First World War History

After the end of World War II, the race for technological supremacy sped on. Top-secret research into ballistics and computing, begun during the war to aid those on the front lines, continued across the United States as engineers and programmers rushed to complete their confidential assignments. Among them were six pioneering women, tasked with figuring out how to program the world's first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer—better known as the ENIAC. Proving Ground restores these women to their rightful place as technological revolutionaries.

On January 24, 1915, a German naval force commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper conducted a raid on British fishing fleets in the area of the Dogger Banks. The force was engaged by a British force, which had been alerted by a decoded radio intercept. The ensuing battle would prove to be the largest and longest surface engagement until the Battle of Jutland the following summer.

On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu, located at the Southern end of the Palau Islands. Boasting a large airfield from which the Americans could mount bomber campaigns, Peleliu was a strategically essential part of Gen. MacArthur's long-awaited liberation of the Philippines. With the famed 1st Marine Division making the amphibious assault, Pacific High Command was confident that victory would be theirs in just a few days. They were drastically wrong.

In 1940, the last patch of resistance to the Nazi war machine was a little strip of beach whose name would soon be famous around the world: Dunkirk. Over 300,000 Allied soldiers crowded into the little harbor. If Hitler destroyed them, Britain would be left defenseless, and the war would almost be over. The British had other ideas. Over the next ten days, the people of Britain launched an unprecedented rescue effort. Countless little ships steamed forth from every port in England to bring the boys back home.

The late Van Slayden trained on the PT-3 kite-like biplane in 1937, but he learned fighter pilot operations flying "by the seat of his pants," walking away from five crashes. Shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Utah Beach to help establish a US Army Air Forces' (AAF's) presence in Europe. He flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a fighter-bomber, in combat over Northern France and commanded the 36th Fighter Group—the "Fightin' 36th"—at Batogne, St. Vith, the Bridgehead at Remagen, Operations Grenade, Clarion, Varsity and other missions.

During the First World War, the British army's most consistent German opponent was Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Commanding more than a million men as a General, and then Field Marshal, in the Imperial German Army, he held off the attacks of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French and then Sir Douglas Haig for four long years. But Rupprecht was to lose not only the war, but his son and his throne. In Haig's Enemy, Jonathan Boff explores the tragic tale of Rupprecht's war - the story of a man caught under the wheels of modern industrial warfare.

This is the story of how America's first women soldiers helped win World War I, earned the vote, and fought the US Army. In 1918 the US Army Signal Corps sent 223 women to France. They were masters of the latest technology: the telephone switchboard. General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, demanded female "wire experts" when he discovered that inexperienced doughboys were unable to keep him connected with troops under fire.

As award-winning biographer and science writer Graham Farmelo describes in Churchill's Bomb, the British set out to investigate the possibility of building nuclear weapons before their American colleagues. But when scientists in Britain first discovered a way to build an atomic bomb, Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not make the most of his country's lead and was slow to realize the bomb's strategic implications.

With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps - the last all-white branch of the U.S. military - was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Night Raid on Truk covers the ground-breaking events of that night as well as the individuals, events, implements of war and technology that led to the success of the raid. In addition, it utilizes the oral histories of Martin, whose vision and hard work brought the mission to fruition and Joseph Doyle, one of the 12 pilots who participated in the raid to bring the events of that night to life.

When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army had no specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of 1939-40, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought the invading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named Charles Minot “Minnie” Dole convinced the United States Army to let him recruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates, wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form them into a unique band of Alpine soldiers.

In The Day Wall Street Exploded, Beverly Gage tells the story of a once infamous but now largely forgotten terrorist attack. On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded in a spray of metal and fire, turning the busiest corner of America's financial center into a war zone. Based on thousands of pages of Bureau of Investigation reports, this historical detective saga traces the four-year hunt for the perpetrators, a worldwide effort that spread as far as Italy and the new Soviet nation.

American history is full of heroes: individuals who went above and beyond to ensure the safety and freedom of others. In some cases, they paid the ultimate price. This is the story of one such forgotten warrior, a World War II US Navy fighter pilot charged with defending Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, and other lands against Japanese air attacks with the Cactus Air Force.

Those who had decoded and seen the Japanese communications in early December 1941 would not be surprised when they heard about an attack on December 7, 1941. They would, however, be astonished when they heard where that attack took place. Posted on the other side of the world, it was early on the morning of December 8 in the Philippines when American general Douglas MacArthur received news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor hours earlier.

From the tragic loss of courageous airmen who gave their lives for our freedom to the gentle breezes that swirl through graves in a quiet cemetery in Belgium’s countryside, Bob Steele takes us on a personal journey of history and revelation as he recounts the story of his uncle, a gunner on a World War II bomber, and his own personal quest to uncover the fates of the crewmen, their families, and gracious Europeans who honored them.

FNH Audio presents a complete and unabridged audio book of a book published in 1917 at the height of the First World War. The author, Jeffery Farnol, is better known for his works of romantic fiction, but in this departure, Jeffery recites the events observations and anecdotes of his tour of Great Britain's war effort.

China-Burma-India is one of the most forgotten theaters of World War 2. As the United States entered the war after Pearl Harbor, it looked to China as a source of manpower as well as a base for bombers and a way to eventually invade Japan. The Japanese, British, Americans, and Chinese each had their own motivations and policies in the Pacific that would ultimately lead to the involvement of Burma in the Pacific War. The conflict in Burma was an intricate affair that may be best understood through the story of the first Yunnan Expedition into Burma.

Luego de finalizada la I Guerra Mundial, quedó muy claro que el país más afectado fue Alemania. De este escenario se aprovecharía el jefe del partido Nazi Adolf Hitler, quien gracias a una prédica incendiaria, nacionalista, xenófoba y racista, buscaría iniciar una nueva guerra. Polonia, el débil país vecino del Este, sería su primer objetivo, iniciando así la II Guerra Mundial en 1939.