War - WW2

633 Squadron's dangerous war-time mission in Norway.

In the Autumn of 1943 the celebrated 633 Squadron of the RAF is called in to launch Operation Crucible. Their role is to give ground support to American troops attempting a Dieppe-style landing against overwhelming firepower.

The story of an RAF crew's plan to bomb an important target in Bavaria in World War 2.

A specially published book of 70 inspirational essays written by internationally renowned educator, historians and scholars marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - to be read one a day.

1943: Five Army aviators left Alaska's Ladd Field on a routine flight to test their B-24 Liberator in harsh winter conditions. The mission ended in a crash that claimed all but one - Leon Crane. With only a parachute for cover and an old Boy Scout knife in his pocket, Crane found himself alone in subzero temperatures. Crane knew that his chance of survival dropped swiftly with each passing day. This is his story.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all "negroes and Jews." Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. 

In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer's life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers - a cover for her spying work - Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served - the US, France, and Britain. 
 

In the quiet Cotswolds village of Great Rollright in 1944, a thin, and unusually elegant, housewife emerged from her cottage to go on her usual bike ride. A devoted mother-of-three, attentive wife and friendly neighbour, Sonya Burton seemed to epitomise rural British domesticity. However, rather than pedalling towards the shops with her ration book, Ursula Kuczynski -� codename Sonya �- was heading for the Oxfordshire countryside to gather scientific secrets from a nuclear physicist. Secrets that would enable the Soviet Union to build the atomic bomb. In Agent Sonya, Ben Macintyre reveals the astonishing story behind the most important woman spy in history and the huge emotional cost that came with being a mother, a wife, and a secret agent at once.

On a chill December night in 1942, a Nazi parachutist landed in a Cambridgeshire field. His mission: to sabotage the British war effort. His German masters called him Fritz, or Fritzchen. The British police knew him as Eddie Chapman. Within weeks Chapman was in the hands of MI5 and operating as Agent Zigzag.

The author was just eighteen years old when he enlisted in the RAF as a pilot. After training he served in the Middle East for four years with no home leave. This is the account of one man's war.

Following on from Volume I (9441), Max Hastings' study of the greatest and most terrible event in history continues in the second part of his epic book. There are vivid descriptions of the tragedies and triumphs of a host of ordinary people, in uniform and out of it, in an 'everyman's story'.

A narrative history of the Second World War from one of our finest historians. A book which depicts what the war was like to live through - whether you were a starving child in Leningrad, a soldier in North Africa, or a civilian in Dresden. Continued in Volume II (9442)

On 16 December, 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed he could split the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then force the Canadians and the British out of the war. But the Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht.

What might have happened if Poland was never invaded? Or if Hiroshima never happened? Or if the great evacuation at Dunkirk was scrapped? Would the war have turned out differently? Would Hitler have won? ARMCHAIR GENERAL airdrops you the reader into the key historical moments and turning points of WWII - from the outbreak of war to D-Day - and thrusts you into the role of decision-maker. Taking the chair of Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Montgomery, General Eisenhower and other leaders and soldiers from the Allied Forces, you will be primed with the contemporaneous intelligence that real leaders would have been presented with during the war - including maps and secret dossiers. Once you have examined the evidence, you the reader will then have to make key decisions that have the power to affect the war - and the fate of history. How far should you parachute behind enemy lines? Should you fight on or try to make peace? Will you send more troops in or hold them back? Do you wait or do you act? Each decision will take you to an alternate chapter in the book, and to either the truth, or to an alternate but highly plausible new reality.

The Battle of Arnhem is one of the best-known stories in British military history. It is always written about, with the benefit of unerring 20/20 hindsight, as being doomed to fail, but the men who fought there, men of military legend, didn't know that that was to be their fate.

By focusing on the events of one day as they happened through the eyes of the British participants and without bringing any knowledge of what would happen tomorrow to bear, Al Murray offers a very different perspective to a familiar narrative.

Tuesday 19 September 1944 was that terrible day which became known as Black Tuesday. From just after 12:00 hours while plans were being made to seize the initiative and optimism reigned, to the following midnight, when Arnhem was burning and the Allied fortunes looked very different, a mere twenty-four hours changed the course of the war.

In the middle of WW2, a refugee from the Nazis, Louis de Wohl, made a curious offer to British Intelligence. Based on the widely-held belief that Hitler's every action was guided by his horoscope, de Wohl claimed he could reveal precisely what advice the Fuhrer's astrologers were giving him.

Churchill could see de Wohl's worth for himself and de Wohl was made an army captain and employed to pass detailed astrological readings to the War Office and Naval Intelligence. Did senior officers really take the ancient and arcane practice of astrology seriously? And was de Wohl genuine or merely a charlatan?

From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, this is the remarkable story of Easy Company, who kept getting the tough assignments. They were responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden.

Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of Russia in June 1941, was the largest military operation in history; its aim nothing less than 'a war of extermination' to annihilate Soviet communism, liquidate the Jews and create lebensraum for the so-called German master race. But it led to the destruction of the Third Reich, and it was entirely cataclysmic: in six months of warfare, no less than six million were killed, wounded or registered as missing in action, and soldiers on both sides committed heinous crimes behind the lines on a scale without parallel in the history of warfare. In Barbarossa, drawing on hitherto unseen archival material - including previously untranslated Russian sources - in his usual gripping style, Jonathan Dimbleby recounts not only the story of the military campaign, but the politics and diplomacy behind this epic clash of global titans. With authority and panache, he charts the crucial decisions made in the world's capitals and the bitter struggles on the front lines, giving vivid insights into the experiences of all players, from the leaders on all sides to the men and women on the ground. Above all, Dimbleby reveals the significance of 1941 - the year in which the Soviet Union destroyed Hitler's chance of realising his demented vision - as the most important struggle in the annals of the 20th century.

The Battle of Britain was a crucial turning point in the history of the Second World War.

The German invasion of France and the Low Countries in May 1940 was unlike any the world had ever seen. With France facing defeat and with British forces pressed back to the Channel, there were few who believed Britain could possibly survive.

Yet thanks to a sophisticated defensive system and the combined efforts of the RAF, Royal Navy as well as the mounting sense of collective defiance led by a new Prime Minister, Britain was not ready to roll over just yet. 

From clashes between coastal convoys and Schnellboote in the Channel to astonishing last stands in Flanders, and from the slaughter by the U-boats in the icy Atlantic to the dramatic aerial battles over England, The Battle of Britain tells this most epic of stories from all sides.

Summer 1939. War is coming. The British believe that, through ingenuity and scientific prowess, they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too. They believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational aids. Flying above the clouds they, like the seafarers of old, had the stars to guide them, and that is all that is required. They are wrong. Most of the bombs the RAF will drop in the first years of the war land miles from their target. They also believe that the Germans, without the same naval tradition, will never be able to find targets at night. They are, again, wrong. In 1939 the Germans don't just have radar to spot planes entering their airspace, they have radio beams to guide their own planes into enemy airspace. War is coming, and it is to be a different kind of war. It will be fought, as expected, on land and sea and in the air. It will also be fought on the airwaves.

It will be fought between scientists on both sides at the forefront of knowledge, and the agents and commandos they relied on to bolster that knowledge. Luckily there was one young engineer, Reginald Jones, helping the British government with their own scientific developments. In June 1940, when Jones quietly explained the beams the Germans had devised to a room full of disbelieving sceptics, Churchill later described the moment as like sitting in the parlour while Sherlock Holmes finally reveals the killer. Churchill immediately supported Jones's efforts to develop radar technology that went on to help the Allies win the war. Relying on first-hand accounts from Reginald Jones as well as papers recently released by the Admiralty, The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of WW2 literature. It is a tale that combines history, science, derring do and dogged determination and will appeal as much to fans of WW2 history as to those fascinated by the science behind the beams that changed our lives. The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles in history. This is the story of that war.

This tale of the Battle of the River Plate follows the machinations of the German war machine as Kapitan zur See Hans Langsdorff commands the pocket battleship Graf Spee on a mission to cripple British shipping.

Reaching Berlin in 1945, the Red Army wanted revenge, and the result was a terrible bloodbath, with hundreds of thousands of civilians dying. Using new documenets the author has reconstructed Berlin's downfall.

Leo Marks was the head of the code department of SOE during the Second World War, and this memoir gives a unique picture of the organization at work.

After forty years Janina Bauman is ready to tell the story of her life and experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto during the holocaust.

Pierre Clostermann was one of the oustanding Allied aces of the Second World War. A Frenchman who flew with the RAF, he survived over 420 operational sorties, shooting down scores of enemy aircraft while friends and comrades lost their lives in the deadly skies above Europe. This is his extraordinary account which has been described as the greatest pilot's memoir of WWII.

At Warburg, Germany, in 1941, four British PoWs find an unexpected means of escape from the horrors of internment when they form a birdwatching society, and embark on an obsessive quest behind barbed wire.

In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield there could not threaten the invasion forces. This important new book explores the dramatic story of this 'forgotten' battle and the campaign's strategic failings.

Bitter Peleliu reveals the full horror of this 74-day battle, a battle that thanks to the reduced media presence has never garnered the type of attention it deserves. Pacific War historian Joseph Wheelan dissects the American intelligence and strategic failings, analyses the shift in Japanese tactics, and recreates the Marines' horrific experiences on the worst of the Pacific battlegrounds. This book is a brilliant, compelling read on a forgotten battle.

A remarkable series of accounts of living through the Blitz, not only in London, but in many other large cities, such as Plymouth, Bristol and Liverpool. The book includes many tales of solidarity, bravery and perseverance.

This unflinching history of the darkest days of the Second World War covers the entire world stage, from the Battle of the Atlantic to Pearl Harbor. Rooted in the personal accounts of the soldiers themselves, Blood, Tears and Folly is a sweeping, moving account of the political machinations, the strategy and tactics, the weapons and the men on both sides who created a world of devastation.

55,573 aircrew of Bomber Command lost their lives during the Second World War, yet their bravery and sacrifice went largely unrecognized. On 28 June 2012 this was corrected with the dedication and unveiling of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, London. This tells the story of the campaign: locating a site, raising the funds, designing the memorial, and the opening ceremony.

Thousands of airmen failed to return from operations as part of the 1943 and 1944 Bomber Command Battle of Berlin. The authors, utilising family archives, personal testimony and wartime memoirs, piece together the remarkable, yet tragic events surrounding those who made the ultimate sacrifice. ‘We Will Remember Them'.

The exploits and capture of "The White Rabbit", the code name of one of World War 2's greatest secret agents.

In 1965 the German journalist Horst Krüger attended the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, where 22 former camp guards were put on trial for the systematic murder of over 1 million men, women and children. Twenty years after the end of the war, this was the first time that the German people were confronted with the horrific details of the Holocaust executed by 'ordinary men' still living in their midst. The trial sent Krüger back to his childhood in the 1930s, in an attempt to understand 'how it really was, that incomprehensible time'.

He had grown up in a Berlin suburb, among a community of decent, lower-middle-class homeowners. This was not the world of torch-lit processions and endless ranks of marching SA men. Here, people lived ordinary, non-political lives, believed in God and obeyed the law, but were gradually seduced and intoxicated by the promises of Nazism. He had been, Krüger realised, 'the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work'. This world of respectability, order and duty began to crumble when tragedy struck. Krüger's older sister decided to take her own life, leaving the parents struggling to come to terms with the inexplicable.

The author's teenage rebellion, his desire to escape the stifling conformity of family life, made him join an anti-Nazi resistance group. He narrowly escaped imprisonment only to be sent to war as Hitler embarked on the conquest of Europe. Step by step, a family that had fallen under the spell of Nazism was being destroyed by it. Written in accomplished prose of lingering beauty, The Broken House is a moving coming-of-age story that provides an unforgettable portrait of life under the Nazis. Yet the book's themes also chime with our own times - how the promise of an 'era of greatness' by a populist leader intoxicates an entire nation, how thin is the veneer of civilisation, and what makes one person a collaborator and another a resister.

This book distills war down to individual young men climbing into defenseless gliders made of plywood, ready to trust the towing aircraft that would pull them into enemy territory by a single cable wrapped with telephone wire. Based on their after-action reports, journals, oral histories, and letters home, this book reveals every terrifying minute of their missions. They were all volunteers, for a specialized duty that their own government projected would have a 50 percent casualty rate. None faltered. In every major European invasion of the war they led the way.

They landed their gliders ahead of the troops who stormed Omaha Beach, and sometimes miles ahead of the paratroopers bound for the far side of the Rhine River in Germany itself. From there, they had to hold their positions. They delivered medical teams, supplies and gasoline to troops surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge, ahead even of Patton's famous supply truck convoy. These all-volunteer glider pilots played a pivotal role in liberating the West from tyranny, from the day the Allies invaded Occupied Europe to the day Germany finally surrendered. Yet the story of these anonymous heroes is virtually unknown. Here it is told in full - a story which epitomizes courage and sacrifice.

The Sherwood Rangers were one of the great tank regiments. They had learned their trade the hard way, under the burning sun of North Africa, on the battlefields of El Alamein and Alam el Halfa. By the time they landed on Gold Beach on D-Day, they were toughened by experience and ready for combat. From that moment on, the Sherwood Rangers were in the thick of the action til the war's end. They and their Sherman tanks covered thousands of miles and endured some of the fiercest fighting in Western Europe. The first British unit to cross into Germany, their engagements stretch from the Normandy beaches, to the bridges at Eindhoven, and the grinding crossing of the Siegfried Line and on into the Nazi heartland. Through compelling eye-witness testimony and James Holland's expert analysis of the war in the West, Brothers In Arms brings to vivid life the final bloody scramble across Europe and gives the most powerful account to date of what it was really like to fight in the dying days of World War Two.

John Masters was a soldier before he became a bestselling novelist. He joined a Gurhka regiment on receiving his commission, and his depiction of garrison life and campaigning on the North-West Frontier is a matchless evocation of the British Army in India on the eve of the Second World War. Still very much the army depicted by Kipling, it stands on the threshold of a war that will transform the world.

Stuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6.45 a.m., Sunday 4 June 1944. He was 20 years old, unblooded, fresh from a public-school background and Officer Cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk, he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a replacement tank (of the non-swimming variety), engaging the enemy in a constant round of close encounters, led to a swift mastering of the art of tank warfare and remarkable survival in the midst of carnage and destruction. His story of that journey through hell to victory makes for compulsive reading.