Kategoria BISAC: History >> Military - World War II

At last, new archival discoveries reveal the truth about the German Deputy-Fuhrer's incredible solo flight to Britain in May 1941, and explain the British government's sixty-year silence as to what the Hess mission was all about.

On the night of 10 May 1941, in one of the most extraordinary and bizarre incidents of the Second World War, a Messerschmitt-110 crash-landed on a remote Scottish hillside. Its pilot, who had parachuted to safety, was Rudolf Hess, the Deputy-Fuhrer of the German Reich. Hess's remarkable solo flight was immediately dismissed in both Britain and Germany as the...

For decades it has been assumed that the Allied bombing of Dresden -- a cultured city famous for its china, chocolate, and fine watches -- was militarily unjustifiable, an act of retribution for Germany's ceaseless bombing of London and other parts of England.

Now, Frederick Taylor's groundbreaking research offers a completely new examination of the facts and reveals that Dresden was a highly militarized city actively involved in the production of military armaments and communications. Incorporating first-hand accounts, contemporaneous press material and memoirs, and...

Compared to Casablanca by the Washington Post, this a page-turning story of a group of resistance workers who secreted downed Allied fighter pilots through France and into safety in Spain during World War II.

As war raged against Hitler's Germany, an increasing number of Allied fliers were shot down on missions against Nazi targets in occupied Europe. Many fliers parachuted safely behind enemy lines only to find themselves stranded and hunted down by the Gestapo. The Freedom Line traces the thrilling and true story of Robert Grimes, a 20-year-old American...

In this riveting book, Jack Sacco tells the realistic, harrowing, at times horrifying, and ultimately triumphant tale of an American GI in World War II as seen through the eyes of his father, Joe Sacco -- a farm boy from Alabama who was flung into the chaos of Normandy and survived the terrors of the Bulge.

As part of the 92nd Signal Battalion and Patton's famed Third Army, Joe and his buddies found themselves at the forefront of the Allied push through France and Germany. After more than a year of fighting, but still only twenty years old, Joe had become a hardened veteran. Yet...

"They flirted with men, and with death." In The Women Who Lived for Danger, acclaimed historian Marcus Binney recounts the story of ten remarkable women -- some famous, some virtually unknown -- recruited to work behind enemy lines as secret agents during WWII. Part of Winston Churchill's Special Operations Executive, formed in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze," the women of the SOE were trained to handle guns and explosives, work undercover, endure interrogation by the Gestapo, and use complex codes. Once in enemy territory, theirs was the most dangerous war of all, leading an...

The 100-foot promontory known as Pointe du Hoc -- where six big German guns were ensconced -- was the number one target of the heavy U.S. and British warships poised in the English Channel on D-Day morning. Facing arguably the toughest task to befall U.S. forces during the war, the brave men of the Army 2nd Ranger Battalion boldly took control of the fortified cliff and set in motion the liberation of Europe.

Based upon recently released documents, here is the first in-depth, anecdotal remembrance of these fearless Army Rangers. Acclaimed author and historian Douglas Brinkley deftly...

Of the nearly 15,000 Allied paratroopers dropped into France on D-14 (two weeks before D-Day), only one regiment--the 3,000 men of the 505 Parachute Infantry--had been tested in battle, and so they were given the toughest mission. For a few critical days, while the fate of occupied Europe hung in the balance, these troopers held their ground against savage assaults. In doing so, they changed the course of World War II.

Within hours of landing in Normandy, the paratroopers of the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment had gathered in the darkened fields outside Ste. Mere Eglise and moved...

France, 1940. The once glittering boulevards of Paris teem with spies, collaborators, and the Gestapo now that France has fallen to Hitler's Wermacht. For Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite who have been denounced as enemies of the Third Reich the fear of imminent arrest, deportation, and death defines their daily life. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive.

A powerfully told, meticulously researched true...

In most accounts of World War II, the last six months of fighting in Europe are tucked into an epilogue. After the Battle of the Bulge, the Nazis are assumed to be as good as defeated. In fact, they fought to their last breath. In the Hurtgen Forest, in the Po Valley of Italy, and in the German industrial heartland of the Ruhr, the Allies suffered horrific losses.

Drawing on never-before-published sources, Barry Turner captures the thrill of victory, the despair of defeat, and the staggering human costs of war. From the grunts on the ground to the machinations of generals and...

A riveting, minute-by-minute account of the momentous event that changed our world forever

On a quiet Monday morning in August 1945, a five-ton bomb--dubbed Little Boy by its creators--was dropped from an American plane onto the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On that day, a firestorm of previously unimagined power was unleashed on a vibrant metropolis of 300,000 people, leaving one third of its population dead, its buildings and landmarks incinerated. It was the terrifying dawn of the Atomic Age, spawning decades of paranoia, mistrust, and a widespread and very real fear of the...

As the Imperial Japanese Army swept across China and South Asia at World War II's outset, closing all of China's seaports, more than 200,000 Chinese laborers embarked on a seemingly impossible task: to cut a 700-mile overland route -- the Burma Road -- from the southwest Chinese city of Kunming to Lashio, Burma. But when Burma fell in 1942, the Burma Road was severed. As the first step of the Allied offensive toward Japan, American general Joseph Stilwell reopened it, while, at the same time, keeping China supplied by air-lift from India and simultaneously driving the Japanese out of...

Despite the volumes written about World War II, many questions remain un-answered. In this balanced and thoughtful chronicle, historian and World War II expert Len Deighton dares to explore intriguing questions, including why the British weren't more prepared for the Blitz and why Hitler failed to thoroughly support his U-boat program. He also warns that we haven't yet learned the lessons of World War II, as ethnic cleansing, Middle East violence, and the widening gap between rich and poor still plague the world.

November 1944. The British government finally agrees to send a brigade of 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine to Europe to fight the German army. But when the war ends and the soldiers witness firsthand the horrors their people have suffered in the concentration camps, the men launch a brutal and calculating campaign of vengeance, forming secret squads to identify, locate, and kill Nazi officers in hiding. Their own ferocity threatens to overwhelm them until a fortuitous encounter with an orphaned girl sets the men on a course of action--rescuing Jewish war orphans and transporting them...

From 1932 to 1945, in a headlong quest to develop germ warfare capability for the military of Imperial Japan, hundreds of Japanese doctors, nurses and research scientists willingly participated in what was referred to at the time as 'the secret of secrets' - horrifying experiments conducted on live human beings, in this case innocent Chinese men, women, and children. This was the work of an elite group known as Unit 731, led by Japan's answer to Joseph Mengele, Dr Shiro Ishii.

Under their initiative, thousands of individuals were held captive and infected with virulent strains of...

Allene Carter's father-in-law was a decorated veteran. Yet it was not until the Carter family received a call from the White House that she discovered he was a heroic force in the Rhineland campaign. President Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to several black soldiers who served in World War II. Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr. was among the recipients. Shocked to learn the extent of Carter's service, Allene was determined to uncover both the truth about her father-in-law's wartime record and why his official recognition was so long in coming.

Here is the story not only of Sergeant...

"If we had only known even a bit of what John Craddock tells us now, our own history could have been so very different."
--Sherry Sontag, coauthor of Blind Man's Bluff

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Helen Epstein traveled from America to Europe to Israel, searching for one vital thin in common: their parent's persecution by the Nazis. She found:

• Gabriela Korda, who was raised by her parents as a German Protestant in South America;
• Albert Singerman, who fought in the jungles of Vietnam to prove that he, too, could survive a grueling ordeal;
• Deborah Schwartz, a Southern beauty queen who--at the Miss America pageant, played...

At 7:53 a.m., December 7, 1941, America's national consciousness and confidence were rocked as the first wave of Japanese warplanes took aim at the U.S. Naval fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. As intense and absorbing as a suspense novel, At Dawn We Slept is the unparalleled and exhaustive account of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is widely regarded as the definitive assessment of the events surrounding one of the most daring and...

During the five years William Craig spent researching the battle for Stalingrad, he traveled extensively on three continents, studying documents and interviewing hundreds of survivors, both military and civilian. This unique account is their story, and the stories of the nearly two million men and women who lost their lives.