At the time, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist C.L. Sulzberger received widespread praise for his authoritative account of the six-year war that involved more than fifty-six nations, resulted in the death of some 22 million people, and shaped the course of history. His work became a standard reference on the war. Stephen E. Ambrose, one of the most highly regarded historians of our time, oversaw a major revision of this classic work. Seamlessly incorporating new material and insights, Ambrose produced a comprehensive and riveting account of the war’s key characters and events. In planes and foxholes, in deserts and jungles, on ships and beaches, Ambrose shines a light on the people involved - the leaders, the fighters, the victims. He also added new chapters on the atrocities of the Holocaust and revelations about the secret war of espionage. Ambrose’s analysis also offers insight into the events that precipitated the Cold War. This book captures the courage, commitment, military genius, and horror of the war that gave birth to a new era in world politics. For students, history buffs, and fascinated readers, The American Heritage History of World War II is the definitive single-volume work on the subject and will endure as a major narrative of world history.

    Throughout the war, Atkins recruited, trained, and mentored the agents for the SOE's French Section, which sent more than four hundred young men and women into occupied France, at least one hundred of whom never returned and were reported MPD (missing presumed dead) after the war. Twelve of these were women and among Atkins' most cherished spies. When the war ended in 1945, she made it her personal mission to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines, tracing rigorously their horrific final journeys. But as the woman who carried out this astonishing search appeared quintessentially English, Atkins was nothing of the sort. As we follow her through the devastation of postwar Germany, we learn Atkins herself covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past.In A Life in Secrets Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera Atkins' many veils. Drawing on recently released sixty-year-old government files and her unprecedented access to the private papers of the Atkins family, Helm vividly reconstructs a complex and extraordinary life.

    Each volume will include a foreword by Wesley K. Clark, and be co-edited by a different foreign general who will write an afterword. This exciting new series opens with “The Desert Fox,” the most famous German field marshall in World War II, Erwin Rommel. A hero of the people of the Third Reich and widely respected by his opponents, Rommel proved himself highly adept at Blitzkrieg warfare. Both in France and North Africa he consistently outwitted his adversaries through his ability to sense the weak spot in his enemy's deployment and the pace at which he conducted his operations. Rommel’s serious wounding in France came just three days before the aborted attempt on Hitler’s life. Rommel subsequently came under suspicion of being involved in the plot and, under pressure, he committed suicide. Rommel displayed an outstanding ability to seize the initiative and retain it, and here, Charles Messenger draws on the skills behind this ability for the benefit of modern day leaders.

    The most popular of Lewis's twenty-seven books, Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature. In prose both heartrending and comic, Lewis describes an era of disillusionment, escapism, and hysteria in which the Allied occupiers mete out justice unfairly and fail to provide basic necessities to the populace while Neapolitan citizens accuse each other of being Nazi spies, women offer their bodies to the same Allied soldiers whose supplies they steal for sale on the black market, and angry young men organize militias to oppose "temporary" foreign rule. Yet over the chaotic din, Lewis sings intimately of the essential dignity of the Neapolitan people, whose traditions of civility, courage, and generosity of spirit shine through on a daily basis. This essential World War II book is as timely a read as ever."Norman Lewis is one of the greatest twentieth-century British writers and Naples '44 is his masterpiece. A lyrical, ironic, and detached account of a tempestuous, byzantine, and opaque city in the aftermath of war."--Will Self

    They were to lead the assault on Omaha Beach and break out inland. Simultaneously, other Ranger units would scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to destroy the ostensibly huge gun battery there and thus protect the invasion fleet from being targeted. But was the Pointe du Hoc mission actually necessary? Why did the Allies plan and execute an attack on a gun battery that they knew in advance contained no field guns? And more importantly, why did they ignore the position at Maisy that did? Using personal interviews with the surviving Rangers who fought on the beach and at Pointe du Hoc, The Cover-Up at Omaha Beach presents exceptionally detailed new research that takes the reader into the middle of the action with the Rangers.Gary Sterne has made a painstaking study of what the Allies actually knew in advance of D-Day, including what was known about Maisy Battery. Maps, orders, and assault plans have been found in US, UK, and German archives, many of which have only been recently released after having been classified for more than sixty years. Radio communications of the Rangers as they advanced inland have been found, and Royal Air Force intelligence evaluations of bombing missions directed at the site have now been released. All these combine to make The Cover-Up at Omaha Beach one of the most up-to-date references on the subject.

    They were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company. After almost two years of hard training, they parachuted into Normandy on DDay and, later, Operation Market Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler's hideout in the Alps. Here, revealed for the first time, are stories of war, sacrifice, and courage as experienced by one of the most revered combat units in military history. In We Who Are Alive and Remain, twenty men who were there and are alive today-and the families of three deceased others-recount the horrors and the victories, the bonds they made, the tears and blood they shed...and the brothers they lost.

    Each success noted had to be verified by a witness and signed by a superior officer.The journal of Sutkus is one of only a few such books to have survived the war. It records more than 200 kills, placing him as one of the wars most successful snipers. A large part of his journal is reproduced for the first time here.As a Hitler Youth member his skill as a marksman was quickly noted and, in July 1943, aged 19, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. A month later he was sent on a five month snipers course in Wilna, after which he was posted to the Eastern Front. He was so successful that his superiors sent him to crucial positions. Despite his age, he was regarded as one of Germanys best snipers and in November 1944 he was awarded the Scharfshtzenabzeichen 3 Stufe the highest award for a sniper.After being wounded in January 1945, Sutkus was given time to recuperate away from the Eastern Front. During this time he met a Red Cross nurse, to whom he gave all his journal.When the war finished, Sutkus was forced to join the Red Army. He deserted to join the Lithuanian resistance fighters. After being captured again he was tortured by the KGB and deported to Siberia to endure forced labor. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that he was able return to Germany and find his journal, still in the hands of the same nurse.Introduction written by David L. Robbins.

    The United States remained wary of joining the costly and destructive conflict. But for five extraordinary young Americans, the global threat of fascism was too great to ignore. Six months before Pearl Harbor, these courageous idealists left their promising futures behind to join the beleaguered British Army. Fighting as foreigners, they were shipped off to join the Desert Rats, the 7th Armored Division of the British Eighth Army, who were battling Field Marshal Rommel’s panzer division. The Yanks would lead anti-tank and machine-gun platoons into combat at the Second Battle of El Alamein, the twelve-day epic of tank warfare that would ultimately turn the tide for the Allies. A fitting tribute to five men whose commitment to freedom transcended national boundaries, Into Dust and Fire is a gripping true tale of idealism, courage, camaraderie, sacrifice, and heroism.

    Pollifax series, had reached a point of no return in her life. With her sons in college, Ms. Gilman was searching for something unknowable, unnameable . . . until she bought a small house in a little lobstering village in Nova Scotia, Canada.And so she began her life again, discovering talents and interests she never realized were hers, accepting the inner peace she had always fought, and most of all, understanding the untapped part of herself, almost as if it were a new kind of country, to challenge, explore, and love.

    His memoirs are richly illustrated with contemporary photographs, including key confrontations of World War II.After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a Company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak Company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank.) 
Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built. They were the most powerful heavy tanks to see service, and only one kind of shell could penetrate their armor at a reasonable distance.Every effort had to be made to retrieve any of them bogged down or otherwise immobilized, which led to many towing adventures. The author has a fine memory and eye for detail. His account is easy to read and not technical, and adds substantially to the knowledge of how the German Panzer Arm operated in the Second World War.

    She was German. She was Jewish. She was a survivor.  This is her story.As a young girl, Marione was aware that people of the Jewish faith were regarded as outsiders, the supposed root of Germany’s many problems. She grew up in an apartment building where neighbors were more than happy to report Jews to the Gestapo. Marione’s mother attempted suicide after receiving a deportation notice—Marione revived her, but then the bombs started to fall, as the Allies leveled the city in eight straight days of bombings. Somehow Marione and her mother and sister survived the devastating firestorms—more than 40,000 perished, and almost the same numbered were wounded.Marione and her family miraculously escaped and sought shelter with a contact in the countryside who grudgingly agreed to house them in a shed for more than a year. With the war drawing to a close, they went west, back to Hamburg.  There they encountered Allied troops, who reinstalled the local government (made up of ex-Nazis) in order to keep order in the country. Life took on the air of what it used to be. Jews were still second-class citizens.Marione eventually took shelter at a children’s home in a mansion once owned by wealthy Jewish bankers. There she met Uri, a troubled orphan and another one of the “Children of Blankenese.” Uri’s story, a bleak tale of life in the concentration camps, explores a different side of the Nazi terror in Germany.In this stirring account of World War II through the eyes of a child, the author’s eloquent narrative elicits compassion from readers.

    He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.

    In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese juggernaut quickly racked up victory after victory. Desperate to secure resource-rich regions in the Pacific and ensure their continued dominance of South East Asia, Japanese forces were determined in their efforts to conquer Malaya, Singapore and the oil-rich islands around Java Sea - Borneo, Sumatra and Java itself.  In the face of this seemingly unstoppable tide stood a small Allied force - American, Australian, British and Dutch. Thrown together by circumstance; cut off from reinforcements or in many cases retreat; operating with old, obsolete equipment and dwindling supplies, there was little hope of victory. Indeed, the month-long Java Sea Campaign, as it subsequently became known, quickly evolved from a traditional test of arms into a test of character. In the face of a relentless enemy and outnumbered, outgunned and alone, they defiantly held on, attempting to buy weeks, days, even hours until a better line of defense - and offense - could be established.  These were the men of the US Asiatic Feet, the British Far Eastern Fleet, the Royal Netherlands Navy's East Indies Squadron and the Royal Australian Navy. And their supporting units like Patrol Wing Ten, the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Service, the US Army Air Force's 17th Pursuit Squadron and submarines of all these fine nations. A campaign that has been too often either ignored by historians or criticised for poor command decisions, this is the story of the sailors and the airmen at the sharp end, and how they fought and endured the first months of the War in the Pacific.

    This expanded second edition includes over 250 rare historical photographs, maps and images and over 10,000 more words.Winner of Book of the Year in War & Military by the Foreword Indies Review board. Amazon best-seller in four categories and a solid 5-star rating, one of the highest of any book in its categories.

    Two men meet. One is elderly, the other in his twenties. One will become the most revered man of his time, and the other known as the greatest of traitors.Winston Churchill met Guy Burgess at a moment when the world was about to explode. Now in his astonishing new novel, Michael Dobbs throws brilliant fresh light upon Churchill's relationship with the Soviet spy and the twenty months of conspiracy, chance and outright treachery that were to propel Churchill from outcast to messiah and change the course of history.