Showing titles in World War II

Written from the "other side" and told as much as possible through the words of the veterans, this is an important book on one of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War.

In November 1941, Hitler ordered German forces to complete the final drive on the Soviet capital, now less than 100 kilometers away. Army Group Center was pressed into the attack for one last attempt to break Soviet resistance before the onset of winter. From the German perspective, the final drive on Moscow had all the ingredients of a dramatic final battle in the east, which, according to previous accounts, only failed at the gates of Moscow.

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."

Dünkirchen 1940 is the first major history on what went wrong for the Germans at Dunkirk. As supreme military commander, Hitler had seemingly achieved a miracle after the swift capitulation of Holland and Belgium, but with just seven kilometres before the panzers captured Dunkirk – the only port through which the trapped British Expeditionary force might escape – they came to a shuddering stop. Only a detailed interpretation of the German perspective – historically lacking to date – can provide answers as to why.

Into Enemy Waters is the story of World War II's most elite and daring unit of warriors, the direct precursors to the Navy SEALs, told through the eyes of its last living member, ninety-five-year-old George Morgan. Morgan was just a wiry, seventeen-year-old lifeguard from New Jersey when he joined the Navy's new combat demolition unit, tasked to blow up enemy coastal defenses ahead of landings by allied forces. His first assignment: Omaha Beach on D-Day. When he returned stateside, Morgan learned that his service was only beginning.

Der Held des 20. Jahrhunderts: Er hat Hitler aufgehalten. Unter den herausragenden Politikern des 20. Jahrhunderts ist Churchill der schillerndste. Hollywood hat den Adeligen mit der Zigarre längst zu einer Film- und Heldenfigur überhöht. Seine Sätze, dass er etwa »außer Blut, Schweiß und Tränen« nichts zu bieten habe, sind geflügelte Worte. Churchill gilt als einer der größten Redner der Geschichte, hat seinen aufwendigen Lebensunterhalt als Schriftsteller und Journalist bestritten und wurde mit dem Nobelpreis für Literatur ausgezeichnet.

Una promesa a su madre lo mantuvo con vida en medio del horror del Holocausto. Cuando Abram y su madre llegaron al campo de exterminio de Auschwitz el 29 de agosto de 1944, se dieron cuenta de que sería su final. En los últimos instantes juntos, ella le pidió que hiciera todo lo humanamente posible para sobrevivir y para contarle al mundo entero lo que pasó con los judíos. Minutos después, fue asesinada en la cámara de gas. A pesar del dolor y de las dificultades, Abram siguió adelante, motivado por aquella promesa.

Authored by Samuel Milner, this book delves into the critical campaign in Papua New Guinea, offering a detailed examination of the strategic battles, operational challenges, and the indomitable spirit of the Allied forces tasked with halting Japanese expansion in the Southwest Pacific. Through meticulous research and compelling narrative, Milner captures the harsh realities of jungle warfare, the strategic significance of the region, and the extraordinary efforts of the soldiers who fought there.

Przez całe lata nie wolno było o nich mówić. Teraz również nie dla wszystkich są bohaterami "wygodnymi”. Polacy wypędzeni przez bolszewików ze swych domów i małych ojczyzn na Kresach. Symbolem ich gehenny jest pociąg. Długi, upiorny, ciągnący się niemal w nieskończoność. Wiozący ich bydlęcymi wagonami do piekła – w syberyjską tajgę i stepy Kazachstanu. Dla większości była to podróż bez powrotu.

Former Polish teenage piano prodigy Mosha Gebert is teaching when the Nazis come for her. They kill her student, but she is taken to Majdanek concentration camp. There, Commandant Josef Hanke spots her and recognises her as the pianist he fell in love with years earlier. Hanke demands that Mosha play ‘Ode to Joy’ for him, but she refuses. She will never play in such a horrific place – or for such an evil monster. So begins a battle of wills and repeated torture.

Книга Николаса Старгардта, оксфордского профессора, одного из самых авторитетных историков нацизма, является уникальным исследованием, где впервые представлена социальная история нацистской Германии глазами детей. Серьезный исторический труд основан на оригинальных документах — дневниках подростков, школьных заданиях, детских рисунках из еврейского гетто Терезиенштадт и немецкой деревни в Шварцвальде, письмах из эвакуационных лагерей, исправительных учреждений, психиатрических приютов, письмах отцам на фронт и даже воспоминаниях о детских играх.

Reinhard Heydrich fut parmi les dirigeants nazis l’un des plus féroces et des plus craints. Cet ancien officier de marine fut distingué par Himmler et mis à la tête du SD, le service de sécurité de la SS. Ayant ainsi autorité sur les services secrets et la Gestapo, il eut entre les mains une puissance qui n’était guère dépassée que par celle de Hitler lui-même. Il fut avec Himmler l’un des concepteurs de la " solution finale de la question juive ". Nommé protecteur de Bohême-Moravie, le " bourreau de Prague " fut abattu en 1942, à trente-huit ans, par des résistants tchèques.

In April 1945, Linz was one of Nazi Germany's most vital assets. It was a crucial transportation hub and communications center, with railyards brimming with war materiel destined for the front lines. Linz was also the town Hitler claimed as home and had long intended to remake as the cultural capital of Europe, filling its planned Fuehrermuseum with world-famous art stolen from his conquered territories.

Historicizing the much-championed ideal of zero waste, Anne Berg shows that the management of waste was central to the politics of war and to the genesis of genocide in the Nazi Germany. Destruction and recycling were part of an overarching strategy to redress raw material shortages, procure lebensraum, and cleanse the continent of Jews and others considered undesirable. Resource extending schemes obscured the crucial political role played by virtually all German citizens to whom salvaging, scrapping, and recycling were promoted as inherently virtuous and orderly behaviors.

Sent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just 17, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet'. In this vivid and spirited account the author evocatively sets his love of the skies and flying against his bitter experience of the horrors of war. We then follow his progress from France and the battlefields of the Somme to his pioneering defence of London against deadly nighttime raids.

As Hitler was attempting to conquer the western world, his armies were methodically pillaging the finest art in Europe, from Michelangelos to Vermeers, all stolen for the Führer. The Monuments Men had a mandate from President Roosevelt to find these artworks, but no vehicles, typewriters, or authority. In a race against time to save the world’s greatest cultural treasures from destruction at the hands of Nazi fanatics, each man constructed his own treasure map....

Who were the Gestapo officers? Were they merely banal paper shufflers, or were they recognizably evil? Were they motivated by an eliminationist anti-Semitism? Did the average German know about the mass murder of Jews and other undesirables while they were happening? Exactly how was Nazi terror applied in the daily lives of ordinary Jews and Germans? Eric A. Johnson answers these questions as he explores the roles of the individual and of society in making terror work.

Waffen-SS udviklede sig i løbet af Det Tredje Riges historie fra en beskeden livgarde for Hitler til at være en multietnisk og transnational massehær, som over en million mand passerede igennem. Et af de mest forbløffende paradokser i moderne militærhistorie. Flertallet af soldaterne kom fra Tyskland, men styrkerne talte mænd fra hele Europa; syd og øst, såvel som nord og vest. Soldaterne i Waffen-SS blev indsat på stort set alle europæiske fronter og i alle former for krig og ugerninger.

In September 2016, Jerry Stahl was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy. The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl's lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling would be appropriate. 

In 1942, a rational fear was mounting that New York Harbor was vulnerable to sabotage. If the waterfront was infested with German and Italian agents then the US Navy needed a recourse just as insidious to secure it. Naval intelligence officer Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden had the solution: recruit as his own spies, members of La Cosa Nostra. Pier to pier, no one terrified the longshoremen, stevedores, shopkeepers, and boat captains along the harbor better than the Mafia gangs of New York, who controlled the docks in Manhattan and Brooklyn.