For Bastogne was the holdout city, center of Allied resistance to his Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhein) offensive—the German surprise attack in the west that would become known among the Allies as the Battle of the Bulge… The battle that would result from Hitler’s orders would become the climactic event of the Bastogne saga: a rapid-fire, desperate assault by overwhelming German armored might, defended in bloody struggles by the ragged and weapons-strapped GIs trapped in Bastogne. It would be either the last stand of the American defenders or the culmination of the German drive to capture the vital crossroads. Either way pointed to a climactic showdown—a desperate bloodbath in the snowy fields of Bastogne. For hundreds of German and American soldiers facing off in the siege, the events of Christmas 1944 would destroy any sense of holiness and peace on earth. For the soldiers on both sides, and for the brave people of Bastogne, this would be no silent night.

    They lived and made this history, and much of it is told in their own words. The material contributed by these men of the 101st Airborne Division, the Armor, Tank Destroyer, Army Air Force , and others is tailored meticulously by the author and placed on the historical framework known to most students of the Battle of the Bulge. Pieces of a nearly 60-year-old jigsaw puzzle come together in this book, when memoirs from one soldier fit with those of another unit or group pursuing the battle from another nearby piece of terrain.

    In their role as “escorts” to Flying Fortresses and Liberators, the fighter squadrons’ ability to blast enemy aircraft from the sky was key to the success of pinpoint bombing raids on German oil refineries, communication and supply lines, and other crucial targets. Flying in formation with the bomber stream, Fortier and the rest of his squadron helped develop dive-bombing and strafing tactics for the Thunderbolts and Mustangs. As the war progressed, fighter squadrons began to carry out their own bombing missions. From blasting V-1 missile sites along France’s “rocket coast” and the hell-torn action of D day to the critical attacks on the Ruhr Valley and massive daylight raids on German industrial targets, Fortier was part of the Allies’ bitter struggle to bring the Nazi war machine to a halt. In describing his own hundred-plus missions and by including the accounts of fellow fighter pilots, Fortier recaptures the excitement and fiery terror of the world’s most dangerous cat-and-mouse game.From the Paperback edition.

    On that rather unlucky day of October 14th, 1944, when the S.S. came knocking on Rommel’s door, even his legendary heroism couldn’t save him from the monstrous regime for which he had once fought so hard.Inside you will read about...✓ Building the Next War✓ Rommel’s Return to War✓ The Desert Fox✓ Against All Odds✓ Near Death Experience✓ Mislaid Plans✓ Rommel Takes the FallAnd much more!After being implicated in a last minute plot to kill Hitler in the final phases of World War Two, Rommel was given a choice. He could either face charges of treason or commit suicide. He was then duly assured that in the advent of his suicide, all charges would be dropped, covered up, never mentioned again. He was then promised a hero’s burial with full military honors and even a pension for his wife.Rommel was then literally driven to his suicide when members of the S.S. transported him to a secluded area, where he swallowed a cyanide capsule - a gruesome and twisted end to a man that was supposed to be his nation’s greatest hero. What caused a nation to canonize and cannibalize one of its best champions simultaneously? What were the events that led up to the strange paradox that was Erwin Rommel’s life?Series Information: World War 2 Biographies Book 3

    When their food, ammunition, and medical supplies ran out, the area’s Army headquarters turned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of Japanese–American soldiers, to achieve what other units had failed to do: rescuing the “lost battalion.”In this riveting, gritty narrative, New York Times bestselling historian Scott McGaugh tells the story of the famous Go–for–Broke regiment, whose soldiers had volunteered for combat from within America’s internment camps. It is a story of a young generation’s fight against both the enemy and American prejudice— a story of heroism, sacrifice, and the best America has to offer.

    Using new sources--ground-breaking research in the papers of the Nuremberg prison psychiatrist and commandant, the letters and journals of the prisoners, and accounts of the judges and prosecutors as they struggled through each day making compromises and steeling their convictions--Joseph Persico retells the story of Nuremberg, combining sweeping history with psychological insight. Here are brilliant, chilling portraits of the Nazi warlords and riveting descriptions of the tensions between law and vengeance, between East and West, and of the friction already present in the early stages of the Cold War.

    In this revealing new biography, author Martin Kitchen disputes Speer’s lifelong assertions of ignorance and innocence, portraying a far darker figure who was deeply implicated in the appalling crimes committed by the regime he served so well.   Kitchen reconstructs Speer’s life with what we now know, including information from valuable new sources that have come to light only in recent years, challenging the portrait presented by earlier biographers and by Speer himself of a cultured technocrat devoted to his country while completely uninvolved in Nazi politics and crimes. The result is the first truly serious accounting of the man, his beliefs, and his actions during one of the darkest epochs in modern history, not only countering Speer’s claims of non-culpability but also disputing the commonly held misconception that it was his unique genius alone that kept the German military armed and fighting long after its defeat was inevitable.

    Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya.The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.

    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.

    A nation in tatters, in many places literally flattened by bombs, was suddenly subjected to brutal occupation by vengeful victors. Rape was rampant. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and German-speakers died in the course of brutal deportations from Eastern Europe. By the end of the year, Germany was literally starving to death. Over a million German prisoners of war died in captivity, where they were subjected to inadequate rations and often tortured. All told, an astounding 2.25 million German civilians died violent deaths in the period between the liberation of Vienna and the Berlin airlift. A shocking account of a massive and vicious military occupation, After the Reich offers a bold reframing of the history of World War II and its aftermath. Historian Giles MacDonogh has unearthed a record of brutality which has been largely ignored by historians or, worse, justified as legitimate retaliation for the horror of the Holocaust. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary firstperson accounts, MacDonogh has finally given a voice to tens of millions of civilians who, lucky to survive the war, found themselves struggling to survive a hellish peace.

    Cook combines an extraordinary grasp of military strategy with a deep empathy for the soldiers on the ground, at sea and in the air. Whether it's a minute-by-minute account of a gruelling artillery battle, vicious infighting among generals, the scene inside a medical unit, or the small details of a soldier's daily life, Cook creates a compelling narrative. He recounts in mesmerizing detail how the Canadian forces figured in the Allied bombing of Germany, the D-Day landing at Juno beach, the taking of Caen, and the drive south. Featuring dozens of black-and-white photographs and moving excerpts from letters and diaries of servicemen, Fight to the Finish is a memorable account of Canadians who fought abroad and of the home front that was changed forever.

    Stoically poised for battle in the spring of 1945—when even Japan’s last desperate technique of arms, the kamikaze, was running short—Yamato arose as the last magnificent arrow in the imperial quiver of Emperor Hirohito. Here, Jan Morris not only tells the dramatic story of the magnificent ship itself—from secret wartime launch to futile sacrifice at Okinawa — but, more fundamentally, interprets the ship as an allegorical figure of war itself, in its splendor and its squalor, its heroism and its waste. Drawing on rich naval history and rhapsodic metaphors from international music and art, Battleship Yamato is a work of grand ironic elegy.

    They Call It Pacific is an insightful account of events leading up to the war and beyond from an authority on Japanese-American affairs at the time. It is also a thrilling journal detailing Lee’s unbelievable real-time escape from the Philippine Islands with the help of the Filipino resistance. The book contains extensive accounts of the battle for the Philippines on Bataan and Corregidor, interviews with soldiers including General Douglas MacArthur, talks with Japanese prisoners, and descriptions of combat as the author accompanied Navy pilots such as Swede Larson on flights over Guadalcanal. This new edition of They Call It Pacific has been updated with footnotes and images from the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. *Includes original footnotes. *Includes photographs from World War 2.

    The plan nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, were it not for one small Belgian town and its tenacious American defenders who held back a tenfold larger German force while awaiting the arrival of General George Patton’s mighty Third Army. In this dramatic account of the 1944–45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII. Schrijvers draws on diaries, memoirs, and other fresh sources to illuminate the experiences not only of Bastogne’s 3,000 citizens and their American defenders, but also of German soldiers and commanders desperate for victory. The costs of war are here made real, uncovered in the stories of those who perished and those who emerged from battle to find the world forever changed.

    The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised.In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Momuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture.Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis.