Military World War Ii

On September 4, 1944, Antwerp, Europe’s largest port, fell to the Second British Army and it seemed the war would soon be won. But Antwerp was of little value unless the West Scheldt Estuary linking it to the North Sea was also in Allied hands. In his greatest blunder of the war, Field Marshal Montgomery turned his back on the port, leaving the First Canadian Army to fight its way up the long coastal flank. By the time the Canadians and others serving with them reached the area, it had been transformed into a fortress manned by troops ordered to fight to the death.

Patrick K. O'Donnell has made a career of uncovering the hidden history of World War II by tracking down and interviewing its most elite troops: the Rangers, Airborne, Marines, and First Special Service Force, forerunners to Americas's Special Forces.

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final flourish to try to end the war. Richard Overy’s remarkable book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombs. The popular view that bombing worked in this case has now to be set in a broader context of what was happening in Japan in the months before surrender. The easy equation ‘bombing equals surrender’ is no longer viable.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Battle of the Atlantic, written and read by Jonathan Dimbleby. The Battle of the Atlantic was - though often overlooked - crucial to victory in the Second World War. If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery across the Atlantic would have been severed. Mass hunger would have consumed Britain, and the Allied armies would have been prevented from joining in the invasion of Europe.

In this audiobook, you’ll discover all about WWII, including who was involved and why it started, a timeline of events, what life was like at the time, the major battles, who some of the main heroes and villains were, and the lasting impact the war left behind. There are also interesting facts and a bonus interesting facts chapter to finish things off! There are even pronunciation tips and helpful explanations for those new, tricky words. To keep things fun and engaging, each chapter has an activity and answer section—from quizzes and word searches to creative drawing and writing challenges!

Updated and timed for the 60th anniversary (Thanksgiving Day, 1942) of this movie, this critically acclaimed book draws upon years of research, including access to Ingrid Bergman's personal acting diaries and the vast Warner Brothers archives, as well as interviews with many of those close to the film, including the late Paul Henreid, Lauren Bacall, and scriptwriters Howard Koch and Julius Epstein.

On November 5, 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slammed into the Greenland ice cap. Four days later, a B-17 on the search-and-rescue mission also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on the B-17 survived. The U.S. military launched a second daring rescue operation, but the Grumman Duck amphibious plane sent to find the men vanished. In this thrilling adventure, Mitchell Zuckoff offers a spellbinding account of these harrowing crashes and the fate of the survivors and their would-be saviors.

General Chuck Yeager was the greatest test pilot of them all - the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound...the World War II flying ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop-driven P-51 Mustang...the hero who defined a certain quality that all hotshot fly-boys of the postwar era aimed to achieve: the right stuff. Now he tells his whole incredible life story with the same “wide-open, full throttle” approach that has marked his astonishing career.

At President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's behest, Page Wilson left the US to serve in London with Ambassador Joseph Kennedy as he took up his post just before World War II began and the Blitz commenced. With the conflict in Europe already underway, Wilson, working with Kennedy, shares the grip of war with the men and women who are engaged against Germany.

The OSS - Office of Strategic Services - created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the "Oh So Social", it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected before, during, and after the war.

St Nazaire, 1.22 a.m. 28th March 1942. HMS Cambeltown, supported by seventeen wooden motor launches, approached the German-held port intending to smash into the lock gates of the largest dock in the world; the Normandie Dock-Operation Chariot was in full swing. Against vicious Nazi gunfire, the commandos stormed the docks, and within half an hour, succeeded in their chief demolition objectives, but in the heat of battle, the Royal Navy had lost nearly all of its small vessels intended to carry them back to England.

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances.

Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the 20th century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. Studying his life is a fascinating way to imbibe the history of his era and gain insight into key events that have shaped our time.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of First Light by Geoffrey Wellum, read by Andrew Brooke. Two months before the outbreak of the Second World War, 18-year-old Geoffrey Wellum becomes a fighter pilot with the RAF. Desperate to get in the air, he makes it through basic training to become the youngest Spitfire pilot in the prestigious 92 Squadron. Thrust into combat almost immediately, Wellum finds himself flying several sorties a day, caught up in terrifying dogfights with German Me 109s.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 70 Allied men and women were convicted - mostly in secret trials - of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents, and attempting to cause disaffection among Allied troops.

Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.

Heinz Knoke was one of the outstanding German fighter pilots of the Second World War. This vivid firsthand record of his experiences has become a classic among aviation memoirs and is a fascinating counterbalance to the numerous accounts written by Allied pilots.

Infantry Attacks is a classic text in the field of military strategy. Written by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, it was first published in 1937 as a journal-esque chronicle of the author's experiences in World War I, and the lessons he learned there. In it, he provides detailed accounts of a variety of military strategies that rely on speed, deception, and deep penetration into enemy territory to intimidate and surprise opposing forces.

When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried’s work.

A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how America allowed them to get away with it.