"Superb... the greatest naval air battle of all time finally receives the meticulous and comprehensive treatment it deserves."--Richard Frank, author of Tower of SkullsIn June, 1944, American and Japanese carrier fleets made their way toward one another in the Philippine Sea. Their common objective: the strategically vital Marianas Islands. During two days of brutal combat, the American and Japanese carriers dueled, launching wave after wave of fighters and bombers against one another. By day and night, hundreds of planes filled the skies. When it was over, the men of the American Fifth Fleet had claimed more than four hundred aerial combat victories, and three Japanese carriers lay on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.Here is the true account of those great and terrible days--by those who were there, in the thick of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Drawing upon numerous interviews with American and Japanese veterans as well as official sources, Clash of the Carriers is an unforgettable testimonial to the bravery of those who fought and those who died in a battle that will never be forgotten."In his inimitable style, naval aviation's most prolific historian comes through with a much-needed, comprehensive documentary on the greatest aircraft carrier battle of all time."--Cdr. Alexander Vraciu, USN (Ret) Fighting Squadron 16, 1944

    For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month and were visible for 200 miles.The people of Hamburg had no time to understand what had hit them. As they emerged from their ruined cellars and air raid shelters, they were confronted with a unique vision of hell: a sea of flame that stretched to the horizon, the burned-out husks of fire engines that had tried to rescue them, roads that had become flaming rivers of melted tarmac. Even the canals were on fire.Worse still, they had to battle hurricane-force winds to escape the blaze. The only safe places were the city's parks, but to reach them survivors had to stumble through temperatures of up to 800C and a blizzard of sparks strong enough to lift grown men off their feet."Inferno" is the culmination of several years of research and the first comprehensive account of the Hamburg firestorm to be published in almost thirty years. Keith Lowe has interviewed eyewitnesses in Britain, Germany, and America, and gathered together hundreds of letters, diaries, firsthand accounts, and documents. His book gives the human side of an inhuman story: the long, tense buildup to the Allied attack; the unparalleled horror of the firestorm itself; and the terrible aftermath. The result is an epic story of devastation and survival, and a much-needed reminder of the human face of war. Includes nineteen maps and thirty-one photographs, many never seen before.350 pages narrative, 489 pages in total

    Cruising up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, they sank 259 ships, littering the waters with cargo and bodies. As astonished civilians witnessed explosions from American beaches, fighting men dubbed the area Torpedo Junction. And while the U.S. Navy failed to react, a handful of Coast Guard sailors scrambled to the front lines. Outgunned and out-maneuvered, they heroically battled the deadliest fleet of submarines ever launched. Never was Germany closer to winning the war.In a moving ship-by-ship account of terror and rescue at sea, Homer Hickam chronicles a little-known saga of courage, ingenuity, and triumph in the early years of World War II. From nerve-racking sea duels to the dramatic ordeals of sailors and victims on both sides of the battle, Hickam dramatically captures a war we had to win--because this one hit terrifyingly close to home.

    And yet it is far less known than Stalingrad, which involved about half the number of troops. From the time Hitler launched his assault on Moscow on September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, seven million troops were engaged in this titanic struggle. The combined losses of both sides -- those killed, taken prisoner or severely wounded -- were 2.5 million, of which nearly 2 million were on the Soviet side. But the Soviet capital narrowly survived, and for the first time the German "Blitzkrieg" ended in failure. This shattered Hitler's dream of a swift victory over the Soviet Union and radically changed the course of the war.The full story of this epic battle has never been told because it undermines the sanitized Soviet accounts of the war, which portray Stalin as a military genius and his people as heroically united against the German invader. Stalin's blunders, incompetence and brutality made it possible for German troops to approach the outskirts of Moscow. This triggered panic in the city -- with looting, strikes and outbreaks of previously unimaginable violence. About half the city's population fled. But Hitler's blunders would soon loom even larger: sending his troops to attack the Soviet Union without winter uniforms, insisting on an immediate German reign of terror and refusing to heed his generals' pleas that he allow them to attack Moscow as quickly as possible. In the end, Hitler's mistakes trumped Stalin's mistakes.Drawing on recently declassified documents from Soviet archives, including files of the dreaded NKVD; on accounts of survivors and of children of top Soviet military and government officials; and on reports of Western diplomats and correspondents, "The Greatest Battle" finally illuminates the full story of a clash between two systems based on sheer terror and relentless slaughter.Even as Moscow's fate hung in the balance, the United States and Britain were discovering how wily a partner Stalin would turn out to be in the fight against Hitler -- and how eager he was to push his demands for a postwar empire in Eastern Europe. In addition to chronicling the bloodshed, Andrew Nagorski takes the reader behind the scenes of the early negotiations between Hitler and Stalin, and then between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.This is a remarkable addition to the history of World War II.

    Actual entries in a posiealbum (autograph book) serve as stepping stones in a crucial year in history, when people of Jewish ancestry in Germany and Austria were systematically stripped of their rights, subjected to violence, and arrested without cause. Jutta was one of the lucky ones who escaped to America before the rising tide of violence erupted into World War II and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Remembrances from Jutta's friends and relatives introduce chapters, written in verse form, that describe her experiences—many of them typical of any teenager anywhere—and report some of the history of the era. Debbie wrote these verses in consultation with her mother to reflect her voice, feelings, and thoughts as she was living through this memorable year. The book also includes excerpts from Jutta’s diary. Together the poesie writings, verses and diary entries reflect a year of change and chance, confusion and cruelty. Most of all, they describe a year of goodbyes.

    Yet this feat of endurance was a prelude to a long and arduous retreat in which Soviet troops, inspired by deep beliefs in the sacred Motherland, pushed back German forces steeled by the vision of the Ubermensch--the iron-willed fighter. Supported by tanks and ski battalions, Soviet troops engaged in this desperate struggle in the harshest Russian weather.Michael Jones draws upon a wealth of new eyewitness testimonies from both sides of the conflict to vividly chronicle this pivotal chapter in the Second World War as he takes us from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on the morning of June 22 through the counteroffensive that carried into the spring of 1942. From the German soldier finding his comrades frozen into blocks of ice to the Russian lieutenant crying with rage at the senseless destruction of his unit, the author shows us the faces of war when the Wehrmacht was repelled and the titanic and cruel struggle of two world powers forged the fate of Europe.

    Among these men was prisoner number 1418 Andrei Pogozhev. He survived, and this is his story.

    When their food, ammunition, and medical supplies ran out, the area’s Army headquarters turned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of Japanese–American soldiers, to achieve what other units had failed to do: rescuing the “lost battalion.”In this riveting, gritty narrative, New York Times bestselling historian Scott McGaugh tells the story of the famous Go–for–Broke regiment, whose soldiers had volunteered for combat from within America’s internment camps. It is a story of a young generation’s fight against both the enemy and American prejudice— a story of heroism, sacrifice, and the best America has to offer.

    He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk. Manstein also stands as one of the war’s most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO. Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein’s life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career. 510 pages of narrative, 647 pages in total

    As an Army staff officer stated simply, "The capitulation of Hirohito saved our necks." In 1944, a year earlier, success seemed near, but squabbling in the military command and the logistical challenges of launching a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland soon took their toll, and by the time of V.E. Day it was questionable whether the United States was up to the task of ending the war in the Pacific. An exhausted American public was calling for troops to come home and for the country to return to manufacturing consumer items instead of arms. Republican politicians called for the Allies to back away from the demand for unconditional surrender. The politically powerful constituency of GIs won legislative victories, allowing soldiers more easily to leave the military and depleting units just as they most needed experienced soldiers. Weaving together analysis of grand strategy with a vivid narrative depicting the brutal, debilitating, and often terrifying experience of combat, Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio bring to life the final year in the Pacific. They explore the lives of the soldiers, sailors, and Marines who faced illness, drenching rain, and tenacious Japanese opponents. They also evoke the grand, clashing personalities of Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall, who warned of "the agony of enduring battle," and shed light on the views of President Roosevelt, who doubted Americans' understanding of the conflict and worried about a public mood that oscillated between overconfidence and despair. After the bloodletting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the war against Japan seemed more repugnant and less meaningful than the struggle against Germany. It is in this context, of military emergency and patience wearing thin, that a new president, Harry S. Truman, made the decision to deploy the atomic bomb. This remarkable, gripping narrative challenges assumptions about the inevitability of the war's outcome, the consequences of the "Europe first" strategy, and the wisdom of America's leaders.

    Written just two years before he put his theories to work in Hitler's Blitzkrieg of World War II.

    The book probes the central mystery of why a generation of the world's most able commanders and staff officers came to be seduced by Hitler, and why they failed to deflect him from his disastrous decisions.

    They depict the reality of the battle and how it was enacted by those who took part, whether in the air, on the ground, in the planning rooms or at home in towns and villages.

    In dramatic, vivid language, this unforgettable collection records the terrible years between 1940 and 1943. It includes the autobiographical It Was Cruel; A Ship to Remember, about the sinking of the Lancastria in 1940 (3,000 men lost their lives); and I Was There, HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour, and The Ship That Died of Shame--three short fictional pieces.

    Freezing cold and reliant on dwindling food supplies from Luftwaffe air drops, thousands died from starvation, frostbite or infection if not from the fighting itself.This important work reconstructs the grim fate of the 6th Army in full for the first time by examining the little-known story of the field hospitals and central dressing stations. The author has trawled through hundreds of previously unpublished reports, interviews, diaries and newspaper accounts to reveal the experiences of soldiers of all ranks, from simple soldiers to generals.The book includes first-hand accounts of soldiers who were wounded or fell ill and were flown out of the encirclement; as well as those who fought to the bitter end and were taken prisoner by the Soviets. They reflect on the severity of the fighting, and reveal the slowly ebbing hopes for survival. Together they provide an illuminating and tragic portrait of the appalling events at Stalingrad.