Second, she is “High-Pockets,” the outstanding and resourceful spy operating in Jap-held Manila for over 2 years. Third, she is a guerrilla officer; determined and able leader and organizer of the Manila underground. Last, she is ‘Comadre,’ the intensely patriotic, and spiritually strong godmother of ragged, desperate men.” Major John Peyton Boone Agent High Pockets is the remarkable story of a fascinating woman who under the pressures of war found any resourceful means to aid her friends against their common enemy, the Japanese, through the tumultuous years of World War Two. This memoir, written by Claire Phillips, shortly after World War Two provides brilliant detail into her life as she spied, smuggled information, and funneled aid to American guerilla fighters who were hidden in the jungles surrounding Manila. Shortly after arriving in the Philippines she fell in love with Sgt. John V. Phillips and became engaged to marry him. But before the ceremony could take place the Japanese Imperial Army invaded, forcing Phillips and her fiancé to retreat to the Bataan peninsula and conduct a quick ceremony in the jungle. Claire’s resourcefulness allowed her survive through these turbulent years and she opened a nightclub, Club Tsubaki, on the Manila waterfront. The Japanese officers who frequented it had little knowledge that they were paying for the contraband that Claire and her friends were smuggling to POW camps and their loud, drunken conversations were being quickly relayed to American guerillas in the surrounding jungles. She could not evade Japanese authorities forever, however, and in May 1944 she was arrested. While at the notorious Bilibid Prison she endured numerous forms of torture but refused to give any information away. This remarkable account should be essential reading for anyone interested in the war in the Pacific and how civilians who had been caught up in the conflict fought to survive and support their country. Claire was later given the Medal of Freedom for her activities through the course of the war. Her citation reads: “By direction of the President, under the provisions of Army Regulations 600-45, the Medal of Honor is awarded to you by the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, for the meritorious service which has aided the United States in the prosecution of the war against Japan in the Southwest Pacific Areas, from June 1942 to June 1944.” After she returned to the United States she wrote her account of this time which was published as Manila Espionage in 1947. Her book was the basis of a Hollywood feature film, I Was an American Spy, released in 1951 and starring Anne Dvorak as Phillips. She died of meningitis in 1960.

    The tense drama of Suzanne Spaak who risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz. This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust.Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country’s leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life’s purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups.Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups “kidnapped” hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers.In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations.

    Despite the starvation and disease that claimed 50,000 lives per year, the Jews were not dying swiftly enough to suit Heinrich Himmler, who ordered in 1942 that the Warsaw Ghetto be dismantled and the 450,000 inhabitants be deported to the gas chambers at Treblinka. On April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, two thousand German troops, singing confidently, marched into the ghetto to round up the remnant of remaining Jews. Suddenly, a fifteen-year-old girl tossed a grenade in their midst. Within minutes the German army had been routed. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had begin.This is the first full-scale, step-by-step account of the climatic twenty-eight-day struggle of the poorly armed Jews against their Nazi exterminators. The Bravest Battle took more than two years to write and involved interviewing more than 500 people, including most of the surviving fighters. This moving history cannot be matched for its authenticity and drama. The Bravest Battle is a testament to the Warsaw Jews, who fought for survival with dignity and courage.

    By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime. Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced - the Holocaust, genocide and the mass murder of Soviet POWs - and shows the Red Army, brutalized by war, taking its terrible revenge on the German civilian population. For the first time Russian veterans are candid about the terrible atrocities their own army committed. But they also describe their struggle to raise themselves from the abyss of hatred. Their war against the Nazis - which in large part brought the Second World War in Europe to an end - is a tarnished but deeply moving story of sacrifice and redemption.

    Some highlights include Caleb Carr on Poland in 1939, the only campaign that Hitler won; Stephen E. Ambrose on a pivotal battle to take the Rhine; John Keegan on the siege of Berlin; Victor Davis Hanson on the charismatic and controversial Gen. Curtis LeMay; William Manchester on Churchill's failure to influence the French; and Antony Beevor on the battle for Stalingrad. The pieces have appeared in print only once before in the respected MHQ: The Military Journal of Military History.

    Here he tells of the scorn and ridicule he endured for sounding the alarm when many still viewed Hitler as a positive and inevitable force. He recounts the sorrow of having to leave his home, friends, and family in Germany to conduct his fight against the Nazis from Austria. He tells how he defiantly challenged Nazism in the public square, prompting the German ambassador in Vienna to describe him to Hitler as “the architect of the intellectual resistance." And throughout it all, he conveys his unwavering trust in God, even during his harrowing escape from Vienna and his desperate flight across Europe, with the Nazis always just one step behind.

    This is the compelling story of the wartime adventures of Dr Aidan MacCarthy, who survived the evacuation at Dunkirk, burning planes, sinking ships, jungle warfare and appalling privation as a Japanese prisoner of war. It is a story of survival, forgiveness and humanity at its most admirable.

    The anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject--the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity.

     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!”

     The victories won by British arms in the years which followed that great deliverance have made men forget those soldiers – the first of the many – upon whom it fell to withstand the shock of Hitler’s great attack. It is now fitting that these men and their Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gort, should be worthily remembered, and their story fully told, from those first landings in France, in the autumn of 1939, until the climax of Dunkirk. The authors, both professional writers, themselves served as officers with the B.E.F., and have recaptured the gallantry and comradeship of that little force. The result is a moving story of courage and devotion in the face of odds which no other British Force has ever been called upon to face. It is chivalrous to admire a gallant enemy, and of that chivalry we have lately seen much. Justice demands that the courage and devotion of our own fighting men be no less clearly recognised. There were no medals for the B.E.F., hardly even today the laurels of memory. They were soldiers, doing a soldier’s job against odds which no British Force had ever been called upon to face, and which, it is to be hoped, no British Force will ever face again. What were they then, the men of that small Expeditionary Force, a mere army in one of the groups of French armies? How did they spend the months of what has been called the “twilight war”, and how, when the shock of battle came at last, did they withstand the blow? Dunkirk tells the true story of those brave men who fought to save the lives of so many. With the 2017 movie release of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk now is the time to remember the real history of the battle in the words of those who experienced it. Lt. Colonel Ewan Butler and Major J. Selby Bradford M.B.E., M.C. served in France as young officers during the last months of 1939 and the first five of 1940 with that small British Expeditionary force commanded by Lord Gort, which first faced the full might of Nazi Germany. Dunkirk was first published in 1950 under the title Keep The Memory Green. It was used as inspiration for the 1958 film, Dunkirk, starring Richard Attenborough.

    Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life. Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship. A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all.

    Mr. Arad reports as a controlled and effective witness for the prosecution.... Mr. Arad's book, with its abundance of horrifying detail, reminds us of how far we have to go."--New York Times Book Review..". some of the most gripping chapters I have ever read.... the authentic, exhaustive, definitive account of the least known death camps of the Nazi era." --Raul HilbergArad, historian and principal prosecution witness at the Israeli trial of John Demjanjuk (accused of being Treblinka's infamous "Ivan the Terrible"), uses primary materials to reveal the complete story of these Nazi death camps.

    Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end.In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

    Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda... These are the women behind the infamous men—complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands' murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.James Wyllie's Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.

    There were more than 300 escape attempts at Colditz in the four and a half years of its war history and Major Pat Reid vividly describes a unique interlude in Second World War history that contains the mythical qualities which cause a legend to live forever. Men from all over the world and from all walks of life were incarcerated in suffocating intimacy for five years in an alien and hostile land. Under these conditions they proved that men could live together, and that loyalty and generosity could thrive, transcending the natural prejudices of race, creed, language and intellectual diversity.