'An extraordinary account of heroism and sacrifice. An unexpected and important story, rivetingly told. Rip roaring stuff. Get this into the paws of the sea dog in your life.' - Griff Rhys Jones 'A book that had to be written' - Let's Talk 'People ashore don’t realise what a grim war we are waging at sea with the Germans. A cold-blooded war, in a way I think requiring the maximum of bravery from the men of both sides in the long run, as it is so ceaseless and intangible. You just don’t know whether the next moment will be your last.' Robert Hichens, RNVSR Several years ago, Julia Jones was searching through long-forgotten items stored at her house and discovered some suitcases of old written material, which turned out to be accounts by her father of his experiences in the RNVSR (Royal Naval Volunteer Supplementary Reserve). She realised that as a child she’d met some of the people mentioned, and although she was too young to truly know them, these youthful impressions spurred her on to rediscovery and understanding. In this absorbing book Julia tells the compelling stories of the yachtsmen. Some were famous (such as Sir Peter Scott), others were wealthy (such as August Courtauld, who returned his pay to help with the war effort) but the majority were just 'ordinary' professionals such as publishers, lawyers and advertising agents, who signed up because they loved sailing. Few could ever have dreamed that they would end up acting in areas that were so far beyond their normal lives, as they found themselves commanding destroyers and submarines, and undertaking covert missions of sabotage. Some undertook the dangerous daily drudgery of minesweeping; others tackled unexploded bombs, engaged the enemy in high-speed attacks or played key roles in Ian Fleming's famous intelligence commandos. This varied crew of men were given tasks vital to the war effort, requiring endurance, extraordinary bravery, resourcefulness and quick thinking. Some died in the process, but for the ones who survived, Julia asks how their experiences changed them. Could their love of sailing and the sea survive the harsh realities of war?

Who's going to guide you when your military boot camp class is over? What's going to help you prepare for the next boot camp challenge? With the aid of superb line artworks, SAS and Elite Forces Guide: Extreme Fitness demonstrates to the reader how special forces soldiers are trained to reach and maintain peak physical fitness. The book explores the different training methods to build up physical strength, speed, agility and endurance, across running, swimming, weight training, circuit training and triathlon events. In addition, it addresses the importance of diet and nutrition, injuries and rest, and using mental fitness to help physical health. With more than 300 easy-to-follow artworks, training tips and workouts used by the U.S. Navy SEALs and British Royal Marines, Extreme Fitness is the definitive guide for the person who wants to be their best.

John T. Farnham, a sharpshooter in the Union Army, wrote a substantial diary entry nearly every day during his three-year enlistment, sent over 50 long articles to his hometown newspaper, and mailed some 600 letters home. He described training, battles, skirmishes, encampments, furloughs, marches, hospital life, and clerkships at the Iron Brigade headquarters and the War Department. He met Lincoln and acquired a blood-stained cuff taken from his assassinated body. He befriended freed slaves, teaching them to read and write and built them a school. He campaigned for Lincoln's re-election. He subscribed to three newspapers and several magazines and devoured 22 books. He attended 23 plays and six concerts during his service. He was gregarious and popular, naming in his diaries 108 friends in the service and 156 at home. Frail and sickly, he died of tuberculosis four years after his discharge. He paints a detailed portrait of the lives of ordinary soldiers in the Union Army, their food, living conditions, relations among officers and men, ordeals, triumphs, and tragedies. Nominated for the Gilder Lehrman Prize

From bestselling author Robert Greene comes a new guide to the strategies of war that can help us gain mastery in the modern world. Spanning world civilisations, and synthesising dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts, The Concise 33 Strategies of War is a guide to the subtle social game of everyday life. Based on profound and timeless lessons, it is abundantly illustrated with examples of the genius and folly of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher and Hannibal to Ulysses S. Grant, as well as diplomats, captains of industry and Samurai swordsmen.

Shortly after Ponce de Leon discovered La Florida in 1513, early Spanish settlers found a large and sheltered bay on the Gulf of Mexico. The bay became known as Pensacola after the Penzacola Indians who lived along the shore. In 1698, the first permanent colony was established by pioneers who recognized the strategic importance of a fine harbor with protective barrier islands and a high bluff, or barranca, on the mainland across from a defensible mouth. For centuries the bay was fortified and refortified. Battles raged in four wars, and five nations raised their flags along the harbor. Pensacola Bay: A Military History traces the rich military history of the bay from Spanish times to the present-day Naval Air Station Pensacola, home of the Navy's Blue Angels. The book presents over 200 black-and-white images that highlight the acquisition of Florida by the United States in 1821, the construction of fortifications and naval installations, the Civil War, both World Wars, the Old Navy Yard, the Naval Air Station, and present-day military activity.

'Magisterial . . . [a] fine, balanced and superb account. It deserves to be read for many years to come.' TELEGRAPH March 1945. Allied troops are poised to cross the Rhine and sweep on into Germany. Victory is at last within their grasp. But if they believe this victory can be easily won, they face swift disillusionment. The final I 00 days of the Second World War will prove to be bitterly and bloodily fought, village by village, town by town. This is the extraordinary and gripping story of those final I00 days. _________________________________________________ 'Superbly written and full of wisdom and deep understanding, this will stand as a defining work on these darkest months of the conflic.' JAMES HOLLAND 'This is the most vivid and detailed narrative of the subject that we are likely to see.' MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE 'An impressive work. Lively, informative and comprehensively researched.' CAROLINE MOOREHEAD, SPECTATOR 'An important contribution to military history. A great read and powerful reminder of how the Second World War in Europe was definitely not over until the final surrender.' BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE

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 to Palestine -- that will not only change their lives but also help create a nation and forever alter the course of world history.

Without the Red (or Soviet) Army, it is likely that the Western Allies would have taken much longer to defeat the Third Reich - they may even have lost altogether. However even decades after the war's end, little is widely known about this giant organization that numbered millions of soldiers. Broken down by key battles or campaigns within each theatre of war, The Red Army in World War II shows the strengths and organizational structures of the Red Army's ground forces campaign by campaign, building into a detailed compendium of information. With extensive organizational diagrams and full-colour campaign maps showing the disposition of units, The Red Army in World War II is an easy-to-use guide to the Russian, Polish, Czech and units of other nationalities that served as part of Stalin's army, their strengths during key campaigns and battles, and details of where they served throughout the war. The book will be an essential reference guide for any serious enthusiast of World War II.

How does one play bridge in a gas mask? Or enjoy motoring without consuming petrol? Or deal with a nationwide shortage of pea-sticks? For this compact little book Heath Robinson joined forces with writer Cecil Hunt to show civilians 'how to make the best of things' during the air raids, rationing, allotment tending and blackouts of the Second World War. The result is a warm celebration of the British population's ability to 'make do and mend'.

This book critically conceptualises positive security and explores multiple areas in global politics where positive security can be studied as an alternative to the existing understandings and practices of security. Structured through a framework on the practice and ethics of everyday security, the book defines positive security as a focal point of contextual and spatiotemporal moments that emerge through encounters with 'the other' in everyday politics. In these moments, an actor can show attentiveness and humility towards 'the other'. In this book, the authors present their own understandings of positive security, offering an in-depth discussion and analysis of the Global North and South divides, delving into many aspects such as human security, migration, gender, Indigenous issues and perceptions of security in the Arctic, and challenges and tensions for and within NATO. The book concludes by reflecting on the significance of positive security, looking at its application for other current issues, including how to understand and manage new (in)security challenges including hybrid threats and warfare. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, critical security, and peace studies.

The Constitution was one of the US Navy's first six original frigates, ordered as a counter to the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean. Fast and heavily built, she was nominally rated as a 44 but mounted thirty 24-pdr and twenty-two 12-pdr cannon. Her most famous encounter, after which she became nicknamed 'Old Ironsides' due to British shot being seen bouncing off her hull, involved HMS Guerriere, which she smashed; the same treatment was meted out to HMS Java four months later. Now the oldest commissioned warship afloat in thw world, she is berthed in Boston Harbor. The 'Anatomy of the Ship' series aims to provide the finest documentation of individual ships and ship types ever published. What makes the series unique is a complete set of superbly executed line drawings, both the conventional type of plan as well as explanatory views, with fully descriptive keys. These are supported by technical details and a record of the ship's service history.

“A date which will live in infamy.”—US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Sunday, December 7, 1941, was supposed to be a day of rest for the military personnel at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor naval base on the island of Oahu. But at 7:55 a.m., Japanese carrier-based planes launched a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet moored in the harbour. Thousands of lives were lost that day, drawing the United States into World War II and beginning a new phase of the war in East Asia. In Pearl Harbor, our expert author offers a concise photographic guide to this key turning point in World War II. The book is divided into chapters covering the origins and military strength of the naval station; Japanese plans and dispositions; the attack itself; the damage caused; the clean-up operation and aftermath; and the life of the base today. See rare photographs of Japanese airplanes taking off to launch the attack; aerial views of the US naval base before and during the air attack; the destruction wrought; the key figures involved on both sides; and the memorials that have been erected, especially to the sunken battleship USS Arizona. Pearl Harbor provides a photographic exploration of this momentous event and its aftermath in 160 dramatic photos.

The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal was preparing to launch attacks into North Vietnam when one of its jets accidentally fired a rocket into an aircraft occupied by pilot John McCain. A huge fire ensued, and McCain barely escaped before a 1,000-pound bomb on his plane exploded, causing a chain reaction with other bombs on surrounding planes. The crew struggled for days to extinguish the fires, but, in the end, the tragedy took the lives of 134 men. For thirty-five years, the terrible loss of life has been blamed on the sailors themselves, but this meticulously documented history shows that they were truly the victims and heroes.

In September 2012, UNESCO held its first ever consultation with member states on the subject of Holocaust and genocide education, recognising the importance of teaching the history of genocide. The aim was to find approaches to raise awareness about the recurrence of mass atrocities and genocide in different environments. It is in this context that Mohamed Adhikari has put together this title, giving perspective to historical European overseas conquests which included many instances of the extermination of indigenous peoples. In cases where invading commercial stock farmers clashed with hunter-gatherers - in southern Africa, Australia and the Americas - the conflict was particularly destructive, often resulting in a degree of dispossession and slaughter that destroyed the ability of these societies to reproduce themselves biologically or culturally. The question of whether this form of colonial conflict was inherently genocidal has not in any systematic way been addressed by scholars until now. Through chapters written by leading academics, this volume explores the nature of conflict between hunter-gatherers and market-oriented stock farmers in geographically and historically diverse instances, using a wide range of theoretical approaches and comparative studies, which also consider exceptions to the pattern of extermination.

The Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939, was the first battle against fascism in Europe. Five months after the victory of dictator Francisco Franco in Spain the conflict moved to Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War. Fascism and anti-fascism again faced each other on the battlefield. Amid the heat of the Nazi invasions in Europe, anti-fascist resistance groups formed by ordinary citizens emerged in virtually all European countries. Although the Franco dictatorship was not directly involved in the world war, in Spain an anti-Franco resistance movement was organized in 1939 and lasted until 1952. Although the Spanish resistance constituted the first and last anti-fascist resistance movement in Europe, the Spanish case has been consistently overlooked by international studies. This book inserts the Spanish anti-Franco resistance into the European context, proposing a new narrative of anti-fascist resistances in Europe. At the same time, the book offers a new interpretation of guerrilla phenomena with a strongly peasant character, as was the case of the resistance in Spain. The author underlines the importance of primary groups (kinship, neighbourhood, friendship) and secondary groups (camaraderie and political loyalties) in the mobilisation and organisation of armed groups. For this study, Jorge Marco establishes twelve variables that permit him to distinguish between 'neighbours in arms' and 'modern guerrilla'. The studied combinations of groups and types demonstrates the plurality of the identities and cultures of the anti-fascist resistance in Spain. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

Spain's Martyred Cities studies international reactions to the Spanish Civil War between the Battle of Madrid in November 1936 and the bombing of Guernica in April 1937. Many of the iconic events of the war belong to this key period, when international perceptions of the conflict were decisively shaped. The subject is approached through French and British newspapers and pamphlets, and events are linked to both their immediate press coverage and subsequent literary and artistic representations. For contemporaries, the aerial bombardments of Madrid, Guernica and other cities formed part of a single unbroken narrative. It was only later that Guernica acquired its perceived symbolic primacy. The language of martyrdom' was sometimes evoked in pro-Republican writing as a means of challenging Francoist claims to the religious and moral high ground. But the ur-text was The Martyrdom of Madrid (1937), a compilation of the posthumous, censored reports of the French correspondent Louis Delapree on the bombing of Madrid. Delapree's earliest reporting (JulyOctober 1936) was from both the Nationalist and Republican zones, and is used to provide an introductory overview of the early stages of the war; he was an eyewitness of the aerial bombardments of Madrid in November 1936; subsequently, the posthumous publication of his writings created a major stir in Paris. Delapree's powerful and emotive writing provides a platform from which to discuss issues of press censorship and journalistic practice. It is notable for its initial impact, when publication in no less than five languages enabled it to reach writers as different as Virginia Woolf and Andre Malraux. This book shows that Delapree's reports were also an important catalyst in Picasso's artistic involvement in the war, culminating in his Guernica. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies

From the author of THE PERFECT STORM and WAR comes a book about why men miss war, why Londoners missed the Blitz, and what we can all learn from American Indian captives who refused to go home. Tribe is a look at post-traumatic stress disorder and the challenges veterans face returning to society. Using his background in anthropology, Sebastian Junger argues that the problem lies not with vets or with the trauma they've suffered, but with the society to which they are trying to return. One of the most puzzling things about veterans who experience PTSD is that the majority never even saw combat-and yet they feel deeply alienated and out of place back home. The reason may lie in our natural inclination, as a species, to live in groups of thirty to fifty people who are entirely reliant on one another for safety, comfort and a sense of meaning: in short, the life of a soldier. It is one of the ironies of the modern age that as affluence rises in a society, so do rates of suicide, depression and of course PTSD. In a wealthy society people don't need to cooperate with one another, so they often lead much lonelier lives that lead to psychological distress. There is a way for modern society to reverse this trend, however, and studying how veterans react to coming home may provide a clue to how to do it. But it won't be easy.

The German Navy - known as the Kriegsmarine - played a crucial role during World War II in disrupting Allied shipping, especially in the early years, when Britain stood alone against Nazi aggression following the fall of France. Broken down by campaign and key encounters within each theatre of war, German Kriegsmarine in World War II illustrates the strengths and organizational structures of the Third Reich's naval forces, building into a detailed compendium of information. Full-colour order of battle tree diagrams at fleet and flotilla level help the reader quickly understand how and where the ships and U-boats of the German Navy were employed at any given time between 1939 and 1945. Reference tables provide fleet strengths while organizational diagrams show the types and numbers of ships involved in specific operations, such as the U-Boat wolfpacks that hunted Allied merchant shipping in the North Atlantic and the invasion fleet used for the assault on Crete. With extensive organizational diagrams and full-colour operations maps, German Kriegsmarine in World War II is an easy-to-use guide to German naval forces. The book is an essential reference for anyone with a serious interest in the naval warfare of World War II.

The captivating biography of three women courageously struggling to survive the turbulence of war-time Berlin. Meet Maria, Hannelore, and Kaethe, telephone operators during the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany. Based on live interviews, personal documents, and historical research, author Arthur Rathburn has created a compelling page-turner of decades of friendship and courage throughout the daily tribulations of peace and war.

This book, translated from the original Spanish, is the primary academic and historical study of the Blue Division -- a Falangist initiative involving the dispatch of some forty-thousand Spanish combatants (over a half of whom paid with their lives, health, or liberty) to the Russian Front during the Second World War. Xavier Moreno Julia does not limit himself to relating their deeds under arms, but also analyses -- for the first time -- the political background in detail: the complex relations between the Spanish government and Hitler's Germany; the internal conflicts between the Falangists and the Army; the rise and fall of Franco's brother-in-law, Minister Ramon Serrano Suner, who inspired the Blue Division and became the second most powerful person in Spain; and the attitude of General Agustin Munoz Grandes, commander of the Blue Division, who was encouraged by Berlin to seriously consider the possibility of taking over the reins of Spanish power. In the end, there were 45,500 reasons that led to joining the Blue Division -- one for each young man who decided to enlist. To understand all of the complex reasons behind their military service under German command is impossible at this juncture. It is an irrecoverable past that lies in Spanish cemeteries and on the Russian steppes. This book, based on massive documentation in German, British and Spanish archives, is an essential source of information to understand Spain in the 1940s -- an epoch when the Caudillo's power and the regime's good fortune were less secure than is often believed. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, LSE.

The mass of available data about World War II has never been as large as it is now, yet it has become increasingly complicated to interpret it in a meaningful way. Packed with cleverly designed graphics, charts and diagrams, World War II: Infographics offers a new approach by telling the story of the conflict visually. Encompassing the conflict from its roots to its aftermath, more than 50 themes are treated in great detail, ranging from the rise of the Far Right in pre-war Europe and mass mobilization, to evolving military tactics and technology and the financial and human cost of the conflict. Throughout, the shifting balance of power between the Axis and the Allies and the global nature of the war and its devastation are made strikingly clear.

When Roland Regan and Frederick Mauriello went off to fight the Germans in World War II, they packed cameras and notepaper and documented their experiences, Roland with photos, Frederick with letters to his family. Roland's photos, developed after the war, never went through Army censorship and show an honest firsthand view of the war from the eyes of an enlisted man. Frederick's letters show a young man's devotion to his family, his good-will, and his growing distrust of military authority. As a whole, this collection is a testimony to the courage, faith, and loyalty of all the men who served during World War II. These priceless documents, presented by their sons in this book, offer readers an intimate glimpse at a unique aspect of the American experience.

Over 20,000 deserters and war resisters paid the ultimate price at the hands of Hitler's brutal war judges and bloody executioners. Thousands of others died in prison camps and penal battalions. Even for those who escaped death, life was never the same. Even today, many of those who refused to serve the Nazis live as pariahs, scorned by a society that professes to hate the regime they had actively opposed. In contrast, their judges, masters of unbelievably draconian sentences, thrived in post-war Germany and beyond as honoured men in prestigious positions. Hitler's Deserters: When Law Merged with Terror is the story of this incredible injustice. It is the disturbing story of what happened to those who refused to fight for the Third Reich, and - even more horrifying - it is the story of an international community that has turned its back on them.