The Soviet Union had lost the heart of its industry, and the United States was not yet armed.The Allied victory in 1945 was not inevitable. Overy shows us exactly how the Allies regained military superiority and why they were able to do it. He recounts the decisive campaigns: the war at sea, the crucial battles on the eastern front, the air war, and the vast amphibious assault on Europe. He then explores the deeper factors affecting military success and failure: industrial strength, fighting ability, the quality of leadership, and the moral dimensions of the war.

    Now known as the Wereth Eleven, these brave African-American soldiers left their homes to join the Allied effort on the front lines of WWII. As members of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion, they provided crucial fire support at the Siege of Bastogne. Among the few who managed to escape the Nazi’s devastating Ardennes Offensive, they found refuge in the small village of Wereth, Belgium. A farmer and supporter of the Allies took the exhausted and half-starved men into his home. When Nazi authorities learned of their whereabouts, they did not take the soldiers prisoner, but subjected them to torture and execution in a nearby field. Despite their bravery and sacrifice, these eleven soldiers were omitted from the final Congressional War Crimes report of 1949. For seventy years, their files—marked secret—gathered dust in the National Archive. But in 1994, at the site of their execution, a memorial was dedicated to the Wereth Eleven and all African-American soldiers who fought in Europe. Drawing on firsthand interviews with family members and fellow soldiers, The Lost Eleven tells the complete story of these nearly forgotten soldiers, their valor in battle and their tragic end.

    Yet the two have never been seriously compared at book length. Acclaimed historian Lewis Lehrman finds that Lincoln and Churchill led their wars in remarkably similar fashion, guided by fixed principles of honor, duty, and freedom. Gifted literary stylists, both also relied on the written and spoken word to steel their nation's hearts and give meaning to war's sacrifice. And though both unexpectedly left office near the end of their wars--Lincoln by the bullet, Churchill by the ballot--they had gained victory.

    Critical acclaim for The Battle for Okinawa"An indispensable account of the fighting and of Okinawa's role in the Japanese defense of the home islands." --The Wall Street Journal"A fascinating, highly intelligent glance behind the Japanese lines." --Kirkus Reviews"The most interesting of the 'last battle of the war' books." --The Washington Post."A fascinating insider's view of the Japanese command." --Dallas Morning NewsCOLONEL HIROMICHI YAHARA was the senior staff officer of the 32nd Japanese Army at Okinawa.A Military Book Club Main Selection

    The Fourth Edition incorporates new material from the latest literature, offering modified conclusions on key topics and expanding coverage throughout. The author examines the origins of World War II, the legacy of World War I, the rise of the dictators, the road to war, Germany's march of conquest, globalization of the war, the second front question and the invasion of North America, war in the Atlantic, the allied bombing offensive, the home fronts, and the triumph of the allies. For World War II enthusiasts.

    Newcomb is one of the true masters of military storytelling. In researching Iwo Jima he interviewed hundreds of Iwo veterans, both American and Japanese; read the diaries and letters of fighting men; and combed through masses of official navy and marine records to write the full story of one of the most famous battles in U.S. history. With exceptional depth, intelligence, and emotional power, Newcomb recounts the events of February 19, 1945, in which common men were thrust into impossible circumstances, demonstrating valor and even humor amid the horror and chaos of war.

    However, it also ventures far beyond the usual soldier's story and approaches a travelogue of the Eastern Front campaign, seldom attained by the memoirs of the period. His self-published book in French is highly regarded by Belgian historian and expert on these volunteers Eddy de Bruyne, and Battle of Cherkassy author Douglas Nash. This book merits attention as the SS volunteer equivalent of Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier, a bestseller in the USA and Europe. By comparison, Kaisergruber’s story has the advantage of being completely verifiable by documents and serious historical narratives already published, such as Eddy de Bruyne’s For Rex and for Belgium and Kenneth Estes' European Anabasis.Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German Army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber’s book, the reader discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries. The combat experiences of the Walloons echoed those of the very best volunteer units of the Waffen-SS, although they shared equally in the collapse of the Third Reich in May, 1945.Although unapologetic for his service, Kaisergruber makes no special claims for the German cause and writes not from any postwar apologia and dogma, but instead from his firsthand observations as a young man experiencing war for the first time, extending far beyond what had been imaginable at the time. His observations of fellow soldiers, commanders, Russian civilians and the battlefields prove poignant and telling. They remain as fresh as when he first wrote some of them down in his travel diary, ‘Pensées fugitives et Souvenirs (1941–46)’. Fernand Kaisergruber draws upon his contemporary diaries, those of his comrades and his later work with them while secretary of their postwar veteran's league to present a thoroughly engaging epic.

    Here, collected for the first time and posthumously, are Fleming's favorite works. He takes us back to the days of the founders, detailing the surprising facts of American life in 1776, including its resemblance to today. He tells the seldom-told tale of the Loyalists, supporters of England who acted on their political convictions with impressive courage during the Revolution, and reveals little-known facets of men ranging from Franklin to Lafayette, Howe to Washington. He concludes with the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when fifty-five men from twelve virtually autonomous states came to Philadelphia in a brave - some thought foolhardy - attempt to replace a loose and fragile confederation with a strong national government. Their astonishing achievement became a standard of enlightenment the world over.

    By the beginning of 1945, American pilots were shooting down Japanese planes more than ten to one. The Japanese had so few metals left that the military had begun using wooden coins and clay pots for hand grenades. For the first time in 800 years, Japan faced imminent invasion. As Germany faltered, the combined strength of every warring nation gathered at Japan's door. Desperate, Japan turned to its most idealistic young men – the best and brightest college students – and demanded of them the greatest sacrifice.On the morning of May 11, 1945, days after the Nazi surrender, the USS "Bunker Hill" – a magnificent vessel that held thousands of crewmen and the most sophisticated naval technology available – was holding at the Pacific Theater, 70 miles off the coast of Okinawa.At precisely 9:58 a.m., Kiyoshi Ogawa radioed in to his base at Kanoya, 350 miles from the Bunker Hill, "I found the enemy vessels." After eighteen months of training, Kiyoshi tucked a comrade's poem into his breast pocket and flew his Zero five hours across the Pacific. Now the young Japanese pilot had located his target and was on the verge of fulfilling his destiny. At 10:02.30 a.m., as he hovered above the "Bunker Hill," hidden in a mass of clouds, Kiyoshi spoke his last words: "Now, I am nose-diving into the ship."The attack killed 393 Americans and was the worst suicide attack against America until September 11. Juxtaposing Kiyoshi's story with the stories of untold heroism of the men aboard the "Bunker Hill," Maxwell Taylor Kennedy details how American sailors and airmen worked together, risking their own lives to save their fellows and ultimately triumphing in their efforts to save their ship.Drawing on years of research and firsthand interviews with both American and Japanese survivors, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy draws a gripping portrait of men bravely serving their countries in war and the advent of a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombing, that nearly halted the most powerful nation in the world.

    Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men--military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor--put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm's way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed--eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler's dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan's leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington's hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan's place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy--unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation's bona fides with the West.We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan's army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan's elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing--both Japanese and Western--to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.

    Examples of the many perspectives based on real-life characters include: Hu, a VC “informant” whose false information led the Rangers straight into the jaws of a ferocious ambush; General Tanh, the COSVN commander; Major Nguyen Hiep, the 52d Ranger Commander; and Ranger POWs later returned by the North.Nightingale moreover offers the point of view of an American advisor to elite Vietnamese troops, a vital perspective regrettably underrepresented in the literature of Vietnam, including Burns’ documentary. Added to this are well-informed conjecture of enemy psychology; insight into the dedication and often misunderstood role of the elite Vietnamese Ranger forces; the intelligence acquired from debriefing captured Rangers, whose captors had told them that the entire battle had been a carefully staged attack planned by COSVN as part of a larger Total War strategy developed by the leadership of the North Vietnamese Army; and an eyewitness account by a gifted author who is a rare survivor of one of the most vicious—and heretofore forgotten—battles of the war.

    In Conduct Under Fire, Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father and three fellow Navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942. Abridged. 5 CDs.

    In that global conflagration, only one battle, the struggle for the Atlantic lasted from the very first hours of the conflict to its final day. Hitler knew that victory depended on controlling the sea-lanes where American food and fuel and weapons flowed to the Allies. At the start, U-boats patrolled a few miles off the eastern seaboard, savagely attacking scores of defenseless passenger ships and merchant vessels while hastily converted American cabin cruisers and fishing boats vainly tried to stop them. Before long, though, the United States was ramping up what would be the greatest production of naval vessels the world had ever known. Then the battle became a thrilling cat-and-mouse game between the quickly built U.S. warships and the ever-more cunning and lethal U-boats. The historian Richard Snow captures all the drama of the merciless contest at every level, from the doomed sailors on an American freighter defying a German cruiser, to the amazing Allied attempts to break the German naval codes, to Winston Churchill pressing Franklin Roosevelt to join the war months before Pearl Harbor (and FDR’s shrewd attempts to fight the battle alongside Britain while still appearing to keep out of it). Inspired by the collection of letters that his father sent his mother from the destroyer escort he served aboard, Snow brings to life the longest continuous battle in modern times. With its vibrant prose and fast-paced action, A Measureless Peril is an immensely satisfying account that belongs on the small shelf of the finest histories ever written about World War II.

    fascinating reading."--LA Times1) Tangled web1 "How did they catch us with our pants down, Mr President?" 12/6-7/412 Mr Knox goes west 12/8-16/413 "Some admiral or some general in the Pacific may be made the goat."Herbert Hoover 12/17/41 1/29/42 4 "Settle yourself in a quiet nook somewhere & let old father time help this entire situation."Stark to Kimmel 1/25/422/44 2) Pandora's box 5 Mutiny on the second deck 6 The Hart inquiry 2-6/44 7 The Army & Navy club 6-10/44 8 "You do not have to carry the torch for Admiral Kimmel" 6/449/453) Congress dances9 "If I had known what was to happen...I would have never have allowed myself to be 'tagged'"-Wm D. Mitchell 11-12/4510 Their day in court 12/31/45-1/31/4611 Safford at bay 2/1-11/4612 "To throw as soft a light as possible on the Washington scene"4) The Tenth investigation13 Operation Z 193211/27/41 14 The Tracking of Kido Butai 11/26-12/615 Date of infamy. "But they knew, they knew, they knew" 12/7-8/4116 The Summing up

    So begins The Dying Place, David Maurer’s unflinching look at MACV-SOG, Vietnam, and a young man’s entry into war. Fresh from the folds of the Catholic Church, Sgt. Sam Walden is quickly embraced by another religion, jungle warfare. After four years there may be no resolution between the two; God knows Sam has tried. But how many Hail Mary’s will absolve him of what he has done in Laos? Walden is a war-weary Green Beret, regularly tested beyond normal limits by the ever-changing priorities of the puzzle palace in Saigon. And yet he overcomes, staying alive to go on mission after mission with his one-one and his little people. To them he is everything – strength, compassion, courage. He will not let them down. David Maurer’s own experiences at MACV-SOG’s Command and Control North come to life in this tense action-packed story. The U.S. was not supposed to be in Laos during the Vietnam War and by all accounts, we weren’t. Some know better, and fortunately, Maurer is one of those. With a fine ear for dialogue Maurer takes you back and sets you down squarely on the LZ, where inner turmoil is quelled and external conflict takes over, if only for awhile. If you’re lucky, you just might make it out alive.