The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler


John Hendrix - 2018
    Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who was shocked to watch the German church embrace Hitler's agenda of hatred. He spoke out against the Nazi party and led a breakaway church that rebelled against racist and nationalist beliefs of the Third Reich. Struggling with how his faith interacted with his ethics, Bonhoeffer eventually became convinced that Hitler and the Nazi Party needed to be stopped--and he was willing to sacrifice anything and everything to do so.

Return with Honor


Scott O'Grady - 1995
    Return with Honor is O'Grady's riveting account of that time, filled with the incredible, never-before-revealed details about the tricks and strategems he used to avoid the enemy and survive.

The Last Jew of Treblinka


Chil Rajchman - 1997
    I cut off her hair, thick and beautiful, and she grasps my hand and begs me to remember that I too am a Jew. She knows that she is lost. ‘But remember,‘ she says, ‘you see what is being done to us. That‘s why my wish for you is that you will survive and take revenge for our innocent blood, which will never rest.‘ She has not had time to get up when a murderer who is walking between the benches lashes her on the head with his whip. Blood shows on her now shorn head. That evening, the blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface.—from The Last Jew of TreblinkaWhy do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls. In the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution. There was no pretense of work here like in Auschwitz or Birkenau. Only a train platform and a road covered with sand. A road that led only to death. But not for Chil Rajchman, a young man who survived working as a “barber” and “dentist,” heartsick with witnessing atrocity after atrocity. Yet he managed to survive so that somehow he could tell the world what he had seen. How he found the dress of his little sister abandoned in the woods. How he was forced to extract gold teeth from the corpses. How every night he had to cover the body-pits with sand. How ever morning the blood of thousands still rose to the surface.Many have courageously told their stories, and in the tradition of Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved, Rajchman provides the only survivors’ record of Treblinka. Originally written in Yiddish in 1945 without hope or agenda other than to bear witness, Rajchman’s tale shows that sometimes the bravest and most painful act of all is to remember.

Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil


Ron Rosenbaum - 1998
    Hitler did not escape the bunker in Berlin but, half a century later, he has managed to escape explanation in ways both frightening and profound. Explaining Hitler is an extraordinary quest, an expedition into the war zone of Hitler theories. This is a passionate, enthralling book that illuminates what Hitler explainers tell us about Hitler, about the explainers, and about ourselves.

The Spy with 29 Names


Jason Webster - 2014
    He was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler and an MBE by Britain. To MI5 he was known as Garbo. To the Abwehr, he was Alaric. He also went by Rags the Indian Poet, Mrs Gerbers, Stanley the Welsh Nationalist – and 24 other names. He tricked Hitler over D-Day. He was the greatest double agent in history.But who, exactly, was Juan Pujol? Using his intimate knowledge of Spain and his skills as a crime novelist, Jason Webster tells for the first time the full true story of the character who captured the imagination in Ben Macintyre’s Double Cross. He tells of Pujol’s early life in Spain, his determination to fight totalitarianism ­and his strange journey from German spy to MI5. Working for the British, whom he saw as the exemplars of freedom and democracy, he created a bizarre fictional network of spies – 29 of them – that misled the entire German high command, including Hitler himself. Above all, in Operation Fortitude he diverted German Panzer divisions away from Normandy, playing a crucial role in safeguarding D-Day and ending the war, and securing his reputation as the most successful double agent of the war. Meticulously researched, yet told with the verve of a thriller, The Spy with 29 Names uncovers the truth – far stranger than any fiction – about the spy behind one of recent history’s most important and dramatic events.

Tilli's Story: My Thoughts Are Free


Lorna Collier - 2004
    The small, poignant touches are riveting." -"Kirkus Discoveries""I think about what I want and what makes me happy, But orderly and quietly to myself. Because my thoughts tear down fortresses and walls, My thoughts are free. -German folk song, author unknown"The beautiful, safe, joyful places in young Tilli's imagination were her only refuge from the bombing that tore through the sky above her during World War II. Her thoughts were her only freedom from Hitler's Nazi tyranny, and they were her strength to survive after the war ended, when Russians invaded her tiny farming village in eastern Germany; forced her into months of hiding in a dark attic crawlspace; and took her innocence, her childhood, and nearly her life.Tilli's dreams-of a time when she could think and act freely, and travel, work, write, worship, and live however she wished-were what fueled the sixteen-year-old to courageously and single-handedly escape the terror of Stalin's harsh Communist rule and create her own happy ending in a free America.This true tale of sorrow and terror, hope and triumph, is Tilli's story-but it's also the story of the unthinkable suffering and untold bravery of countless innocent children who have lived through a war and its aftermath.

Beyond the Call: The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front


Lee Trimble - 2015
    With no food, shelter, or supplies, they were an army of dying men.The Red Army had pushed the Nazis out of Russia. As they advanced across Poland, the prison camps of the Third Reich were discovered and liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs as cowards, and regarded all refugees as potential spies or partisans.The United States repeatedly offered to help recover their POWs, but were refused. With relations between the allies strained, a plan was conceived for an undercover rescue mission. In total secrecy, the OSS chose an obscure American air force detachment stationed at a Ukrainian airfield; it would provide the base and the cover for the operation. The man they picked to undertake it was veteran 8th Air Force bomber pilot Captain Robert Trimble.With little covert training, already scarred by the trials of combat, Trimble took the mission. He would survive by wit, courage, and a determination to do some good in a terrible war. Alone he faced up to the terrifying Soviet secret police, saving hundreds of lives. At the same time he battled to come to terms with the trauma of war and find his own way home to his wife and child.One ordinary man. One extraordinary mission. A thousand lives at stake.This is the compelling, inspiring true story of an American hero who laid his life on the line to bring his fellow men home to safety and freedom.INCLUDES PHOTOS

A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18


Joseph Loconte - 2015
    R. R. Tolkien and C. S. LewisThe First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence—and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

Unfinished Symphony


Bernard Hellreich Ingram - 2012
    This is not a book about survival in a concentration camp. It is a book about "ordinary" people, maybe like you & me, on the peripheries of the Holocaust. It is a book about an ordinary man who is a young Polish Jewish doctor & it tells of the discrimination he faced leading up to WWII. It tells how his comfortable Polish middle class life is shattered first by the 1939 Soviet invasion showing the real face of the Stalinist regime & then by the Nazis in 1941 who are bent on exterminating a people merely because of their religious background. What to do? I ask myself how I would have reacted & I asked my father how he had the courage to choose to walk the line of a Jew hiding as a Christian. How brave was he? "Not brave at all" was his reply, "I just did what I had to do". It is also the story of two brave Christians, the doctor's girlfriend & a friend of hers, & how they chose to risk their lives & those of their families to prevent the unjust murder of another human being whose only crime was his ethnic background. I ask myself could I now do the same if this situation arose. The book is priced as low as possible to encourage people to read about an amazing account of survival through the love & selflessness of others in a very dark time of man's recent history. Two of the central figures of this book, Marian Golebiowski & Irena Szumska-Ingram have been honored by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum with the Righteous Among the Nations award. See the Yom Ha’atzmaut 2010 speech by Dor Shapira of the Israeli Embassy to the Sydney NSWJBD in relation to Irena Sumska's award: http://www.google.com.hk/url?sa=t&... It is a story of love, adventure & human values, the fugitive "Jew in a Christian skin", under constant threat of exposure, precariously maintaining his false identity in a tiny rural community. finally we see Hellreich the penniless refugee, still supported by his faithful Irena, rebuilding his shattered career in Australia - a chapter of heartbreaking difficulties & heartwarming satisfaction. "...as gripping and human a story as any told about this tragic period in the history of man's inhumanity to man. I couldn't put it down. That it is told without bitterness and rancour makes it all the more powerful ... simply yet eloquently written." - Barry Cohen (former Australian Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Environment) "... incredible faith and courage ... one of the most amazing stories to emerge from the wreckage and despair of the Holocaust." - L E Freeman in The Newcastle Herald Publisher's Note: My father, the author, passed from this world of natural causes in 2008 after what he described as a very interesting life. My hope in publishing his story is to document what happened to one man during these dark times & let him tell his story to all of you & not let it die with him. My father did not speak of his war years until I was 8, after many requests. It took him a lot longer to agree to write his story for the public. He was a modest man & did not think his story on the Holocaust's edges would be of interest, as per his Preface. All the Holocaust books I have read are valuable not for their literary merit but for the story they tell of barbarism, heroism, selfless help by others while endangering their own lives, & the wonderful strength & purity of th

Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters


Dick Winters - 2006
    Dick Winters was their commander—"the best combat leader in World War II" to his men. This is his story—told in his own words for the first time.On D-Day, Dick Winters parachuted into France and assumed leadership of the Band of Brothers when their commander was killed. He led them through the Battle of the Bulge and into Germany, by which time each member had been wounded. They liberated an S.S. death camp from the horrors of the Holocaust and captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat. After briefly serving during the Korean War, Winters was a highly successful businessman. Made famous by Stephen Ambrose's book Band of Brothers—and the subsequent award-winning HBO miniseries—he is the object of worldwide adulation, Beyond Band of Brothers is Winters's memoir—based on his wartime diary—but it also includes his comrades' untold stories. Virtually all this material is being released for the first time. Only Winters was present from the activation of Easy Company until the war's end. Winner of the Distinguished Service Cross, only he could pen this moving tribute to the human spirit.

My Life in the Maine Woods: A Game Warden's Wife in the Allagash Country


Annette Jackson - 2007
    Jackson, an avid sportswoman and nature lover, writes of hunting, fishing, campfire cooking, and the sounds of the wilderness through the seasons. She visits trappers and woodsmen, and tells what it's like to sleep on a bed of pine boughs under the stars that shine on the legendary Allagash. This new edition expands on Jackson's original, including not only new photographs, author biography, and foreword, but also new material from Jackson and revisions she made following its original publication.

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw: Soldiering with Dignity


Depinder Singh - 2002
    Manekshaw rose to become the 8th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army in 1969 and under his command, Indian forces conducted victorious campaigns against Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 that led to the liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971.

Jungle Soldier: The True Story of Freddy Spencer Chapman


Brian Moynahan - 2009
    

Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist


Karen Swallow Prior - 2014
    A woman without connections or status, More took the world of British letters by storm when she arrived in London from Bristol, becoming a best-selling author and acclaimed playwright and quickly befriending the author Samuel Johnson, the politician Horace Walpole, and the actor David Garrick. Yet she was also a leader in the Evangelical movement, using her cultural position and her pen to support the growth of education for the poor, the reform of morals and manners, and the abolition of Britain's slave trade."Fierce Convictions" weaves together world and personal history into a stirring story of life that intersected with Wesley and Whitefield's Great Awakening, the rise and influence of Evangelicalism, and convulsive effects of the French Revolution. A woman of exceptional intellectual gifts and literary talent, Hannah More was above all a person whose faith compelled her both to engage her culture and to transform it.

Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945


Marie Vassiltchikov - 1945
    The secret diaries of a twenty-three-year-old White Russian princess who worked in the German Foreign Office from 1940 to 1944 and then as a nurse, these pages give us a unique picture of wartime life in that sector of German society from which the 20th of July Plot -- the conspiracy to kill Hitler -- was born.Includes index.