Military World War Ii

Here is the audio companion to the magnificent seven-part PBS series. The individuals featured in this audiobook are not historians or scholars. They are ordinary men and women who experienced - and helped to win - the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost.

In June 1944, an Allied army of British, American, and Canadian troops sought to open up a Second Front in Normandy. But they were not only fighting to bring the Second World War to an end. After decades of Anglo-American struggle for dominance, they were also contending with one another—to determine who would ascend to global hegemony once Hitler's armies fell. Marc Milner traces this bitter rivalry as it emerged after the First World War and evolved during the fragile peace which led to the Second.

A gripping and authentic World War II naval adventure by a master storyteller.

WWII sniper Caje Cole embarks on a rescue mission behind the new Iron Curtain for American POWs held as political pawns by Russian forces. To free them, he will have to defeat his deadliest adversary yet, the Red Sniper. The brutal Russian believes that he can outgun anyone, but he hasn't met the likes of this backwoods hunter and marksman.

In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the 15 high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory.

Here for the first time, in rich human, political, and scientific detail, is the complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan. Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly - or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than 25 years.

Basil St. Florian is an accomplished agent in the British Army, tasked with dozens of dangerous missions for crown and country across the globe. But his current mission, going undercover in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, might be his toughest assignment yet. He will be searching for an ecclesiastic manuscript that doesn't officially exist, one that genius professor Alan Turing believes may hold the key to a code that could prevent the death of millions and possibly even end the war.

George Wilson has garnered much acclaim for this shattering and enlightening memoir. Detailing his odyssey from July, 1944 until the following summer, If You Survive is a startling first-person account of the final year of World War II. Wilson was the only man from his original company to finish the war. As a Second Lieutenant, he went ashore at Utah Beach after the D-Day invasion amidst burned vehicles, sunken landing craft, and broken fortifications.

On the killing ground that was the island of Guadalcanal, a 2,000-yard-long ridge rose from the jungle canopy. Behind it lay the all-important air base of Henderson Field. And if Henderson Field fell, it would mean the almost certain death or capture of all 12,500 marines on the island. But the marines positioned on the ridge were no normal fighters - they were the hard-fighting men of Edson's Raiders, an elite fighting unit within an already elite Marine Corps.

World War II was much more than just a war among several nations. With the war came new forms of warfare, covert missions, special operations, sabotage, destruction, and espionage and so on among the enemies. Spies were employed, plans were formulated, and disguises were put up by both the Axis and the Allies to obtain information or to hinder the progress of the war. This resulted in some of the most unconventional, creative and ingenious operations that played an important role in shaping the course of the war.

The USS Cowpens and her crew weren’t your typical heroes. She was a flattop that the US Navy initially didn’t want, with a captain nearly scapegoated for the loss of his last command, pilots who self-trained on the planes they would fly into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins, Cowpens and her band of second-string reservists and citizen sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier operation from 1943 to 1945, including the Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.

Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company, which kept getting the tough assignments. Easy Company was responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. Band of Brothers is the account of the men of this remarkable unit.

At the onset of World War II, Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own "Hannibal Trek." Billy Williams became a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them, but his story has since been forgotten.

In this remarkable work, renowned historian Professor Norman Davies draws from years of meticulous research to recount the compelling story of the Polish II Corps or "Anders Army", and their exceptional journey from the Gulag of Siberia through Iran, the Middle East, and North Africa to the battlefields of Italy to fight shoulder-to-shoulder with Allied forces. Complete with firsthand accounts from the men and women who lived through it, this is a unique record of one of the most fascinating episodes of World War II.

The American 345th Bomb Group - the Air Apaches - was legendary in the war against Japan. The first fully trained and fully equipped group sent to the South Pacific, the 345th racked up a devastating score against the enemy. Armed to the teeth with machine guns and fragmentation bombs, and flying their B-25s at impossibly low altitudes - often below 50 feet - the pilots and air crews strafed and bombed enemy installations and shipping with a fury that helped cripple Japan.

General Bradstreet and the American forces on Mars have defeated the incursion by the insectoid Seekers, but at a heavy cost. The Morrigan is nearly out of reaction mass and can’t make it back to Earth, both landers have been destroyed and they have greater than fifty percent casualties. They’re stranded on Mars, saved only by the shelter of the Visitor ship. Until, miraculously, help arrives in the form of a new alliance with the French Coalition government, which provides a resupply ship filled with food, fuel, and reinforcements… both US Marines and French Special Forces. They’re saved.

Lieutenant Bobby Steele, USN, is a fresh-faced and eager naval aviator: a "Nugget" who needs to learn the ropes and complex procedures of taking off and returning safely to his aircraft carrier. A blurry night of drinking lands him in an unfamiliar bed aboard the USS Oklahoma; later that day, the Japanese destroy Pearl Harbor. After cheating death and losing his friend in this act of war, the formerly naive Steele vows to avenge the attack.

In 1943 Winston Churchill and the British Empire needed millions of Indian troops, all of India's industrial output, and tons of Indian grain to support the Allied war effort. Such massive contributions were certain to trigger famine in India. Because Churchill believed that the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, he proceeded, sacrificing millions of Indian lives in order to preserve what he held most dear. The result: the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, in which millions of villagers starved to death.

Lina is just like any other 15-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys - until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia.

Britain's Special Air Service - or SAS - was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II's African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel's desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: Given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war matériel.