With the end of World War I, a new Republic of Poland emerged on the maps of Europe, made up of some of the territory from the first Polish Republic, including Wolyn and Wilno, and significant parts of Belarus, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, and East Prussia. The resulting conglomeration of ethnic groups left many substantial minorities wanting independence.

The approach of World War II provided the minorities' leaders a new opportunity in their nationalist movements, and many sided with one or the other of Poland's two enemies -- the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany -- in hopes of achieving their goals at the expense of Poland and its people. Based on primary and secondary sources in numerous languages (including Polish, German, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian and English), this work examines the roles of the ethnic minorities in the collapse of the Republic and in the atrocities that occurred under the occupying troops. The Polish government's response to mounting ethnic tensions in the prewar era and its conduct of the war effort are also examined.

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

'The most important book you’ll ever read… Battle Scars will save lives.' TOM MARCUS, author of SOLDIER SPY

Battle Scars tells the story of Jason Fox’s career as an elite operator, from the gunfights, hostage rescues, daring escapes and heroic endeavours that defined his service, to a very different kind of battle that awaited him at home.

After more than two decades of active duty, Foxy was diagnosed with complex PTSD, forcing him to leave the military brotherhood and confront the hard reality of what follows. What happens when you become your own enemy? How do you keep on fighting when life itself no longer feels worth fighting for?

Unflinchingly honest, Battle Scars is a breathtaking account of Special Forces soldiering: a chronicle of operational bravery, and of superhuman courage on and off the battlefield.

Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during the First World War, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, cunningly join forces. To stave off boredom, Jones makes a handmade Ouija board and holds fake seances for fellow prisoners. One day, an Ottoman official approaches him with a query: could Jones contact the spirits to find a vast treasure rumoured to be buried nearby? Jones, a lawyer, and Hill, a magician, use the Ouija board - and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception-to build a trap for their captors that will lead them to freedom. The Confidence Men is a nonfiction thriller featuring strategy, mortal danger and even high farce - and chronicles a profound but unlikely friendship.

Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable - together. This is their true story. RENEE: I was ten years old then, and my sister was eight. The responsibility was on me to warn everyone when the soldiers were coming because my sister and both my parents were deaf. I was my family's ears. As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide. But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be captured and taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Communicating in sign language and relying on each other for strength in the midst of illness, death and starvation, Renee and Herta would have to fight to survive the darkest of times. This gripping memoir, told in a vivid 'oral history' format, is a testament to the power of sisterhood and love, and now more than ever a reminder of how important it is to honour the past, and keep telling our own stories. A memoir of the Holocaust Perfect for those who want to learn more about the experiences of people during this period of time in history Written with Joshua M. Greene, a renowned Holocaust scholar.

'The wartime spy career of Mathilde Carre - aka "the Cat" and "Agent Victoire" - is so extraordinary it almost defies belief' The Times 'A truly astonishing story, meticulously and brilliantly told' Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline RESISTANCE, COLLABORATION AND BETRAYAL Occupied Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carre, codenamed 'the Cat', later known as Agent Victoire. She is charismatic, daring, and a spy; her story is one of heroism and survival against the odds. These are the darkest days for France, half-occupied by Nazi Germany, half-governed by the collaborationist Vichy regime; and dark days for Britain, isolated and under threat of invasion. Yet Mathilde is driven by a sense of destiny that she will be her nation's saviour. With little training or support, Mathilde and her Polish collaborator, Roman Czerniawski, create a huge web of agents in a matter of weeks to form the first great Allied intelligence network of the Second World War. They risk torture and execution to deliver their coded reports, London's sole source of reliable information about the Occupation. But the 'Big Network' is threatened at every turn and when the Germans inevitably close in Mathilde makes a desperate compromise. She enters a hall of mirrors in which any bond is doubtful and every action could be fatal. Nobody is certain where her allegiances lie - her German handler, the founder of the Resistance she ensnares and the British who eventually succeed in extracting her on a fast boat all have to make their own calculations. Is she a double, possibly even a triple agent, and, if so, can she be trusted to turn yet again? Victoire is the story of a passionate, courageous spy but also of a fragile hero, desperate to belong - a portrait of patriotism and survival in momentous times. Drawing on a wide range of new and first-hand material, Roland Philipps has written a dazzling tale of audacity, complicity and the choices made in wartime.

A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust.

This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.

At the end of the First World War, there were 270,000 demobilised Australian soldiers in Europe. Getting them home after the Armistice was a task of epic proportions that would take more than two years. In the meantime, how to keep these disgruntled, damaged men with guns occupied? In a word: sport. The Oarsmen tells the story of the servicemen who survived the war to row for the coveted King's Cup at the 1919 Royal Henley Peace Regatta. Competing against crews from the US, New Zealand, France, the UK and Canada, the Australians were a ragtag bunch of oarsmen thrown in an old-fashioned boat and expected to race. Many had seen the worst of the action during the war at Gallipoli and the Western Front, and carried scars both physical and psychological. The baggage they brought to the boat would soon threaten to capsize the whole endeavour. Combining first-hand accounts with lively prose, this never-before-told story approaches the First World War from peacetime and illuminates history in vivid and compelling detail. Interweaving the soldiers' personal stories from before, during and after the war, The Oarsmen paints a fascinating picture of how these men, and society, transitioned from an unprecedented war to a new sort of peace.

A riveting collection of thirty-eight narratives by American soldiers serving in Afghanistan, "Outside the Wire" offers a powerful evocation of everyday life in a war zone. Christine Dumaine Leche--a writing instructor who left her home and family to teach at Bagram Air Base and a forward operating base near the volatile Afghan-Pakistani border--encouraged these deeply personal reflections, which demonstrate the power of writing to battle the most traumatic of experiences.

The soldiers whose words fill this book often met for class with Leche under extreme circumstances and in challenging conditions, some having just returned from dangerous combat missions, others having spent the day in firefights, endured hours in the bitter cold of an open guard tower, or suffered a difficult phone conversation with a spouse back home. Some choose to record momentous events from childhood or civilian life--events that motivated them to join the military or that haunt them as adults. Others capture the immediacy of the battlefield and the emotional and psychological explosions that followed. These soldiers write through the senses and from the soul, grappling with the impact of moral complexity, fear, homesickness, boredom, and despair.

We each, writes Leche, require witnesses to the narratives of our lives. "Outside the Wire" creates that opportunity for us as readers to bear witness to the men and women who carry the weight of war for us all.

25 medal winners - the bravest of the brave - from the Army, the Royal Marine Commandos and the RAF describe, in their own words, the astonishing actions which led to their awards.

Trailblazer, superstar, activist, and spy: Alice Marble was a true American icon.

At seventeen, Alice Marble has no formal tennis skills and no coach. What she does have is an ability to hit the ball as hard as she can and a strong desire to prove herself. With steadfast determination and one sacrifice after another, Alice plays her heart out on the courts of the rich and famous, at national tournaments, and—the greatest of them all—at Wimbledon, rising to be one of the top-ranked players in the world.

But then her world falls apart.

With the outbreak of war with Germany, Alice’s tennis career and life come to a screeching halt, and for the first time, she is forced to confront who she is without tennis. As she seeks to understand her new place in the world and how she can aid in the war efforts, a telegram arrives with devastating news from overseas. Heartbroken and lost, she feels like she can only watch as the war wreaks havoc in every area of her life.

Alice is given the chance to fight back when the US Army sends her a request: Under the guise of playing in tennis exhibition games in Switzerland, she would be a spy for them. Alice aches for nothing more than to avenge what the war has taken from her and to prove herself against this new opponent. But what awaits her might be her greatest challenge yet.

From her start as a promising athlete with worn-out shoes to her status as a glamorous international star, Alice Marble’s determination to control her own life and destiny fuels a story of achievement, discipline, loss, and love.

Jenni L. Walsh’s Ace, Marvel, Spy brilliantly showcases the life of Alice Marble, a real-life tennis sensation known for her extraordinary talent and indomitable spirit. This fast-paced and action-packed historical novel spans multiple international settings and is enhanced by discussion questions that prompt readers to reflect on Alice’s challenges and triumphs, making it an ideal choice for book clubs.

From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of and sexual violence in modern conflict.

Christina Lamb has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefield she gives voice to the women of conflicts, exposing how in today’s warfare, is used by armies, s and militias as a weapon to humiliate, oppress and carry out ethnic cleansing.

Speaking to survivors first-hand, Lamb encounters the suffering and bravery of women in war and meets those fighting for justice. From Southeast Asia where ‘comfort women’ were enslaved by the Japanese during World War Two to the Rwandan , when an estimated quarter of a million women were , to the Yazidi women and children of today who witnessed the of their families before being enslaved by ISIS. Along the way Lamb uncovers incredible stories of heroism and resistance, including the Bosnian women who have hunted down more than a hundred war criminals, the Aleppo beekeeper rescuing Yazidis and the Congolese doctor who has risked his life to treat more victims than anyone else on earth.

may be as old as war but it is a preventable crime. Bearing witness does not guarantee it won’t happen again, but it can take away any excuse that the world simply didn’t know.

**As seen on BBC news** **As featured on BBC Radio 4: Today with Frank Gardner** 'In order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand them.' - Tamer Elnoury Tamer Elnoury, a long-time undercover agent, joined an elite counterterrorism unit after September 11. Its express purpose is to gain the trust of terrorists whose goals are to take out as many people in as public and devastating a way as possible. It's a furious race against the clock for Tamer and his unit to stop them before they can implement their plans. Yet as new as this war still is, the techniques are as old as time. Listen, record and prove terrorist intent. Due to his ongoing work for the FBI, Elnoury writes under a pseudonym. An Arabic-speaking Muslim American, a patriot, a hero. To many people, it will be a revelation that he and his team even exist, let alone the vital and dangerous work they do keeping all of us safe. It's no secret that federal agencies are waging a broad, global war against terror. Now, for the first time, an active, Muslim American federal agent reveals his experience infiltrating and bringing down a terror cell in North America.

War and Enlightenment in Russia explores how members of the military during the reign of Catherine II reconciled Enlightenment ideas about the equality and moral worth of all humans with the Russian reality based on serfdom, a world governed by autocracy, absolute respect for authority, and subordination to seniority. While there is a sizable literature about the impact of the Enlightenment on government, economy, manners, and literature in Russia, no analytical framework that outlines its impact on the military exists. Eugene Miakinkov's research addresses this gap and challenges the assumption that the military was an unadaptable and vertical institution. Using archival sources, military manuals, essays, memoirs, and letters, the author demonstrates how the Russian militaires philosophes operationalized the Enlightenment by turning thought into reality.

1961. The height of the Cold War. Just hours before work begins on the Berlin Wall, a KGB assassin and his young wife flee for the West before the Iron Curtain comes down and traps them in the East forever. This gripping story of real-life espionage and intrigue began when the Soviets invented a special weapon that killed without leaving a trace and put it in the hands of Bogdan Stashinsky. It is a tale of exploding parcels, fake identities, forbidden love and a man who knew the truth about the USSR's most classified programme. By the time Stashinsky had his day in court, the whole world was watching.

'Tony is the real deal.' Andy McNab The full, explosive, boots-on-the-ground story of the Falklands War, from a soldier at the heart of the action, published for the 40th anniversary of the conflict. Tony Hoare always knew he wanted to be in the SAS. Both his grandfather and father had been soldiers, and so Tony signed up for the Cadets at 13, then the Infantry at 17 and enlisted into the Royal Green Jackets before passing arduous SAS selection in 1978. Less than four years later, Tony and his team were sent to a collection of islands just off the coast of Argentina called the Falklands, where tensions were rising and war was on the horizon. No amount of training could prepare Tony for what happened over the course of the next twelve weeks, as the Falkland Islands became a battleground between British and Argentinian forces. As helicopters crashed and ships sank, Tony, at the centre of the action, battled across treacherous terrain and against a fearsome enemy, doing whatever it took to retake the islands. From one of the only soldiers who was on the frontline throughout the entire conflict, this is a thrilling account of what really happened in the Falklands, an explosive story of land, sea and air battles from a trooper who saw it all.

From one of Bosnia's most prominent poets and writers: spare and haunting stories and poems that were written under the horrific circumstances of the recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Semezdin Mehmedinovic remained a citizen of Sarajevo throughout the Serbian nationalists' siege and was active throughout the war in the city's resistance movement, as one of the editor's of the magazine Phantom of Liberty. Sarajevo Blues was originally published at the end of 1992 and was the first book in the Biblioteka "egzil-abc" series, published in Ljubljana, which provided a forum for Bosnian writers and translators under siege or living in exile. Semezdin Mehmedinovic says that "writing is, finally, quite a personal thing that doesn't make much sense unless you are practicing for the last word." For those Bosnians emerging from the siege or still in exile, these "last words" remain intimate possessions, one of the last bastions left against the commodification of tragedy.

"'The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky' offers not only a panoramic view of a country poised between devastation and an uncertain future but a gripping self-portrait of a man poised between unresolved youthful bewilderment and a mature clarity of conviction." * Wall Street Journal In 1945 Melvin J. Lasky, serving in one of the first American divisions that entered Germany after the country's surrender, began documenting the everyday life of a defeated nation. Travelling widely across both Germany and post-war Europe, Lasky's diary provides a captivating eye-witness account colored by ongoing socio-political debates and his personal background studying Trotskyism. The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky reproduces the diary's vivid language as Lasky describes the ideological tensions between the East and West, as well as including critical essays on subjects ranging from Lasky's life as a transatlantic intellectual, the role of war historians, and the diary as a literary genre.

This adventure story is also the biography of Heinrich Harrer, already a famous mountaineer and Olympic ski champion when he was caught by the outbreak of the World War II while climbing in the Himalayas.;Being an Austrian he was interned in India but succeeded in escaping into Tibet. After a series of experiences in a country never before crossed by a Westerner he reached the forbidden city of Lhasa. He stayed there for seven years, learned the language and acquired an understanding of Tibet and the Tibetans.;He became the friend and tutor of the young Dalai Lama and finally accompanied him into India when he was put to flight by the Red Chinese invasion.;As a mountaineer Heinrich Harrer was a member of the party which successfully ascended the North Wall of the Eiger in 1938.

In the terrifying summer of 1942 in Belgium, when the Nazis began the brutal roundup of Jewish families, parents searched desperately for safe haven for their children. As Suzanne Vromen reveals in Hidden Children of the Holocaust, these children found sanctuary with other families and schools--but especially in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages.
Vromen has interviewed not only those who were hidden as children, but also the Christian women who rescued them, and the nuns who gave the children shelter, all of whose voices are heard in this powerfully moving book. Indeed, here are numerous first-hand memoirs of life in a wartime convent--the secrecy, the humor, the admiration, the anger, the deprivation, the cruelty, and the kindness--all with the backdrop of the terror of the Nazi occupation. We read the stories of the women of the Resistance who risked their lives in placing Jewish children in the care of the Church, and of the Mothers Superior and nuns who sheltered these children and hid their identity from the authorities. Perhaps most riveting are the stories told by the children themselves--abruptly separated from distraught parents and given new names, the children were brought to the convents with a sense of urgency, sometimes under the cover of darkness. They were plunged into a new life, different from anything they had ever known, and expected to adapt seamlessly. Vromen shows that some adapted so well that they converted to Catholicism, at times to fit in amid the daily prayers and rituals, but often because the Church appealed to them. Vromen also examines their lives after the war, how they faced the devastating loss of parents to the Holocaust, struggled to regaintheir identities and sought to memorialize those who saved them.
This remarkable book offers an inspiring chronicle of the brave individuals who risked everything to protect innocent young strangers, as well as a riveting account of the "hidden children" who lived to tell their stories.

This book attempts to establish a more holistic approach to the rehabilitation of war-injured civilians, one that adjusts to the patients' long-term needs. Kovacic not only offers an insight into the daily realities of patients during and after rehabilitation, but seeks to develop a new way to perceive, respect and involve them in health care. Based on comprehensive interviews with patients and MSF staff, as well as extended field observations, Reconstructing lives follows Syrian and Iraqi war-injured civilians in their journey to recovery. From their improvised medical treatment in their home countries, to the MSF-run hospital in Amman Jordan, to their return home, Kovacic explores how individuals attempt to pick up the pieces of their previous lives, add new elements from their treatment and travel experiences, and finally establish a new reconstructed reality. The book explores how the interaction between MSF staff and their patients contributes to the immense task of healing that awaits victims of war. The reader visits the intimate medical and domestic spaces that usually remain closed to the outside observer, spaces rich with human contact, perceptions, emotions, conflicts and reconciliations. -- .

Many of the most famous escapes in history took place during the Second World War. These daring flights from Nazi-occupied Europe would never have been possible but for the assistance of a hitherto secret British service: MI9. This small, dedicated and endlessly inventive team gave hope to the men who had fallen into enemy hands, and aid to resistance fighters in occupied territory. It sent money, maps, clothes, compasses, even hacksaws - and in return coded letters from the prisoner-of-war camps and provided invaluable news of what was happening in the enemy's homeland. Understaffed and under-resourced, MI9 nonetheless made a terrific contribution to the Allied war effort. First published in 1979, this book tells the full, inside story of an extraordinary organisation.