Showing titles in World War II

A fourth-generation soldier tells the story of his father’s tank battalion, the “Spearhead,” that selflessly led the charge on the front lines from Normandy into Germany—against impossible odds, technologically superior weaponry, and a fanatical enemy on its home turf—and the heroes...

Willi Langbein was just thirteen when the Nazis took him away from his parents under the pretense of protecting him. Their real reason was to turn him into cannon-fodder for use against Hitler’s enemies. Deployed to the collapsing Eastern Front in the last days of the war, Willi, now aged fourteen, and his schoolmates were ordered to stave off the relentless Russian advance. None were expected to return alive from the final battles of the Third Reich.

As World War II raged, millions of men and women confronted injury, destruction, separation from home and loved ones, chaos, and death. These challenges and traumas and many others forced an entire generation of everyday heroes to take stock of their lives. And in the process, many turned to God...

Spies are a feature of countless works of fiction in which they often discover secrets on which the fate of nations hang in the balance. Reality is generally rather more mundane as spies often gather low-level intelligence that only makes sense when it is examined by analysts and compared to information from other sources. Espionage provides clues to what the enemy is planning, but on its own it rarely changes the course of a war. Moreover, real spies are generally anonymous and not the bold, swashbuckling action heroes depicted in fiction.

Mush Morton was a warrior without peer. At the helm of the USS Wahoo he completely changed the way the submarines fought in the Pacific War. He would relentlessly attack the Japanese at every opportunity, burning through his supply of torpedoes in record time on every patrol. Over the course of only nine months and five patrols, Morton racked up an astounding list of achievements, including being the first American skipper to wipe out an entire enemy convoy single-handedly.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, millions of young American men were eager to join up and defend their country. William Swanson was among them. The View from My Foxhole tells William Swanson's story of fighting in the jungles of Bougainville and Guam and the ash heap of Iwo Jima. Through it he maintains his sense of humor and thanks his lucky stars for every day he survives.

This book provides a complete overview of U.S. and British escape and evasion during World War II. It tells the story of the escape and evasion organizations, the Resistance-operated lines, and the dangers faced by the escapers and the evaders in a logical and compelling narrative. Heroism, betrayal, sacrifice, and cowardice are all elements of this fascinating part of the rich tapestry of World War II.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill crossed the Rhine River on March 25th, 1945. His presence was calculated to emphasize the British role in the defeat of the Germans and to divert attention away from Patton and the Americans who had crossed the Rhine at Remagen two weeks earlier. Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower had warned his commanders that Churchill would seek to steal the limelight. Eisenhower ordered his commanders to refuse any requests to cross the Rhine--“The answer must be 'no!'”

For decades, the dramatic stories of World War II soldiers have been the stuff of memoirs, interviews, novels, documentaries, and feature films. Yet the men and women who served in less visible roles, never engaging in physical combat, have received scant attention.

The heroic true story of Major Richard Bong, America’s greatest fighter pilot of the Pacific War and the nation’s top flying ace of World War II Arriving as a fresh US Army Air Forces pilot in New Guinea in late 1942, Richard Bong wasted no time taking on the Japanese, shooting down two...

The Parachute Regiment is Britain's elite airborne infantry. On the 80th anniversary of their first crucial campaign, in Operation Torch in North Africa, historian and broadcaster Mark Urban combines perspectives from German and British sources to tell the gripping stories of the men who had the resilience, fitness and self-reliance to be "Red Devils"—the name they were given by their German enemies.

Victor Capesius custodiaba la reserva nazi de gas Zyklon B y proporcionaba fármacos que eran empleados por médicos para llevar a cabo experimentos espantosos y mortales en mujeres embarazadas y niños. Hurgaba en los cadáveres de los judíos en busca de empastes de oro, y llevado por la codicia, arrastraba pesadas maletas llenas de ese metal extraído a miles de víctimas. El farmacéutico de Auschwitz cuenta su historia. Tras una exhaustiva investigación, Patricia Posner recrea la historia de Victor Capesius.

08. September 1957. Zwölf Jahre sind vergangen, als ich in dieses Buch das letzte Mal einschrieb. Es war der 23. Februar 1945, Dieter war 12 Jahre alt. Zwei Lebensabschnitte von großer Bedeutung, die alles, aber auch alles enthalten, was das menschliche Schicksal an Glück und Leid zu enthalten vermag. Charlotte Korsch, eine junge Mutter in Berlin, begann ihr Tagebuch, als ihr Sohn Dieter im Jahre 1933 in Berlin geboren wurde, wenige Wochen nach Hitlers Machtübernahme.

The exhilarating, inspiring story of Len Lomell, an Army Ranger who on D-Day almost single-handedly knocked out the big German guns before they could fire on the American invasion force, and whose later exploits spanned the most dramatic battles of World War II. Len Lomell was drafted to the...

Het verhaal van Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema blijft mensen fascineren, nu met de musical over zijn leven en de grootse herdenking van de bevrijding is zijn biografie meer dan populair. "Soldaat van Oranje" is niet alleen een spannend verhaal maar ook een historisch document over de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Prins Bernhard schreef niet voor niets over dit boek: "Ik ben erbij geweest, en zo was het." "Soldaat van Oranje" is een van de beroemdste boeken over de Tweede Wereldoorlog.

Markus Bauer erzählt die bewegende Geschichte seines Großonkels Leonhard März, der als Pak-Schütze den Wahnsinn an der Ostfront durchlebte und schließlich aus dem Kessel von Tarnopol 1944 nicht mehr zurückkehrte... Was Sie erwartet: "Wenn's so weitergeht, wie es jetzt ist, bleibt in einem Monat vom Regiment nichts mehr übrig; jeden Tag 10 bis 20 Verwundete und Tote." Leonhard März wurde Anfang 1941 in die Wehrmacht eingezogen und zum Schützen an der Panzerabwehrkanone ausgebildet.

Into Enemy Waters is the story of World War II's most elite and daring unit of warriors, the direct precursors to the Navy SEALs, told through the eyes of its last living member, ninety-five-year-old George Morgan. Morgan was just a wiry, seventeen-year-old lifeguard from New Jersey when he joined the Navy's new combat demolition unit, tasked to blow up enemy coastal defenses ahead of landings by allied forces. His first assignment: Omaha Beach on D-Day. When he returned stateside, Morgan learned that his service was only beginning.

Mellan 1940 och 1945 genomled världen några av de värsta åren mänskligheten någonsin har skådat. Medan kriget härjade runtom i Europa lyckades Sverige alltjämt hålla sig utanför det. Det berättas bland annat om episoder då Sverige var en hårsmån från att hamna i stridsbehandlingar med Storbritannien och om jakten på den norske kungen. Trots att Sverige lyckades hålla sig på behörigt avstånd från kriget, är det viktigt att komma ihåg att landet trots detta varken var passivt eller neutralt.

When the Japanese invade in 1942, the Australian men and women stationed at the New Guinea port of Rabaul flee into the jungle. Written off by their government as ‘hostages to fortune', the little-known garrison on Australia's tropic frontier has been left with no modern equipment, no lifeline to the outside, and no means of escape. Most are captured and killed in the sinking of the prison ship Montevideo Maru, which remains Australia's worst sea disaster. But the surviving soldiers and nurses carry on.

The harrowing story of the Allied airmen who experienced the true horrors of Nazism firsthand. It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged towards Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they...