Seven of the sixty-four bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. “I think I’m going to say,” mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell.” During his esteemed career Walter Cronkite issued millions of words for public consumption, but he never wrote or uttered a truer phrase.Assignment to Hell tells the powerful and poignant story of the war against Hitler through the eyes of five intrepid reporters. Crisscrossing battlefields, they formed a journalistic band of brothers, repeatedly placing themselves in harm’s way to bring the war home for anxious American readers. Cronkite crashed into Holland on a glider with U.S. paratroopers. Rooney dodged mortar shells as he raced across the Rhine at Remagen. Behind enemy lines in Sicily, Bigart jumped into an amphibious commando raid that nearly ended in disaster. The New Yorker’s A. J. Liebling ducked sniper fire as Allied troops liberated his beloved Paris. The Associated Press’s Hal Boyle barely escaped SS storm troopers as he uncovered the massacre of U.S. soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.Assignment to Hell is a stirring tribute to five of World War II’s greatest correspondents and to the brave men and women who fought on the front lines against fascism—their generation’s “assignment to hell.”

    Beginning with an essay that examines Churchill's rise and strategic cast of thought, the book goes on to provide an intimate portait of each general. Black-and-white photographs.

    In this first volume of the Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the ultimate victory of the Allied powers without a grasp of the great drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. That first year of the Allied war was a pivotal point in American history, the moment when the United States began to act like a great power.Beginning with the daring amphibious invasion in November 1942, An Army at Dawn follows the American and British armies as they fight the French in Morocco and Algeria, and then take on the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. Battle by battle, an inexperienced and sometimes poorly led army gradually becomes a superb fighting force. Central to the tale are the extraordinary but fallible commanders who come to dominate the battlefield: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, and Rommel.Brilliantly researched, rich with new material and vivid insights, Atkinson's narrative provides the definitive history of the war in North Africa.

    Fraser was only 19 when he arrived there in the war's final year, and he offers a first-hand glimpse at the camaraderie, danger, and satisfactions of service. A substantial Epilogue, occasioned by the 50th anniversary of VJ-Day in 1995, adds poignancy to a volume that eminent military historian John Keegan described as "one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War."

    It is without question one of the most famous battles in history. Now, for the first time since Gordon W. Prange’s bestselling Miracle at Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully offer a new interpretation of this great naval engagement. Unlike previous accounts, Shattered Sword makes extensive use of Japanese primary sources. It also corrects the many errors of Mitsuo Fuchida’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, an uncritical reliance upon which has tainted every previous Western account. It thus forces a major, potentially controversial reevaluation of the great battle. Parshall and Tully examine the battle in detail and effortlessly place it within the context of the Imperial Navy’s doctrine and technology. With a foreword by leading World War II naval historian John Lundstrom, Shattered Sword is an indispensable part of any military buff’s library.Shattered Sword is the winner of the 2005 John Lyman Book Award for the "Best Book in U.S. Naval History" and was cited by Proceedings as one of its "Notable Naval Books" for 2005.

    Its global scope and human toll reveal the true face of modern, industrialized warfare. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive, single-volume account of how and why this global conflict evolved as it did. 'A War to be Won' is a unique and powerful operational history of the Second World War that tells the full story of battle on land, on sea, and in the air. Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett analyze the operations and tactics that defined the conduct of the war in both the European and Pacific Theaters. Moving between the war room and the battlefield, we see how strategies were crafted and revised, and how the multitudes of combat troops struggled to discharge their orders. The authors present incisive portraits of the military leaders, on both sides of the struggle, demonstrating the ambiguities they faced, the opportunities they took, and those they missed. Throughout, we see the relationship between the actual operations of the war and their political and moral implications. 'A War to be Won' is the culmination of decades of research by two of America's premier military historians. It avoids a celebratory view of the war but preserves a profound respect for the problems the Allies faced and overcame as well as a realistic assessment of the Axis accomplishments and failures. It is the essential military history of World War II-from the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to the surrender of Japan in 1945-for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

    David Stafford has written a riveting account of ten of those ordinary men and women -- including an American paratrooper, a German soldier, a nineteen-year-old English woman working on secret codes, a Parisian Jew in hiding, and a daring French resistance cell -- as they lived through ten very extraordinary days. Drawing on previously unpublished diaries and letters, Stafford gives readers a fresh point of entry into one of the most significant battles ever fought.Ten Days to D-Day buzzes with the pace of a novel, as Stafford moves from country to country, from character to character, including some of D-Day's leaders: Hitler, Rommel, Eisenhower, and Churchill. Stafford compellingly brings to life the final days before the invasion through the eyes of its participants, the citizens and soldiers that made history on June 6, 1944.

    Many pilots, including Douglas Bader, thought it was superior to the Spit--but together they saved Britain from Nazi invasion and possible defeat.Adrian Stewart has produced a gloriously atmospheric and nostalgic book capturing the spirit of these great aircraft and the pilots who flew them. It tracks the aircraft as it was developed and improved, and follows it to the many theaters of the war where it saw service. Among the lesser-known are Burma and hazardous convoy protection in the Arctic and Mediterranean, flying from makeshift carriers. This book will fascinate specialist aviation historians and those who enjoy a rattling good war story, and includes a superb selection of rare photographs.

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

    On March 7, 1945, a small group of American infantrymen, engineers, and tank crews secured the Ludendorff Bridge that crossed the Rhine. The successful mission saved thousands of American lives and spearheaded the invasion of Nazi Germany.The Bridge at Remagen is the detailed narrative of this surprising but crucial military action, one that stunned the German army. It is also the moving story of men who did not consider themselves heroes, but who performed magnificently under fire. In this amazing true story, Ken Hechler gives you the hour-by-hour account of brilliant military daring, human courage, and almost incredible luck that profoundly changed the course of the war.

    Offering a record of one of the pivotal events of World War II, as told through the personal accounts of the German and Soviet soldiers who fought in it, this book features photographs from the Battle of Stalingrad, from both sides of the front.

    One of the world’s leading military historians, Lloyd Clark, delivers a gripping narrative and fresh interpretation of this remarkable but overshadowed battle. About six months before D-Day, in January 1944, a united force of 36,000 soldiers launched one of the first attacks on continental Europe at Anzio, a small coastal city thirty miles south of Rome. But the advance stalled, and the Allies were unable to exploit initial German weakness that could have led to a decisive strike to liberate the undefended Italian capital. As the Germans gained strength, their force growing to 120,000 men, Anzio beach became a death trap. With winter beating down, the Allies held on, pushing more men, guns, and armor into the stalemate, though their men were still sorely outnumbered. After five months of fighting, and monumental casualties on both sides, the Allies were able to successfully crack the German line, capturing Rome on June 4, just two days before D-Day.

    Combining Guderian’s land offensive with Luftwaffe attacks, the Nazi Blitzkrieg decimated the defenses of Poland, Norway, France—and, very nearly, Russia—at the war’s outset. But in 1941, when Guderian advised that ground forces should take a step back, Hitler dismissed him. In these pages, the outspoken general shares his candid point of view on what would have led Germany to victory, and what ensured that it didn’t. In addition to providing a rare inside look at key members of the Nazi party, Guderian reveals in detail how he developed the Panzer tank forces and orchestrated their various campaigns, from the breakthrough at Sedan to his drive to the Channel coast that virtually decided the Battle of France. Panzer Leader became a bestseller within one year of its original publication in 1952 and has since been recognized as a classic account of the greatest conflict of our time.

    How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials—personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence—to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people—from infantrymen and tank commanders on the Eastern front to civilians on the home front—to vivid life. While most historians identify the German defeat at Stalingrad as the moment when the average German citizen turned against the war effort, Stargardt demonstrates that the Wehrmacht in fact retained the staunch support of the patriotic German populace until the bitter end.Astonishing in its breadth and humanity, The German War is a groundbreaking new interpretation of what drove the Germans to fight—and keep fighting—for a lost cause.

    McManus examines, with great intensity and thoroughness, the American experience in the weeks leading up to D-Day and on the great day itself. From the build up in England to the night drops of airborne forces behind German lines and the landings on the beaches at dawn, from the famed figures of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Lightin' Joe Collins to the courageous, but little-known privates who fought so bravely, and under terrifying conditions, this is the story of the American experience at D-Day. What were the battles really like for the Americans at Utah and Omaha? What drove them to fight despite all adversity? How and why did they triumph? Thanks to extensive archival research, and the use of hundreds of first hand accounts, McManus answers these questions and many more.Impressively researched, engrossing, lightning quick, and filled with human sorrow and elation, The Americans at D-Day honors those Americans who lost their lives on D-Day, as well as those who were fortunate enough to survive.