Showing titles in World War II

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place – 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a...

In this revealing insight into a little-known aspect of British wartime history, Helen Fry documents the stories of those who fought for king and adopted country. Based on interviews with veterans and drawing on a rich vein of source material, the author sets their personal stories against the bigger picture of the experience of enemy aliens in Britain during the Second World War. 

From historian and columnist in Leatherneck and Armor magazines, this is the exciting, personal account of a marine fighter squadron in the South Pacific during the critical days of 1943, when the tide turned against the Japanese. Based on individual interviews and wartime documents, this is a thrilling narrative of the marines who lived, and died, during the toughest battles of the entire war.

On the day that Roswell K. Doughty graduated from Boston University, he also received a commission as a second lieutenant in the army of the United States of America. It was not until 1942 that he was called to active duty—to face some of the toughest fighting of the Second World War. He subsequently saw action in North Africa, then at the disastrous Salerno landings in Italy - where the Allied divisions involved suffered 4,000 casualties—about which the author reveals that suspected intelligence breaches led to the Allies' plans becoming known to the Germans.

Fritz Kleinmann fasst einen unglaublichen Beschluss. Da er seinen Vater nicht allein lassen will, folgt er ihm nach Auschwitz. Jeremy Dronfields Bestseller „Der Junge, der seinem Vater nach Auschwitz folgte" ist ein eindringliches Plädoyer gegen das Vergessen. Basierend auf den geheimen Tagebüchern des jüdischen KZ-Häftlings Gustav Kleinmann, erzählt der Autor in diesem historischen Sachbuch die Geschichte von Gustav und seinem Sohn Fritz, die den „Todesfabriken" der Nazis entkamen.

Le nom de Jean Moulin, sa figure sont devenus familiers à tous les Français. En ne parlant pas sous la torture, il a racheté les lâchetés de nombreux Français pendant l'Occupation. Mais qui était-il vraiment ? Pourquoi de Gaulle a-t-il décidé de faire de lui son représentant en France ? Était-il un sous-marin du Parti communiste, un agent soviétique ou américain ? Faut-il inscrire le tragique épisode de Caluire dans un combat fratricide ? Ce grand livre d'enquête de Pierre Péan, fourmillant de révélations, redonne à Jean Moulin une dimension humaine. Le héros était aussi un homme.

This gripping personal account of life as a young World War Two submariner on two famous Royal Navy submarines, Thrasher and Trenchant gives vivid detail of depth charging, gun actions and other operations including sinking the Japanese cruiser Ashigara, the largest enemy warship sunk by a British submarine during the war, sinking the German U-boat U-859 with its secret cargo, towing a midget submarine to attack the German battleship Tirpitz in the Norwegian Fjords, and taking a group of SBS soldiers to carry out a daring raid in Sumatra.

Black Tulip locates the ambiguous truth about Erich Hartmann and so much of the German Wehrmacht in general: that many of these men were neither full-blown Nazis nor impeccable knights. They were complex, contradictory, and elusive. This book portrays a complex human rather than the heroic caricature we're used to, and it argues that the tidy, polished hero stories we've inherited about men like Hartmann say as much about those who've crafted them as they do about the heroes themselves. 

The incredible untold World War II story of Australian hero Barney Greatrex - from Bomber Command to French Resistance fighter. A high school and university cadet in Sydney, Barney Greatrex signed up for Bomber Command in 1941, keen to get straight into the very centre of the Allied counterattack. The RAF's strategic bombing missions faced the deadliest and most dangerous fighting imaginable as they attempted to break the will of the German people and destroy its industrial might.

Of all the celebrities who served their country during World War II - and they were legion - Jimmy Stewart was unique. On December 7, when the attack on Pearl Harbor woke so many others to the reality of war, Stewart was already in uniform - as a private on guard duty south of San Francisco at the Army Air Corps Moffet Field. Seeing war on the horizon, Jimmy Stewart, at the height of his fame after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and his Oscar-winning turn in The Philadelphia Story in 1940, had enlisted several months earlier.

General George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army during World War II, faced the daunting task not only of overseeing two theaters of a global conflict but also of selecting the best generals to carry out American grand strategy. Marshall and His Generals is the first and only book to focus entirely on that selection process and the performances, both stellar and disappointing, that followed from it. Stephen Taaffe explores how and why Marshall selected the Army's commanders.

Listeners around the world have been enthralled by Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and Killing Jesus—riveting works of nonfiction that journey into the heart of the most famous murders in history. Now from Bill O'Reilly, iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor, comes the most epic audiobook of...

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 fourteen...

When Metcalfe boarded the C-47 which would drop him at Groesbeek Heights, just outside of Nijmegen, Holland, he was handed a box of twelve dozen condoms by an overconfident British lieutenant. He was to be among the first to jump into what should have been a picture-book meadow, free of German troops. Instead, it was defended by three German antiaircraft cannon emplacements. As he jumped into a hail of bullets and exploding shells, he watched his plane roll over and plummet into the ground.

Six Americans refused surrender when Japan captured Guam. Five were executed. One sailor survived 31 months evading the Japanese. December 10, 1941. George Tweed became the longest-surviving American fugitive of World War II, hiding in northern Guam's limestone cliffs. His survival depended on Chamorro families who shared their food, built underground networks, and endured Japanese torture to protect him.

A born daredevil, John Homan joined the Army Air Forces after the Pearl Harbor attack. By 1944, he was co-piloting a B-24 Liberator over Nazi Germany, raining death and destruction on the enemy. This first-person account of his harrowing missions—chronicling deadly flights through skies of red-hot flak bursts and airmen bailing out with parachutes aflame—will leave listeners staggered by the determination and grit of World War II aviators.

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.

In 2008, the author/narrator embarks on a poignant journey to Minidoka, one of the 10 former US concentration camps authorized by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, where tens of thousands of American men, women, and children were incarcerated solely because of their race.

Albert Speer – Hitlers Lieblingsarchitekt, späterer Rüstungsminister und enger Vertrauter des Diktators – gehört zu den rätselhaftesten Figuren des Dritten Reichs. Jahrzehntelang prägte er sein öffentliches Bild selbst: als verführter Künstler, unpolitischer Macher, der von den Verbrechen des Regimes nichts gewusst haben wollte. Heinrich Breloer, einer der renommiertesten deutschen Dokumentarfilmer, räumt mit diesem Mythos auf.

The nearly half-million American air crewmen who served during World War II have almost disappeared. And so have their stories. Award-winning writer and former fighter pilot Jay A. Stout uses Unsung Eagles to save an exciting collection of those accounts from oblivion. These are not rehashed tales from the hoary icons of the war. Rather, they are stories from the masses of largely unrecognized men who - in the aggregate - actually won it.