British War World Ii

Nine thousand men of the First British Airborne Division were parachuted into the peaceful countryside that surrounded Arnhem. Their objective was to capture and hold the bridge over the Rhine ahead of the advancing British Second Army. Nine days later, after some of the fiercest street-fighting of the war, 2,000 paratroopers managed to escape to safety.

January 1941. The Luftwaffe continues its assault on Britain from the sky, but ATA pilot Lizzie Hayes is grounded after a crash. Itching to be of use, she hears that DI Kember is investigating the death of a coal miner in Kent and sees her chance to help. They discover the miner died from carbon monoxide poisoning but Kember instinctively suspects foul play. Was it an accident, or murder?

Eleni has been coming to Crete her entire life, swapping her English home for cherished sun-baked summers with her grandfather in his idyllic shoreside villa. When she arrives in 1936, she believes the long, hot weeks ahead will be no different to so many that have gone before. But someone else is visiting the island that year too: a young German man called Otto. And so begins a summer of innocence lost, and love discovered; one that is finite, but not the end.

The joint British and US campaigns in the European theater of operations during World War II rank among the most impressive examples of coalition warfare in history. In just eighteen months, the US and British armies integrated their planning, intelligence, and command structures more thoroughly than any previous alliance.

Accounts of the Second World War usually involve tales of bravery in battle, or stoicism on the home front, as the British public stood together against Fascism. However, the war looks very different when seen through the eyes of the 60,000 conscientious objectors who refused to take up arms and whose stories, unlike those of the First World War, have been almost entirely forgotten.

London, 1940. Winnie Berry is at the heart of the community in her pub, The Battersea Tavern. Her door is always open to those in need of a cup of tea and sympathy. Winnie's abusive husband has left, and she finds herself foolishly falling in love with black-market trader Harry Hampton. But Harry is married, and Winnie soon finds herself tied up in his web of secrets. Meanwhile Winnie's son is back in London—not to visit his own child, but to charm the latest barmaid at the Battersea Tavern, which will lead to devastating consequences for the family.

During the summer of 1940, Hitler's Germany appeared unstoppable. The Nazis were masters of mainland Europe, in alliance with Stalin's Russia, and only the English Channel prevented an immediate invasion. Britain stood alone. Operation Sealion examines just how realistic the German threat of invasion was. The author studies the plans, the available capability and resources, and the Germans' record in Norway and, later, Crete. The author weighs these against the state of Britain's defenses and the relative strengths of the land, air, and naval forces.

Mahl's account brings together bits and pieces of a story that has been told before together with the best research and documentation of the subject available on this crucial period of Western history between 1939 and 1944.

But the summer days seemed to go on forever – and British families were determined to make the best of their paralysed country. For evacuated children, this meant freedom that is unimaginable today: discovering wildlife, foraging from orchards and hedgerows and swimming in the streams. Elsewhere, country estates were requisitioned for the war efforts. Caroline Taggart shows us how Britons succeeded in keeping spirits up with this entertaining collection of first-hand reminiscences from people who lived through those six long years.

In 1942 the young soldier Arthur Dodd was taken prisoner by the German Army and transported to Oswiecim in Polish Upper Silesia. The Germans gave it another name, now synonymous with mankind’s darkest hours. They called it Auschwitz. Forced to do hard labour, starved and savagely beaten, Arthur thought his life would end in Auschwitz. Determined to go down fighting, he sabotaged Nazi industrial work, risked his life to alleviate the suffering of the Jewish prisoners and aided a partisan group planning a mass breakout.

The amazing experiences of the Queen Alexandra nurses in the World Wars is one of the greatest adventure stories of modern times, and - incredibly - remains largely untold. Thousands of middle-class girls, barely out of school, were plucked from sheltered backgrounds, subjected to training regimes unimaginably tough by today's standards, and sent forth to share the harsh conditions of the fighting services.

The Depths of December is a short and punchy (12,000 word) treatment of one of the most pivotal naval battles in World War II, when the British Far East Fleet found itself pitted against the Mitsubishi Bombers of the 22nd Flotilla Imperial Japanese Air Service off the coast of Singapore and Malaya. It is narrated in an engaging and high-energy style by the author of the book.

A new understanding of the post-World War II era, showing what occurred when the British Empire wouldn't step aside for the rising American superpower - with global insights for today.