst, Danzig, is a must read for the any lover of well written historical fiction. * “Mr. Walker's descriptions made this reader feel as if she were in the middle of the historic drama. The novel builds in intensity until the dramatic ending. It's a terrific read.” * “Danzig is a must read for any lover of riveting historical fiction dealing with Hitler’s rise. Walker makes the saga of the city and the Polish Corridor come alive. The tensions of the time are vividly described in human terms, making for gripping reading.” * “Danzig is an amazing book, putting the reader in the middle of pre WW II in Europe. The time and scene were painted in detail and to perfection. The characters were presented in such a way I felt I knew them and worried for them throughout.” * “Superb historical fiction; good story, good atmospherics. Danzig is a sophisticated journey into European power politics during a time of high drama. I think it bears comparison to the best authors in the popular interwar historical fiction genre and I rate it a very successful effort.” * “The author does a great job of making the reader feel what it was like to be in the center of pre-WWII Europe, with Germany flouting the Treaty of Versailles, England following an ill-fated policy of appeasement and the League of Nations powerless and ineffective in dealing with Hitler and his aggression. For anyone interested in WWII history, especially the lead-up to the war and the dysfunction among the European Allies, this is a great read! The website www.authorwilliamwalker.com offers a link to Amazon Kindle as well as a synopsis, photos and more information.

    It’s been three years since the fall of Berlin and the end of the war for Germany, but a new war fraught with political and military tension is gripping the world. A silent and deadly war that will last for decades and Harold Kellner finds himself smack in the middle of it - in cold war Russia. Born in Germany in 1930, Harold Kellner was raised on Nazi propaganda and like all German boys his age, was forced to become a part of Hitler’s war machine. As the war raged on and the tides turned, Harold and his best friend, Karl Veth, became disillusioned with Hitler and his war and their loyalty to the Fatherland waned. At fourteen years old, they saw no reason to fight to the death and planned a strategy to survive. They narrowly escaped death as Berlin fell and were eventually arrested by a Russian Political Kommissar who planned to use them for his own gains. They carried out secret missions for the Kommissar and over time he was not only impressed by their intelligence and resourcefulness - he developed a fondness for them as well. When Harold’s dream of being reunited with his family was shattered, he accepted an offer by the Kommissar to be adopted and become his protégé.When Harold accepted the offer to be adopted, he knew of the Kommissar’s political ambitions and that he would be expected to continue conducting clandestine operations for him. In the Spring of 1948, Harold is sent on a number of missions that not only pull him deeper into the world of Soviet intelligence, but also involve eliminating one of the Kommissar’s political rivals. Armed with KGB credentials, his life is becoming more dangerous than it was during the war in Germany.Adept at learning new languages, Harold is sent to stay with a Swiss banker and his family between missions to further his language studies. The Kommissar has plans to infiltrate Stalin’s ranks by sending Harold in as a translator, but Harold begins to develop plans of his own. Languages are not the only thing Harold is learning during his time with the Swiss banker as he begins to understand how the political and financial worlds truly operate. There are secrets the banker is willing to share with the protégé of a Russian Political Kommissar.Author’s Note: Harold Kellner’s story began in the Degree series. He was the best friend of Karl Veth, the main character in the books. After World War II ended, their lives took off in two completely different directions. Postwar Drifter is the first book in The Kellner Chronicles, a new series based on Harold’s life. And, as with Karl’s story in the Degree books, The Kellner Chronicles are based on a true story. Recommended reading order:Children To A Degree – Book 1Loyal To A Degree – Book 2Trust To A Degree – Book 3Partners To A Degree – Book 4Postwar Drifter – The Kellner Chronicles: Book 1

    The skinny little girl with dark eyes looks nine rather than her real age of fourteen. Flanked on either side by her older cousins, Inka and Carmella, she has survived yet another selection for the gas chambers. Inka maintains that when the SS man passes in front of Guta, an angel’s hand covers his eyes so that he cannot choose her. And so it seems. All the horrors and cruelty, miraculously, do not crush this remarkable child. We are left in awe at her resilient, life-affirming spirit.Guta Goldstein focuses her story through the eyes of the child she then was, and she tells it with skill, humility and grace. Her gift restores one more previous piece to the shattered mosaic, and we are thankful. —Alex SkovronWith an excellent memory and a perceptive eye for detail, Guta tells her story. Throughout the dark madness of the Ghetto and concentration camps, Guta's pure spirit shines like a beam of light, maintaining the higher qualities to which humans aspire. This is an uplifting book that will bring tears to the eyes of any reader. —Mimi Roennfeldt

    And twelve-year-old Anton knows his family can't outrun them. A web of underground caves seems like the perfect place to hide. But danger lurks above the surface. Ruthless Major Karl Von Duesen of the Gestapo has made it his mission to round up every Jew in the Ukrainian countryside. Anton knows if his community is discovered, they will be sent off to work camps...or worse.When a surprise invasion catches them off guard, Anton makes a radical decision. He won't run any longer. And he won't hide. He will stop being the hunted...and start doing some hunting of his own. Michael P. Spradlin's newest thriller is the ultimate game of cat and mouse set during one of the darkest moments in history.

    In a Jewish settlement a young woman is about to embark upon her destiny. Her father has arranged a marriage for her and she must comply with his wishes. She has never seen her future husband and she knows nothing about him. Michal’s destiny lies in the hands of fate. On the night of her wedding she is terrified but her mother assures her that she will be alright. Her mother explains that it is her duty to be a good wife, to give her husband children and always to obey him. However, although her mother and her mother’s mother before her had lived this way, this was not to be Michal’s destiny. Terrible circumstances would force Michal to leave her home and travel to the city of Berlin during the Weimar period where she would see and experience things she could never have imagined. Having been a sheltered religious girl she found herself lost and afraid trying to survive in a world filled with contrasts. Weimar Berlin was a time in history when art and culture were exploding, but it was also a period of depravity and perversions. Fourteen tumultuous years passed before the tides began to turn for the young girl who had stood under the canopy and said “I do” to a perfect stranger. Michal was finally beginning to establish her life However, the year was 1933, and Michal was still living in Berlin. Little did she know that Adolf Hitler was about to be appointed Chancellor of Germany and that would change everything forever.

    With only moments left together, she places a cross around her beloveds neck and reluctantly releases him into a cruel world where nothing is certain, especially whether she will ever see him again.Days later, Germans invade her village and take over her tiny house. Serafima and her mother must comply with orders, endure abuse, and stay put, or their village will be annihilated.As World War II intertwines Serafimas and Vityas life with that of a young German violinist and a Russian intellectual, their destinies are irrevocably altered. Can they rise to the challenge of agonizing moral choices and learn to forgive and love again?

    Partnering with the Ten Boom Museum in the Netherlands, Causey spent years of meticulous research and analysis into the diaries and letters of the protagonists for biographically-rich authenticity. This stunning new moral thriller begins with a mysterious plane crash and exposes chilling secrets of the Nazi’s during the final weeks of WWII. Bestselling author Cynthia Brian calls The Lion and the Lamb “Absolutely riveting!” Suspenseful like fiction, yet all characters exist in history, their words are their own, and their actions detailed from national archives—this fast-paced narrative stands alone in a genre between biography and historical fiction. The museum director in Holland provided the foreword in English and Dutch.

    

    Rifcha and her family were living normal, happy lives. There was school, work, family dinners, outings and vacations. That was until 1938 when the first bit of turmoil started to hit their village located in the Sub-Carpathian mountains - anti-Semitism started running rampant like a disease. It began taking ahold of everyone around them. Those who were once friends now became vicious enemies. Rifcha began to realize that her world was about to crumble.On April 18, 1944, Rifcha and her family were ripped from their home and taken by gunpoint to the Mukacheve Ghetto. The conditions were harsh and virulent but the entire family was alive and together. Their stay in Mukacheve Ghetto was brief. One month later they were loaded into cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz II- Birkeneu.Selections were made as soon as the family was pulled from the train. There were no last hugs. No good-byes. As Rifcha's mother and her youngest siblings were being torn away and taken to their final death march, Rifcha's mother made her promise to take care of her sisters, to survive and to make sure she told the world of the atrocities of the Holocaust. At the gates of Auschwitz, Rifcha decided to become someone new. She gave herself a new name: Edita with the meaning: Spoils of war.Over a million people, lost their lives in Auschwitz II - Birkenau, mostly in gas chambers; today, it is the world's largest Jewish graveyard. At the height of the selections, the murders would peak at 10,000 a day. This camp was home to Dr. Josef Mengele. This was where he did all of his medical experiments. Edita fell prey to Dr. Mengele several times, even becoming victim to his knife, which ended up saving her life. When selections were being made for the eviction of Auschwitz-Birkenau II, Edita once again came in front of Mengele and he once again saved her life, but her battle wasn't over.When the Russians started nearing the concentration camps she was moved to the Flossenburg work camp. The living conditions were much better but the risks remained. It was here that she befriended the Hauptsrumfuhrer (the Commander of the camp). He ended up helping both Edita and Joli survive the next six months.In April 1945, Edita was moved again to the Terezin Ghetto. It was here she spent her time waiting for the Russian's, American's, or simply - a miracle. On May 4, 1945 that miracle happened she was Liberated.Edita's father, three brothers and one sister survived the war. They were eventually all reunited. Edita married a Russian soldier and had two daughters. When Edita made her way to America she changed her name again to Edith, meaning happy - because she was happy because despite the worse of circumstances, life goes on and she survived and now she is telling her story, just as she promised her Mother she would.

    Between 1939 and 1945, London and its environs experienced destruction on a huge and deadly scale, with air raids and rocket attacks reducing entire buildings and streets to rubble. The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps—meticulously hand-colored to document the extent of the damage being wrought on the city and surrounding areas—represent a key record of the destruction wrought by the Blitz, the impact of which can still be seen in the capital’s urban and social landscapes.Featuring new, high-quality reproductions of the 110 maps, this publication marks the first occasion on which these truly remarkable documents have been made available to a general audience. An introduction by Laurence Ward, Principal Archivist at the London Metropolitan Archives, explores the maps in the context of the terrible events that made them necessary. Reproductions of the maps themselves are complemented by a series of photographs of the damage done to the City of London, taken with a sympathetic yet unflinching eye by police constables Arthur Cross and Fred Tibbs; additional archival photographs; and tables of statistics. This landmark publication represents an invaluable graphic representation of one of the most dramatic and affecting episodes in the history of London.

    She had saved Australia from a German attack in the Pacific in World War I, but after the war she was a victim in the race to disarm. There was a day of national mourning when they blew the bottom out of her.In 1928 the RAN acquired a new ship of the same name, the fast, heavy cruiser HMAS Australia II, and she finally saw action when World War II began, patrolling the North Atlantic on the lookout for German battleships. By March 1942 Australia had returned home, where the ship was stunned by a murder. One night one of her sailors, Stoker Riley, was found stabbed and bleeding to death. Before he died, he named his two attackers, who'd tried to kill him because, he said, he'd threatened to expose their homosexual activities. At a hastily arranged court martial, the two men were found guilty and sentenced to death under British Admiralty law. Only weeks later Australia fought in the Battle of the Coral Sea near Papua New Guinea, the first sea battle to stop the Japanese advance in the Pacific. She was heavily attacked and bombed from the air but, with brilliant ship-handling, escaped unscathed. In 1944 she took part in the greatest sea fight of all time, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which returned the American General Douglas MacArthur to the Philippines. She was struck by a kamikaze bomber, killing her captain and 28 other men. The next year, she was hit by no fewer than four kamikaze planes on four successive days. She was, in fact, attacked by more kamikaze aircraft than any other Allied ship in the war, and in the end this finished her war. She retired gracefully, laden with battle honours, and was scrapped in 1956 – the last of her name, for the navy no longer uses Australia for its ships. In this riveting book, with his inimitable panache and flawless research Mike Carlton tells the story of Australia, which encompasses the era's fascinating naval and social history.

    Constantly under threat of discovery, and in danger of losing her life, Claudette risks everything when she falls in love with the wrong man, the worst kind of man.Over seventy years later, in rural Oxfordshire, Connie Webber discovers seven letters linked to a famous playwright, Freddy March. The letters will eventually lead her to Paris where she discovers the horrific reason behind Freddy’s life long depression. As his mother’s story unfolds Connie uncovers a dark past that the city has tried to erase from history.

    When Sophie Scholl finds out, she insists on joining Hans and his close friends in writing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets entitled, The White Rose. The young university students call out to the German people, begging them to not allow their consciences to become dormant, but to resist their tyrannical leader and corrupt government. Hans knows the consequences for their actions—execution for committing high treason—but firm in his convictions, he’s prepared to lose his life for a righteous cause. Based on a true story, Hans, Sophie and all the members of The White Rose resistance will forever inspire and challenge us to do what is right in the midst of overwhelming evil.

    atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the ensuing death and destruction that led to the end of World War II. The events that culminated in the fall of Japan - which forever changed the course of diplomacy, geopolitics, and warfare in the twentieth century - are vividly recreated through dramatic first-hand accounts of the major participants on both sides of the Pacific. They include: Harry Truman, the inexperienced American president who made the decision that would lead to unprecedented death and destruction; the war-mongering, but mysterious, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who ultimately presided over his country's surrender; General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense director of the Manhattan Project; and Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane, the Enola Gay, which dropped the very first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.

    This group of raw young recruits scrambled ceaselessly in their Kittyhawk fighters to an extraordinary and heroic battle, the story of which has been left largely untold.The recruits had almost nothing going for them against the Japanese war machine, except for one extraordinary leader named John Jackson, a balding, tubby Queenslander - at 35 possibly the oldest fighter pilot in the world - who said little, led from the front, and who had absolutely no sense of physical fear.Time and time again this brave group were hurled into battle, against all odds and logic, and succeeded in mauling a far superior enemy - whilst also fighting against the air force hierarchy. After relentless attack, the squadron was almost wiped out by the time relief came, having succeeded in their mission - but also paying a terrible price.Michael Veitch, actor, presenter and critically acclaimed author, brings to life the incredible exploits and tragic sacrifices of this courageous squadron of Australian heroes.

    She's falling in love, and her city has been the safest place in the world for Jewish people since the Spanish Inquisition. But when Rachel's Gentile boyfriend is forced to disappear rather than face arrest, she realizes that everything is changing, and so must she. Although she is often tired and scared, she delivers papers for the underground under the Nazis noses. But after eighteen months of ever increasing danger, she pushes her parents to go into hiding with her. The dank basement where they take refuge seems like the last place where Rachel would meet a new man but she does. An Address in Amsterdam shows that, even in the most hopeless situation, an ordinary young woman can make the choice to act with courage and even love.

    Minter Dial’s lost Annapolis ring altered the lives of many—not just those who gazed upon its blue stone.The spellbinding account of one man’s obsession with a family mystery—and the product of decades of research and inquiries—The Last Ring Home explores author Minter Dial’s pursuit of the true story of his namesake, his late grandfather Lt. Minter Dial, USN, a celebrated war hero whose suffering and trauma nearly buried his memory forever.A prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, Lt. Dial discovered the cruelest meaning of the Bushido code. Moments before he was killed, he gave his treasured Naval Academy ring to a friend. In the ensuing chaos, it disappeared.Armed with a passion for history and a desire to uncover his grandfather’s legacy, Dial’s epic quest for the ring transports him to prisoner-of-war memorials and ex-POW conventions, military and press archives, and the homes of those affected by the Second World War across the world.Sweeping as far back as the American Civil War, The Last Ring Home combines rigorous research with more than one hundred interviews with experts, survivors, and descendants of the Greatest Generation to tell the powerful story of American prisoners of war in the Pacific.

    Not only was it the first decisive victory for British troops against the Japanese, more significantly, it demonstrated how the Japanese could be defeated. The lessons learned in this tiny and otherwise insignificant corner of the Far East, set up the campaign in Burma that would follow, as General Slim’s Fourteenth Army finally turned defeat into victory.Burma '44 is a tale of incredible drama. As gripping as the story of Rorke's drift, as momentous as the battle for the Ardennes, the Admin Box was a triumph of human grit and heroism and remains one of the most significant yet undervalued conflicts of World War Two.

    The story centres on three men – on British, one French and one German – and the duels they fought out in an atmosphere of collaboration, betrayal and assassination, in which comrades sold fellow comrades, Allied agents and downed pilots to the Germans, as casually as they would a bottle of wine.In this thrilling history of how ordinary, untrained people in occupied Europe faced the great questions of life, death and survival, Paddy Ashdown tells a fast-paced tale of SOE, betrayal and bloodshed in the city labelled ‘la plus belle collaboratrice’ in the whole of France.

      On April 16, 1944, the SS Pan Pennsylvania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-550 off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. In return the sub was driven to the surface with depth charges, and then sent to the bottom of the ocean by three destroyer escorts that were guarding the naval convoy. For more than sixty years the location of the U-boat’s wreck eluded divers.   In 2012, a team found it—the last undiscovered U-boat in dive-able waters off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, more than three hundred feet below the surface.   This is the story of their twenty-year quest to find this "Holy Grail" of deep-sea diving and their tenacious efforts to dive on this treacherous wreck—and of the stunning clash at sea that sealed its doom and brought the Battle of the Atlantic to America’s doorstep.

    When the Führer's troops march across Europe, Hedy is determined to help the soldiers by becoming a physical therapist. The Nazis, however, have other plans. Suddenly she finds herself assembling airplanes, dodging bombs, battling hunger, and standing up to invading tanks.As the pride in her country is shattered with the news of the Nazi atrocities, her father reminds her, "The darker the night, the brighter the stars." Is her star the charming American Counter-Intelligence Agent who keeps appearing in the oddest places? Hedy must decide between her love of country and her newfound desires.Each chapter of Darker the Night begins with a historical quote or piece of propaganda to place the reader alongside the German population experiencing the effects of the war. Discussion questions and a glossary of German terms are also included.

    Improbably, they fall in love and join forces to try to stop the rise of Hitler. The story covers the years 1923-1933, and a sequel set against the events of 1934-1945 is currently being written.

    A B-17 bomber drones high over the Pacific Ocean, sending a desperate SOS into the air. The crew is carrying America's greatest living war hero on a secret mission deep into the battle zone. But the plane is lost, burning through its final gallons of fuel.At 1:30 p.m., there is only one choice left: an emergency landing at sea. If the crew survives the impact, they will be left stranded without food or water hundreds of miles from civilization. Eight men. Three inflatable rafts. Sixty-eight million square miles of ocean. What will it take to make it back alive?

    As the Russians closed in on Hitler from the east and the Allies attacked from the west, American soldiers discovered a secret Nazi effort to engineer a master race of the finest purebred horses. With the support of U.S. general George S. Patton, a passionate equestrian, the Americans planned an audacious mission to kidnap these beautiful animals and smuggle them into safe territory—assisted by a daring Austrian colonel who was both a former Olympian and a trainer of the famous Lipizzaner stallions.

    In 1940 the raiders Orion, Komet, Pinguin, and Kormoran left Germany and waged a "pirate war" in the South Seas as part of Germany's strategy to attack the British Empire's maritime trade on a global scale. Their extraordinary voyages spanned the globe and are maritime sagas in the finest tradition of seafaring.The four raiders voyaged across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans as well as the Arctic and Antarctic. They sank or captured 62 ships in a forgotten naval war that is now being told in its entirety for the first time. The Orion and Komet terrorised the South Pacific and New Zealand waters before Pearl Harbor when the war was supposed to be far away. The Pinguin sank numerous Allied merchant ships in the Indian Ocean before mining the approaches to Australian ports and capturing the Norwegian whaling fleet in Antarctica. The Kormoran raided the Atlantic but will always be remembered for sinking the Australian cruiser Sydney off Western Australia, killing all 645 sailors on board in tragic circumstances.False Flags is also the story of the Allied sailors who encountered these raiders and fought suicidal battles against a superior foe as well as the men, women and children who endured captivity on board the raiders as prisoners of the Third Reich. False Flags is an engrossing tale that will appeal to not only military experts, but also to anyone interested in Maritime History.

    On March 15th 1939, the day the Nazis occupy Czechoslovakia, Willy is arrested as a British spy and tortured. After his release the dispossessed family, posing as Hungarians, pay a small-time smuggler to help them escape through Hungary and Germany. On a journey fraught with dangerous incidents, they battle through to keep their toddler son safe, fearing the moment they will be unmasked as Jewish and detained.

    

    McCrea worked with the president of the United States on difficult and unusual assignments, associated with royalty and world-famous political and military leaders, and he commanded the USS Iowa and a task force in the Pacific. Over the years, many urged him to write a book, and before his passing he finally recorded his reminiscences. Captain McCrea’s War captures his amazing tales from the World War II years.After the United States entered the war, McCrea served as a naval aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, where he set up the White House Map Room (later known as the Situation Room) and Shangri-La (now called Camp David). He supplied material for the president’s fireside chats, helped arrange the Casablanca Conference, and worked with such prominent leaders as Winston Churchill and General Douglas MacArthur.Despite his important work for the president, McCrea yearned for sea duty. Persuading FDR to release him from the White House, he was given command of the USS Iowa, the country’s newest and largest battleship. With his new ship, McCrea transported Roosevelt and the joint chiefs of staff across the Atlantic for the Tehran Conference and fought with the Fast Carrier Task Force in the Pacific. Captain McCrea’s War ends in April 1945, when McCrea was summoned back to Washington after President Roosevelt’s death. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    The Holocaust: The Origins, Events, and Remarkable Tales of Survival is a thought-provoking new book that explores the circumstances that led to the Holocaust, examines what life was like in concentration camps, and retells incredible stories of heroism in a sensitive and accessible way for a young audience.Featuring full-color illustrations, historical photographs, and maps and charts, this large format book is perfect for parents and teachers who want to introduce this subject to young readers. Eyewitness accounts and real-life stories of loss, courage, and survival bring a humanity and immediacy to the facts and images, making The Holocaust a compelling and invaluable read for a new generation.

    His fearlessness in carrier raids against Japan, his steely resolve at Guadalcanal, and his impulsive blunder at the Battle of Leyte Gulf made him the "Patton of the Pacific" and solidified his reputation as a decisive, aggressive fighter prone to impetuous errors of judgment in the heat of battle. In this definitive biography, Thomas Hughes punctures the popular caricature of the "fighting admiral" to reveal the truth of Halsey's personal and professional life as it was lived in times of war and peace.Halsey, the son of a Navy officer whose alcoholism scuttled a promising career, committed himself wholeheartedly to naval life at an early age. An audacious and inspiring commander to his men, he met the operational challenges of the battle at sea against Japan with dramatically effective carrier strikes early in the war. Yet his greatest contribution to the Allied victory was as commander of the combined sea, air, and land forces in the South Pacific during the long slog up the Solomon Islands chain, one of the war's most daunting battlegrounds. Halsey turned a bruising slugfest with the Japanese navy into a rout. Skillfully mediating the constant strategy disputes between the Army and the Navy--as well as the clashes of ego between General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz--Halsey was the linchpin of America's Pacific war effort when its outcome was far from certain.

    THE CORSAIR LOOKED TRULY VICIOUS ...'In 1942 Norman Hanson learnt to fly the Royal Navy's newest fighter: the US-built Chance Vought Corsair. Fast, rugged and demanding to fly, it was an intimidating machine. But in the hands of its young Fleet Air Arm pilots it also proved to be a lethal weapon.Posted to the South Pacific aboard HMS Illustrious, Hanson and his squadron took the fight to the Japanese. Facing a desparate and determined enemy, Kamikaze attacks and the ever-present dangers of flying off a pitching carrier deck, death was never far away.Brought to life in vivid, visceral detail, Carrier Pilot is one of the finest aviator's memoirs of the war; an awe-inspiring, thrilling, sometimes terrifying account of war in the air.PRAISE FOR CARRIER PILOT'Just outstanding. Carrier Pilot is up there with First Light and The Big Show as one of the best pilot's memoirs of WWII.' ROWLAND WHITE, AUTHOR OF VULCAN 607'Hanson's thrilling memoir takes you right into the cockpit in a way few writers have ever managed. The lethal world of the wartime Royal Navy carrier pilot, with its casual and shocking violence, horrific attrition, yet extraordinary camaraderie is so vividly brought to life that one can almost smell the smoke, oil and sweat. Real, adrenalin-charged, and ridiculously dangerous flying, Hanson's account is an aviation classic that has to be read.' JAMES HOLLAND, AUTHOR OF DAM BUSTERS and THE WAR IN THE WEST

    Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the Empire’s strategy to knock Australia out of the war. Allied Commander-in-Chief General Douglas MacArthur committed 340,000 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Australian, Dutch, and New Guinea troops, to retake New Guinea at all costs.What followed was a four-year campaign that involved some of the most horrific warfare in history. At first emboldened by easy victories throughout the Pacific, the Japanese soon encountered in New Guinea a roadblock akin to the Germans’ disastrous attempt to take Moscow, a catastrophic setback to their war machine. For the Americans, victory in New Guinea was the first essential step in the long march towards the Japanese home islands and the ultimate destruction of Hirohito’s empire. Winning the war in New Guinea was of critical importance to MacArthur. His avowed “I shall return” to the Philippines could only be accomplished after taking the island.In this gripping narrative, historian James P. Duffy chronicles the most ruthless combat of the Pacific War, a fight complicated by rampant tropical disease, violent rainstorms, and unforgiving terrain that punished both Axis and Allied forces alike. Drawing on primary sources, War at the End of the World fills in a crucial gap in the history of World War II while offering readers a narrative of the first rank.

    The Depression brought them together and World War II separated them but Eleanor Bradford and Mary Willis knew that nothing was more important than their love for each other and nothing and nobody would tear them apart.

    On one occasion Mary delivered a Wellington bomber to an airfield, and as she climbed out of the aircraft the RAF ground crew ran over to her and demanded to know where the pilot was! Mary said simply: ‘I am the pilot!’ Unconvinced the men searched the aircraft before they realized a young woman had indeed flown the bomber all by herself.After the war she accepted a secondment to the RAF, being chosen as one of the first pilots, and one of only three women, to take the controls of the new Meteor fast jet. By 1950 the farmer's daughter from Oxfordshire with a natural instinct to fly became Europe's first female air commandant.In this authorized biography the woman who says she kept in the background during her ATA years and left all the glamour of publicity to her colleagues, finally reveals all about her action-packed career which spans almost a century of aviation, and her love for the skies which, even in her nineties, never falters.She says: ‘I am passionate for anything fast and furious. I always have been since the age of three and I always knew I would fly. The day I stepped into a Spitfire was a complete joy and it was the most natural thing in the world for me.’

    It was not just the men who went to war but women too, as this action-packed story tells. Set against a sweeping panorama of the war and the Royal Navy, Wren Jane Beacon goes to War shows just how close to the action a girl could get. Brave and feisty, independent of spirit so always at an angle to authority, from the start of the war she does brilliantly as the Navy’s first experimental boat crew Wren. But the story is much more than bullets and stormy seas; human life in all its complexities is there as she comes of age under extreme circumstances. The young Jane Beacon not only has to overcome the entrenched chauvinism of the Royal Navy; she also learns about herself and her sexuality. She soon finds out that having an affair in a warship is a major naval taboo. Almost chucked out when it comes to light, only her exceptional performance in the boats saves her. As a rating she learns to live with the lower deck and its own particular ways but coming from a comfortable upper middle-class family she is just as at ease in the wardroom which in itself is a source of strife. As she develops, neither corporal punishment nor naval bloody-mindedness can put her off. Typical of her impulsive nature, she takes a naval cutter to Dunkirk without permission to help with the evacuation and does great things, much to the annoyance of Naval authority. World War Two saw the UK’s armed forces massively expanded and, as always, the fighting and dying was done by young men drafted in whether they liked it or not. This time, the conscription also took in the UK’s women on a mass scale, and without them the war would not have been won. While their work was mostly in support and production, there were some who got close up to the front line activities and Wren Jane Beacon goes to War is the story of one who did. It is much more than “a ripping good yarn”, as one reviewer put it, although it is all of that. Quite instinctively she lives, loves and works close to the edge and the tale shows women can be heroes too but always with a warm human side.

    Spanning the globe from amphibious landings at Guadalcanal, to the Navajo code talker school, to the exotic environs of New Orleans, to the secret world of Bletchley Park, this tautly written thriller, covering two weeks during the summer of 1942, combines a fully imagined cast of characters with the historically important figures of Andrew Higgins, members of American and British Intelligence, Navajo code talker Chester Nez, Commander Ian Fleming of MI6, along with a Polish intelligence officer, and “Silver Dollar Sam” Carolla, crime boss of New Orleans.An old German is found dead in a New Orleans whorehouse. Sewn into the lining of the dead man’s vest is a notebook filled with hand-drawn maps and notes about the comings and goings at military installations. German conspirators fret that their local contact (the dead German) is overdue. Mafia crime boss Nico Carolla, is soon drawn into the disposition of the corpse.We move to the Pacific and meet the grandson of the dead German, PFC Brock, a U.S. Marine being trained for the landings at Guadalcanal. Then we meet Andrew Jackson Higgins at the helm of the single most important landing craft ever built, the Higgins Boat, the steel-ramped landing craft that brought American troops to Pacific islands and to Normandy. In his colorful manner, Higgins is instructing a class of Coast Guard newbies on how to properly drive and operate his nearly indestructible boat. Higgins faces shortages of materials, manpower, and factory space. The Mafia boss controls much of the labor supply. Accommodations must be made to placate the mob family, who also have Old World connections in critical to the upcoming North African landings.The Waffen-SS officers charged with sabotaging the Higgins Boat plant arrive, only to learn of the loss of the intelligence gathered by the dead German. Now enter the code breakers at Bletchley Park who intercept the commando team’s messages, including one female mathematician through whose eyes we see inside Bletchley Park.America is almost entirely dependent on Britain’s MI6 for intelligence gathering. We meet Martina Amerada, a Cuban woman with a high-level banking responsibility, including ties to British intelligence, and who is Nico Carolla’s mistress. Martina moves money for the crime family and provides diplomatic cover between the Palermo branch of the family and the planners of Operation Torch. We are also introduced to the Navajo code-talker program essential to securing Marine Corps messages in the Pacific theater.The German commando team searches for the lost notebook by visiting the whorehouses Brock has been known to frequent, which leads to a murder and later retaliation by the Mafia against the German conspirators. Half the German commando team perishes. US marshals are drawn into the story as bodies are discovered in the nearby bayous. The Mafia is suspected. When the marshals confront Carolla, the marshals are put on the trail of the commandos which leads to the death of the marshals.Bletchley Park is busy trying to crack the code imbedded in the Himmler messages, We move back to the Pacific where grandson Brock is involved in the bloody landings ahead of Guadalcanal. Brock is wounded and nearly dies as the remaining commando attempts to demolish the largest Higgins Boat manufacturing facility in New Orleans. With the help of British intelligence, Nico Carolla prevents the plant from being destroyed and thus becomes the hero of the story.Operation Torch gets underway and the Higgins boats prove their indispensability to the war effort. PFC Brock recovers from his wounds, and Martina takes possession of all intelligence related to the German commandos so the threat never becomes public knowledge.

    Gravelyn was Captain of Company D, 331st Infantry, 83rd “Thunderbolt” Infantry Division, United States Army, during World War II. He served in active combat from the landing at Normandy until a mortar took him out in Petite Langlir, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. These are his wartime memoirs, which he started working on when he retired in his sixties and was still adding to at age ninety six, right up until the last moment before publishing. This isn’t the Hollywood version of war. This is matter-of-fact war from the viewpoint of the “grunts,” the infantrymen, who in every war in every time, slog, crawl, and fight through rain, snow, mud, and dead bodies until they either die or stand on the contested ground and say, “Okay, this is ours now,” in order that famous generals can claim victory. More than 63,000 words, with a foreword by his son, Jim Gravelyn, this first-person account covering everything from pre-war training in the Michigan National Guard to the trip home on a hospital ship makes for fascinating reading. The book is hyperbole free but will nevertheless have you shaking your head in amazement, horror, or amusement at various times, and leave you with a sense of actually having been there in the European Theatre of Operations in World War II, as a grunt.

    To counteract these threats, generations of general staff officers were educated in operational thinking, the main tenets of which were extremely influential on military planning across the globe and were adopted by American and Soviet armies. In the twentieth century, Germany's art of warfare dominated military theory and practice, creating a myth of German operational brilliance that lingers today, despite the nation's crushing defeats in two world wars.In this seminal study, Gerhard P. Gross provides a comprehensive examination of the development and failure of German operational thinking over a period of more than a century. He analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of five different armies, from the mid--nineteenth century through the early days of NATO. He also offers fresh interpretations of towering figures of German military history, including Moltke the Elder, Alfred von Schlieffen, and Erich Ludendorff. Essential reading for military historians and strategists, this innovative work dismantles cherished myths and offers new insights into Germany's failed attempts to become a global power through military means.

    The Battle of Britain has begun. A young Messerschmitt pilot is shot down over Dartmoor. He tries to evade a manhunt, knowing that if he is captured by the British, his war will be over. But when Josef Schafer falls into the hands of a sinister agent of the Special Operations Executive, his troubles have only begun. He is returned to occupied France having made an impossible deal with the British. As the air war escalates, Josef is in danger in the sky and on the ground. His allegiances are tested as he is torn between loyalty to his Luftwaffe comrades and a French woman whom he is compelled to serve. The stakes are high. Whoever controls the sky above the English Channel will decide the fate of nations. Winner of the CALEB Prize Unpublished Fiction 2014 Winner of the Clive Cussler Adventure Writer's Competition

    It showed Churchill, the freshly installed prime minister, rolling up his sleeves to confront the oncoming menace of Nazi Germany. In his wake, leading the endless ranks of the British people, marched the most prominent figures of his new coalition government. It was a potent expression of a moment when Britons of every class were truly all in it together. It also contained a truth that Churchill's titanic historical reputation has since eclipsed: that neither he nor the country would have prevailed but for the joint effort of this remarkable "ministry of all the talents". Indeed, without the vital support of the Labour Party, and its leader Clement Attlee, Churchill might never have become prime minister at all. Now Roger Hermiston tells the story of the men — and women —   who steered Britain through its darkest hour, showing how they helped to win the Second World War, and how they laid the foundations of the "New Jerusalem" that followed. Along the way, he explores the roles played by characters as diverse as the mercurial newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, who supplied the planes that won the Battle of Britain; the pugnacious trade union baron Ernest Bevin, who kept the nation working; Lord Woolton, the minister for food — a man so widely loved he was dubbed "Uncle Fred"; and Sir John Anderson, one of the first people to contemplate the awful power of the atom bomb. Hermiston also considers the achievements of more junior ministers, including the only two women in Churchill's government: the left-wing firebrand Ellen Wilkinson, and the Conservative Florence Horsbrugh, who played a pivotal role alleviating the suffering inflicted by the Blitz. Five years after that cartoon, Churchill predicted that history would shine a light on "every helmet" of his"great coalition". As it was, many were forgotten. This book seeks to recover their memory, and to celebrate a generation of politicians who rose above party to put their country first.

    Hundreds of the most riveting articles from the archives of the Times including firsthand accounts of major events and little-known anecdotes have been selected for inclusion in The New York Times: The Complete World War II. The book covers the biggest battles of the war, from the Battle of the Bulge to the Battle of Iwo Jima, as well as moving stories from the home front and profiles of noted leaders and heroes such as Winston Churchill and George Patton.A respected World War II historian and writer, editor Richard Overy guides readers through the articles, putting the events into historical context. The enclosed DVD-ROM gives access to more day-by-day coverage of World War II in The New York Times -- from the invasion of Poland to V-J day with access to over 98,000 articles.Beautifully designed and illustrated with hundreds of maps and historical photographs, it's the perfect gift for any war, politics, or history buff.

    With expertly researched and sensitive prose Author Peggy Reiff Miller shares the story of real life seagoing cowboys, while Claire Ewart's luminous illustrations bring their efforts and adventures to life.

    This book is richly illustrated with 50 historical photos and sketches.“When Ben went off to war...It was obvious I had to go to work. But with all these new duties and two small children under my wing, what could I do? There was a labor shortage. Sure. But was it so bad that some desperate employer would pay handsomely for two hours of a frazzled female’s time after a hard day? Shall we say, fifty dollars a week?”World War II was a tipping point for social change in America. With their men at war, nineteen million women joined the work force. Radio, the first instantaneous mass medium, provided daytime serial drama, entertainment and news, including pronouncements of world leaders and terrifying war reports, as President Roosevelt used the new medium to rally the nation to arms and win the war..Alice Green’s lost and recently found eyewitness accounts of her childhood, her own war, the Golden Years of Radio and the postwar housing shortage are told from the light-hearted viewpoint of a shy, youngest child, who learns she can make even the stormy and outrageous characters in her own family laugh. With a little help from her son, who (just barely) escaped this madhouse to finish it, her story stands for unsung American women in war and survives as Alice’s triumphPRAISE FOR PETER GREEN’S FIRST WORLD WAR II BIOGRAPHY“Dad's War With The United States Marines is very highly recommended to all general readers and a welcome addition to the growing library of military memoirs and biographies.” –James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review Re-issued in 2014 as THE EDITION REFERENCED BELOWCOMPANION VOLUME BEN’S WAR WITH THE U.S.MARINES By Peter H. Green Greenskills Press, St. Louis, 2014

    That text has been updated repeatedly, and now through a unique partnership with West Point graduates, The West Point History of Warfare has been completely rewritten. Volume 1 concluded with the midpoint of World War II in 1942, which is where this latest edition begins, covering all aspects of the war in chapters such as “Strategic Seapower and Airpower” by Richard J. Overy, “The Defeat of Japan” by Robert W. Love, Jr., “The Allies Turn the Tide” by Robert M. Citino, and “Occupation, Demobilization, and Assessing Victory” by Steve R. Waddell. As with previous volumes, The West Point History of World War II, Volume 2 boasts rich, full-color illustrations with unique tactical maps created by expert cartographers in collaboration with West Point’s military historians, as well as dozens of graphics uniquely created for this volume and hundreds of historical images, many of which are from the West Point archives. Authoritative, compelling, a goldmine for history lovers, this essential resource belongs in the library of every serious student of World War II.

    Whether your traumatic experience peaks the top of PTSD's sliding scale the way Cathy's Pentagon level MK Ultra mind control programming did; or is from the horrors of war; or even if it is simply resultant from socially engineered information control and fears, this book is for you. These step by step healing methods intelligence insider Mark Phillips taught Cathy can help anyone willing to reclaim control over their own mind and life just as she did. Their journey to release PTSD: Time to Heal has been politically strenuous until now! Positive change through public awareness and overwhelming global demand prompted this release of otherwise suppressed easy to follow step-by-step healing methods Mark taught Cathy for successfully reclaiming her mind and life after decades of torturous MK Ultra mind control. Since PTSD: Time to Heal is a workbook journal, it is not authorized in either eBook form or used copy. From it's cover to unconventional layout to insights within, PTSD: Time to Heal reverberates with introspective inspirations.

    But when she arrived, she found herself steeped in a world of bookies, mobsters, and a Nazi underworld that she must infiltrate on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League.Anita Mishook’s well-researched and brilliantly written debut novel transports you to 1936 and the under-told history of the American Bund, the pro-Nazi Silver Shirts, and their efforts to build a summer retreat for Hitler near the Los Angeles coast.

    A master of word painting, Pyle honed the skills that would win him a 1944 Pulitzer Prize for his battlefront reporting by traveling across America, writing columns about the people and places he encountered. At Home with Ernie Pyle celebrates Pyle’s Indiana roots, gathering for the first time his writings about the state and its people. These stories preserve a vivid cultural memory of his time. In them, we discover the Ernie Pyle who was able to find a piece of home wherever he wandered. By focusing on his family and the lives of people in and from the Hoosier state, Pyle was able to create a multifaceted picture of the state as it slowly transformed from a mostly rural, agrarian society to a modern, industrial one. Here is the record of a special time and place created by a master craftsman, whose work remains vividly alive three quarters of a century later.

    From Defeat to Victory analyzes how the Red Army transformed itself from a beaten army to a conquering army while battle raged, not merely through its willingness to expend human life without regard, but by developing fundamentally sound doctrine, which enabled it to plan and conduct successful large-scale operations in 1943-45 in ways that it could not in 1941-42.

    Situation plans, numbered exhibits and photographs allow for quick and easy finding of descriptions of visited places.Publication consists of two parts.The first part reconstructs the approved order of visiting along the route of the main exhibition (blocks: 4, 5, 6, 7, 11) and the most important places such as: crematorium, gas chamber, courtyard of block 11, barrack square and the place of execution of the first KL Auschwitz commander - Rudolf Höss. There is also a description of national exhibitions presenting the fate of deported persons from various countries of occupied Europe.The second part of the guidebook presents the functions of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and describes particular sections the camp was divided into, as well as places directly connected to Holocaust: the so-called ramp, where the SS doctors were performing selections, ruins of gas chambers and crematoria II, III, IV and V, areas where human ashes were scattered and warehouses with property seized from Jews, victims of mass Holocaust.

    The Nazis would not accept him as the winner because he was Sinto. Many Sinti and Roma (or "Gypsies") had long been involved in the sport, but Nazi ideology demanded that only Aryans excel as fighters. Trollmann used his visibility in the ring for shocking and aggressive protest, turning boxing into politically charged performance art. He fought for his country, and against its prejudice. Roma and Sinti were victims of fascism, but they also were soldiers, activists, and underground resistors. Since World War II, there has been a struggle to obtain greater recognition of this past. From underground fight nights to Madison Square Garden, from secret partisan meetings to concentration camp uprisings, across several continents, this is a hard-hitting look at forgotten history.

    In the spring of 1942, Col. William H. Tunner lacked sufficient male pilots to move vital trainer aircraft from the factory to the training fields. Nancy Love found 28 experienced women pilots who could do the job. They, along with graduates of the army’s flight training school for women—established by Jacqueline Cochran—performed this duty until fall 1943, when manufacture of trainers ceased. In December 1943 the women ferry pilots went back to school to learn to fly high-performance WWII fighters, known as pursuits. By January 1944 they began delivering high performance P-51s, 47s, and 39s. Prior to D-Day and beyond, P-51s were crucial to the air war over Germany. They had the range to escort B-17s and B-24s from England to Berlin and back on bombing raids that ultimately brought down the German Reich. Getting those pursuits to the docks in New Jersey for shipment abroad became these women’s primary job. Ultimately, more than one hundred WASP pursuit pilots were engaged in this vital movement of aircraft.

    All she wants to do is to fly and now the World’s at war she leaves her home in Northern California to go to England as one of Jackie Cochran’s Ladybirds. Here she joins the Air Transport Auxiliary to ferry British aircraft on behalf of the RAF. Crashing a Tiger Moth in a Lincolnshire field brings her world into chaos when she meets land girl Rose. At last she is forced to face up to her true feelings and is torn between her love for husband, Richard, and Lizzie who is married to her psychopathic brother, Ben. The Wings to Fly allows the reader to experience life with the land girls of Lincolnshire; tragedy in the London Blitz; the courage and sacrifice of The Few in the Battle of Britain; the indispensible work of female pilots in Britain and America; political shenanigans in Washington and the military; heroism and loss at Guadalcanal; love, disaster, sabotage, and, at last, a happy ending for Midge. Cameo appearances from Jackie Cochran, Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Captain Oliver Colin (Boots) LeBoutillier, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and poet, Pilot Officer John Magee punctuate this story of love, honour and true grit on the Home Front in World War Two.(Also available on Kindle Unlimited).

    A history of haute couture in the 20th century decade by decade Turning the pages of this lively book is like rummaging with a fancy dress box overflowing with clothes from the 20th century S Dirix is a fabulous guide Daily Mail What defined the way women dressed in the 1930s When did haute couture become offthepeg How did economic highs and lows influence style in the 1980s High Fashion answers these questions and more by exploring fashion design in the 20th century one decade at a time Each chapter looks at the significant stylistic changes that occurred in one decade and places them in a wider cultural and socioeconomic context The designers whose work best represents their era are profiled and their key looks deconstructed from the vertical silhouette of the 1900s to minimalism in the 1990s High Fashion combines thoughtful analysis with a carefully curated selection of archive images to create an invaluable resource for fashion students and a fascinating journey through 20thcentury style for fashionistas It reveals how styles have changed what those changes tell us about individuals and society at that time and how our current relationship with fashion was formed

    Karl Walden and Countess Lilya Zarov alongside the Domino Lady; the Nyctalope, Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty, and Frank Reade’s granddaughter fought giant ants in the Nevada desert; the Shadow, the jungle lord, Bulldog Drummond, and a bronze-skinned, golden-eyed pulp hero had dinner at Nero Wolfe’s brownstone; Judex battled Freddy Krueger; Honey West and T.H.E. Cat solved two cases together; Captain Action and the Black Bat teamed up in Japan; Carl Kolchak met the descendants of Doctor Moreau’s creatures, as well as the Time Traveler; Lupin III matched wits with Fantômas’ grandson; the Ghostbusters fought the Phantom of the Opera and the Deep Ones; and Vampirella met Buffy……To the Twenty-first Century, when Lara Croft visited Shangri-La; Angel and company battled a Kandarian demon; Harry Dresden encountered a shoggoth; the DangerGirl team joined forces with Ash Williams and G.I. Joe; Cassie Hack and Vlad went up against Edgar Dill, Victor Crowley, Jason Voorhees, and Dexter, and teamed up with the Living Corpse, Mercy Sparx, and Eva; the Phantom and Captain Action had a mission together; Cal McDonald met the Frankenstein Monster, the Goon, and the vampires of Barrow, Alaska; Witchblade and Red Sonja crossed paths; the Phantom and Mandrake defeated a pair of rogues; Dick Tracy found a missing Little Orphan Annie; Remo Williams and Batman fought the Joker; and Fox Mulder quoted his good friend Dale Cooper……To the far-flung future, when crews of the starships Enterprise had transdimensional encounters with the Planet of the Apes, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and the Doctor…

    This is a fictional tale love, faith, and struggle, told through their letters to each other.

    When he was shipped with other prisoners to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of his writings were confiscated and destroyed. After his liberation and while convalescing, he began to draw and make notes again about his experiences in Theresienstadt, in Auschwitz, the first death march out of Mauthausen, and its satellite camps, in Melk and Gunskirchen.             As a teenager confronting the traumas of these experiences, Kraus found that recording his memories in words and pictures helped him overcome his hatred for those who had murdered his parents. The process of writing and drawing also helped him begin the painful transition to a so-called normal life. As a survivor, Kraus also felt the need to recount his experiences for the benefit of future generations, especially on behalf of the many who did not survive.             The present edition makes this memoir, originally written in Czech and significant for having been written so close to the author’s liberation, widely available to English readers for the first time. It also reproduces pages from the original booklets that show how the teenage Kraus illustrated his memories with pencil drawings that both complement and extend his story, giving readers a sense of its character as an unusual and important historical document.

    Camelot has fallen. Britain drowns in Saxons. These are the stories of what came after. Merlin’s prophecies begin such, in introduction: “In the days when Arthur’s dream was dimmed, as grey embers under storm, actors from our reverie still ventured forth. A boy enters decaying Broceliande with the May Hawk’s daughter, both in search of fathers. Sir Gawain, bereft of his nation, rides in search of my tomb—but finds a friend turned enemy. In the Britain’s hour of need, the round table will be restored to defend Logres in the sky, in the London Blitz. “My tutor, Bleys, will take a fool’s horse, and two adventurers will trace my dying steps across the world. Sir Lionel’s remains will visit the remains of the Arthurian world, and the Victorians will strive to make a gentleman of Mordred. The Questing Beast will never cease to haunt Pellinore’s line, no matter how far north they trend. The old witch, Morgan, will seek forgiveness. The holy lance will appear once more. And a queen who is no longer a queen will meet a knight who is no longer a knight, and both will marvel at the grave of the greatest king who served his country. “These may be read, in full, inside. “But I am tired now, and Nimue calls for me…” An all-new anthology from the award-winning curator Nicole Petit, featuring stories by Colin Fisher, Leigh Ann Cowan, Amy Wolf, Thomas Olivieri, Jon Black, Patricia S. Bowne, Claudia Quint, David Wiley, Christian Bone, Patrick S. Baker, and Elizabeth Zuckerman.

    Blankenship's study of Christianity in the infamous camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II yields insights both far-reaching and timely. While most Japanese Americans maintained their traditional identities as Buddhists, a sizeable minority identified as Christian, and a number of church leaders sought to minister to them in the camps. Blankenship shows how church leaders were forced to assess the ethics and pragmatism of fighting against or acquiescing to what they clearly perceived, even in the midst of a national crisis, as an unjust social system. These religious activists became acutely aware of the impact of government, as well as church, policies that targeted ordinary Americans of diverse ethnicities.Going through the doors of the camp churches and delving deeply into the religious experiences of the incarcerated and the faithful who aided them, Blankenship argues that the incarceration period introduced new social and legal approaches for Christians of all stripes to challenge the constitutionality of government policies on race and civil rights. She also shows how the camp experience nourished the roots of an Asian American liberation theology that sprouted in the sixties and seventies.

    Two of these Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange were teachers and two were nurses. Having arrived In the Solomon Islands in December, 1940, they were new to missionary life, new to a culture not their own, new to the languages spoken on their island and new to navigating in the geography that surrounded them. On December 7, 1941, a year and a day after the nuns arrived in the Solomons, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. After that devastating air-strike, the Japanese quickly and strategically occupied many of the islands of the South Pacific. What the nuns didn’t know was that the Japanese wanted to occupy their island, Buka, and they wanted it fast! Buka, a small island just north of the large island of Bougainville, offered the Japanese a strategic site for an airfield to support their invasion of the rest of the South Pacific, including Australia. When the nuns had left Wilmington, California in 1940, one of them, Sister Hedda Jaeger, a nurse, was tasked with keeping a journal that was sent back periodically to their religious community in Orange, California. In good times and bad, Sister Hedda was faithful to recording their story. This first person account documents their journey—from their eager anticipation about their new mission, to adapting to the realities of native culture, to sheer terror as they run from the invading Japanese. Once in hiding on the larger island of Bougainville, they learn that other missionaries in the Solomons had been tortured and executed. Throughout their adventures and later ordeals, they are protected by the Marist priests, experienced missionaries who knew the lay of the land and feared for the sisters’ fate should they be captured. After many months of hiding in the jungle and with no communication with the larger world, the sisters were ultimately rescued by United States submarine Nautilus in a high risk mission on New Year’s Day 1943. The book tells the story of these four courageous and devoted women, the natives they taught and nursed, the priests who hid and protected them, and the incredible physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges they faced. After the end of the war, the Sisters of St. Joseph returned again to serve the people of the Solomon Islands. An epilogue describes the fate of the principal missionaries, both those who survived and those who died at the hands of the Japanese. The sisters’ journal, related writings, maps, and original photographs form the basis for this book.