The Navy’s Air War (Annotated): A Mission Completed


Albert R. Buchanan - 2019
    Author and historian Albert Buchanan recreates the engagements of the Pacific and Atlantic combat theaters with near clinical detail, from the Pearl Harbor Attack to the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Interwoven within these aerial combat narratives is background information on technological innovations, production methods, training programs, and the important players involved. This new edition of The Navy's Air War: A Mission Completed includes annotations and photographs from World War 2. *Annotations. *Images.

The Long Walk


Ruth Treeson - 2010
    There are no attack dogs barking, no guards shouting. After weeks of evading the Soviet Army by marching their captives around Germany, the Nazis have finally given up and evaporated into the night.Rutka embarks on a harrowing journey back to Poland that lands her at the Catholic boarding school where she'd hidden from the Gestapo until her capture. Here, among the few tattered remnants of her childhood, the tragic past begins to seep through: the assumed Christian names, the mother who risked everything to find her lost husband and the sister torn from Rutka's arms by the police.Confronted by unimaginable loss, Rutka nonetheless finds friends, joy and slowly, a whole new life in the United States.

German Girl?


Vivian Bolten Herz - 2012
    In thetone of voice that adults reserve for talking to six-year-olds,he asks again, “Now, tell me Vivian, when did you last seeyour Papa?”I shake my head and say, “No, I haven’t seen him for along time. I don’t know where he is.”The finger comes again, hooking my chin and forcingmy head up and toward him. I look into the pale, wateryeyes of the man in the gray Gestapo uniform. My heartpulses so hard in my ears that I can barely hear his words.“Have you seen Papa this week, Liebchen” (Sweetie), hecoos. “Who are his friends?” I shake my head “No,” knowingthat a few hours earlier Papa came to our street, near theapartment. He stood in the shadow of the corner house,watching me. I knew that he had come to see me, andsomehow, instinctively, I also knew that I should not go tohim and that he could not come to me. We looked at eachother, and then he turned and slipped away. It will bealmost ten years before I would see him again.The Gestapo man stands and abruptly leaves the bedroom.It isn’t until I see him in the living room, talking to Oma, that my tears come.In German Girl?, I reflect on my extraordinary childhood years, 1942 to 1953, growing up in Nazi Germany. As a "Mischling", a child with one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, my experiences during World War II, and its effect on the years that followed, provide a unique picture of wartime life as seen through the eyes of a child. My Lutheran grandparents hid and protected me while my mother was jailed and questioned tortuously on the whereabouts of my father. A Jewish man, my father lived “underground.” In "German Girl", I describe my father’s ingenuity and bravery, the enduring strength of my mother and the simple pleasures and comforting love of my grandparents stolen in a time of horror for so many. I have included copies of historical documents and photographs of the people discussed in the book.* In "German Girl", I have filled my book with memories, pictures, reproductions of forged documents and the incredible story of growing up alongside the appalling destruction of WWII in East Berlin.Copyright © 1998 Vivian Ert Bolten Herz.All rights reserved.The Library of Congress, catalog card number 2005351683United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,Washington D.C.Catalogue card number DS135.G5 H 4659 1998;Jüdisches Museum Berlin, GermanyYad Vashem Library, Jerusalem, Israel., catalog card number 105-0271Yad Vashem - Bet Vahlin Library, Israel., catalog card number HER-09

I Promised My Mother


Ludvik Wieder - 1984
    And with G-d's help, he saved not only himself but also his parents and a host of friends, relatives, and strangers from almost certain death. If Ludvik Wieder's adventures were fiction, they would seem too contrived. But everything told is the unembellished truth. At the age of 26, Ludvik had it all—health, wealth, good looks, popularity, and a growing business in one of Europe's brightest capitals. Then, one dreadful Sunday in the spring of 1943, the Nazis marched into Budapest and imposed a series of repressive measures that threatened the life of every Jew in Hungary. From that day on, all that mattered was survival. Suddenly, life hung by a shred of paper— the proper “Aryan” identification. Determined to survive, Ludvik boldly entered the black market to buy those precious scraps of false identity that might save him and his loved ones from disaster. Soon he was living a double life, outwardly forsaking his Orthodox Jewish upbringing to pose as a gentile, at the same time clinging steadfastly to his beliefs, never for a moment forgetting who he was and where he came from. Soon he became a master of deception— whether it was posing as a trusted “gentile” factory employee, disguising himself as a drunken peasant, or assuming the dress and manner of a member of the Hungarian S.S. Somehow, he had the capacity to enlist the aid of an unlikely assortment of non-Jews, who helped him at the peril of their lives—among them, a peasant woman who befriended him in prison and offered her home as his haven for the duration of the war… a Hungarian Air Force officer, who “adopted” Ludvik's niece as his own illegitimate child, lent him his apartment as a hiding place and smuggled a series of vital ID papers to him… the Skid Row derelict who saved the life of Ludvik's nephew by pretending to be the boy's uncle. The book traces Ludvik's life, beginning with his placid, essentially easygoing boyhood in Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1940, after the Hungarian takeover, he was inducted into forced labor. It describes the cruelty and black humor of the labor camp, which helped him to develop the cunning and ingenuity that enabled him to sharpen his survival skills and avoid being sent to fatal service on the Russian front. The story then focuses on the Nazi occupation, culminating in Ludvik's near-execution at the hands of his Russian liberators. Armed with optimism, unswerving faith in the Almighty, and his own resourcefulness, Ludvik never let fear keep him from doing whatever was necessary to save himself and his fellow Jews. Throughout his heart-stopping adventures —and even in the darkest moments of despair, when events propelled him to the brink of suicide—Ludvik was motivated to go on by consummate devotion to his beloved mother. He knew he had to survive, for he had promised her he would.

Prisoner in the mud: A young German's diary from 1945


Herwarth Metzel - 2020
    The front lines are collapsing all around, bombs are falling. On Thuringia too, a state in the centre-east of Germany. The Second World War is nearing its end. Boys of fifteen and sixteen from the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth movements set off in the belief that they can still save the fatherland – they are determined to defend it, bravely and loyally. Inadequately armed, however, they are forced to retreat from the advancing enemy in an entirely pointless march. They are taken prisoner and transferred to one of the infamous camps near Bad Kreuznach. Conditions in the camp are tough. The diarist is fortunate enough to survive and to be released relatively early, at the end of June 1945. Germany, spring 2005. The fatherland too has survived and has been reunified. It is a year of commemoration days, of monuments and memorials, and in the run-up to the sixtieth anniversary it is already being declared by all the media as a year of remembrance of the downfall of the ‘Third Reich’. Inspired by this, the diarist, now seventy-five years old, remembers the notes and diary entries kept at that time by his fifteen-year-old self. Originally written on scraps of toilet paper, he copied them out after his fortunate return in July 1945, and has not looked at them since. The notes are very personal and honest and, above all, authentic. They give an insight into the experiences and the thoughts of a young boy who by his own admission left as a ‘proud soldier’ and returned home as a ‘pitiful vagabond’. It is a historical document. It is not the story of an individual fate. Thousands had the same experiences. That is why the diarist decided, with some hesitation, to publish his diary as a part of the historical truth, even if there already existed numerous reports and publications about the camps in Bad Kreuznach, Bretzenheim, Dietersheim, Bingen, Heidesheim and the other ‘Rhine Meadows camps’. All these records are testament to the fact that tyranny often abounds when one group of people is given unchecked power over another. According to Livy, as many as 2400 years ago the Gaulish king Brennus called to the defeated Romans: ‘Vae victis!’ – woe to the vanquished! Herwarth Metzel

Falcons: A Siege of Malta Novel (The Bluebirds Trilogy Book 3)


Melvyn Fickling - 2020
    The stresses of combat flying in England's summer skies during the Battle of Britain, and night-fighting in the icy darkness of The Blitz, together with the loss of friends and a shattered heart, have left him broken and grounded. Fortress Malta, and the unrelenting Nazi siege that aims to grind it away, will be the furnace that forges him anew...

Code Name Camille: A story of trust, love and betrayal


Kathryn Gauci - 2019
    Code Name Camille, now a standalone book. 1940: Paris under Nazi occupation. A gripping tale of resistance, suspense and love. When the Germans invade France, twenty-one-year-old Nathalie Fontaine is living a quiet life in rural South-West France. Within months, she heads for Paris and joins the Resistance as a courier helping to organise escape routes. But Paris is fraught with danger. When several escapes are foiled by the Gestapo, the network suspects they are compromised. Nathalie suspects one person, but after a chance encounter with a stranger who provides her with an opportunity to make a little extra money by working as a model for a couturier known to be sympathetic to the Nazi cause, her suspicions are thrown into doubt. Using her work in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, she uncovers information vital to the network, but at the same time steps into a world of treachery and betrayal which threatens to bring them all undone. Time is running out and the Gestapo is closing in. Code Name Camille is a story of courage and resilience that fans of The Nightingale and The Alice Network will love.

We Will Not Go to Tuapse: From the Donets to the Oder with the Legion Wallonie and 5th SS Volunteer Assault Brigade 'Wallonien' 1942-45


Fernand Kaisergruber - 2016
    However, it also ventures far beyond the usual soldier's story and approaches a travelogue of the Eastern Front campaign, seldom attained by the memoirs of the period. His self-published book in French is highly regarded by Belgian historian and expert on these volunteers Eddy de Bruyne, and Battle of Cherkassy author Douglas Nash. This book merits attention as the SS volunteer equivalent of Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier, a bestseller in the USA and Europe. By comparison, Kaisergruber’s story has the advantage of being completely verifiable by documents and serious historical narratives already published, such as Eddy de Bruyne’s For Rex and for Belgium and Kenneth Estes' European Anabasis.Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German Army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber’s book, the reader discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries. The combat experiences of the Walloons echoed those of the very best volunteer units of the Waffen-SS, although they shared equally in the collapse of the Third Reich in May, 1945.Although unapologetic for his service, Kaisergruber makes no special claims for the German cause and writes not from any postwar apologia and dogma, but instead from his firsthand observations as a young man experiencing war for the first time, extending far beyond what had been imaginable at the time. His observations of fellow soldiers, commanders, Russian civilians and the battlefields prove poignant and telling. They remain as fresh as when he first wrote some of them down in his travel diary, ‘Pensées fugitives et Souvenirs (1941–46)’. Fernand Kaisergruber draws upon his contemporary diaries, those of his comrades and his later work with them while secretary of their postwar veteran's league to present a thoroughly engaging epic.

Henri's War: A Buchenwald Holocaust Story


A Survivor - 2015
     Readers Reviews: A powerful and detailed account and very chilling to the thought of human activity to other humans. Very gripping and hard to put down, a highly recommend book. A compelling read and an insight into mans inhumanity to man.it seems unbelievable today how one deranged lunatic in Berlin could cause such destruction and persuade people to act in such a barbaric fashion towards others. I found this to be a fascinating read. Recommended. From the Heart of a man. From the depths of Hell. A harrowing narration of the Worlds darkest hours. This book should be compulsory reading in Schools. We must never forget. Thank you for all of the amazing reviews and purchasing this eBook.

My Eyes Looking Back at Me: Insight Into a Survivor's Soul


Menucha Meinstein - 2015
    Rejoice over the bonds of love, friendship and forgiveness, of finding relatives, and share the triumph of unexpected turns in Leah's story that will inspire you, leaving you breathless. "How did she do it?" You'll find it all here, as you follow Leah through the many phases of her life, her redemption and revenge against Hitler's evil, and to grateful happiness during her 90th year. When Leah Cik Roth decides to write her secret memoirs for her children, writer, Menucha Meinstein, walks into her life as a volunteer. The two develop the deepest of human bonds as together they uncover Leah's lifelong bitterness and suppressed Holocaust memories. Through Soul-Writing, they struggle to relive Leah's stories, revealing heroic patterns of resilience from the young age of five. Her memories bring out fresh pain, and renewed feelings of loss and loneliness. The Holocaust is merely a backdrop to Leah's life. Together, the two women share joy in the legacy that Leah leaves for the world.

Silence and Secrets: A Jewish Woman's Tale of Escape, Survival and Love in World War II


Yvonne Carson-Cardozo - 2013
    In her courageous memoir, she breaks the chains of silence and reveals an incredible story of evading the Nazis, escaping the threat of annihilation, surviving in strange worlds, and finding love and a new life. This book is a testament to the human spirit.Yvonne Carson-Cardozo was twelve years old when she and her family escaped the German occupation of Belgium. She lost her brother and fifty relatives to the death camps. As a refugee, she traveled to France, Spain, Jamaica, and West Indies. She joined the Dutch Indonesian Army and served in Australia and Indonesia, where she worked in the Netherlands Forces Intelligence Service, deciphering and encoding secret military telegrams. After the war, she eventually settled in the United States, her home for the past fifty-five years. She has two children and lives in California. On Veteran’s Day 2013, Yvonne was honored as Veteran of the Year for the city of Mission Viejo, California.

Humble Heroes, How The USS Nashville CL43 Fought WWII


Steven Bustin - 2010
    It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war “Neutrality Patrol” that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy. Now, with the ship bulging with an unusual load of fuel and supplies, in the company of a large fleet quietly passing under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the crew was about to learn of their latest (but not last) and most improbable adventure yet as the captain made an announcement that would change the war and their lives forever, “We are going to Tokyo!”. Over three years, scores of battles and hundreds of thousands of ocean miles later, the Nashville and her crew had earned 10 Battle Stars, served from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the Aleutians to the Yangtze River, as McArthur’s flagship and suffered heavy casualties from a devastating kamikaze attack. Tokyo Rose reported her sunk, repeatedly. Earlier, with goodwill trips that included France, England, Scandinavia, Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro, the new, sleek Nashville built a pre-war reputation as a “glamour ship”. But with war came the secret missions, capturing the second and third Japanese POWs of the war, having a torpedo pass just under the stern, being strafed and bombed by Japanese planes, losing a third of the crew in a single devastating Kamikaze attack, swimming in shark infested waters protected by marines with machine guns, enjoying the beauty of Sydney and her people, planning a suicide mission to destroy the Japanese fishing fleet, and bombarding Japanese troops and airfields across the Pacific. The Nashville crew served their ship and country well. They came from Baltimore row-houses, New York walk-ups, San Francisco flats, Kansas wheat farms, Colorado cattle ranches, Louisiana bayous and Maine fishing towns. Many had never traveled more than 25 miles from home and had never seen the ocean until they joined the service. They were part Irish, part Italian, part Polish and All-American. Battered, burnt and bombed, they made the USS Nashville their home and lived and died as eternal shipmates. Historical narrative enriched with the personal stories of the crew, this is the story of a ship and crew of ordinary men who did extraordinary things.

The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival


Sara Tuval Bernstein - 1999
    She was born into a large family in rural Romania?and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father' s orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher' s vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him?After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women' s concentration camp, Aand? managed to survive?she tells this story with style and power." --Kirkus Reviews

The Expendable: The true story of Patrol Wing 10, PT Squadron 3, and a Navy Corpsman who refused to surrender when the Philippine Islands fell to Japan


John Floyd - 2020
    

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson | Chapter Compilation


Ethan Thomas - 2016
     The ship was called “magnificent”, consuming as much as one hundred forty tons of coal every day even if it just stands still on the dock, and standing seven stories tall from dock to bridge. She was considered by engineers and shipbuilders as one of the finest examples of man’s ingenuity and creativity. In addition, out of all the ships that were converted for use in the war, the Lusitania was the only one that was exempted and continued on as a cruise ship. However, its job of carrying passengers across the Atlantic Ocean was not the thing that made her famous today. Read more.... Download your copy today! for a limited time discount of only $2.99! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. © 2015 All Rights Reserved by Unlimited Press Works, LLC