A Quiet Genocide: The Untold Holocaust of Disabled Children in WW2 Germany (WW2 Historical Fiction)


Glenn Bryant - 2018
    Jozef grows up in a happy household - so it seems. But his father Gerhard still harbours disturbing National Socialism ideals, while mother Catharina is quietly broken. She cannot feign happiness for much longer and rediscovers love elsewhere. Jozef is uncertain and alone. Who is he? Are Gerhard and Catharina his real parents? ˃˃˃ A dark mystery gradually unfolds, revealing an inescapable truth the entire nation is afraid to confront. But Jozef is determined to find out about the past and a horror is finally unmasked which continues to question our idea of what, in the last hour, makes each of us human. Scroll up and grab a pre-order copy at only 99 cents today.

Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War


Gilda O'Neill - 2003
    This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called 'ordinary people' Our Street illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared.

Like Birds In Black and White


Miriam Raz-Zunszajn - 2002
    LIKE BIRDS IN BLACK AND WHITE is the narrative of a young Jewish girl from the village of Wereszczyn, Poland. At the same time, LIKE BIRDS IN BLACK AND WHITE is a very painful human story, about the spark of goodness that exists – even in the depths of evil, and motivates us to be humane. Miriam Raz-Zunszajn-Winograd was born in 1933 on a small farm, in the village of Wereszczyn, located in Western Poland. She spent the duration of the Holocaust in the region where she was born, and she is the sole survivor of her family, as well as from the Jews of Wereszczyn. With her farewell to her readers, at the completion of her journey-story of torment, Miriam asks to tell us the lesson that is so very important to her: “I learned that in every place – even in the case of the most evil – there is always a handful of righteous people ready to endanger their own lives for the good of others. I never forget these righteous people that I encountered in my path to survive. They were my hope and my light in the darkness.” Miriam live today on Kibbutz and can be reached at miryamr@gan.org.il

Fallen Eagle: The last days of the Third Reich


Robin Cross - 2020
    The Allies were determined to end the war in Europe quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible. But the Germans were by no means prepared to yield - though they could see the war was lost. Thus began one of the most crucial years in the history of the world, and its climax, the desperate battle for Berlin, brought to a close one of the darkest chapters mankind has ever witnessed. The Allied effort pushed on from all fronts. In the east, Stalin's mighty war machine began its great offensive. From out of the swirling fog and snow, the Soviet steamroller crashed through the German lines on the Vistula, 125 miles south of Warsaw. Driving across the Polish plain towards the Oder, Germany's historic frontier with the east, Russia's advancing armored columns created panic in East Prussia. In the west, Eisenhower and Montgomery joined the race to destroy the heart of Nazi Germany - and defend Europe against Stalin's vaulting ambition. Through vivid, firsthand accounts from soldiers and civilians, privates, generals, and refugees, Fallen Eagle chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the war's closing months - from the devastating, triple air raids on Dresden to "Spring's Awakening," Hitler's last offensive, with which he planned to retake Budapest and retain its oil fields; from the legendary summit in Yalta between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill to an extraordinary account of Hitler's last days.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz


Heather Morris - 2018
    When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.

Blood Makes the Grass Grow: A Norwegian Volunteer's War Against the Islamic State


Mike Peshmerganor - 2018
     August 2014: ISIS continues its reign of terror, conquering new areas in Iraq and Syria, leaving tens of thousands of dead and millions displaced in their homelands. International news shows gruesome images of massacres and ethnic cleansing. A horrified Norwegian soldier at Camp Rena, shocked by Norway’s unwillingness to commit troops to eradicate the terrorists, decides to take matters into his own hands and travels to the Kurdish front line in Iraq.

In this gripping memoir, Mike Peshmerganor recounts how his Kurdish heritage, liberal Norwegian upbringing and military training shaped his worldview and drew him into the fight against militant Islamism. Armed only with gear he purchased himself and the name of a Kurdish contact, Mike is thrust into a military culture completely foreign to Westerners; where soldiers work without pay, adequate food and even ammunition, and their revered leader is a former hitman. Here are dramatic firefights against the world’s most feared terrorist organization, and insight into the mindset of a true warrior. Mike Peshmerganor is a pseudonym. He escaped from Kurdistan as an infant with his family, grew up in Eastern Norway and served in Norway’s elite Telemark Battalion. "I couldn’t think of a single better reason for the government to send troops abroad than to stop an ongoing genocide. And what about all the foreign fighters from Europe who fought for ISIS? Didn’t we have a responsibility to stop our own citizens from actively perpetrating war crimes and other atrocities in Iraq? Who will prevent them from returning home and carrying out terrorist attacks here, in
our own cities? I realized it was futile to wait for Norway to engage directly in the fight against ISIS. I had to do it on my own."

Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot


Ron Alexander - 2002
    With an unswerving concern for every American soldier trapped by enemy fire, and a fearlessness that became legendary, Ron Alexander earned enough official praise to become the second most decorated helicopter pilot of the Vietnam era. Yet, for Ron, the real reward came from plucking his fellow soldiers from harm's way, giving them another chance to get home alive.In Taking Fire, Alexander and acclaimed military writer Charles Sasser transport you right into the cramped cockpit of a Huey on patrol, offering a bird's eye view of the Vietnam conflict. Packed with riveting action and gritty "you-are-there" dialogue, this outstanding book celebrates the everyday heroism of the chopper pilots of Vietnam.

Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II


Steven J. Zaloga - 2008
    George Patton, believed that the Sherman helped win World War II. So which was it: death trap or war winner? Armor expert Steven Zaloga answers that question by recounting the Sherman's combat history. Focusing on Northwest Europe (but also including a chapter on the Pacific), Zaloga follows the Sherman into action on D-Day, among the Normandy hedgerows, during Patton's race across France, in the great tank battle at Arracourt in September 1944, at the Battle of the Bulge, across the Rhine, and in the Ruhr pocket in 1945.

Fighting Fox Company: The Battling Flank of the Band of Brothers


Bill Brown - 2013
    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.

SS Panzer Battalion


Leo Kessler - 2004
    The Dogs of War, by Leo Kessler. It was January 1940, and the coldest winter within living memory. The Western front was still paralysed by the phoney war, but, at the Adolf Hitler Kaserne, a new battalion of SS troops were being put through the most gruelling training programme in the history of the German army. SS Assault Regiment Wotan were preparing for a mission so secret that it was known only by its codename, Zero. Only the Vulture, Major Horst Geier, knew that the objective was the key Belgian fortress guarding the junction of the River Meuse and the Albert Canal. It was the most impregnable stronghold in Europe and had to be taken, regardless of the cost of human lives, if Hitler's handpicked SS Panzer troops were to turn the flank of the Maginot line and force the phoney war to explode into the Blitzkrieg.

Ernie Pyle in England


Ernie Pyle - 1941
     With the German Luftwaffe flying overhead, he had entered it in the midst of the Blitz. He would stay in Britain for the next four months. With his distinctive writing style, that would later earn him a Pulitzer Prize, he vividly depicts Great Britain in her darkest hour. With France defeated and America not yet in the war, the future did not look bright for Churchill’s country. Yet, as Pyle finds out, this was not a country resigned to defeat, instead it was carrying on as best it could, determined that it would not buckle under the pressure of Hitler’s aerial raids. He spends much time in London where he sees the city, “ringed and stabbed with fire,” but also travels the length and breadth of the country, from some areas that have hardly been affected like Edinburgh, to others like Coventry that suffered greatly under the bombardment. Pyle’s inquisitive nature leads him to spend time with dockworkers of Glasgow, R.A.F. pilots in a bomber station, miners of Wales, policemen of London and families across the nation to uncover how the ordinary men and women were coping under the pressure. Ernie Pyle in England is a fascinating account of Britain during one of its darkest periods, and how with amazing resilience the British people survived. Ernest Taylor Pyle was a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist. As a roaming correspondent for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain he earned wide acclaim for his accounts of ordinary people, including the likes of Harry Truman. He was killed on Iejima in the Pacific theater of war during the Battle of Okinawa on April 18, 1945. This book was first published in 1941.

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi


Neal Bascomb - 2009
    Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time). The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you'd find in great spy fiction.

Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers


David O'Keefe - 2019
    O’Keefe takes us on a heart-pounding journey at the sharp end of combat during the infamous Normandy campaign. More than 300 soldiers from the Black Watch found themselves pinned down, as the result of strategic blunders and the fog of war, and only a handful walked away. Thrust into a nightmare, Black Watch Highlanders who hailed from across Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the Allied world found themselves embroiled in a mortal contest against elite Waffen-SS units and grizzled Eastern Front veterans, where station, rank, race and religion mattered little, and only character won the day. Drawing on formerly classified documents and rare first-person testimony of the men who fought on the front lines, O’Keefe follows the footsteps of the ghosts of Normandy, giving a voice yet again to the men who sacrificed everything in the summer of 1944.

Lilac Girls


Martha Hall Kelly - 2016
    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.

Auschwitz: A History


Sybille Steinbacher - 2004
    Here the utopian twentieth-century dream of employing science and technology to improve and protect human life was inverted from the latter part of the 1930s through the end of the Second World War, as the same systems were manipulated in the cause of efficient mass slaughter. Historian Sybille Steinbacher's powerful and eminently important book details Auschwitz's birth, growth, and horrible mutation into a dreadful city. How it came to be and how what followed was allowed to occur is a story that everyone needs to understand and remember.