On December 7, 1941, an unexpected attack on American territory pulled an unprepared country into a terrifying new brand of warfare. To the generation of Americans who lived through it, the Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century, and the defining moments of that war were played out in the year 1942.   This account covers the Allies’ relentless defeats as the Axis overran most of Europe, North Africa, and the Far East. But by midyear the tide began to turn. The United States finally went on the offensive in the Pacific. In the West, the British defeated Rommel’s panzer divisions at El Alamein while the US Army began to push the Germans out of North Africa. By the year’s end, the smell of victory was in the air.  1942, told with Winston Groom’s accomplished storyteller’s eye, allows us into the admirals’ strategy rooms, onto the battlefronts, and into the heart of a nation at war.   “When not drawing in readers with the narrative, Groom is impressing them with his masterful analyses.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution   “Groom has done an artful job of blending the many stories of 1942.” —The Anniston Star

    Widely hailed as a masterpiece, this volume remains the first history of World War II to provide a truly global account of the war that encompassed six continents. Starting with the changes that restructured Europe and its colonies following the First World War, Gerhard Weinberg sheds new light on every aspect of World War II. Actions of the Axis, the Allies, and the Neutrals are covered in every theater of the war. More importantly, the global nature of the war is examined, with new insights into how events in one corner of the world helped affect events in often distant areas.

    naval operations in World War II. Morison was a distinguished historian, a former Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University. But he also wrote as a participant in many of the events described in this volume: he served on eleven different ships during the war, emerging as a captain with seven battle stars on his service ribbons, having gone to sea specifically to be able to write in contact with the events covered. Fully illustrated with 35 photographs and 54 charts and maps of key engagements, this is a blazing record of the action from Pearl Harbor to the long war of attrition between submarines and convoys in the Atlantic, through Midway and Guadalcanal, to the invasion of continental Europe, to Okinawa, Leyte, and the final grudging surrender of the Japanese. Morison's narrative is rich enough to reveal all levels of each wartime encounter, dramatizing the strategic arguments that went on between Churchill and King, between MacArthur and Nimitz, as well as highlighting the glory of individual feats of arms. The Two-Ocean War is a truly outstanding contribution to military history.

    "Superb... the greatest naval air battle of all time finally receives the meticulous and comprehensive treatment it deserves."--Richard Frank, author of Tower of SkullsIn June, 1944, American and Japanese carrier fleets made their way toward one another in the Philippine Sea. Their common objective: the strategically vital Marianas Islands. During two days of brutal combat, the American and Japanese carriers dueled, launching wave after wave of fighters and bombers against one another. By day and night, hundreds of planes filled the skies. When it was over, the men of the American Fifth Fleet had claimed more than four hundred aerial combat victories, and three Japanese carriers lay on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.Here is the true account of those great and terrible days--by those who were there, in the thick of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Drawing upon numerous interviews with American and Japanese veterans as well as official sources, Clash of the Carriers is an unforgettable testimonial to the bravery of those who fought and those who died in a battle that will never be forgotten."In his inimitable style, naval aviation's most prolific historian comes through with a much-needed, comprehensive documentary on the greatest aircraft carrier battle of all time."--Cdr. Alexander Vraciu, USN (Ret) Fighting Squadron 16, 1944

    Chronicling the crucial role of imperial Japan’s island stronghold during WWII, Fortress Rabaul is the renowned second installment of Bruce Gamble’s award-winning military nonfiction trilogy from Zenith Press.

    It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled cruelty and savagery: forty-one months of captivity, starvation rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture--far from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur. The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out of Hemingway: a young cowboy turned sketch artist from Montana who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against Steele's story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers. The result is an altogether new and original World War II book: it exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate; it makes clear, with great literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides.

    In the Pacific theater during World War II there were more than one hundred D-Days. The largest—and last—was the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which brought together the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled, far larger than that engaged in the Normandy invasion.D-Days in the Pacific tells the epic story of the campaign waged by American forces to win back the Pacific islands from Japan. Based on eyewitness accounts by the combatants, it covers the entire Pacific struggle from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Pacific war was largely a seaborne offensive fought over immense distances. Many of the amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands were among the most savagely fought battles in American history: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, New Guinea, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa. Generously illustrated with photographs and maps, D-Days in the Pacific is the finest one-volume account of this titanic struggle.

    The end of World War II finally appears to be nearing. The Third Reich is collapsing in Europe, and the Americans are overpowering the once-mighty Japanese Empire in the Pacific. For a group of young pilots trained in the twilight of the war, the greatest worry is that it will end before they have a chance to face the enemy. They call themselves Tail End Charlies. They fly at the tail end of formations, stand at the tail end of chow lines, and now they are catching the tail end of the war. What they don’t know is that they will be key players in the bloodiest and most difficult of naval battles—not only of World War II but in all of American history.The Twilight Warriors relives the drama of the world’s last great naval campaign. From the cockpit of a Corsair fighter we gaze down at the Japanese task force racing to destroy the American amphibious force at Okinawa. Through the eyes of the men on the destroyers assigned to picket ship duty, we experience the terror as wave after wave of kamikazes crash into their ships. Standing on the deck of the legendary superbattleship Yamato, we watch Japan’s last hope for victory die in a tableau of gunfire and explosions.Among the Tail End Charlies are men such as a twenty-two-year-old former art student who grows to manhood on the day of his first mission over Japan and his best friend, a ladies’ man and intrepid fighter pilot whose life abruptly changes when his Corsair goes down off the enemy shore. Another is a young Texan lieutenant who volunteers for the most dangerous flying job in the fleet—intercepting kamikazes at night over the blackened Pacific. Their leader is a charismatic officer who rises to greatness in the crucible of Okinawa. Directing the vast armada of sea, air, and land forces is a cast of brilliant and flawed commanders—from the imperturbable admiral and master of carrier warfare to the controversial soldier assigned to command the land forces. The fate of the Americans at Okinawa is intertwined with the lives of the “young gods”— the honor-bound Japanese airmen who swarm like killer bees toward the U.S. ships. The kamikazes are dispatched on their deadly one-way missions by a classic samurai warrior who vows that he will follow them to a warrior’s grave.The ferocity of the Okinawa fighting stuns the world. Before it ends, the long battle will cost more American lives, ships, and aircraft than any naval engagement in U.S. history. More than simply the account of a historic battle, The Twilight Warriors brings to life the human side of an epic conflict. It is the story of young Americans at war in the air and on the sea—and of their enigmatic, fanatically courageous enemy.

    From the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor through the release of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the conflict in the Pacific was characterised by amazing tactical innovations in amphibious warfare and horrific battles that raged in the unforgiving climate of the island jungles. Each chapter in this book focuses on a different aspect of this conflict, from the planning of operations to the experiences of the men who were there.

    The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won? Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war—the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism—as never before. In researching this magnificently vivid history, Roberts walked many of the key battlefields and wartime sites in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, and the Far East, and drew on a number of never-before-published documents, such as a letter from Hitler's director of military operations explaining the reasoning behind the FÃœhrer's order to halt the Panzers outside Dunkirk—a delay that enabled British forces to evacuate. Roberts illuminates the principal actors on both sides and analyzes how they reached critical decisions. He also presents the tales of many little-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the terrible depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War gives a dramatic account of this momentous event and shows in remarkable detail why the war took the course it did.

    Dan van der Vat's naval histories have been acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as “definitive,” “extraordinary,” and “vivid and harrowing.” Now he turns to the greatest naval conflict in history: the Pacific campaign of World War II. Drawing on neglected archives of firsthand accounts from both sides, van der Vat interweaves eyewitness testimony with sharp, analytical narration to provide a penetrating reappraisal of the strategic and political background of both the Japanese and American forces, as well as a major reassessment of the role of intelligence on both sides. A comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of the war in the Pacific, The Pacific Campaign promises to be the standard work on the U.S.-Japanese war for years to come.

    Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men--military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor--put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm's way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed--eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler's dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan's leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington's hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan's place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy--unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation's bona fides with the West.We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan's army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan's elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing--both Japanese and Western--to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.

    Army bombers under the command of daredevil pilot Jimmy Doolittle lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet on a one-way mission to pummel Japan’s factories, refineries, and dockyards in retaliation for their attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid buoyed America’s morale, and prompted an ill-fated Japanese attempt to seize Midway that turned the tide of the war. But it came at a horrific cost: an estimated 250,000 Chinese died in retaliation by the Japanese. Deeply researched and brilliantly written, Target Tokyo has been hailed as the definitive account of one of America’s most daring military operations.

    Chosen as a Main Selection of the Military Book Club.

    The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic final months, when the war was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peace. Historically, this is extremely rare. Drawing on original testimony from ordinary Germans and arch-Nazis alike, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this fascinating question in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in May 1945. Hitler, desperate to avoid a repeat of the "disgraceful" German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the Third Reich's fanatical determination, but his power was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even as the military situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their orders largely obeyed, and the regime continued its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and foreign workers. Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw's The End is a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.