World War Memoir

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

An enthralling story that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule.

When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No." As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: "We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death." What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence - some recently declassified - that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina.

The USS Seawolf was one of the greatest submarine raiders of all time. Having narrowly avoided the attack on Pearl Harbor the Seawolf set out for the seas of the Pacific to wreak havoc on Japanese shipping. Joseph Melvin Eckberg was on the Seawolf from her maiden voyage and remained with her until January 1943. As chief radioman he was instrumental in assisting Captain Frederick Warder to find and destroy enemy targets. From the claustrophobia of being trapped under water and the overwhelming fear of depth charges to the joys of aiding the war-effort and the camaraderie on the ship.

Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the listener discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries.

Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.

In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements.

In 1941 a 31-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization - the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence. Fourcade was captured twice by the Nazis - and both times she managed to escape.

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, answers these problems in this fascinating book.

The Nuremberg Interviews reveals the chilling innermost thoughts of the former Nazi officials under indictment at the famous postwar trial. The architects of one of history’s greatest atrocities speak out about their lives, their careers in the Nazi Party, and their views on the Holocaust. Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a US Army psychiatrist. Dr. Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defense and prosecution witnesses.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.

What does an elite Navy SEAL Team operator trained to kill the United States’ most dangerous enemies do when he realizes his skills aren’t being properly utilized? He leaves the Navy. In American Mercenary, Daniel Corbett takes listeners on a wild ride through the unadulterated, morally ambiguous, and riveting world of being a hired gun. From Abu Dhabi to Washington, D.C., Cairo to San Diego, Belgrade to places that must remain secret, this is a world where money rules, and where adventure, danger, and absurdity often follow.

Audie Murphy was a desperately poor eighteen-year-old orphan when he joined the Army, nineteen when he first saw a buddy die from an enemy bullet and an enemy die from one of his own. By VE day, he had killed at least 240 Germans, had single-handedly destroyed a German tank in one battle and held off six tanks in another, and had become the most decorated soldier in American history, winning every medal his country offered, including the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In the summer of 1942, Stanley Lovell, a renowned industrial chemist, received a mysterious order to report to an unfamiliar building in Washington, D.C. When he arrived, he was led to a barren room where he waited to meet the man who had summoned him. After a disconcerting amount of time, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the OSS, walked in the door. Following this life-changing encounter, Lovell became the head of a secret group of scientists who developed dirty tricks for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA.

This celebrated classic gives a soldier's-eye-view of the Guadalcanal battles; crucial to World War II, the war that continues to fascinate us all. Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. One of only two on-location news correspondents, he lived alongside the soldiers: sleeping on the ground - only to be awoken by air raids - eating meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II.

Simo Häyhä was a man of action who spoke very little, but he was respected by his men and his superiors and given many difficult missions, including taking out specific targets. Able to move silently and swiftly through the landscape, melting into the snowbound surroundings in his white camouflage fatigues, his aim was deadly and his quarry rarely escaped. The Russians learned of his reputation as a marksman and tried several times to kill him by indirect fire. He was promoted from corporal to second lieutenant and he was awarded the Cross of Kollaa.

Sidekick to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and supervisor of Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, General Hans Kammler was responsible for the construction of Hitler's slave labor sites and concentration camps. He personally altered the design of Auschwitz to increase crowding, ensuring that epidemic diseases would complement the work of the gas chambers. Why has the world forgotten this monster? Kammler was declared dead after the war. But the aide who testified to Kammler's supposed "suicide" never produced the general's dog tags or any other proof of death.

More than seven decades after the end of the Second World War, the era of the Nazi hunters is drawing to a close as they and the hunted die off. Their saga can now be told almost in its entirety. After the Nuremberg trials and the start of the Cold War, most of the victors in World War II lost interest in prosecuting Nazi war criminals. Many of the lower-ranking perpetrators quickly blended in with the millions who were seeking to rebuild their lives in a new Europe, while those who felt most at risk fled the continent.

An unexpected phone call hurls Reshef into an intensive two-year journey, during which he has to solve a mystery that took shape in the 1930s and gradually unfolded in the present. A mysterious lot, a forgotten bank account, a people long gone - along with their memory which were obliterated during the Holocaust. All of these rise to the surface, bearing with them memories and emotions previously hidden away in the shoebox.

In this first volume of a new chronicle, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending on Germany's comprehensive military defeat of Poland in 1939.