Book picks similar to
Codebreakers' Victory: How the Allied Cryptographers Won World War II by Hervie Haufler
history
non-fiction
nonfiction
wwii
The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes
Gordon Welchman - 1982
Here, unsuspected by the Germans, the famous Enigma codes were broken, almost continuously throughout the war. Welchman was a leading figure at Bletchley Park; his brilliant mathematical mind, and imaginative attack on apparently insuperable problems, were of inestimable value in shaping the course of the war and hastening victory. No other book has explained so thoroughly how the job was done, and how so often a flash of genius, an inspired insight, or even a stroke of luck, tipped the balance from failure to success, against all the odds.Gordon Welchman, a talented mathematician, was educated at Marlborough, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He had taken up a post as a fellow of Sidney Sussex College when the war started, and he was an obvious recruit for the expanding codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park. He was awarded the OBE for his war work. After the war he emigrated to the USA, and continued to work on computers and their applications to security and communications. He died in 1985."A publishing history is given on page 252, in Appendix III: First published by McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc. in 1982, with a British edition appearing in the same year under the Allen Lane imprint. A paperback edition was published by Penguin Books in 1984.
First Blood: The Battle of the Kasserine Pass, 1943
Charles Whiting - 1984
In the slaughter that ensued, Rommel left behind a shaken, confused, and deeply shamed American army and a nearly collapsed Allied front. This is the full story of that massacre of youthful innocents. 31 photos. 262 pp.
Forgotten Voices of the Second World War: A New History of the Second World War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There
Max Arthur - 2004
As in the highly acclaimed "Forgotten Voices of the Great War", Max Arthur and his team of researchers will spend hundreds of hours digging deep into this unique archive, uncovering tapes, many of which have not been listened to since they were created in the early 1970s. The result will be the first complete aural history of the war. We hear at first from British, German and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians. Accounts of the impact of the U. S. involvement after Pearl Harbour and the major effects that had on the war in Europe and the Far East is chronicled in startling detail, including compelling interviews from U. S. and British troops who fought against the Japanese. Continuing through from D-Day, to the Rhine Crossing and the dropping of the Atom Bomb in August 1945, this book is a unique testimony to one of the world's most dreadful conflicts. One of the hallmarks of Max Arthur's work is the way he involves those left behind on the home front as well as those working in factories or essential services. Their voices will not be neglected.
The Storm on Our Shores: One Island, Two Soldiers, and the Forgotten Battle of World War II
Mark Obmascik - 2014
The Battle of Attu—called “The Forgotten Battle” by World War II veterans—was raging on the Aleutian island with an Arctic cold, impenetrable fog, and rocketing winds that combined to create some of the worst weather on Earth. Both American and Japanese forces tirelessly fought in a yearlong campaign, with both sides suffering thousands of casualties. Included in this number was a Japanese medic whose war diary would lead a Silver Star–winning American soldier to find solace for his own tortured soul. The doctor’s name was Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi, a Hiroshima native who had graduated from college and medical school in California. He loved America, but was called to enlist in the Imperial Army of his native Japan. Heartsick, wary of war, yet devoted to Japan, Tatsuguchi performed his duties and kept a diary of events as they unfolded—never knowing that it would be found by an American soldier named Dick Laird. Laird, a hardy, resilient underground coal miner, enlisted in the US Army to escape the crushing poverty of his native Appalachia. In a devastating mountainside attack in Alaska, Laird was forced to make a fateful decision, one that saved him and his comrades, but haunted him for years. Tatsuguchi’s diary was later translated and distributed among US soldiers. It showed the common humanity on both sides of the battle. But it also ignited fierce controversy that is still debated today. After forty years, Laird was determined to return it to the family and find peace with Tatsuguchi’s daughter, Laura Tatsuguchi Davis. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mark Obmascik “writes with tremendous grace about a forgotten part of our history, telling the same story from two opposing points of view—perhaps the only way warfare can truly be understood” (Helen Thorpe, author of Soldier Girls).
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
Doug Stanton - 2001
Interweaving the stories of survivors, Doug Stanton has brought this astonishing human drama to life in a narrative that is at once immediate and timeless. The definitive account of a little-known chapter in World War II history, In Harm's Way is destined to become a classic tale of war, survival, and extraordinary courage.On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine. An estimated 300 men were killed upon impact; close to 900 sailors were cast into the Pacific Ocean, where they remained undetected by the navy for nearly four days and nights. Battered by a savage sea, they struggled to stay alive, fighting off sharks, hypothermia, and dementia. The captain's subsequent court-martial left many questions unanswered: How did the navy fail to realize the Indianapolis was missing? And perhaps most amazing of all, how did these 317 men manage to survive?
Those Who Hold Bastogne: The True Story of the Soldiers and Civilians Who Fought in the Biggest Battle of the Bulge
Peter Schrijvers - 2014
The plan nearly succeeded, and almost certainly would have, were it not for one small Belgian town and its tenacious American defenders who held back a tenfold larger German force while awaiting the arrival of General George Patton’s mighty Third Army. In this dramatic account of the 1944–45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII. Schrijvers draws on diaries, memoirs, and other fresh sources to illuminate the experiences not only of Bastogne’s 3,000 citizens and their American defenders, but also of German soldiers and commanders desperate for victory. The costs of war are here made real, uncovered in the stories of those who perished and those who emerged from battle to find the world forever changed.
Seven Days in Hell: Canada's Battle for Normandy and the Rise of the Black Watch Snipers
David O'Keefe - 2019
O’Keefe takes us on a heart-pounding journey at the sharp end of combat during the infamous Normandy campaign. More than 300 soldiers from the Black Watch found themselves pinned down, as the result of strategic blunders and the fog of war, and only a handful walked away. Thrust into a nightmare, Black Watch Highlanders who hailed from across Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the Allied world found themselves embroiled in a mortal contest against elite Waffen-SS units and grizzled Eastern Front veterans, where station, rank, race and religion mattered little, and only character won the day. Drawing on formerly classified documents and rare first-person testimony of the men who fought on the front lines, O’Keefe follows the footsteps of the ghosts of Normandy, giving a voice yet again to the men who sacrificed everything in the summer of 1944.
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII
Chester Nez - 2011
Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty- nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them.In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Marine. His story puts a living face on the legendary men who developed what is still the only unbroken code in modern warfare.
The Navajo Code Talkers
Doris A. Paul - 1973
The Navajo Code Talkers is the single most comprehensive account of the contribution of the Navajo native Americans in World War II. It's authentic photos and illustrations have been featured on CBS Television's "An American Portrait" series, and the book itself has been profiled on the ABC Nightly News. It is also among the select 10 perecnt of all books written by white men or women on the native Americans to be chsoen by the Navajos for display in their tribal museum.
17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis and the Biggest Cover-Up in History
Andrew Morton - 2015
However, the full story of the couple's links with the German aristocracy and Hitler has until now remained untold.Meticulously researched, 17 Carnations chronicles this entanglement, starting with Hitler's early attempts to matchmake between Edward and a German noblewoman. While the German foreign minister sent Simpson seventeen carnations daily, each one representing a night they had spent together, she and the Duke of Windsor corresponded regularly with the German elite. Known to be pro-German sympathizers, the couple became embroiled in a conspiracy to install Edward as a puppet king after the Allies were defeated. After the war, the Duke's letters were hidden in a German castle that had fallen to American soldiers. They were then suppressed for years, as the British establishment attempted to cover up this connection between the House of Windsor and Hitler. Drawing on FBI documents, material from the German and British Royal Archives, and the personal correspondence of Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower and the Windsors themselves, 17 Carnations reveals the whole fascinating story, throwing sharp new light on a dark chapter of history.
West Point 1915
Michael E. Haskew - 2014
The graduating class of 1915, the class the stars fell on, was particularly noteworthy. Of the 164 graduates that year, 59 (36%) attained the rank of general, the most of any class in. Although Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, both five-star generals, are the most recognizable, other class members contributed significantly to the Allied victory in World War I, World War II and played key roles either in the post-war U.S. military establishment or in business and industry after World War II, especially in the Korean War and the formation of NATO. For more than half a century, these men exerted tremendous influence on the shaping of modern America, which remains substantial to this day. Individually, the stories of these military and political leaders are noteworthy. Collectively, they are astonishing. West Point, 1915 explores the achievements of this remarkable group.
Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives In World War II
Adam Makos - 2019
Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater.But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans.As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time.
The Honest Spy
Andreas Kollender - 2015
Recognizing that millions of lives are at stake, Kolbe uses his position to pass information to the Americans—risking himself and the people he holds most dear—and embarks on a dangerous double life as the Allies’ most important spy.Summoned from his South African post to return to Nazi Germany, Kolbe leaves behind his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter, a decision made for her safety that nonetheless torments him. And as he lives under the constant threat of arrest, he wrestles with the guilt of putting Marlene Wiese, a married nurse and the love of his life, in danger as they collaborate on Kolbe’s clandestine work.But no matter the personal cost, Kolbe will not be deterred. In scenes that pulse with suspense, he emerges as a towering figure who risked everything to save innocent lives—and Germany from itself.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Heather Morris - 2018
When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Agents of the Special Operations Executive
Marcus Binney - 2002
In The Women Who Lived for Danger, acclaimed historian Marcus Binney recounts the story of ten remarkable women who were dropped in occupied territories to work as secret agents.Once they were behind enemy lines, theirs was the most dangerous war of all, as they led apparently normal civilian lives while in constant danger of arrest. They organized dropping grounds for arms and explosives destined for the Resistance, helped operate escape lines for airmen who had been shot down over Europe, and provided Allied Command with vital intelligence. SOE women agents came from all walks of life: from the dazzling Polish Countess Krystyna Skarbek (alias Christine Granville) and the American Virginia Hall, who was from a rich Baltimore family, to Marguerite Knight, a secretary in Walthamstow. Petite Lisa de Baissac lived next to Gestapo headquarters in Poitiers playing the part of a quiet widow, while twenty-year-old student Paola Del Din was sent to find a way through the German front line in Florence. Hot-tempered Paddy O'Sullivan deflected a German officer from examining her suitcase by making a date with him, and Alix d'Unienville feigned madness when captured.The stories of these women agents -- some famous, some virtually unknown -- are told with the help of extensive new archive material. Their exploits form a new chapter of heroism in the history of warfare matched only by their determination, resourcefulness, and ability to stay cool in the face of extreme danger.