He and his friend, Harold, had narrowly escaped death during the fall of Berlin by taking refuge in the subway tunnels under the city. As members of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), the two 14-year-old boys had been ordered to fight to the death; however, they defied Hitler’s orders and chose to live. Hearing the announcement the day before that Berlin had surrendered, they left their subway shelter to seek out friends where they thought they would be safe. Somehow, the Soviets had found them. But what did they want with them?After being transported to an interrogation center and brought before a Russian political Kommissar, Karl soon finds the answers to his questions. Once again, he is going to be used by a high-ranking official due to his unique knowledge of the Berlin subway system. He must agree to help the Kommissar or risk being shipped off to the Russian labor camps along with the rest of the German prisoners. When Karl learns that Harold has also been arrested and given the same choice, the two agree to assist the Kommissar.The boys work with the Kommissar and when the last mission is completed, Karl hopes to be released so he can search for his family. Unfortunately, the final mission ends with a twist and Karl is once again forced to make a life or death decision. This time, however, the life hanging in the balance is not his own, but that of someone very close to him. To save the life of the person he holds dear, Karl must decide whether or not he will follow orders and do the one thing he has never done before - take the life of another.Books In The Series:Children To A DegreeLoyal To A DegreeTrust To A DegreePartners To A Degree

    history, thanks to Stephen Ambrose s superb book Band of Brothers, followed by portrayals in film. However, to date little has been heard of Fox Company of that same regiment the men who fought alongside Easy Company through every step of the war in Europe, and who had their own stories to tell.Notably this book, over a decade in the making, came about for different reasons than the fame of the Band of Brothers. Bill Brown, a WWII vet himself, had decided to research the fate of a childhood friend who had served in Fox Company. Along the way he met Terry Poyser, who was on a similar mission to research the combat death of a Fox Company man from his hometown. Together, the two authors proceeded to locate and interview every surviving Fox Company vet they could find. The result was a wealth of fascinating firsthand accounts of WWII combat as well as new perspectives on Dick Winters and others of the Band, who had since become famous.Told primarily through the words of participants, Fighting Fox Company takes the reader through some of the most horrific close-in fighting of the war, beginning with the chaotic nocturnal paratrooper drop on D-Day. After fighting through Normandy the drop into Holland saw prolonged ferocious combat, and even more casualties; and then during the Battle of the Bulge, Fox Company took its place in line at Bastogne during one of the most heroic against-all-odds stands in U.S. history.As always in combat, each man s experience is different, and the nature of the German enemy is seen here in its equally various aspects. From ruthless SS fighters to meek Volkssturm to simply expert modern fighters, the Screaming Eagles encountered the full gamut of the Wehrmacht. The work is also accompanied by rare photos and useful appendices, including rosters and lists of casualties, to give the full look at Fox Company which has long been overdue.

    In One Man's War a B-17 pilot vividly details his experiences in war-ravaged Germany, from the horrific to the romantic and beyond. 20 photos.

    Marines landed on a small island in the Central Pacific called Peleliu, as a prelude to the liberation of the Philippines. Among the first wave of Marines that hit the beach that day was 22-year-old George Peto. Growing up in on a farm in Ohio, George had always preferred exploring to being indoors. This made school a challenge, but his hunting, fishing and trapping skills helped put food on the family’s table. As a teenager living in a rough area he got into regular brawls, and he found holding down a job hard because of his wanderlust. After a succession of jobs he decided that joining the Marines offered him the opportunity for adventure plus three square meals a day, so he and his brother joined the Corps in 1941, just a few months before Pearl Harbor.Following boot camp and training, he was initially assigned to a guard unit. Found not guilty of misconduct after falling asleep on duty while very sick, he was then shipped out to a combat unit. His first experience of combat was during the landings at Finschhaven and Cape Gloucester. He was a Forward Observer in one of the lead amtracs of the 1st Marines for the Peleliu landing, and saw fierce fighting for a week before the unit was relieved due to massive casualties. The unit was then the immediate reserve for the initial landing on Okinawa. They encountered no resistance on landing on D+1, but would then fight on Okinawa for over six months. This is the wild and remarkable story of an "Old Breed" Marine, from his youth in the Great Depression, his training and combat in the Pacific during WWII, to his life after the war, told in his own words.

    They uncover evidence of collusion at worst and the turning of a blind eye at best, which enabled many leading Nazi's to escape apprehension and to hold onto their ill-gotten gains.Alford and Savas describe how the principal powermongers of the "Reich Sicherheits Hauptamt" - The Reich Main Security Office, established by Himmler and Kaltenbrunner to oversee all security departments of the German State - squirreled away vast fortunes. Towards the end of the war, blackmail, unrestrained looting, theft and the bartering of human lives became sources of great profit for these men. Never ideologically motivated, these RSHA managers, who included college professors, bank executives and engineers - all of whom are named in this book - preyed on the misfortunes of others. After stealing and destroying in the most brutal fashion, most of the RSHA leaders returned to a "normal" existence after the war, continuing their lives as if nothing untoward had ever happened How did they mislead U.S. Army criminal investigators and walk away free men? What part did money, blackmail, counter-spying and murder play in these events? Ken Alford and Ted Savas address these and many other questions in this detailed investigation and exposé.

     Just over a year later the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor devastated this force. Out of a total of 231 aircraft of the Hawaiian Air Force, 64 were destroyed and not more than 79 were left usable. Out of the inferno emerged the newly reformed Seventh Air Force. It faced, in the central Pacific, the largest water theater in the world — sixteen million square miles, five times the size of the United States. The Americans patched up their planes as best they could and began to fly the "Atoll Circuit," the low-lying, white sand atolls and the first stepping stones on the long road to Tokyo. In this huge area and against a fearsome opponent, the men of the Seventh were forced to fly the longest missions in any theater of war, entirely over water and, at first, without fighter escort. They fought at Midway, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Saipan, Palau, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and finally Tokyo. Clive Howard and Joe Whitley’s history of this remarkable air force covers from the events at Pearl Harbor through to V-J Day, covering every single island that the force landed on in between. They listened to demand of Corporal Earl Nelson’s article “Heroes Don’t Win Wars”, that criticised the press and radio that only recorded the fantastic achievements of men who wore medals; “Why don’t they talk about the guy who is just a soldier?” So with humor and insight Howard and Whitley have provided us with a history of the Seventh Air Force that doesn’t focus on only the glorious achievements of some men, nor does it simply record the accounts of the “brass hats”, but instead gets to the heart of what the men of this extraordinary force did and thought. Clive Howard and Joe Whitley were both sergeants and served as correspondents for the Seventh Air Force. They were there; they saw it happen. Their book One Damned Island After Another was first published in 1946.

    Maybe you heard about it yesterday. Maybe last month. But it was probably recent. And when it came up, did you wish that you could be the one to casually drop a fact that would have everyone in the room going, “Wow, I never knew that!” With this book, you can be that person. You can read it in just a few minutes a day. Chapters are bite-sized and easy to read, meant for normal people instead of war historians! Each chapter ends with a bonus helping of trivia and some quick questions to test your knowledge. You’ll zoom through this book and be hungry for more. Get ready to impress your friends with your knowledge – not just of the main events of World War Two, but of all the gritty details and weird true facts. By the time you finish this book, you’ll have a fact for every occasion, from the first moment someone thought about having a second World War, to the most recent blockbuster movies about it. So get ready to meet characters from Adolf Hitler, rejected art student, to Jack Churchill, the broadsword-swinging male model. Find out why World War Two started in the first place, and why it’s never a good idea to invade Russia in winter. Learn why the United States was going to stay out of the war, how Canadians stole airplanes for the British, and what an orange soft drink has to do with the Nazis. Some of the things you’re going to learn are sad. Some are scary. Some are sexy. And some are downright strange! It’s everything your history teacher never got around to telling you.

    Two weeks later LIFE magazine published that image. It became one of the most famous WWII photographs in history (and the most celebrated photograph ever published in the world's dominant photo-journal), a cherished reminder of what it felt like for the war to finally be over. Everyone who saw the picture wanted to know more about the nurse and sailor, but Eisenstaedt had no information and a search for the mysterious couple's identity took on a dimension of its own. In 1979 Eisenstaedt thought he had found the long lost nurse. And as far as almost everyone could determine, he had. For the next thirty years Edith Shain was known as the woman in the photo of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. In 1980 LIFE attempted to determine the sailor's identity. Many aging warriors stepped forward with claims, and experts weighed in to support one candidate over another. Chaos ensued.For almost two decades Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi were intrigued by the controversy surrounding the identity of the two principals in Eisenstaedt's most famous photograph and collected evidence that began to shed light on this mystery. Unraveling years of misinformation and controversy, their findings propelled one claimant's case far ahead of the others and, at the same time, dethroned the supposed kissed nurse when another candidate's claim proved more credible. With this book, the authors solve the 67-year-old mystery by providing irrefutable proof to identify the couple in Eisenstaedt's photo. It is the first time the whole truth behind the celebrated picture has been revealed.The authors also bring to light the couple's and the photographer's brushes with death that nearly prevented their famous spontaneous Times Square meeting in the first place. The sailor, part of Bull Halsey's famous task force, survived the deadly typhoon that took the lives of hundreds of other sailors. The nurse, an Austrian Jew who lost her mother and father in the Holocaust, barely managed to escape to the United States. Eisenstaedt, a World War I German soldier, was nearly killed at Flanders.For more information on the book, go to www.thekissingsailor.com

    This is what mother decided would be our best chance at survival. This was not an easy undertaking. To blend into the Polish community it was essential not to look Jewish; not to sound Jewish; to know a fair amount about Catholicism; and be able to think on your feet when unexpected events occurred. Above all one needed to be lucky. With counterfeit documents we changed our name and moved to Lublin, the site of Majdanek, the second largest concentration camp in Poland. At that time I was five years old and my brother was seven. We had to learn new names and to never reveal our past. No sooner we got settled that members of my father’s family descended on us seeking shelter. In a small, primitive house we hid up to eight members of my father’s family.

    By the time Foley finally managed to grab a few hours sleep three nights later, he'd already fought in a bloody attack that left sixty percent of his battalion dead or wounded. That was just the beginning of one of the toughest, bloodiest challenges the 94th would ever face: breaking through the Siegfried Line. Now, in Visions from a Foxhole, Foley recaptures that desperate, nerve-shattering struggle in all its horror and heroism. Features the author's artwork of his fellow soldiers and battle scenes, literally sketched from the foxhole Look for these remarkable stories of American courage at war BEHIND HITLER'S LINESThe True Story of the Only Soldier to Fight for BothAmerica and the Soviet Union in World War IIThomas H. TaylorTHE HILL FIGHTSThe First Battle of Khe Sanhby Edward F. Murphy NO BENDED KNEEThe Battle for Guadalcanalby Gen. Merrill B. Twining, USMC (Ret.) THE ROAD TO BAGHDADBehind Enemy Lines: The Adventures of an American Soldier in the Gulf Warby Martin Stanton

    

    “It does not seem to be much use being anything else.”Have you ever wanted to deliver the ultimate Churchillian wisecrack? Give sound advice to a peer on how to deal with life’s problems? Or contribute to a heated discussion on international politics? The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill is the perfect pocket book to carry around in your arsenal as you laugh at Churchill’s devious brand of smarts and learn from his political and humanist outlook on life during the turmoil of the Second World War. Discover what he had to say about domestic politics, war and peace, power, struggles and strife, education, philosophy, and some of the biggest names of his time, including himself.Beautifully designed and curated, this entertaining collection compiles the wisest and wittiest Churchill quotations that speak of the politician’s enduring legacy in contemporary pop culture. Full of savvy and wisdoms, The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill is sure to delight devoted fans of history and casual readers alike.

    Marshall Zhukov said "We have found no corpse that could be Hitler's." This book not only tells of the escape of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and others of the Third Reich; it includes photographs, files from the FBI, CIA and OSS that show the US knew they escaped, interviews and much more. You will also read the reason that no government went after Hitler even though they knew where he was. This book will change the history you were taught in 5th grade.

     Given that there was only seventy-five minutes of daylight left, they had little fuel, and they were flying into the middle of the world’s biggest ocean to attack the damaged but still dangerous Japanese fleet, it is little wonder that many of them were pessimistic about their chances. Yet this is exactly what sixty-four men did in the twilight hours of June 19th, 1944. Not one of the pilots or their crew hesitated as they got into their planes. “They did what their commanders and their country told them to do. They carried out a ‘mission beyond darkness.’” Robert M. Citino, Navy Times Mission Beyond Darkness by Lt. Commander J. Bryan III records in fascinating detail one of the most remarkable missions that place during the war in the Pacific. Rather relying on second-hand accounts Byran explains this his work is completely authentic as it “is derived wholly from narratives by the survivors, from statements by officers and men of the Lexington’s company”. “A story of tight going and tricky work that provided aerial miracles in a landing stampede of planes and pilots; the responsibilities of those aboard the carriers; the rescue work of destroyers and escort ships; foul ups and rogue ships; obstacles of dwindling fuel, misunderstood signals … Top among aviation books.” Kirkus Reviews “The thrilling story of the closing phase of the First Battle of the Philippines, in which Air Group 16 from the Lexington successfully attacked a number of fleeing Japanese battleships and carriers.” Foreign Affairs Lieutenant Commander J. Bryan III, USNR, served as a lieutenant commander assigned to naval air combat intelligence in the Pacific during World War Two. In civilian life he was a journalist and writer who was born into the influential Bryan family of newspaper publishers and industrialists. He passed away in 1993. Mission Beyond Darkness was first published in 1945.

    “Pure unadulterated hell. That’s the only word for it. It’s hell.” The Battle of Huertgen Forest was one of the bloodiest engagements of the Second World War. Fought between American and German forces between 19th September to 16th December it was the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. During those three months six American Infantry Divisions — the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 28th and 83rd — and part of the 5th Armored Division fought against the battle-hardened Germans. Lt. Paul Boesch provides an eyewitness account of the horrors that he and his men saw as they struggled through the rain and mud, avoiding artillery, mortars and mines. This book is a remarkable account of one of the most vicious battles in World War Two told honestly by a man who was there. “A true but little-told account of what it means to be an Infantryman.” Major General William G. Weaver “To an old soldier this book will arouse memories; to the man in uniform who has never heard a shot fired in anger this book will stimulate reflexes which are life savers when the chips are down; to the youngster who eventually will be given the opportunity and privilege of wearing the uniform of his country, this book demonstrates the heights of heroism Americans can reach under the most deadly and difficult circumstances.” Major General P. D. Ginder Paul Boesch was awarded two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts and the French Croix de Guerre for his bravery and leadership through the course of the Battle of Huertgen Forest. At the outbreak of the war he volunteered for the join the army and served with the 8th infantry Division. After the war he became a professional wrestler and promoter, most famous for his work as an announcer and promoter for Houston Wrestling. His book Road to Huertgen was first published in 1962 and he passed away in 1989.