This is the story, brilliantly told, of a desperate and heroic venture - the raid by British warships of the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, 23 April 1918. The objective was to sink blockships in the mouth of the canal, sealing off access to the English Channel from the U-boats and destroyers based in the harbour at Bruges. The British crews were all volunteers, yet highly trained and ready for the fight. Many knew they were unlikely to survive the firestorm from the German batteries. It was the ultimate example of heroism in the face of defeat. The Germans removed the obstructions, and the U-boats continued to operate through the summer. But in that one brief morning, eleven men won the VC, 21 the DSO, 29 the DSC, among many other awards. Barrie Pitt, the bestselling author of The Crucible of War (about the Battle of Alamein) and History of the SBS, captures logistics, action and spirit of the men during the campaign. Zeebrugge is a military classic, a testament to British heroism. Recommended reading for fans of Antony Beevor, Max Hastings and James Holland. Barrie Pitt (1918-2006) was well known as a military historian and editor of Purnell’s History of the Second World War and History of the First World War. His publications include 'Coronel and Falkland', 'Churchill and the Generals' and 'The Crucible of War', a trilogy covering the North African campaign of the Second World War. He was born in Galway and later lived near Ilminster in Somerset. Praise for Barrie Pitt: 'As much a thriller as it is a history book.' Daily Mail 'A breathless and unforgettable narrative.' Sphere 'A magnificent book. Barrie Pitt has almost a novelist's skill and perception of character.' Daily Telegraph Totally readable, Mr Pitt's study depicts equally well the broad outlines of strategy, the confusions and hazards of the battlefield and the personalities of the generals of private soldiers fighting there.' Oxford Times

    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.

    The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won? Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war—the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism—as never before. In researching this magnificently vivid history, Roberts walked many of the key battlefields and wartime sites in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, and the Far East, and drew on a number of never-before-published documents, such as a letter from Hitler's director of military operations explaining the reasoning behind the FÃœhrer's order to halt the Panzers outside Dunkirk—a delay that enabled British forces to evacuate. Roberts illuminates the principal actors on both sides and analyzes how they reached critical decisions. He also presents the tales of many little-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the terrible depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War gives a dramatic account of this momentous event and shows in remarkable detail why the war took the course it did.

    How could a nation of 8 million fail to subdue a struggling colony of 300,000? Yet, when the campaign of 1812 ended, the only Americans left on Canadian soil were prisoners of war. Three American armies had been forced to surrender, and the British were in control of all of Michigan Territory and much of Indiana and Ohio.In this remarkable account of the war's first year and the events that led up to it, Pierre Berton transforms history into an engrossing narrative that reads like a fast-paced novel. Drawing on personal memoirs and diaries as well as official dispatches, the author has been able to get inside the characters of the men who fought the war — the common soldiers as well as the generals, the bureaucrats and the profiteers, the traitors and the loyalists.Berton believes that if there had been no war, most of Ontario would probably be American today; and if the war had been lost by the British, all of Canada would now be part of the United States. But the War of 1812, or more properly the myth of the war, served to give the new settlers a sense of community and set them on a different course from that of their neighbours.

     In less than three weeks, Hitler achieved the most extraordinary military triumph of modern times: Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium had been overrun; the French army was about to collapse; and the entire British Expeditionary Force, which had been sent across the Channel to help stop the Germans, was trapped against the sea at Dunkirk. Unless they could be rescued, Britain would be left without an army. ‘Dunkirk’ is the first book to present an overview of those awful days and show the effect the battle on the beaches was having on the rest of the world. It is also the day-by-day story of a great escape, of the transformation of a massive defeat into what would ultimately prove a disaster for Germany. “Norman Gelb demonstrates in Dunkirk how productive it is to focus on an individual operation or battle … Dunkirk is both a good adventure read and an instructive case study yielding modern lessons.” — JOHN LEHMAN, Former Secretary of the Navy, The Wall Street Journal “Norman Gelb finds fresh angles … Dunkirk stands as an exemplar of the perils of vacillation and the possibilities of action.” — The New York Times Book Review “Mr. Gelb has excavated beneath surface events, delved into political and psychological factors, and produced an intelligent, fast-moving narrative.” — PROFESSOR ARNOLD AGES, Baltimore Sun — “Vivid and comprehensive … Absorbing … Sets a high standard for other reconstructions” — Kirkus Reviews NORMAN GELB was born in New York and is the author of seven highly acclaimed books, including The Berlin Wall, Scramble: A Narrative History of the Battle of Britain, and Less Than Glory. He was, for many years, correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, first in Berlin and then in London. He is currently the London correspondent for New Leader magazine. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    But with the birth of the railroad in the early 1830s, the way wars were fought would change forever. In Engines of War, renowned expert Christian Wolmar tells the story of that transformation, examining all the engagements in which railways played a part from the Crimean War and American Civil War through both world wars, the Korean War, and the Cold War with its mysterious missile trains. He shows that the 'iron road' not only made armies far more mobile, but also greatly increased the scale and power of available weaponry. Wars began to be fought across wider fronts and over longer timescales, with far deadlier consequences. From armored engines with their swiveling guns to track sabotage by way of dynamite, railway lines constructed across frozen Siberian lakes and a Boer war ambush involving Winston Churchill, Engines of War shows how the railways - a fantastic generator of wealth in peacetime - became a weapon of war exploited to the full by governments across the world.

    Called “a masterly account by a first rate historian,” by Ian Kershaw (Hitler), Germany 1945 is sure to become the definitive work on the subject.

    Now, for the first time in a generation, here is a bold new account of the Battle of the Marne. A landmark work by a distinguished scholar, The Marne, 1914 gives, for the first time, all sides of the story. In remarkable detail, and with exclusive information based on newly unearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig superbly re-creates the dramatic battle, revealing how the German force was foiled and years of brutal trench warfare were made inevitable.Herwig brilliantly reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan”–commonly considered militarism run amok–as a carefully crafted, years-in-the-making design to avoid a protracted war against superior coalitions. He also paints a new portrait of the run-up to the Marne: the Battle of the Frontiers, long thought a coherent assault but really a series of haphazard engagements that left “heaps of corpses,” France demoralized, Belgium in ruins, and Germany emboldened to take Paris.Finally, Herwig puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: the French resolve to win, which included the exodus of 100,000 people from Paris (where even pigeons were placed under state control in case radio communications broke down), the crucial lack of coordination between Germany’s First and Second Armies, and the fateful “day of rest” taken by the Third Army. He provides revelatory new facts about the all-important order of retreat by Germany’s Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hentsch, previously an event hardly documented and here freshly reconstructed from diary excerpts.Herwig also provides stunning cameos of all the important players: Germany’s Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, progressively despairing and self-pitying as his plans go awry; his rival, France’s Joseph Joffre, seemingly weak but secretly unflappable and steely; and Commander of the British Expeditionary Force John French, arrogant, combative, and mercurial.The Marne, 1914 puts into context the battle’s rich historical significance: how it turned the war into a four-year-long fiasco that taught Europe to accept a new form of barbarism and stoked the furnace for the fires of World War II. Revelatory and riveting, this will be the new source on this seminal event.

    Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.

    

    Two vast armies engaged one another on land and in the air, in a conflict that included the most costly single day of aerial warfare of all time. This was the battle of Kursk - a battle so terrible that even Hitler confessed it made his ‘stomach turn over’. Citadel was the last great German offensive on the Eastern Front; its aim was to claw back the initiative after the surrender of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943. The location chosen by Hitler was the Kursk salient in the heartland of the Ukraine. The date was 5 July 1943, the codename ‘Citadel’. The Red Army, warned of the German plans by the ‘Lucy’ spy network in Switzerland, was prepared to defend the salient in massive strength and depth. Against its breakwaters Hitler launched his finest armoured divisions, only to see them mangled beyond repair. No sooner had the German thrusts been contained, while within the tantalizing grasp of success, than the Red Army delivered a series of crushing counter-blows with were to drive the Wehrmacht back beyond the River Dnieper. Characteristically, Hitler had gambled all on a throw of a single dice and had lost the initiative in the East - never to regain it. 'Citadel' provides a detailed picture of the Battle of Kursk, from the strategic tug-of-war waged within both high commands in the agonizing months which preceded the German offensive, to the first-hand experiences of the troops on the ground and the airmen flying over the blazing steppe as the battle reached fever pitch. Robin Cross places the battle firmly within the wider strategic context of the spring and summer of 1943, months in which Hitler and Stalin steeled themselves to take decisions which would decide the course of the war and the shape of the peace which followed. Praise for 'Fallen Eagle': "Mesmerising account of those final, bloody weeks of war ... Cross's account of the final hysterical days in his Berlin Bunker is masterful." Sunday Express Robin Cross is a distinguished journalist and military historian whose books include VE Day: Victory in Europe, The Bombers: Strategy and Tactics and The US Marine Corps. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    Had Britain's defences collapsed, Hitler would have dominated all of Europe and been able to turn his full attention east to the Soviet Union.The German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940 was unlike any the world had ever seen. It hit with a force and aggression that no-one could counter and in just a few short weeks, all in their way crumbled under the force of the Nazi hammer blow. With France facing defeat and with British forces pressed back to the Channel, there were few who believed Britain could possibly survive.Soon, it seemed, Hitler would have all of Europe at his feet.Yet Hitler's forces were not quite the Goliath they at first seemed, while her leadership lacked the single-minded purpose, vision and direction that had led to such success on land.Nor was Britain any David.Thanks to a sophisticated defensive system and the combined efforts of the RAF, Royal Navy as well as the mounting sense of collective defiance led by a new Prime Minister, Britain was not ready to roll over just yet.From clashes between coastal convoys and Schnellboote in the Channel to astonishing last stands in Flanders, and from the slaughter by the U-boats in the icy Atlantic to the dramatic aerial battles over England, The Battle of Britain tells this most epic of stories from all sides, drawing on extensive new research from around the world. In so doing, it paints a complete picture of that extraordinary summer - a time in which the fate of the world truly hung by a thread.

    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.

    It examines the physical conditions of fighting, the particular emotions and behaviour generated by battle, as well as the motives that impel soldiers to stand and fight rather than run away.In his scrupulous reassessment of three battles, John Keegan vividly conveys their reality for the participants, whether facing the arrow cloud of Agincourt, the levelled muskets of Waterloo or the steel rain of the Somme.

    The First World War was a truly global conflict from the start, with many of the most decisive battles fought in or directly affecting the Balkans, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Even more than World War II, the First World War continues to shape the politics and international relations of our world, especially in hot spots like the Middle East and the Balkans. Strachan has done a masterful job of reexamining the causes, the major campaigns, and the consequences of the First World War, compressing a lifetime of knowledge into a single definitive volume tailored for the general reader. Written in crisp, compelling prose and enlivened with extraordinarily vivid photographs and detailed maps, The First World War re-creates this world-altering conflict both on and off the battlefield—the clash of ideologies between the colonial powers at the center of the war, the social and economic unrest that swept Europe both before and after, the military strategies employed with stunning success and tragic failure in the various theaters of war, the terms of peace and why it didn’t last. Drawing on material culled from many countries, Strachan offers a fresh, clear-sighted perspective on how the war not only redrew the map of the world but also set in motion the most dangerous conflicts of today. Deeply learned, powerfully written, and soon to be released with a new introduction that commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, The First World War remains a landmark of contemporary history.