A TRUE CELEBRATION OF HEROISM AND BRAVERY

From America's preeminent military historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, comes a brilliant telling of World War II in Europe, from D-Day, June 6, 1944, to the end, eleven months later, on May 7, 1945. The author himself drew this authoritative narrative account from his five acclaimed books about that conflict, to yield what has been called "the best single-volume history of the war that most of us will ever read."

In 1943, on orders from the German Air Ministry, young physicist Peter P. Wegener left the Russian front and reported to the Baltic village of Peenemunde. His assignment was to work at the supersonic wind tunnels of the rocket laboratories of the German Army. Here Wernher von Braun led a team that developed the V-2, the world's first large rocket-powered guided missile, and laid much of the groundwork for postwar rocket development.;In this book, Wegener recounts his experiences during Hitler's time, World War II, and his years at Peenemunde. He tells how he was working one night in August 1943 when the allies bombed the laboratories, but left the wind tunnels undamaged. The tunnels were moved to Bavaria, and Wegener was ordered to follow in 1944. After the war, the tunnels were moved again - this time to the United States, accompanied by the author and other German scientists. Shortly before the end of the war, Wegener visited Germany's underground V-2 production plant to retrieve archival material on aerodynamics that had been stored in caves for safekeeping.;He described the appalling history of the concentration camps where SS guards watched over inmates who toiled underground in inhuman conditions and often did not survive. A photo essay enhances this memoir.

In the early morning hours of May 18, 1944 the Russian army, under orders from Stalin, deported the entire Crimean Tatar population from their historical homeland. Given only fifteen minutes to gather their belongings, they were herded into cattle cars bound for Soviet Central Asia. Although the official Soviet record was cleansed of this affair and the name of their ethnic group was erased from all records and official documents, Crimean Tatars did not assimilate with other groups or disappear. This is an ethnographic study of the negotiation of social memory and the role this had in the growth of a national repatriation movement among the Crimean Tatars. It examines the recollections of the Crimean Tatars, the techniques by which they are produced and transmitted and the formation of a remarkably uniform social memory in light of their dispersion throughout Central Asia. Through the lens of social memory, the book covers not only the deportation and life in the diaspora but the process by which the children and grandchildren of the deportees returned and anchored themselves in the Crimean Peninsula, a place they had never visited.

A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution. Historians are able to make important distinctions between various periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.

A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution. Historians are able to make important distinctions between various periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.

Escaping Hell is the compelling and true story of a heroic young Polish officer who survived the terror of five years in the prisons of Auschwitz and Buchenwald - where violence was meaningless because human life had lost all value. During World War II, Kon Piekarski was a member of the Polish Underground Army, a clandestine resistance movement which operated even inside Auschwitz - organizing spectacular esacpes, operating a secret radio network and matching wits with the Gestapo. After Auschwitz, Piekarski became a prisoner of war at Buchenwald and spent time working in a factory where Russian prisoners of war were used for labour. In the face of constant danger, he and his comrades took every possible opportunity to sabotage the German war industry. He was finally transferred to a small camp near the French border, and escaped three months before the end of the war.

More thrilling than any fiction, this book charts the true story of RAF crewman Denys Teare's year in Occupied France, a year spent a half-step ahead of Gestapo troopers determined to hunt him down.

A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia, published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war.

Richard Overy’s remarkable new book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombing. This book explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians followed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began. But it also engages with the new scholarship that shows how complex the effort to end the war was in Japan, where ‘surrender’ was entirely foreign to Japanese culture.

A vividly detailed account of life aboard U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II.

The story of the African-American crew of the USS Mason that made history in World War II when they escorted six convoys across the Atlantic.

Magic was the name given to the American decoding of the secret Japanese codes used in diplomatic communications before and during the Pacific War of 1941-45. Presenting a Japanese perspective, this work argues that, in the final phase of the eight months of US-Japan talks leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor, serious mistranslations in Magic were a significant factor in the cumulative effect of mutual misunderstandings which grew between the two sides over a longer period.

The heroic story of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet at the outbreak of World War II and their disastrous encounter with vastly superior Japanese forces.

The most complete portrait ever drawn of the complex emotional connection between two of history’s towering leaders

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. It was a crucial friendship, and a unique one—a president and a prime minister spending enormous amounts of time together (113 days during the war) and exchanging nearly two thousand messages. Amid cocktails, cigarettes, and cigars, they met, often secretly, in places as far-flung as Washington, Hyde Park, Casablanca, and Teheran, talking to each other of war, politics, the burden of command, their health, their wives, and their children.

Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. Sons of the elite, students of history, politicians of the first rank, they savored power. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics and haters in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill.

Confronting tyranny and terror, Roosevelt and Churchill built a victorious alliance amid cataclysmic events and occasionally conflicting interests. Franklin and Winston is also the story of their marriages and their families, two clans caught up in the most sweeping global conflict in history.

Meacham’s new sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with the few surviving people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed fresh light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle.

Hitler brought them together; later in the war, they drifted apart, but even in the autumn of their alliance, the pull of affection was always there. Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.

Stephen E. Ambrose draws from more than 1,400 interviews with American, British, Canadian, French, and German veterans to create the preeminent chronicle of the most important day in the twentieth century. Ambrose reveals how the original plans for the invasion were abandoned, and how ordinary soldiers and officers acted on their own initiative.

D-Day is above all the epic story of men at the most demanding moment of their existence, when the horrors, complexities, and triumphs of life are laid bare. Ambrose portrays the faces of courage and heroism, fear and determination -- what Eisenhower called "the fury of an aroused democracy" -- that shaped the victory of the citizen soldiers whom Hitler had disparaged.

Historic WWII reproduction map. A detailed map of Normandy at a scale of 1:200,000 showing the main sites of the summer 1944 battle. This map is an antique-feeling reproduction of the map originally published by Michelin in 1947. The main map includes place names and features special icons denoting battle dates and parachute drops, as well as an inset showing the broader movements of the military forces.

Set in the tumultuous moments of 1944-45 Budapest, this work discusses the operations of the Budapest Relief and Rescue Committee. Drawing out the contradictions and complexities of the mass deportations of Hungarian Jews during the final phase of World War II, Szita suggests that in the Hungarian context, a commerce in lives ensued, where prominent Zionists like Dr. Rezso Kasztner negotiated with the higher echelons of the SS, trying to garner the freedom of Hungarian Jews. Szita's portrait of the controversial Kasztner is a more sympathetic rendition of a powerful Zionist leader who was later assassinated in Israel for his dealings with Nazi leaders. Szita reveals a story of interweaving personalities and conflicts during arguably the most tragic moment in European history. The author's extensive research is a tremendous contribution to a field of study that has been much ignored by scholarship-the Hungarian holocaust and the trade in human lives.

When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army had no specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of 1939-40, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought the invading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole convinced the United States Army to let him recruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates, wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form them into a unique band of Alpine soldiers. These men endured nearly three years of grueling training in the Colorado Rockies and in the process set new standards for both soldiering and mountaineering. The newly forged 10th Mountain Division finally faced combat in the winter of 1945, in Italy's Apennine Mountains, against the seemingly unbreakable German fortifications north of the Gothic Line. There, they planned and executed what is still regarded as the most daring series of nighttime mountain attacks in U.S. military history, taking Mount Belvedere and the sheer, treacherous face of Riva Ridge to smash the linchpin of the German army's lines.
Drawing on unique cooperation from veterans of the 10th Mountain Division and a vast archive of unpublished letters and documents, The Last Ridge is written with enormous warmth, energy, and honesty. This is one of the most captivating stories of World War II, a blend of Band of Brothers and Into Thin Air. It is a story of young men asked to do the impossible, and succeeding.

"From the Hardcover edition.

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account of it by acclaimed author Stephen Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality -- the stuff of all great adventures.

THE GRIPPING SAGA OF THE RISE AND FALL OF THE JAPANESE NAVAL AIR FORCE IN WORLD WAR II THROUGH THE CAREER OF ONE OF ITS BEST FIGHTER ACES

Written by Martin Caidin from Saburo Sakai's own memoirs and journalist Fred Saito's extensive interviews with the World War II fighter pilot, Samurai! vividly documents the chivalry and valor of the combat aviator who time after time fought American fighter pilots and, with 64 kills, would survive the war as Japan's greatest living ace. Here are the harrowing experiences of one of Japan's greatest aces: from fighter pilot school -- where the harsh training expelled over half of his class -- to the thrilling early Japanese victories; from his incredible six hundred mile fight for life from Guadalcanal to his base in Rabaul, to the poignant story of the now-handicapped veteran's return to the air during the final desperate months of World War II.

They were outnumbered and underrated. They were fresh from the training fields in America and ordered to fight an enemy that had rewritten the book of war and brutally controlled a continent and the air above it. But the men of the 56th fighter group had courage and, more importantly, they had the P-47 Thunderbolt.

This is the incredible story of the U.S. 56th Fighter Group as told by one of its best pilots, Robert S. Johnson, who would rack up a score of twenty-eight kills against the Luftwaffe and become one of America¹s top aces‹one of a special breed of men who changed the course of history.

The 1936 Olympic Games, held in Berlin, was the most political sporting encounter of the twentieth century. It was famed for its spirit of ferocious competition and the rise of legends such as Jesse Owens. But it also forecast the horrors of World War Two and served as a crucible for these dark forces. The Berlin Games brought together athletes, politicians, socialites, diplomats, journalists, soldiers and artists from all over the world. It was the last time they would meet in peace. But hostilities bubbled below the surface as Hitler determined the Games would showcase Nazi prowess and athletes became pawns in his political game. From the fascinating set-piece of the Games, Guy Walters stretches story across a broad canvas, placing those crucial weeks in August in the wider context of the 30s. With Second World War expertise and brilliant narrative flair, Guy Walters brings a wide cast of characters and complex political situation thrillingly alive.

The first in a collaborative venture with the DAILY TELEGRAPH in the UK and Borders in the USA, this lavishly illustrated history of the Second World War includes over 100 specially commissioned maps and over 300 photographs. John Ray's narrative incorporates the latest academic research while remaining very accessible. This is the clearest, most understandable account of history's greatest conflict.