Starting with leaflet drops in 1940 the aerial offensive against the Nazis' homeland grew into a huge armada that pulverised much of Germany, seriously damaging her ability to make war and killing hundreds of thousands. By day the Flying Fortresses of the Mighty Eighth US Airforce battled the Focke-Wulfs of Luftflotte Reich, and by night it was the turn of Bomber Command's Lancasters to fight off night-fighting Messerschmitts and Heinkels. For the Allied airmen who fought this war the price was frighteningly high, for those who opposed them – in the air and on the ground – it was even higher. As the bombing increased, Nazi high command were forced to devote more and more resources to try and defeat the Allied campaign just as those same resources were desperately needed elsewhere, both on the Russian Front and, after D-Day on 6 June 1944, on the new Western Front. Written from the ‘other side’ and told as much as possible through the words of the veterans, this is an important book on one of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War.

'If Germany stays united and marches to the rhythm of its revolutionary socialist outlook, it will be unbeatable. Our indestructible will to life, and the driving force of the Fuhrer's personality guarantee this.' (Joseph Goebbels, 4 June 1943.) It wasn't and it didn't. After the collapse of the German Army in the West in August 1944, the western Allies raced towards the borders of the Reich itself, and in the East the victorious Red Army was doing the same - everyone believed the war would be over by Christmas. But it wasn't. Somehow, Nazi Germany managed to stave off final defeat until May the following year. In the end the agony was brought to a close with the hammer and sickle flying over the ruins of Berlin. The much-vaunted 'Thousand Year Reich' had lasted just a dozen years, but in that time it had wrought havoc across the globe. With defeat came the wholesale surrender of the once-proud Wehrmacht; hosts of men suddenly found themselves miles from home in territories ravaged by war. Amongst their ranks were thousands of non-Germans from all over Europe, men - mostly ex-Waffen-SS - who had thrown in their lot with the Germans; they were now 'collaborators' and 'traitors' and would return home to face the justice of the victors. Most histories focus on the fate of Adolf Hitler and German High Command on the road to the bunker beneath the rubble of Berlin, but on the German side in particular, as defeat loomed this was a battle that would be fought by junior officers and other ranks as the Wehrmacht fell apart. Following on from his successful D-Day Through German Eyes: How the Wehrmacht Lost France, Jonathan Trigg seeks with this second volume to tell the story of Nazi Germany's final defeat through the voices of the men - and women - who witnessed it first-hand. This narrative is written from the 'other side' and told as much as possible through the words of the combatants and civilian witnesses.

The divisions of the Waffen-SS were among the elite of Hitler's armies in the Second World War. But alongside the Germans in the Waffen-SS fought an astonishingly high number of volunteers from other countries. By the end of the Second World War these foreign volunteers comprised half of all Hitler's Waffen-SS, and filled the ranks of over twenty-four of the nominal thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions. So during the most brutal war that mankind has ever known, hundreds of thousands of men flocked to fight for a country that was not theirs, and for a cause that was one of the most monstrous and barbaric in history. Who were these men, and why did they fight? Hitler's Gauls is an in-depth examination of one of these legions of foreign volunteers, the Charlemagne division, who were recruited entirely from conquered France. The men in Charlemagne, often motivated by an extreme anti-communist zeal, fought hard on the Eastern Front including battles of near annihilation in the snows of Pomerania and the final stand in the ruins of Berlin. This definitive history, illustrated with rare photographs, explores the background, training, key figures and full combat record of one of Hitler's lesser known foreign units of the Second World War.

Five months, one week and three days of hell. The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using Friedrich Paulus’s 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intense bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble. The battle degenerated into house-to-house fighting, as both sides fought for the city on the Volga. By mid-November, the Germans were on the brink of victory as the Soviet defenders clung on to a final few slivers of land along the west bank of the river. Then, on 19 November, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, targeting the weaker Romanian armies protecting the 6th Army’s flanks. The ill-equipped Romanians were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded. Hitler was determined to hold the city – the symbolic namesake of the Soviet leader – and forbade the 6th Army from attempting a breakout, insisting they be supplied by air instead; in February 1943, without food or ammunition, some 91,000 starving, lice-ridden Germans surrendered. The losses on both sides were eye-watering – the Soviets alone suffered something approaching half a million dead and more than 650,000 sick or wounded – and in his unique style author Jonathan Trigg reveals the human agony behind such statistics through the words of the Germans who were there. Was it all over after the surrender? Of course not. Death marches did for many: Landser Josef Farber remembered: ‘We set out with 1,200 men … about 120 were alive when we reached the camp.’ This was war at its rawest – this was Stalingrad.

Everyone is familiar with the story of D-Day and the triumphal liberation of France by the Allies: a barbaric enemy was defeated by Allied ingenuity, courage and overwhelming military force, helped by dreadful German command errors and the terrible state of Wehrmacht forces in the West - but is this all true? The Wehrmacht was hugely experienced, equipped with some of the best weaponry of the war and was holding its own in Italy and Russia at the time. Berlin knew the invasion was coming and had had years to prepare for it. So how did the Germans view the impending invasion and campaign, did they feel ready, what forces did they have and could they have done better? Previous histories have focused on the 'clash of the generals'; the battle between von Runstedt and Eisenhower, Montgomery and Rommel, but on the German side in particular this was a battle that would be fought by divisional and regimental commanders; the 'German D-Day colonels' upon whom the real business of trying to defeat the invasion fell - it was they and their men, outnumbered and outgunned, who somehow held Normandy for ten whole weeks against the greatest seaborne invasion force ever assembled, and occasionally even came close to defeating it. In the end they lost, and the majority of these unsung leaders ended up killed, wounded or captured in the fighting. As for their men, they ranged from elite Waffen-SS stormtroopers through to bewildered teenagers, old men, 'recycled' invalids and even anti-communist Eastern legions. Written from the 'other side' and told through the words of the veterans, this book is a revelation.

Nazi Germany's assault on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Operation Barbarossa, was the largest invasion in history. Almost 3.5 million men smashed into Stalin's Red Army, reaching the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and Sevastopol. But not all of this vast army was German; indeed, by the summer of 1942, over 500,000 were Romanians, Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Croatians - Hitler's Axis allies. As part of the German offensive that year, more than four allied armies advanced to the Don only to be utterly annihilated in the Red Army's Saturn and Uranus winter offensives. Hundreds of thousands were killed, wounded or captured, and the German Sixth Army was left surrounded and dying in the rubble of Stalingrad. Poorly equipped, often badly led and totally unprepared for the war, they were asked to fight. Drawing on first-hand accounts from veterans and civilians, as well as previously unpublished source material, Death on the Don tells the story of one of the greatest military disasters of the Second World War.

Spring 1941 – the Third Reich triumphant! Having taken over Germany in 1933, Hitler launched a series of lightning campaigns across Europe that crushed Poland, Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries and then the Balkans. Only Great Britain had withstood the Nazis, but even it was battered and bruised and close to defeat. Then, on 22 June 1941 – in the most momentous decision of the war – the Nazi dictator turned East and flung his victorious armies into the vastness of the Soviet Union. Having signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler back in 1939, Stalin was taken completely by surprise by the German attack. Hitler’s Wehrmacht – buoyed by years of untrammelled success and led by some of the greatest commanders Nazi Germany had to offer – crashed across the border and sent the Red Army reeling. The German plan was simple and its scale staggering; over three million men, armed with over three thousand panzers, the same number of aircraft, more than seven thousand guns and carried by over six hundred thousand vehicles and even more horses, would be joined by over half a million soldiers from allied countries, and together they would destroy the largest army in the world while advancing a thousand miles to the very borders of Asiatic Russia. There they would halt and what remained of the Soviet Union and the communist faith that spawned it would wither and die. In the newly conquered lebensraum, Hitler and the Nazis would then commence the biggest mass human extermination programme in history. Barbarossa was huge, but it was fought by men; and on the German side in particular, it would be fought by junior officers and simple soldiers as the Wehrmacht tried to win the war once and for all.

At the very beginning of the Second World War Germany invaded and occupied Belgium. Yet less than a year later some of Belgium's citizens volunteered to join the Waffen-SS and go and fight on the newly formed Eastern Front against Stalin's Soviet Union. By the end of the war thousands had volunteered. Casualties were high, but there were survivors and they returned home, often to face condemnation and retribution. This book is about the war they fought in their own words, the very few who remain, the last testament before they are all gone. The motivations of these men were complex: the Flemings have their own culture and identity and some longed for a state independent of French-speaking Belgium. Some volunteered through a deep hatred of communism, often fuelled by their Catholic faith. Some, of course, were simply persuaded by Hitler's vision of a new world order. The Flemish Waffen-SS, in various configurations, saw action on the Eastern Front from 1941 onwards - at the siege of Leningrad, in the Ukraine, then retreating into Germany itself with the remnants surrendering to the Allies as the Reich lay in ruins. This was hard fighting: and for those men who had chosen this path, the war was not over. Some stayed in Germany, some returned home, perhaps to trial as war criminals. The interviews and images gathered by Jonathan Trigg are vital historical documents.

The Nazis' dream of a world dominated by legions of Aryan 'supermen', forged in battle and absolutely loyal to Hitler, was epitomised by the Waffen-SS. Created as a supreme military elite, it grew to become Nazi Germany's 'second army', an immense force totalling almost one million men by the end of the War. An astonishing fact about the SS is that thousands of its members were not German. Men stepped forward from almost every nation in Europe - for many, sometimes complex reasons - that included hatred of Bolshevism and nationalist sentiment or even straightforward anti-Semitism. Foremost amongst them were Scandinavians from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Thousands were recruited from 1940 onwards and fought with distinction on the Russian Front. They served at first in national legions but were then brought together in the Wiking Panzer Division and the Nordland Panzer-grenadier Division. In Hitler's Vikings, Jonathan Trigg details the battles these men fought and what inspired them to join the Waffen-SS, based wherever possible on interviews with surviving veterans. Many of the photographs reproduced here have never before been published. Hitler's 'Vikings' were amongst the last men still fighting in the ruins of Berlin in 1945 - their story is truly remarkable. Jonathan Trigg served in the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, reaching the rank of Captain and completing tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and the Middle East. He is an established writer on military history, with a particular interest in foreign volunteer formations in the Second World War. Hitler's Vikings is his fourth volume in Spellmount's Hitler's Legions series.

Motivated by anti-communist zeal and a burning desire for Flemish self-rule, the men of the SS Langemarck answered Himmler's call to arms and earned a reputation for steadfastness in battle from friend and foe alike, right through to their eventual destruction by the Soviets in 1945. the exploits of key figures such as the famous Flemish Knight's Cross winner Remy Schrijnen are covered in detail. Written by a former captain in the British Army, this is the second in Spellmount's new series on Hitler's foreign Legions, following the best-selling Hitler's Gauls.