This book reveals how author Roald Dahl was a member of Churchill's infamous dirty tricks squad.

    But they also confronted a terrible challenge - inside the camp were some 60,000 people, suffering from typhus, starvation and dysentery, who would die unless they received immediate medical attention.After Daybreak is the story of the army stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers, medical students and relief workers who attempted to save the inmates of Belsen - with the war still raging and only the most primitive drugs and facilities available.Drawing on their diaries and letters, Ben Shephard reconstructs events at Belsen in the spring of 1945 - from the first horror of its discovery, through the agonising process of trying to save the survivors. In doing so he addresses the question of whether we should regard the relief of the camp as an epic of medical heroism - as the British believed - or see the failure to plan for Belsen and the undoubted mistakes that were made there as further evidence of Allied indifference to the fate of Europe's Jews - as some historians now argue. The result is a powerful and dramatic narrative, full of extraordinary incidents and characters, and an important contribution to medical history.

    It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity--first Lientje's parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje's story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.The Cut Out Girl is an astonishment, a deeply moving reckoning with a young girl's struggle for survival during war, a story about the powerful love of foster families but also the powerful challenges, and about the ways our most painful experiences define us but also can be redefined, on a more honest level, even many years after the fact. A triumph of subtlety, decency and unflinching observation, The Cut Out Girl is a triumphant marriage of many keys of writing, ultimately blending them into an extraordinary new harmony, and a deeper truth.

    They may be acting under orders.” This was only one of the many warnings given to the 30,000 British troops preparing to land in the enemy territory of Nazi Germany nine-and-a-half months after D-Day. The newest addition to the Bodleian Library’s bestselling series of wartime pamphlets, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 opens an intriguing window into the politics and military stratagems that brought about the end of World War II.The pamphlet is both a succinct survey of German politics, culture, and history and a work of British propaganda. Not only does the pamphlet cover general cultural topics such as food and drink, currency, and social customs, but it also explains the effect of years of the war on Germans and their attitudes toward the British. The book admonishes, “The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong.” The mix of humor and crude stereotypes—“If you have to give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it”—in the text make this pamphlet a stark reminder of the wartime fears and hopes of the British.By turns a manual on psychological warfare, a travel guide, and a historical survey, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 offers incomparable insights into how the British, and by extension the Allied forces, viewed their fiercest enemy on the eve of its defeat.

    Ricks, a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, whose farsighted vision and inspired action preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike.Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then acting on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north.It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930s, democracy was discredited in many circles and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini men we could do business with, if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted.In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940s to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks' masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

    There was so little space on the berth that when one of us wanted to ease his hip, we all had to turn in a tangle of legs and chests and hollow bellies as if we were one many-limbed creature, a Hindu god or a centipede. We grow intimate not only in body but also in mind because we knew that though we were not born of one womb, we would certainly die together.'Alex Ehren is a poet, a prisoner and a teacher in block 31 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the children’s block. He spends his days trying to survive while illegally giving lessons to his young charges while shielding them as best he can from the impossible horrors of the camp. But trying to teach the children is not the only illicit activity that Alex is involved in. Alex is keeping a diary…Originally published as THE PAINTED WALL, Otto Kraus’s autobiographical novel, tells the true story of 500 Jewish children who lived in the Czech Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau between September 1943 and June 1944.

    Army to play a key role in the Allied victory.In 1942, the U.S. Army unleashed one of its greatest secret weapons in the battle to defeat Adolf Hitler: training nearly 2,000 German-born Jews in special interrogation techniques and making use of their mastery of the German language, history, and customs. Known as the Ritchie Boys, they were sent in small, elite teams to join every major combat unit in Europe, where they interrogated German POWs and gathered crucial intelligence that saved American lives and helped win the war.Though they knew what the Nazis would do to them if they were captured, the Ritchie Boys eagerly joined the fight to defeat Hitler. As they did, many of them did not know the fates of their own families left behind in occupied Europe. Taking part in every major campaign in Europe, they collected key tactical intelligence on enemy strength, troop and armored movements, and defensive positions. A postwar Army report found that more than sixty percent of the credible intelligence gathered in Europe came from the Ritchie Boys.Bruce Henderson draws on personal interviews with many surviving veterans and extensive archival research to bring this never-before-told chapter of the Second World War to light. Sons and Soldiers traces their stories from childhood and their escapes from Nazi Germany, through their feats and sacrifices during the war, to their desperate attempts to find their missing loved ones in war-torn Europe. Sons and Soldiers is an epic story of heroism, courage, and patriotism that will not soon be forgotten.

    The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker.

    Food rationing was introduced in January 1940 after food shipments were attacked by German U-boat 'Wolf Packs'. The first food items to be rationed were butter, sugar, bacon and ham, with restrictions also placed on meat, fish, jam, biscuits, cheese, eggs and milk. The leaflets reproduced in Eating for Victory were distributed by the Ministry of Food and advised the general public on how to cope with these shortages. Typical contents included: recipes for steamed and boiled puddings; tips on how to use and prepare green vegetables; hints about how to reconstitute dried eggs and use; them as though they were fresh. Eating for Victory is a great gift book offering a nostalgic look back at one of the hardest and yet perhaps healthiest times in history, but is also a relevant guide on healthy eating for today.

    'The Other Tudors' examines the extraordinary untold tales of the women who Henry loved but never married, the mistresses who became queens and of his many children, both acknowledged and unacknowledged.

    For seven decades, we have looked at this cataclysmic conflict in much the same way, particularly when it comes to the war in the western theater. In this sweeping narrative history, the first of three volumes, British historian and contrarian James Holland deploys deep research, incisive analysis, and a profound sense of humanity to revise and enhance our understanding of one of the most significant events in history.It is commonly held that at the outset of war, Germany had the best army in the world, and that Britain barely managed to hold out against it until the Americans declared war and overwhelmed Nazi military prowess with economic might. But the picture looked much different in 1939: In advance of its Polish offensive, Germany was short on resources, tanks, and trained soldiers. Meanwhile, Britain and France had more men in uniform than Germany and considerably greater naval power, and Britain was the richest country in Europe with a massive empire at its disposal. Hitler was bluffing when he called for the wholesale destruction of Poland, but his bet that Western Europe wouldn’t get involved turned out to be fatally wrong.Beginning with the lead-up to the outbreak of war in 1939 and ending in the middle of 1941 on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Russia, The War in the West, Volume I covers the war on several levels, from fascinating tactical revelations—blitzkrieg, Holland argues, is a myth—to the personal stories of a German U-boat captain, a French reserve officer, a son-in-law of Mussolini, an American construction tycoon, and civilians across the war zone. This is a major history, destined to generate significant scholarly debate and reader interest.

    But respected historian David A. Howarth confirmed the details of Jan Baalsrud's riveting tale. It begins in the spring of '43, with Norway occupied by the Nazis and the Allies desperate to open the northern sea lanes to Russia. Baalsrud and three compatriots plan to smuggle themselves into their homeland by boat, spend the summer recruiting and training resistance fighters, and launch a surprise attack on a German airbase. But he's betrayed shortly after landfall. A quick fight leaves Baalsrud alone and trapped on a freezing island above the Arctic Circle. He's poorly clothed (one foot entirely bare), has a head start of only a few hundred yards on his Nazi pursuers and leaves a trail of blood as he crosses the snow. How he avoids capture and ultimately escapes—revealing that much spoils nothing in this white-knuckle narrative—is astonishing stuff. Baalsrud's feats make the travails in Jon Krakauer's Mount Everest classic Into Thin Air look like child's play. This amazing book will disappoint no one. —John J. Miller (edited)

    and Fish.’ So begins Noreen Riols’ compelling memoir of her time as a member of Churchill’s ‘secret army’, the Special Operations Executive. It was 1943, just before her eighteenth birthday, Noreen received her call-up papers, and was faced with either working in a munitions factory or joining the Wrens. A typically fashion-conscious young woman, even in wartime, Noreen opted for the Wrens - they had better hats. But when one of her interviewers realized she spoke fluent French, she was directed to a government building on Baker Street. It was SOE headquarters, where she was immediately recruited into F-Section, led by Colonel Maurice Buckmaster. From then until the end of the war, Noreen worked with Buckmaster and her fellow operatives to support the French Resistance fighting for the Allied cause. Sworn to secrecy, Noreen told no one that she spent her days meeting agents returning from behind enemy lines, acting as a decoy, passing on messages in tea rooms and picking up codes in crossword puzzles. Vivid, witty, insightful and often moving, this is the story of one young woman’s secret war, offering readers an authentic and compelling insight into what really went on in Churchill’s ‘secret army’ from one of its last surviving members.

    He was an almost unknown, and self-taught, speech therapist named Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed 'The Quack who saved a King'.Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love of Mrs Simpson.This is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel's diaries and archive. It throws an extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men, and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband's reputation and reign.'The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy' is an astonishing insight into a private world. Logue's diaries also reveal, for the first time, the torment the future King suffered at the hands of his father George V because of his stammer. Never before has there been such a personal portrait of the British monarchy - at a time of its greatest crisis - seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.

    With the property comes a mountain of debt—and almost as many questions . . .Paris, 1944: A bright, young British office clerk, Constance Carruthers, is sent undercover to Paris to be part of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive during the climax of the Nazi occupation. Separated from her contacts in the Resistance, she soon stumbles into the heart of a prominent family who regularly entertain elite members of the German military even as they plot to liberate France. But in a city rife with collaborators and rebels, Constance’s most difficult decision may be determining whom to trust with her heart.As Emilie discovers what really happened to her family during the war and finds a connection to Constance much closer than she suspects, the château itself may provide the clues that unlock the mysteries of her past, present, and future. Here is a dazzling novel of intrigue and passion from one of the world’s most beloved storytellers.Note to readers: In the UK, this book is published under the title The Light Behind the Window.