World War Ii Memoir

During the Second World War, Flt Lt Richard Stevens led an extraordinary campaign as an RAF nightfighter. Known to contemporaries as "Cat's Eyes" and by the height of his success in July 1941 as the "Lone Wolf", Flt Lt Stevens was the RAF's highest scoring nightfighter pilot with 14 victories. What makes his story unique is that all this was achieved without the aid of radar or another crew member. Instead, Flt Lt Stevens used extraordinary skill, instinct, and innate marksmanship.

The story of the man who won the battle of Midway and avenged Pearl Harbor for the United States. During the Battle of Midway in June 1942, US Navy dive bomber pilot Wade McClusky proved himself to be one of the greatest pilots and combat leaders in American history, but his story has never been told - until now.

A presence in Third Reich cinema, Adolf Hitler also personally financed, ordered, and censored films and newsreels and engaged in complex relationships with their stars and directors. Here, Bill Niven offers a powerful argument for reconsidering Hitler's fascination with film as a means to further the Nazi agenda. In this first English-language work to fully explore Hitler's influence on and relationship with film in Nazi Germany, the author calls on a broad array of archival sources. Niven also explores Hitler's representation in Third Reich cinema, personally and through films focusing on historical figures with whom he was associated

On July 19, 1924, Eric Liddell was on top of the world. He was the most famous Briton at the time, having just won the gold in the Olympic 400-meter race. The story of that race - and the one he didn't run - was told in the popular movie classic Chariots of Fire. But what most of us don't know is what became of Eric Liddell in the years after the credits rolled. As the storm clouds of World War II rolled in, Liddell's strength of character led him to choose an uncertain future in China during World War II to continue helping the Chinese.

A brutal siege. A forgotten heroine. A war-torn romance. And a historian determined to uncover the truth. Untold millions who saw Band of Brothers can finally know the whole story of what happened to American soldiers and civilians in Bastogne during that arduous Winter of 1944/45. In the television version of Band of Brothers, a passing reference is made to an African nurse assisting in an aid station in Bastogne. When military historian Martin King watched the episode, he had to know who that woman was; thus began a multi-year odyssey.

Battle Hardened: An Infantry Officer's Harrowing Journey from D-Day to VE Day tells the story of an American soldier's growth from a Second Lieutenant eager to prove his worth in battle to a skilled and resolute commander over the course of the Northern European Campaign. Craig Chapman delves deep into the personal recollections and mental state of Bill Chapman as he fought against the Nazis, enduring frontline combat and witnessing horror on a massive scale.

The breathtaking memoir by a member of "Nicky's family", a group of 669 Czechoslovakian children who escaped the Holocaust through Sir Nicholas Winton's Kindertransport project. My Train to Freedom relates the trials and achievements of award-winning humanitarian and former Episcopal priest Ivan Backer.

Generals during World War II usually stayed to the rear, but not Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. During D-Day and the Normandy campaign, these commanders of the 82nd "All-American" and the 101st "Screaming Eagle" Airborne Divisions refused to remain behind the lines and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their paratroopers in the thick of combat. Jumping into Normandy during the early hours of D-Day, Ridgway and Taylor fought on the ground for six weeks of combat that cost the airborne divisions more than 40 percent casualties.

Alexander Rosenberg was a smart and curious teenager who spoke many languages, and lived a pampered life with his parents in a tranquil Czechoslovakian town. The rise of fascism and Nazi Germany causes his protected existence to collapse, alongside the illusion of secular Jewish assimilation in 1930s Europe. Using their last reserves of wealth and influence to escape extermination, the Rosenbergs go underground to avoid the Gestapo. Eventually exposed, captured, and taken to Buchenwald, the largest concentration camp in Germany, Alexander and his father collaborate to survive one day at a time

The following cruel dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and sadists from an extensive world history will be described and discussed in further detail: Adolf Eichmann, Benito Mussolini, Enver Pasha, Francisco Pizarro, Josef Mengele, Oliver Cromwell, Paul Joseph Goebbels, Pol Pot, Robespierre, Rudolf Hoess, and Torquemada.

They are the most famous and controversial directors the CIA has ever had - Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Disciples is the story of these dynamic agents and their daring espionage and sabotage in wartime Europe under OSS Director Bill Donovan.

In August 1944, the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place—106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces.

They were known as “Rudder’s Rangers,” the most elite and experienced attack unit the Army had. In December 1944, they would be the spearhead into Germany, taking the war into Hitler’s homeland at last. Their colonel was given this objective: Take Hill 400. After two days, when they were finally relieved, only 16 Rangers remained to stagger down from the top of Hill 400. The Last Hill is filled with unforgettable action and characters—a gripping, finely detailed saga of what the survivors of the battalion would call “our longest day.”

When Hitler invades Poland in 1939, newlyweds Józef and Marysia Buko are catapulted into a sudden and heart-wrenching seven-year separation. Józef honors the soldier’s code and is forced to fight battles in many foreign lands. Marysia remains in Warsaw to join in the underground resistance against Poland’s Nazi occupiers. Each faces life-threatening situations demanding courage, faith, and resilience if the couple is ever to see each other again.

On a cold May morning in 1940, Adrian Vincent arrived in France with his battalion. His war didn’t last long. Within five days the Siege of Calais was over, and nearly all his comrades were killed, wounded or, like him, taken prisoner. After a brutal journey across the breadth of Germany, Vincent and his fellow survivors began their life in Stalag VIIIB, set to work in terrible conditions down a Polish mine. For the next five years, they waged a war not against enemy soldiers but instead versus monotony, disease, cruelty, starvation, and hopelessness.

The World War II era produced many leaders of titanic determination, men whose strengths and weaknesses left an extraordinary imprint on historical affairs. Josip Broz Tito, better known to history as Marshal Tito, was undoubtedly one of these figures. Originally a machinist, Tito leveraged his success in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) and a number of extraordinary strokes of luck into dictatorial rule over Yugoslavia for a span of 35 years. World War II proved the watershed that enabled him to secure control of the country.

Seventy-five years have passed since D-Day, the greatest seaborne invasion in history. The outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance on that chill June morning. Giles Milton’s bold new history narrates the day’s events through the tales of survivors from all sides: the teenage Allied conscript, the crack German defender, the French resistance fighter. Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy, Airman, Gangster, Kill or Die lays bare the absolute terror of those trapped in the front line of Operation Overlord.

Stefan and Marion Hess’s happy childhood was shattered in 1944. Torn from their home in Amsterdam, the six-year-old twins and their parents were deported to a place their mother called “a dying hell”—the infamous concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Inseparable is the vivid account of one family’s struggle to survive the Holocaust.

Train to Nowhere is a war memoir seen through the sardonic eyes of Anita Leslie, a funny and vivacious young woman who reports on her experiences with a dry humour, finding the absurd alongside the tragic. Daughter of a baronet and first cousin once removed of Winston Churchill, she joined the Mechanised Transport Corps as a fully trained mechanic and ambulance driver during WWII, serving in Libya, Syria, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany.

This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of - as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting. But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s "most wanted" list.