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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations
"Don't be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women.
They may be acting under orders." This was only one of the many
warnings given to the 30,000 British troops preparing to land in
the enemy territory of Nazi Germany nine-and-a-half months after
D-Day. The newest addition to the Bodleian Library's bestselling
series of wartime pamphlets, "Instructions for British Servicemen
in Germany, 1944" opens an intriguing window into the politics and
military stratagems that brought about the end of World War
II.
The pamphlet is both a succinct survey of German politics, culture,
and history and a work of British propaganda. Not only does the
pamphlet cover general cultural topics such as food and drink,
currency, and social customs, but it also explains the effect of
years of the war on Germans and their attitudes toward the British.
The book admonishes, "The Germans are not good at controlling their
feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that
Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes
wrong." The mix of humor and crude stereotypes--"If you have to
give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military
manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it"--in the
text make this pamphlet a stark reminder of the wartime fears and
hopes of the British.
By turns a manual on psychological warfare, a travel guide, and a
historical survey, "Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany,
1944" offers incomparable insights into how the British, and by
extension the Allied forces, viewed their fiercest enemy on the eve
of its defeat.
This book chronicles the lives and deaths of courageous Canadians.
It also tells the inspiring story of how the citizens of Nelson of
all ages, with help from surrounding communities, marshalled all
their resources and devoted their civic life for six long years to
help make victory possible. Their efforts prompted some to call
Nelson "The Most Patriotic Town in B.C." And, Nelsons story
highlights an important chapter of Canadian history -- the
invaluable contribution to the Allied war effort made by countless
small Canadian communities across the country.
EUROPE, 1940. NAZI FORCES SWEEP ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WITH A
BRITISH INVASION LIKELY ONLY WEEKS AWAY. NEVER BEFORE HAS A
RESISTANCE MOVEMENT BEEN SO CRUCIAL TO THE WAR EFFORT. In this
definitive appraisal of Anglo-Norwegian cooperation in the Second
World War, Tony Insall reveals how some of the most striking
successes of the Norwegian resistance were the reports produced by
the heroic SIS agents living in the country's desolate wilderness.
Their coast-watching intelligence highlighted the movements of the
German fleet and led to counter-strikes which sank many enemy ships
- most notably the Tirpitz in November 1944. Using previously
unpublished archival material from London, Oslo and Moscow, Insall
explores how SIS and SOE worked effectively with their Norwegian
counterparts to produce some of the most remarkable achievements of
the Second World War.
An in-depth look at the unique actions of the newly formed state of
West Virginia during the Civil War While the taking of hostages by
both the Union and the Confederacy was common during the Civil War,
it was unique for an individual state government to engage in this
practice. The Governor's Pawns examines the history that led to the
taking of political prisoners in western Virginia, the
implementation of a hostage law by Virginia's pro-Union government
in 1863, and the adoption of that law by the newly recognized state
of West Virginia. The roots of state hostage-taking took hold prior
to the Civil War. Sectional politics between eastern and western
Virginia and their local communities, as well as long-standing
family rivalries, resulted in the extreme actions of secession and
war. Randall Gooden uses genealogical sources to tell the
fascinating stories of individuals swept up in the turmoil,
including hostages and their captors, freedmen, and government and
military officials. Gooden emphasizes the personal nature of
civilian arrests and hostage-taking and describes the impact on
communities and the families left scarred by this practice. The
Governor's Pawns takes readers into the city streets, state and
national capitol buildings, army camps, jails and military prisons,
hospitals, and graveyards that accompanied the tit-for-tat style of
pointedly personal warfare.
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The Survivor
(Hardcover)
Josef Lewkowicz, Michael Calvin
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One of the last great untold stories of the Holocaust, The Survivor
is an astonishing account of one man's unbreakable spirit,
unshakeable faith, and extraordinary courage in the face of evil.
At only 16 years old, Josef Lewkowicz became a number, prisoner
85314. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland, he and his father
were separated from their family and herded to the Krakow-Plaszow
concentration camp. Forced to carry out hard labour in brutal
conditions, and to live under the constant threat of extreme
violence and sudden death, before the war was over Josef would
witness the unique horrors of six of the most notorious Nazi
concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Ebensee.
From salt mines to forced marches, summary executions to Amstetten,
where prisoners were used as human shields in Allied bombing, Josef
lived under the spectre of death for many years. When he was
liberated from Ebensee at the end of the war, conditions were
amongst the worst witnessed by allied forces. With his freedom,
Josef returned home to find that he was the only one left alive in
an extended family of 150. Compelled by the need to do something to
avenge that loss, he joined the Jewish police while still in a
displaced persons' camp, and was recruited as an intelligence
officer for the US Army who gave him a team to search for Nazis in
hiding. Whilst rounding up SS leaders, he played a critical role in
identifying and bringing to justice his greatest tormentor, the
Butcher of Plaszow, Amon Goeth, played by Ralph Fiennes in
Schindler's List. He then committed his life to helping the
orphaned children of the Holocaust rebuild their lives. The
Survivor is Josef's extraordinary testimony.
In the early days of the Civil War, Richmond was declared the
capital of the Confederacy, and until now, countless stories from
its tenure as the Southern headquarters have remained buried. Mary
E. Walker, a Union doctor and feminist, was once held captive in
the city for refusing to wear proper women's clothing. A coffee
substitute factory exploded under intriguing circumstances. Many
Confederate soldiers, when in the trenches of battle, thumbed
through the pages of Hugo's "Les Miserables." Author Brian Burns
reveals these and many more curious tales of Civil War Richmond.
Stephen Bungay' s magisterial history is acclaimed as the account
of the Battle of Britain. Unrivalled for its synthesis of all
previous historical accounts, for the quality of its strategic
analysis and its truly compulsive narrative, this is a book
ultimately distinguished by its conclusions - that it was the
British in the Battle who displayed all the virtues of efficiency,
organisation and even ruthlessness we habitually attribute to the
Germans, and they who fell short in their amateurism,
ill-preparedness, poor engineering and even in their old-fashioned
notions of gallantry. An engrossing read for the military scholar
and the general reader alike, this is a classic of military history
that looks beyond the mythology, to explore all the tragedy and
comedy; the brutality and compassion of war.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Hums with living history, human
warmth and indignation' New York Times Less a mystery unsolved than
a secret well kept The mystery has haunted generations since the
Second World War: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?
Now, thanks to radical new technology and the obsession of a
retired FBI agent, this book offers an answer. Rosemary Sullivan
unfolds the story in a gripping, moving narrative. Over thirty
million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal
teenaged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family
and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the
Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But
despite the many works - journalism, books, plays and novels -
devoted to Anne's story, none has ever conclusively explained how
these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over
two years - and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their
door. With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and
a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands
of pages of documents - some never before seen - and interviewed
scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilising
methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly
pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest - and
came to a shocking conclusion. The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold
Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary
Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behaviour
of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of
suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime
Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or
careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust.
The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military
history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. In an
eerie replay of the disastrous British retreat from Kabul in 1842,
coalition troops withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of
military campaigning. The subsequent collapse of the Afghan
government and its army shocked the world, as a resurgent Taliban
gathered its forces and swept across the country. Thousands of
Afghans who had worked with the allies were left to the meagre
mercy of the Taliban. As the Taliban went door to door to execute
'collaborators', a small international task force set out on a
daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as
possible. Drawing on a wide range of first-hand accounts - the
politicians and officers who planned the trans-continental rescue,
the young soldiers who were faced with the unenviable task of
keeping a crowd of thousands of desperate people at bay, former
interpreters and soldiers of the Afghan Special Forces who made it
out - Escape from Kabul is the harrowing true story of Operation
Pitting and the Kabul airlift.
The Sunday Times top 10 bestseller The incredibly moving and
powerful memoir of an Auschwitz survivor who made headlines around
the world. With a foreword by King Charles III. 'Unforgettable' -
Daily Mail When Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert was liberated in
1945, a Jewish-American soldier gave her a banknote on which he'd
written 'Good luck and happiness'. And when her great-grandson,
Dov, decided to use social media to track down the family of the
GI, 96-year-old Lily found herself making headlines round the
world. Lily had promised herself that if she survived Auschwitz she
would tell everyone the truth about the camp. Now was her chance.
In Lily's Promise she writes movingly about her happy childhood in
Hungary, the death of her mother and two youngest siblings on their
arrival at Auschwitz in 1944 and her determination to keep her two
other sisters safe. She describes the inhumanity of the camp and
the small acts of defiance that gave her strength. From there she
and her sisters became slave labour in a munitions factory, and
then faced a death march that they barely survived. Lily lost so
much, but she built a new life for herself and her family, first in
Israel and then in London. It wasn't easy; the pain of her past was
always with her, but this extraordinary woman found the strength to
speak out in the hope that such evil would never happen again.
'Utterly compelling, heartbreaking, truthful and yet redemptive, a
memoir of the Holocaust, a testimony of irrepressible spirit and an
unforgettable family chronicle, written in lucid prose by a truly
remarkable woman . . . I couldn't stop reading it.' - Simon Sebag
Montefiore
**Selected as a Book of the Year by the Spectator and the Daily
Telegraph** 'Fascinating ... carefully researched and beautifully
written' DAVID DIMBLEBY 'Utterly riveting' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'Robert-Sackville West writes tenderly about death and remembrance'
GERARD DEGROOT, THE TIMES ______________________ By the end of the
First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million
British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost
forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders. In
The Searchers, Robert Sackville-West brings together the
extraordinary, moving accounts of those who dedicated their lives
to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the remarkable
lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss:
Rudyard Kipling's quest for his son's grave; E.M. Forster's
conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria;
desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the
campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the
exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of
thousands of bodies. It was a search that would span a century:
from the department set up to investigate the fate of missing
comrades in the war's aftermath, to the present day, when DNA
profiling continues to aid efforts to recover, identify and honour
these men. As the rest of the country found ways to repair and move
on, countless families were consumed by this mission, undertaking
arduous, often hopeless, journeys to discover what happened to
their husbands, brothers and sons. Giving prominence to the deep,
personal battles of those left behind, The Searchers brings the
legacy of war vividly to life in a testament to the bravery,
compassion and resilience of the human spirit. 'Remarkable' JOHN
CAREY, SUNDAY TIMES 'This is an outstanding book' LITERARY REVIEW
'Deeply moving' DAILY MAIL
This narrative history tells the story of the German occupation of
Normandy (1940-44), and the Allied liberation. Following the fall
of France in 1940, Normandy formed part of the Reich's western
border and its history for the next four years. On the coast, vast
defenses were built up, and large numbers of German troops were
stationed throughout the region, all in the midst of the local
population. Much of the story is told in the words of French,
German, and Allied participants, including last letters of executed
hostages and resisters, accounts of everyday life and eyewitness
reports of aerial, naval, and ground combat operations during the
Liberation. When the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, all
were witness to the greatest amphibious landing in history. This,
then, is the story of the 51-month-nightmare that was Normandy's
war, told while it is still possible to record the personal stories
of survivors, which very soon will not be the case.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY
BESTSELLER "As exciting as any spy novel" (Daily News, New York),
The Princess Spy follows the hidden history of an ordinary American
girl who became one of the OSS's most daring World War II spies
before marrying into European nobility. Perfect for fans of A Woman
of No Importance and Code Girls. When Aline Griffith was born in a
quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would
go on to live "a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman
only played at in Notorious" (Time). As the United States enters
the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to
aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed
young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.
Aline's life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named
Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for
her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of
Strategic Services--forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and
expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder,
but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the
upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials,
diplomats, and titled Europeans. Against this glamorous backdrop of
galas and dinner parties, she recruits sub-agents and engages in
deep-cover espionage. Even after marrying the Count of Romanones,
one of the wealthiest men in Spain, Aline secretly continues her
covert activities, being given special assignments when abroad that
would benefit from her impeccable pedigree and social connections.
"[A] meticulously researched, beautifully crafted work of
nonfiction that reads like a James Bond thriller" (Bookreporter),
The Princess Spy brings to vivid life the dazzling adventures of a
spirited American woman who risked everything to serve her country.
Most people are familiar with the use of horses and their
often-heroic actions in the First World War, but what about camels,
monkeys and the mighty elephant? In this wonderfully illustrated
title, learn about how animals were trained and used, the role pets
had to play in the war, and the plight of animals on the farm, down
the mine and in the street. Although animals were used heavily on
the front line and in major battles such as the Somme, they also
had a role to play at home and, indeed, in almost every aspect of
wartime life. From their first use to how animals were treated when
the war ended, and including the involvement of the RSPCA and
Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, this volume contains stories that
will shock, delight and move you.
A fascinating, forgotten story of the six brilliant women who
launched modern computing. As the Cold War began, America's race
for tech supremacy was taking off. Experts rushed to complete the
top-secret computing research started during World War II, among
them six gifted mathematicians: a patriotic Quaker, a Jewish
bookworm, a Yugoslav genius, a native Gaelic speaker, a sophomore
from the Bronx, and a farmer's daughter from Missouri. Their
mission? Programming the world's first and only
supercomputer-before any code or programming languages existed.
These pioneers triumphed against sexist attitudes and huge
technical challenges to invent computer programming, yet their
monumental contribution has never been recognised-until now. Over a
decade, Kathy Kleiman met with four of the original six ENIAC
Programmers and recorded their stories. Here, with a light touch
and a serious mind, she exposes the deliberate erasure of their
achievements and restores the women to their rightful place as
revolutionaries, bringing to life their camaraderie, their
determination, and their rapidly changing world. As big tech
struggles with gender inequality and momentum builds in restoring
women to history, the time has come for this engrossing story to be
uncovered and celebrated.
One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime of
World War II comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish
girl, Anne Frank. Today, The Diary of a Young Girl has sold over 25
million copies world-wide; this is the definitive edition released
to mark the 70th anniversary of the day the diary begins. '12 June
1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have
never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a
great source of comfort and support' The Diary of a Young Girl is
one of the most celebrated and enduring books of the last century.
Tens of millions have read it since it was first published in 1947
and it remains a deeply admired testament to the indestructible
nature of the human spirit. This definitive edition restores thirty
per cent if the original manuscript, which was deleted from the
original edition. It reveals Anne as a teenage girl who fretted
about and tried to cope with her own emerging sexuality and who
also veered between being a carefree child and an aware adult. Anne
Frank and her family fled the horrors of Nazi occupation by hiding
in the back of a warehouse in Amsterdam for two years with another
family and a German dentist. Aged thirteen when she went into the
secret annexe, Anne kept a diary. She movingly revealed how the
eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with
hunger, the daily threat of discovery and death and being cut off
from the outside world, as well as petty misunderstandings and the
unbearable strain of living like prisoners. The Diary of a Young
Girl is a timeless true story to be rediscovered by each new
generation. For young readers and adults it continues to bring to
life Anne's extraordinary courage and struggle throughout her
ordeal. This is the definitive edition of the diary of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was born on the 12 June 1929. She died while imprisoned
at Bergen-Belsen, three months short of her sixteenth birthday.
This seventieth anniversary, definitive edition of The Diary of a
Young Girl is poignant, heartbreaking and a book that everyone
should read.
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