Military World War Ii

On December 7, 1941, America was thrust violently into World War II when Japan launched a devastating surprise attack on the U.S. naval installation at Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. This absorbing, enlightening, powerfully dramatic collection is the ultimate chronicle of what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called "a date that will live in infamy."

From the Munich crisis to the dropping of the first atom bomb, and from Hitler's declaration of war on the United States to the D-Day landings - historians suggest "what would have been" if key events in the war had gone differently. Written by an exceptional team of historians as if these world-changing events had really happened, realistic scenarios based on the true capabilities and circumstances of the opposing forces are projected with chilling implications. What if the Nazis had taken London? The alternate outcomes are fascinating and fully realized.

With The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Ship of Ghosts, James D. Hornfischer created essential and enduring narratives about America’s World War II Navy, works of unique immediacy distinguished by rich portraits of ordinary men in extremis and exclusive new information. Now he does the same for the deadliest, most pivotal naval campaign of the Pacific war: Guadalcanal. Neptune’s Inferno is at once the most epic and the most intimate account ever written of the contest for control of the seaways of the Solomon Islands.

On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story.

The fall of Paris to the Nazis in June 1940 seemed like the darkest day of the Second World War; and the liberation of the city in August 1944 felt like the brightest. The liberation was a hinge moment of immense significance for the twentieth century, heralding the final victory of light over darkness and opening the door to a future free from fear. It was also the party of the century. This happy ending has come to feel as if it was pre-ordained. But there was nothing inevitable about it.

It is autumn 1941, and a German U-boat commander and his crew set out on yet another hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. Over the coming weeks they must brave the stormy waters of the Atlantic in their mission to seek out and destroy British supply ships. But the tide is beginning to turn against the Germans in the war for the North Atlantic. Their targets now travel in convoys, fiercely guarded by Royal Navy destroyers, and when contact is finally made the hunters rapidly become the hunted.

As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years? In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials - personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence - to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people to vivid life.

From D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge and more, here is the authorized biography of one of the most celebrated paratroopers of Easy Company, Sergeant Shifty Powers, the legendary sharpshooter from the Band of Brothers.

The term fighter ace grew in prominence with the introduction and development of aerial combat in the First World War. The actual number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an "ace" has varied but is usually considered to be five or more. For the Luftwaffe, a number of its fighter pilots, many of whom had fought with the Legion Condor in Spain, had already gained their Experte, or ace, status in the Battle of France.

It was the best of times and the worst of times for Hollywood before the war. The box office was booming, and the studios’ control of talent and distribution was as airtight as could be hoped. But the industry’s relationship with Washington was decidedly uneasy - hearings and investigations into allegations of corruption and racketeering were multiplying, and hanging in the air was the insinuation that the business was too foreign, too Jewish, too "un-American" in its values and causes. Could an industry this powerful in shaping America’s mind-set really be left in the hands of this crew?

The Nazi Spy Ring in America tells the story of Hitler's attempts to interfere in American affairs by spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, stealing military technology, and mapping US defenses. This fast-paced history provides essential insight into the role of espionage in shaping American perceptions of Germany in the years leading up to US entry into World War II. Fascinating and thoroughly researched, The Nazi Spy Ring in America sheds light on a now-forgotten but significant episode in the history of international relations and the development of the FBI.

Kimi’s Obaachan, her grandmother, had always been a silent presence throughout her youth. Sipping tea by the fire, preparing sushi for the family, or indulgently listening to Ojichan’s (grandfather’s) stories for the thousandth time, Obaachan was a missing link to Kimi’s Japanese heritage, something she had had a mixed relationship with all her life. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, all Kimi ever wanted to do was fit in, spurning traditional Japanese cuisine and her grandfather’s attempts to teach her the language.

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans. In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated - Operation Mincemeat.

Le Débarquement allié en Normandie, le 6 juin 1944, passe à juste titre pour un des grands tournants de la Seconde Guerre mondiale - à tel point que dans l'esprit de beaucoup de Français le reste de la guerre ne fut qu'une formalité. Or, il n'en est rien. Si le Débarquement fut un de ces moments où se forgent les légendes, la bataille qui s'ensuivit, connue sous le nom de bataille de Normandie, fut autrement plus longue, difficile et décisive.

In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: Its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now his talents were put to more devious use: He built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich.

James Bond has nothing on Dusko Popov. A double agent for the Abwehr, MI5 and MI6, and the FBI during World War II, Popov seduced numerous women, spoke five languages, and was a crack shot, all while maintaining his cover as a Yugoslavian diplomat....

This book is a meticulous reconstruction of a tragic episode in the history of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. The SS. St. Louis left Hamburg in May of 1939 with 937 Jewish refugees on board who thought they had bought visas to enter Cuba. Refused entry in Cuba and the United States the ship eventually had to turn around and return to Europe. The voyage to freedom was in the end nothing more than a roundabout journey to the concentration camps.

During World War II, many deeply mysterious events took place in the fog and chaos of conflict. These were classified, hushed up, and kept from the public eye, and yet with the recent opening of secret archives, new light has been shed on these strange circumstances. This brilliant audiobook fills you in on these unsolved cases, teasing fact from fiction. These intriguing and often chilling conspiracies and subterfuges will leave you stunned.

Hitler's Collaborators focuses the spotlight on one of the most controversial aspects of the Nazi wartime occupation of Europe: the citizens of those countries who helped Hitler. Author Philip Morgan moves away from the usual suspects and focuses instead on the businessmen and civil servants who felt obliged to cooperate with the Nazis. These were the people who faced the most difficult choices and dilemmas by dealing with the various Nazi authorities and agencies, and it was their choices which had the greatest impact on the lives and livelihoods of their fellow countrymen.

In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on untapped sources from eastern Europe and forgotten testimonies from Jewish survivors, Black Earth recounts the mass murder of the Jews as an event that is still close to us, more comprehensible than we would like to think and thus all the more terrifying.