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At the beginning of 1942, the Tirpitz, the heaviest battleship ever
built by a European navy was on the cusp of breaking out into the
north Atlantic. The prospect of a huge German battleship patrolling
the Atlantic posed a grave threat to the convoys that served as the
lifeline for an embattled Britain. After attempted bombing raids
failed, a new and far more daring plan was created; to ram a
battleship loaded with explosives into St. Nazaire, the only dry
dock capable of supporting this unstoppable juggernaut. This volume
in the Casemate Illustrated series gives a clear overview of the
planning and execution of the raid and its aftermath, accompanied
by 125 photographs and images, including colour profiles and maps.
4 juin 1944, 18h30, sud de l'Angleterre. Des officiers de liaison
montent a bord de vingt-deux batiments francais. Enfermes avec les
commandants, ils leur remettent une grande enveloppe cachetee. Des
le depart des Anglais, les " pachas " decouvrent leur mission dans
l'operation " Neptune " (nom de code donne au debarquement des
troupes alliees en Normandie). Les equipages sont reunis. Les
hommes decouvrent qu'ils seront les premiers Francais a contribuer
au debarquement. Beaucoup parmi ces marins venus de France qui vont
participer a la plus vaste operation navale de tous les temps ont
rejoint de Gaulle en Grande-Bretagne. En revanche certains, a
commencer par leur chef l'Amiral Jaujard, sont plus reticents a
l'egard du general. C'est l'histoire de ces bateaux et de ces
hommes qui forme le coeur du livre. Parmi eux, Querville avec son
sous-marin la Junon qui a debarque en Norvege un commando charge de
faire sauter une usine d'eau lourde; ou Levasseur avec l'Aconit qui
a coule deux U-Boote en douze heures. La participation des marins
francais est rarement, voire jamais, evoquee lorsqu'on celebre les
anniversaires du debarquement en Normandie. Il n'est que temps de
reparer l'injustice faite a ces hommes, a leurs batiments et a la
Marine Nationale.
Four years before the Normandy landings, the French coast was the
scene of another major episode in the Second World War. This was
Operation Dynamo, much less well known than D-Day. And yet you only
have to look at the statistics to see how important this part of
the story of the Campaign of France was: between 27 May and 4 June,
almost 340 000 French and British troops were evacuated from the
Dunkirk pocket by a miscellaneous fleet of 850 boats, among which
hundreds of fishing vessels, pleasure boats, lifeboats or Merchant
Navy vessels. Thanks to the sailors' courage but also the RAF
pilots' skill, this operation without precedent was a success which
enabled the British to continue to fight the Germans, even though
they had to leave behind most of their equipment and weapons.
Replaced in its context, Operation Dynamo is here narrated in
detail with numerous period photos, maps, aircraft profiles and
uniform plates. This military operation and human adventure without
precedent breathes again, 77 years later thanks to the film
director Christopher Nolan, the author of the Batman trilogy and
Interstellar which, with Dunkirk, has become an international
blockbuster, to which a chapter of this book is devoted
Quatre ans avant le debarquement allie en Normandie, le littoral
francais a ete le theatre d'un autre episode majeur de la Seconde
Guerre mondiale. Il s'agit de l'Operation Dynamo, nettement moins
connue que le Jour J. Et pourtant, il suffit de rappeler quelques
chiffres pour mesurer l'importance de cette page de l'histoire de
la Campagne de France : entre le 27 mai et le 4 juin, pres de 350
000 soldats britanniques et francais ont ete evacues de la poche de
Dunkerque par une flotte heteroclite de 850 bateaux. Pres de 80 ans
apres, Jean-Charles Stasi, auteur de plusieurs livres a succes aux
editions Heimdal, revient sur ce fait majeur du dernier conflit
mondial, de la genese a ses consequences, dans un ouvrage au style
alerte, illustre de nombreuses photos en noir et blanc et en
couleurs, mais aussi de cartes, d'infographies, de profils d'avions
et de bateaux.
Ils sont un peu les oublies de l'histoire du Debarquement. Dans la
nuit du 5 au 6 juin 1944, alors que les hommes des 82e et 101e
divisions aeroportees americaines et ceux de la 6e division
Airborne britannique s'appretent a sauter sur la Normandie,
trente-six commandos francais sont largues sur la Bretagne. Ils
appartiennent au Special Air Service (SAS), une unite des forces
speciales britanniques creee en juillet 1941 et dont la devise est
" who dares wins " (qui ose gagne). Si leur effectif est bien plus
modeste que celui de leurs camarades parachutistes allies, leur
mission n'en est pas moins capitale : coordonner et entrainer la
Resistance - tres active dans cette region - pour empecher les
Allemands qui y sont stationnes d'aller renforcer les troupes deja
positionnees sur la cote ou a proximite. Les trente-six hommes qui
vont sauter sont des elements precurseurs, ils doivent creer deux
bases permettant l'arrivee du reste de l'effectif et de materiel
dans les jours suivants afin de lancer des operations de guerilla
et de sabotage : Samwest, dans la foret de Duhault (Cotes d'Armor),
et Dingson, dans la foret de Saint-Marcel (Morbihan). Tout au long
de la bataille de Normandie, l'effectif des SAS francais ne va
cesser de croitre et ils vont jouer un role majeur pour la
liberation de la Bretagne. C'est leur histoire meconnue qui est
racontee dans ce livre, de leur entrainement en Grande-Bretagne
jusqu'a leurs derniers combats en Hollande, en avril 1945. Avec de
tres nombreuses photos d'epoque, des objets et des armes ayant
appartenu a certains de ces parachutistes, des cartes et des
infographies pour revivre au plus pres le quotidien de ces
combattants d'elite au cours de l'ete 1944. Ouvrage edite en
partenariat avec le Musee de la Resistance bretonne de Saint-Marcel
(Morbihan). Journaliste et ecrivain, Jean-Charles Stasi est
l'auteur d'une vingtaine d'ouvrages dont plusieurs consacres a la
Seconde Guerre mondiale. Apres avoir relate l'epopee du commando
Kieffer (Commando Kieffer, les Francais debarquent en Normandie,
Heimdal 2014), il tenait a raconter l'histoire de ces autres
combattants francais ayant pris part aux combats du Jour J.
In June 1944, Johannes Boerner is 19 years and Leon Gautier 21.
These two elite soldiers will take part in the battle of Normandy
in the frontline, each convinced to fight for the good cause. One
will experience the thrill of victory, the other the humiliation of
defeat and prison camps. Seventy years later, they live in the same
place, Ouistreham, a seaside resort of the Calvados where Leon
Gautier landed among the 177 French of the mythical Commando
Kieffer. Johannes Boerner, him, married a Norman and became French
in 1956. They are friends and reflect together their experience so
that humanity never again know the horror of World War II.
Tuesday, 6th June 1944: 130,000 Allied soldiers arrived on the
beaches of Normandy. Among them, 177 Frenchmen. If this number
seems modest, its symbolic weight is immense. These men who had
refused the Nazi occupation rediscovered the land of their birth,
arms in hand, four years after having left. They formed part of the
commandos, those elite corps created by Churchill after the
disastrous evacuation of Dunkirk. At their head, Philippe Kieffer,
a banker for 40 years, whose enthusiasm and obstinacy had combined
to convince the British to accept the French at the heart of their
shock troops. But the importance of "Commando Kieffer" to the
success of Operation Overlord is not simply limited to the
symbolic. On D-Day, the French Green Berets would achieve, at the
price of heavy losses, all of their objectives, notably the taking
of the casino at Ouistreham, transformed by the Germans into a
powerfully fortified bunker. Illustrated with many photos, maps,
plans, and infographics which plunge the reader into the heart of
the action, this book permits one to follow the extroardinary
course of action more closely than ever, from their exhaustive
training in Great Britain up until the final raids at the beginning
of 1945.
More than seventy-five years after wards, "Chariot" is still
thought of as the most daring and most spectacular commando
operation of the whole of WWII, called on the other side of the
Channel "the greatest raid of all time". Indeed you had to be mad
or British to go up the estuary of the River Loire at night, into
Saint-Nazaire in order to ram an old destroyer full of explosives
on a time fuse against the Joubert docks. And all this was done to
make the only dry-dock vast enough to take the super cruiser
Tirpitz, the terror of all the Allied navies, totally unusable.
This raid had as tremendous an impact in France as it did in
Britain, proving to the Allies and to all of occupied Europe that
the Third Reich was not invulnerable. To tell the story of this
extraordinary coup de main, Jean-Charles Stasi has consulted the
German, British and French archives, interviewed former commandoes
as well as the inhabitants of Saint-Nazaire who witnessed the raid.
His tale is lively and alert and is illustrated with a lot of
period photographs, as well as maps, drawings and boat profiles, to
plunge the reader into the heart of the action and to allow him
relive the preparations for this extraordinary operation. Text in
French.
Marcel Migeo is a big name in the heroic epoch of French aviation,
even though he is not as famous as Mermoz, Guillaumet or
Saint-Exupery - he knew all three of them. Refusing a path all
mapped-out as a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, he chose
aviation because of his taste for travel and adventure. In January
1923, he left for Syria, sent there as a fighter pilot in the 53rd
Escadrille of the Levant, based at Deir-ez-zor. On a Breguet XIV he
took part in peace keeping operations in Syria, earning himself the
Croix de Guerre and the Medaille du Levant and bar. Each day he
wrote down the important events of his daily life in his moleskin
notebook: his flying missions, his relations with the local
population, his discovery of Syrian towns and countryside. These
notes gave rise to a manuscript, unpublished until today. He became
an insurance broker in his native city, Reims. Marcel Migeo wrote
ten or so books most of which were devoted to flying. We owe him
accounts of the war, like Batailles dans le ciel (Grand Prix
Litteraire de l'Aero-Club de France) and biographies of
Saint-Exupery, Henri Guillaumet, Maryse Bastie and Dider Daurat.
Almost a hundred years later, his writings on Syria have a
pertinent and astonishingly contemporary flavour since the country
is being torn apart by a six-year-old civil war which has taken on
an international dimension. The journalist and writer, Patrick
Poivre d'Arvor, himself from Reims, has written the preface to this
book as a tribute to the memory of Marcel Migeo whom he knew and
whose tales of youth in turn have something to do with developing
his own interest in that heroic period of aviation.
The Normandy Landings of 6 June 1944 were a major and decisive
episode of the Second World War and have been, for more than sixty
years, the object of countless books, films, investigations,
reports and television series. However, is it known that D-Day was
preceded by, on 27 April 1944, a tragic rehearsal that resulted in
over nine-hundred deaths and which remained a secret for decades ?
Is it known that the beautiful Lily Sergueiev, an artist and great
traveller, was considered by the Allies as their best
disinformation agent....and by the Germans as their most efficient
agent in Great Britain ? Or is it known that, Lionel Crabb, the
Royal Navy's star frogman, was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's
character, James Bond ? Is it known that the Germans' favourite
song Lili Marlene, was also very popular with the allied soldiers ?
These are some of the surprising revelations contained in this book
which is both original and informative, based on over half a
century of research undertaken by Philippe Bauduin and which casts
a new light on D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Fascinated by new
technology that he discovered during the summer of 1944, a time
when he was still a teenager, Philippe Bauduin went on to undertake
a scientific career which notably led him to set up the GANIL in
Caen (Large Heavy Ion National Accelerator). He is the author of
seventeen books and numerous articles on various aspects of the
Landings. Jean-Charles Stasi has worked as a journalist since 1985
and is the author of twenty books, most of which deal with the
Second World War. He was awarded the Prix Grand Temoin 2007 and the
Grand Prix de la Legion d'Honneur 2008 for his book L'Epopee du
Normandie-Niemen, co-written with Roland de la Poype.
The period between the two World Wars is an extremely interesting
but largely unknown part of the German aviation history. Signed in
June 1919 and promulgated in January 1920, the Treaty of Versailles
included many measures to limit the Germany's rearmament: it
revoked the right to having tanks, artillery and military aviation,
which caused the dissolution of the Luftstreitkraften. However, the
Treaty did not damage the aeronautical industry as much, which
indeed managed to bypass the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty
regarding building vehicles and equipment, especially in other
countries. For pilot training and equipment testing, Germany could
count on the secret aviation school in Lipetsk, USSR, allowing the
Weimar Republic to develop aeronautical expertise without France
and the UK knowing. The school of Lipetsk closed in September 1933,
a few months after the Nazis seized power in Germany. In 1935, the
Third Reich restored its air force: the Luftwaffe, which will
become in 1939, on the eve of World War II, the most powerful
military aviation of the Western world. Historian Jacques Pernet -
an expert in German and American aviation - and journalist and
writer Jean-Charles Stasi vividly tell us the story of German
aviation in this richly illustrated book.
A major event of the Second World War, the landing of June 6, 1944
has been, for more than seventy years, the subject of countless
books, films, surveys, reportages and TV series. Nowadays many are
aware of the unprecedented technological achievements implied in
the planning and construction of two artificial harbours, or of the
heroic sacrifice of the Rangers under Lieutenant Colonel James
Rudder's command, who stormed the Pointe du Hoc; or again of the
martyrdom the of GIs of the 29th and 1st Divisions of the American
infantry on Omaha Beach, which went down in history by the sad name
of "Bloody Ohama ". But did you know that the D Day was preceded in
late April 1944 by a similar event that took place off the Slapton
Sands coast, in Devon, and that caused the death of more than seven
hundred soldiers, yet remaining a secret for decades? Did you know
that the beautiful Lily Sergeyev, artist and traveller, was
considered by the Allies one of their best agents... and by the
Germans as one of their most effective spies in Britain? Did you
know that Lionel Crabb, sentinel diver of the Royal Navy on the
Normandy coast, inspired Ian Fleming to create the character of
James Jump? Did you know that the US troops, when completely
surrounded in Mortain, were supplied with penicillin, morphine and
plasma by dropping empty bomb shells stuffed with chocolate bars
used as a cushion to avoid damages? Did you know that Lili Marlene,
the Germans' favourite song, was also popular among Allied
soldiers? These are only some of the original and instructive
revelations you will find in this book, which is based on the
rigorous research carried out in over half a century by Philippe
Bauduin, who is passionate about the Landing and the Battle of
Normandy since his childhood, and is author of a dozen books on the
subject as well as numerous articles.
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