First published in 1974, this work remains in the forefront of the many books, movies, and television programs about the epic World War II drama played out in the stormy Atlantic. It is a thrilling firsthand account of the hunting down and sinking of the battleship 'Bismarck', pride of the German Fleet, told by a member of the Royal Navy's destroyer force who participated in the pursuit. The author's own experiences add fire and immediacy to the account that has come to be considered a classic by critic and general reader alike. The world's largest warship when she first sailed into the Atlantic in May 1941, the 'Bismarck' was a serious threat to Britain's survival and her sinking of the beloved battle cruiser 'HMS Hood' with nearly fifteen hundred aboard sent shock waves throughout Britain. Determined to track her down, the Royal Navy engaged in pursuit, finding the mammoth warship just hours from her safe harbor. The chess-like plotting, the horror and heroism on both sides, the final apocalyptic action have never been portrayed more vividly and objectively - and never with the benefit of such detailed documentation from both British and German sources. A measure of the book's epic qualities is that knowledge of the outcome in no way lessens the tension. When she was sunk just days after her own victorious action with the 'Hood<', the 'Bismarck' took more than two thousand German sailors to the bottom of the ocean and with them the dreams of the German naval high command. For sheer suspense, this book can hardly be equalled. For carefully researched history, it is an admirable example of fine writing. Ludovic Kennedy's introduction to this new edition places the event in perspective for today's audiences.

    How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials—personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence—to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people—from infantrymen and tank commanders on the Eastern front to civilians on the home front—to vivid life. While most historians identify the German defeat at Stalingrad as the moment when the average German citizen turned against the war effort, Stargardt demonstrates that the Wehrmacht in fact retained the staunch support of the patriotic German populace until the bitter end.Astonishing in its breadth and humanity, The German War is a groundbreaking new interpretation of what drove the Germans to fight—and keep fighting—for a lost cause.

    However, few can match Hans Sturm in his astonishing rise from a mere private in an infantry regiment, thrown into the bloody maelstrom of the Eastern Front, to a highly decorated war hero. A young man who had displayed fearless heroism in combat, earning him some of Germany's highest military awards, Sturm hated bullies and injustice, and reacted in his normal pugnacious and outspoken manner when confronted with wrongdoing. From striking a member of the feared Sicherheitsdienst for his treatment of a Jewish woman, to refusing to wear a decoration he felt was tainted because of the treatment of enemy partisans, Sturm repeatedly stuck to his moral values no matter what the risk. Even with the war finally over, Sturm's travails would not end for another eight years as he languished in a number of Soviet labour camps until he was finally released in 1953. ** This electronic edition includes 60 black-and-white photographs **

    NBC News calls it, "A historical document of major significance." The focus is on Sir William Stephenson, Britain's urbane spy chief who inspired James Bond.

    From 1923 to 1941, he wrote the entries himself. From 1941 to 1945, he dictated lengthy passages to aides. He sometimes telephoned them in the middle of the night when he wanted to add some text.The dictations usually opened with a description of the military situation, followed by his personal comments. The dictated diary is not as personal as the earlier one he wrote himself.Much of the diaries were thought to have been lost during World War II. However in 1992, they were discovered to be held in Soviet-era archives — as Goebbels himself had ordered his diaries to be duplicated while in the Fuhrerbunker, and buried in a nearby grove of trees, believing that one day history would laud him, and would want to know about his life.There is dispute over which researcher first discovered the Soviet archives, with Elke Fröhlich and David Irving both laying claim to the title.

    In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict, Alan Allport seeks to answer questions such as could the war have been avoided? Could it have been lost? Were the strategic decisions the rights ones? How well did the British organize and fight? How well did the British live up to their own values? What difference did the war make in the end to the fate of the nation?In answering these and other essential questions he focuses--unlike many historians--on the human contingencies of the war, looking directly at the roles of individuals and the outcomes determined by luck or chance. Moreover, he looks intimately at the changes in war-time and post-war British society and culture. Whether discussing the mixing of classes during the war or the labor party movement, he shows us in great detail the effects of the war, again not only on the institutional, but on an individual level as well. For better or worse, much of Britain today is ultimately the product of the experiences of 1939-1942.

    It is must reading for every aficionado of modern military history.” –San Francisco ChronicleErwin Rommel’s instinct for battle and leadership places him among the great commanders of history. In this definitive biography, David Fraser, an acclaimed biographer and distinguished soldier, looks at Rommel’s career and shows how wild and superficially undisciplined Rommel’s bold style of leadership could be, and how it inspired the men under his command to attack with ferocity and pursue with tenacity—qualities that served him well in his great battles in the North African desert and throughout his entire military career. Fraser also thoroughly explores the question of Rommel’s possible involvement in the plot against Hitler and the reason for his forced suicide, even though there was no criminal evidence against him.Revealing his failings as well as his genius, Knight’s Cross is a fascinating biography of a soldier whose distinguished career has become a part of history.

    This best-selling collection gathers 13 examples of such battles, which often influence entire campaigns. Alongside less well-known cases, appear some of the most unforgettable campaigns: Napoleon at Waterloo, the Alamo, Little Big Horn, Rorke's Drift, and Arnhem Bridge. "...part of the...Cassell Military Classics series...hair-raising stories of military skirmishes throughout history."--Library Journal.

    Eleven years in the writing, drawing on newly opened American, Soviet & British documents as well as private diaries, letters & audio recordings, this narrative eavesdrops on private conversations between historical giants. It illuminates FDR's concealment of what America knew about Hitler's war against the Jews & his foot-dragging on saving refugees. FDR's actions so shocked his closest Cabinet friend, Treasury Sec. Henry Morgenthau Jr, that Morgenthau risked their friendship by accusing the FDR of acquiescence in the "murder of the Jews." After Normandy, obsessed by what he'd learned about the Nazis & the Holocaust, Morgenthau drew up a secret blueprint for the Allies to crush Germany by destroying German mines & factories after victory. FDR endorsed most of the plan & pressured a reluctant Churchill to concur. Horrified, Sec. of State Cordell Hull & Sec. of War Henry Stimson leaked the plan to the press during the '44 campaign. Propagandist Joseph Goebbels denounced the Roosevelt-Churchill "Jewish murder plan" & claimed it would kill 43,000,000 Germans. Republican presidential candidate Dewey charged that by stiffening German resistance, publicity about the plan had cost lives. "The Conquerors" explores suspicions that Soviet agents manipulated FDR & his officials to do Stalin's bidding on Germany. It reveals new information on FDR's illnesses & how they affected his leadership--& his private talk about quitting his job during his 4th term. It shows FDR's final dinner, in 4/45, in Warm Springs, GA, at which he & Morgenthau were still arguing over postwar Germany. Finally it shows how an unprepared new president managed to pick up the pieces & push Stalin & Churchill to accede to a bargain that would let the Anglo-Americans block Soviet threats against Western Europe & ensure the world wouldn't have to fear another Hitler.

    These two factors combine to make The Gathering Storm a unique work. The first volume of Churchill's memoirs, this selection is broken into two parts. The first, From War to War, consists of Churchill's critical observations on the settlement of World War I and its place in the causes of the Second World War. The second volume contains letters and memoranda from the British government--of which Churchill was part--as the country plunged unprepared into war. This stands as the best of history: written as it was made, by the man who made it.

    An important and fascinating firsthand account of life with Hitler from 1942 until his death in the Berlin bunker in 1945, by the young woman who was his last secretary.

    The policemen want to haul away her gypsy husband and their five children. The police tell Helene that as a German she does not have to go with them, but she decides to share the fate of her family. After convincing her children that they are going off to a vacation place, so as to calm them, the entire family is deported to Auschwitz. For being German, they are settled in the first barracks of the Gypsy Camp. The living conditions are extremely harsh, but at least she is with her five children. A few days after their arrival, Doctor Mengele comes to pay her a visit, having noticed on her entry card that she is a nurse. He proposes that she direct the camp’s nursery. The facilities would be set up in Barrack 29 and Barrack 31, one of which would be the nursery for newborn infants and the other for children over six years old.Helene, with the help of two Polish Jewish prisoners and four gypsy mothers, organizes the buildings. Though Mengele provides them with swings, Disney movies, school supplies, and food, the people are living in crowded conditions under extreme conditions. And less than 400 yards away, two gas chambers are exterminating thousands of people daily.For sixteen months, Helene lives with this reality, desperately trying to find a way to save her children. Auschwitz Lullaby is a story of perseverance, of hope, and of strength in one of the most horrific times in history.

    Originally titled “Three Lives,” the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English.“The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.” — Clive James“A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942.” — The Guardian“It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.” — The New Republic

    atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the ensuing death and destruction that led to the end of World War II. The events that culminated in the fall of Japan - which forever changed the course of diplomacy, geopolitics, and warfare in the twentieth century - are vividly recreated through dramatic first-hand accounts of the major participants on both sides of the Pacific. They include: Harry Truman, the inexperienced American president who made the decision that would lead to unprecedented death and destruction; the war-mongering, but mysterious, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who ultimately presided over his country's surrender; General Leslie Groves, the no-nonsense director of the Manhattan Project; and Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane, the Enola Gay, which dropped the very first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945.

    The Third Reich has been studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history, and yet until now there has been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the everyday experiences of its inhabitants, both perpetrators and victims, and all those living in what Primo Levi called "the gray zone." In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Examining, close up, life and death inside the camps, and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp system was shaped by changing political, legal, social, economic, and military forces, Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance, KL is destined to be a classic in the history of the twentieth century.