In December 1943 he succeeded in escaping during the weekly bath house visit and was on the run for almost a week disguised as an officer of the Royal Bulgarian Navy. He was captured after several close calls while attempting to board a ship at Lubeck.In February 1944 he escaped again this time dressed as a Swedish sailor and traveled by train to Bremen, Hamburg, Lubeck, Rostock finishing up in Danzig, all the while searching for a suitable ship. He eventually succeeded in reaching Stockholm after 2½ days in the extreme heat of a ship’s engine room. His superbly written narrative is full of suspense and excitement.

    In the vein of his other phenomenal compendiums of amazing battlefield blunders, How to Lose a Battle and How to Lose a War, Fawcett focuses on some amazing catastrophic missteps of Axis and Allies alike.

     This highly acclaimed firsthand account of convoy escort operations in the North Atlantic from 1939 to 1945 is based on Rayner's astonishing war record. About the author: Denys Arthur Rayner was a Royal Navy officer who fought throughout the Battle of the Atlantic. After intensive war service at sea, Rayner became a writer, a farmer, and a successful designer and builder of small sailing craft.

    The resulting account is a treasure trove of first-hand material, from personal memories, diary entries and letters to leave passes, wartime newspaper cuttings, Wehrmacht bulletins and more than 160 photographs.The account follows the unit from its formation in 1943 and the catastrophic events on the Eastern Front, through battles on the Western Front and engagements against the American 3rd Armoured Division to the confusion of retreat, panic-stricken flight and Soviet captivity in the closing stages of the war. Honest and unflinching, this remarkable collection of autobiographies offers a glimpse into life in Hitler's panzer division and is a stark testimony of a generation that sacrificed its best years to the war.This is the first English-language translation of the work.

    

    He brilliantly conveys what it was like to be facing death, day after day, night after night, with never a bed to sleep in nor a hot meal to go home to. This is warfare in the raw ' brutal, yet humorous, immensely tragic, but sadly, all true.

    Every day, thousands more pour in on ships from France. But only the most dangerous are sent to Camp 21 - 'black' prisoners - SS diehards who've sworn death before surrender. Nothing will stop their war, unless it's a bullet.As one fanatic plots a mass breakout and glorious march on London, Max Hartmann dreams of the oath he pledged to the teenage bride he scarcely knows and the child he's never met. Where do his loyalties really lie? To Hitler or to the life he left behind in the bombed ruins of his homeland?Beneath the wintry mountains, in the hell of Black Camp 21, suspicion and fear swirl around like the endless snow. And while the Reich crumbles - and his brutal companions plan their assault - Max's toughest battle is only just beginning.Inspired by terrifying actual events, Black Camp 21 takes readers on a gut-wrenching journey from the battlefields of France to its shocking climax in a camp which still stands today.

    Warning bells ring across Europe as Hitler comes to power. Clara Vine, an attractive young Anglo-German actress, arrives in Berlin to find work at the famous Ufa studios. Through a chance meeting, she is unwillingly drawn into a circle of Nazi wives, among them Magda Goebbels, Anneliese von Ribbentrop and Goering's girlfriend Emmy Sonnemann. As part of his plan to create a new pure German race, Hitler wants to make sweeping changes to the lives of women, starting with the formation of a Reich Fashion Bureau, instructing women on what to wear and how to behave. Clara is invited to model the dowdy, unflattering clothes. Then she meets Leo Quinn who is working for British intelligence and who sees in Clara the perfect recruit to spy on her new elite friends, using her acting skills to win their confidence. But when Magda Goebbels reveals to Clara a dramatic secret and entrusts her with an extraordinary mission, Clara feels threatened, compromised, desperately caught between her duty towards — and growing affection for — Leo, and the impossibly dangerous task Magda has forced upon her.

    At my home, the mailman would walk up towards the front porch, and I saw it just as clear as if he's standing beside me—I see his blue jacket and the blue cap and the leather mailbag. Here he goes up to the house, but he doesn’t turn. He goes right up the front steps. This happened so fast, probably a matter of seconds, but the first thing that came to mind, that's the way my folks would find out what happened to me. The next thing I know, I kind of come to, and I'm in the push-up mode. I'm half up out of the underwater depression, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell happened to those prone figures on the beach, and all of a sudden, I realized I'm in amongst those bodies!” —Army demolition engineer, Omaha Beach, D-Day Dying for freedom isn’t the worst that could happen. Being forgotten is. — “My last mission was the Bastogne mission. We were being towed, we're approaching Bastogne, and I see a cloud of flak, anti-aircraft fire. I said to myself, ‘I'm not going to make it.’ There were a couple of groups ahead of us, so now the anti-aircraft batteries are zeroing in. Every time a new group came over, they kept zeroing in. My outfit had, I think, 95% casualties.” —Glider pilot, D-Day and beyond Maybe our veterans did not volunteer to tell us their stories; perhaps we were too busy with our own lives to ask. But they opened up to a younger generation, when a history teacher taught his students to engage. — “I was fighting in the hedgerows for five days; it was murder. But psychologically, we were the best troops in the world. There was nobody like us; I had all the training that they could give us, but nothing prepares you for some things. You know, in my platoon, the assistant platoon leader got shot right through the head, right through the helmet, dead, right there in front of me. That affects you, doesn’t it?” ” —Paratrooper, D-Day and beyond As we forge ahead as a nation, do we owe it to ourselves to become reacquainted with a generation that is fast leaving us, who asked for nothing but gave everything, to attune ourselves as Americans to a broader appreciation of what we stand for? This is the fifth book in the masterful WWII oral history series, but you can read them in any order. — “Somebody asked me once, what was the hardest part for you in the war? And I thought about a young boy who came in as a replacement; the first thing he said was, ‘How long will it be before I'm a veteran?’ I said, ‘If I'm talking to you the day after you're in combat, you're a veteran.’ He replaced one of the gunners who had been killed on the back of the half-track. Now, all of a sudden, the Germans were pouring this fire in on us. He was working on the track and when he jumped off, he went down, called my name. I ran over to him and he was bleeding in the mouth… From my experience before, all I could do was hold that kid’s hand and tell him it’s going to be all right. ‘You'll be all right.

    B. Cates, General, U. S. Marine Corps. Saipan was the last barrier that the prevented the Allied forces from launching their entire military might against the Japanese homeland. Victory at Saipan was the key which opened the door to the soft underbelly of the Japanese Empire. Yet, because the Japanese were aware of this vulnerability, they were willing to throw everything they had against the ever-encroaching American forces and fight to the death to defend this island. Fifteen battleships began their bombardment of Japanese positions on 13 June 1944, they would fire over 165,000 shells onto the island. Then at 0700 on 15 June 8000 marines travelled in 300 LVTs to land on the west coast of Saipan to begin their assault. The Japanese high command realized that without resupply the island would be impossible to hold, but they and their soldiers were to fight until the last man. To make things as difficult as possible for the U. S. marines the Japanese used guerilla tactics to disrupt the offensive and dug themselves in in the mountainous terrain of central Saipan. Carl Hoffman’s brilliant account of this ferocious battle takes the reader through the course of its duration, from the initial discussion of plans and preparations right through to the eventual victory. This book is essential for anyone interested in the Pacific theater of war during World War Two and for the huge impact that the marine corps made in some of the bloodiest battles ever to have taken place. Carl W. Hoffman was a Major General in the United States Marines Corps. He served in World War Two, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. During World War Two he earned the Silver Star and two Purple Heart Medals while participating in operations on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian. His book Saipan: The Beginning of the End was first published in 1950 and he passed away in 2016.

    With a wry tone rarely seen in a combat memoir, Virski describes the hardships, the near-starvation rations, the inadequate clothing for the frozen wastelands, and his tense interactions with officers of the NKVD (secret police). He is wounded twice; earns a Medal of Valor; witnesses atrocities committed by both the Germans and the Soviets; is branded a deserter; and somehow finds time to fall in love more than once on his journey.A testament to the will of the human spirit, My Life in the Red Army is a must read for fans of World War 2 adventure.*Includes annotations and illustrations.

    The Führer has just survived another assassination attempt. But Germany is losing the war. Stauffenberg's attempted assassination and coup originated from inside the government and military. Is the Nazi Party about to turn on itself? Order must be restored and the High Command is calling for blood. Max Hoffmann is enlisted, under Hitler’s instruction, to carry out an investigation. The disillusioned detective has a problem though; he knows that as soon as the investigation starts, his own treason against the Party might be uncovered. As it becomes clear that Hoffman has not been a "good Nazi" he decides to go on the run, mere hours ahead of the SS Agents who are sent to arrest him. As a fugitive, Hoffman only has one objective: to fight one last battle against the people that turned against him, his friends and his family - and against one man in particular. ‘Into Darkness’ is a superb historical thriller, which sheds light not only upon the end days of the Third Reich but also upon one man, trying to serve his country and conscience.

     It brings to life the dramatic experiences of a woman caught between a ruthless government and the will to survive with her children during the last six months of World War 2 in Nazi Germany as she flees the incoming Russian front in the East and right into the carpet bombing in the West. This book brings this war down to a human level in a way that will leave the reader with a stunning new perspective never told in America and represents the missing link in the historical annals of this time. A sequel called WEST WIND is being written at this time and deals with the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the Third Reich and the survival of Elisabeth, her four children and Helga, the maid. It also describes her husband's experiences in an American prison camp in the south of France. Quote by Elisabeth Wendell, Professor of American Literature, University of Duesseldorf, Germany: “Barbara Martin is a very talented story teller and has captured a dark period of German history during the holocaust with sincere honesty and deep understanding for the people caught up in it. The book makes for great reading enjoyment!”

    While his publisher tries in vain to ease the author’s mind, Saint-Exupéry meets the enchanting Silvia Hamilton at a cocktail party. Though they do not share a language, they are nonetheless drawn to each other, and where words fail them they find other forms of communication.In the proceeding months, Silvia’s warmth and grace give Saint-Exupéry the peace of mind he so desperately needs. And as their love affair flourishes, he finds himself inspired to tell a tale of such simplicity and beauty that a person of any age could find joy and comfort in it. With Silvia as his muse, he works furiously to compose his petite prince.

    When the German army invaded Riga, Latvian Jewry numbered about 95,000, of which only about 1,000 survived the war. The story of how Wood and luck somehow enabled Max and his father to survive the Holocaust, unlike so many, is riveting. The family business was engaged with forestry and wood, so Max, his older brother, and their father were forced to work in wood for the Nazis, while his mother and little brother were murdered. A harrowing journey replete with painful memories… The book traces their harrowing journey from work camp to work camp, a terrible choice that the father is forced to make, the aftermath of the war in Europe, and finally arrival in Israel. For 65 years Max silently bore the burden of these memories until the author led him on a path of discovery through his painful personal history. Scroll up now and get your copy of Wood, luck & survival!