Showing titles in World War II

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an...

Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for. Tom Carew was a maverick...

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most respected commanders and theoreticians of World War II. An innovative tank commander, he was a pioneer of German Blitzkrieg tactics and therefore a hugely influential figure in the way the war was fought. Guderian's profile was not always what might have been expected for a man of his abilities and influence, due to the shape of his career.

William Halsey was the most famous naval officer of World War II. His fearlessness in carrier raids against Japan, his steely resolve at Guadalcanal, and his impulsive blunder at the Battle of Leyte Gulf made him the "Patton of the Pacific" and solidified his reputation as a decisive, aggressive fighter prone to impetuous errors of judgment in the heat of battle.

Dickie Metcalfe was not your typical secret agent, but he was larger than life in more ways than one. Unlike many other agents who were part of the Double Cross System during the Second World War, he did not defect; nor was he blackmailed into becoming a spy. Instead, using his father's connection with Sir Vernon Kell, the first director of MI5, Metcalfe volunteered his services. Recently cashiered from his infantry regiment, he had an ulterior motive.

Elliot Carlson's biography of Captain Joe Rochefort is the first to be written of the officer who headed the U.S. Navy's decrypt unit at Pearl Harbor and broke the Japanese Navy's code before the Battle of Midway. Listeners will share Rochefort's frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto's fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and share his joy when he succeeds in tracking the fleet in early 1942 and breaks the code that leads him to believe Yamamoto's invasion target is Midway.

After being captured in Singapore and transported to the infamous Burma railway, Colonel Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, one of the largest POW camps. Many ex-prisoners testified to the mental and physical courage that he showed protecting POWs from the worst excesses of their captors. Of course his account does not admit to this, but what is clear is that in addition to the deprivation and hardship suffered by all POWs, the author bore heavy responsibility for those under his charge and the daily trauma of dealing with the unpredictable Japanese.

On June 6, 1944, US troops on Omaha suffered the worst casualties of any of the five Allied invasion beaches — so many casualties, and so much tactical difficulty, that Omaha almost didn’t succeed. One big reason why Americans gained a foothold on Omaha was Gen. Norman “Dutch” Cota. A graduate of the West Point class of 1917 (alongside famous classmates Matthew Ridgway, Mark Clark, and Lightning Joe Collins), Norm Cota played football with Dwight Eisenhower, who graduated two years earlier.

E. J. Jernigan's memoir offers listeners a fascinating glimpse of life as an enlisted man aboard the USS Saufley, one of the most highly decorated destroyers of World War II. It is a rarely told story of the sailors who fought the war from boiler rooms, after-steering spaces, radio shacks, and other gritty places that keep a warship going. For the author, it was a world of strong emotions and quick reactions, where men had to adapt and grow if they were to survive.

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.

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.

This strange but true story begins with a prisoner's escape from Campo 303 in Pravia, Northern Italy. Despite being unable to speak Italian, he begins a nearly 2000-mile journey to the safety of the Allied Forces surrounded by hostile forces in his disguise as a Benedictine monk. Truly remarkable for its courage and daring in a war-scarred world.

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as the New York Robins and the Chicago White Sox and that of a spy for the OSS during World War II. Here, Dawidoff provides "a careful and sympathetic biography" ( Chicago Sun-Times) of this enigmatic man.

The Second World War is dominated by heroic tales of men defending their country against a formidable enemy, but what about the women who also played their parts in fighting for freedom? Eileen Younghusband was just 18 when she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She quickly demonstrated her keen intellect and mathematical skills, playing a crucial role in Fighter Command's underground Filter Room.

This is Jack's story, told through over 100 letters he wrote home, his 1995 recollections after 50 years of silence, and the after-action reports that documented every day of the battle.

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.

Au cœur de l'enfer, cinquante-neuf prisonniers ont réussi l'impensable. Ils ont franchi les barbelés, trompé les miradors, défié les SS — et, parfois seulement pour quelques jours, retrouvé le goût de la liberté. Polonais, Juifs, Soviétiques, Tchèques ou Slovaques : tous ont un point commun. Ils ont refusé de mourir sans lutter.

Harold Guard became a war correspondent quite by chance, after he had been invalided out of the navy following a submarine accident. Thereafter, working for United Press, he gained a front row seat to many of the most dramatic battles and events of the century. In March 1942 Guard arrived in Australia, having narrowly escaped from Japanese forces invading Singapore and Java. His dispatches from that disastrous front prompted one observer to comment on “the crisis days when everybody except Harold Guard was trying to hush up the real situation.”

Ribbentrop’s Watch: The True Story of a Nazi Artefact by Cyril Marlen is a haunting investigation into how a single object can reflect the shadows of an entire regime. Part biography, part historical mystery, and part moral reckoning, this gripping narrative follows the journey of a seemingly ordinary wristwatch once worn by Joachim von Ribbentrop—Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister and one of the most loyal figures in Hitler’s inner circle.

Churchill fu protagonista di una eccezionale gamma di attività ed esperienze: nominato ufficiale durante il regno della regina Vittoria, partecipò alle guerre coloniali in Africa e alle prime fasi di sviluppo dell'aviazione, ma soprattutto guidò l'Impero britannico nella sua ora più buia, durante i giorni cupi e gloriosi della Seconda guerra mondiale.