Military

An audio dramatisation of July 1914 Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin. 'The story of the 37 days that led Europe to war after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914....

Since its publication in 1960, this monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the 20th century’s blackest hours....

India’s Most Fearless covers 14 true stories of extraordinary courage and fearlessness, providing a glimpse into the kind of heroism our soldiers display in unthinkably hostile conditions and under grave provocation....

Drawing on previously unpublished eyewitness accounts, prizewinning historian Donald L. Miller has written what critics are calling one of the most powerful accounts of warfare ever published....

Kargil takes you into the treacherous mountains where some of the Indian Army's bloodiest battles were fought. Interviewing war survivors and martyrs' families, Rachna Bisht Rawat tells stories of extraordinary human courage, of not just soldiers but also those who loved them most....

Amaryllis Fox was recruited by the CIA at the age of 21 in the aftermath of 9/11....

There have been over a thousand previous biographies of Churchill. Andrew Roberts now draws on over 40 new sources, including the private diaries of King George VI, used in no previous Churchill biography, to depict him more intimately and persuasively than any of its predecessors.... 

In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin share hard-hitting Navy SEAL combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life....

A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's grand masterwork.... 

Berlin, 1933. William E. Dodd, a mild-mannered academic from Chicago, has become America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proves to be a turning point in history....

Based on previously unpublished documents, diaries, notes, photographs, and dramatic interviews with Hitler's colleagues and associates....

It Worked for Me is filled with vivid experiences and lessons learned that have shaped the legendary career of the four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin Powell....

Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men - who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South - were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States. In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. 

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain’s side, the German government secretly contacted the political opposition, and the leadership of the anti-war movement, the Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis’ aim was to spread sedition, undermine the Allied war effort, and - given the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope sea route - gain naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect.

Was wissen wir wirklich über das Leben unserer Eltern, der Kriegskinder? Wann ist der richtige Zeitpunkt, zum Archäologen des eigenen Lebens zu werden und die Eltern zu befragen? Jürgen Wiebicke folgt den Berichten seiner Eltern, die konfrontiert mit dem Tod von einer radikalen Offenheit getrieben sind und ihre Erlebnisse nicht mehr für sich behalten wollen. "Man hat den Tod eines Menschen mit dem Brand einer Bibliothek verglichen. Bestimmte Geschichten können anschließend nicht mehr erzählt werden. In dieser Hinsicht ist der Tod ein einziger Skandal, ein großer Vernichter."

Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941, was the largest military operation in history; its aim nothing less than 'a war of extermination' to annihilate Soviet communism, liquidate the Jews and create lebensraum for the so-called German master race. But it led to the destruction of the Third Reich and it was entirely cataclysmic: in six months of warfare no less than six million were killed, wounded or registered as missing in action, and soldiers on both sides committed heinous crimes behind the lines on a scale without parallel in the history of warfare.

Nerve agents are the world's deadliest means of chemical warfare. Nazi Germany developed the first military-grade nerve agents and massive industry for their manufacture. At the end of the Second World War, the Allies were stunned to discover this advanced and extensive program. The Soviets and Western powers embarked on a new arms race, amassing huge chemical arsenals. From their Nazi invention to the 2018 Novichok attack in Britain, Dan Kaszeta uncovers nerve agents' gradual spread across the world, despite international arms control efforts. 

Selected in 2005 by the army to be the first airborne reconnaissance squadron, 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, better known as 5-73 CAV, was formed from 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The members of the squadron were hand-selected by the squadron command team, Lieutenant Colonel Poppas and Command Sergeant Major Edgar. With just more than 400 paratroopers, they were half the size of a full-strength battalion and the smallest unit in the Panther Brigade.