Showing titles in World War II

Two ambitious men. One historic mission. With a blinding flash in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1945, the world was changed forever. The bomb that ushered in the atomic age was the product of one of history's most improbable partnerships. The General and the Genius reveals how two extraordinary men pulled off the greatest scientific feat of the 20th century.

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.

What if you were flying into war with barely three weeks of training? What if your first dogfight ended with your guns still on safety? What if a single wrong turn landed you in a prison camp halfway across Europe, unsure if you'd ever see home again? This is the extraordinary true story of Ken Cam, a young RAF Spitfire pilot hurled into the chaos of World War II far from ready—but never backing down.

Heinz Knoke was one of the outstanding German fighter pilots of the Second World War. This vivid firsthand record of his experiences has become a classic among aviation memoirs and is a fascinating counterbalance to the numerous accounts written by Allied pilots.

Written from the "other side" and told as much as possible through the words of the veterans, this is an important book on one of the most controversial campaigns of the Second World War.

In The German Aces Speak II, Heaton and Lewis paint a picture of the war through the eyes of four more of Germany's most significant pilots, put together from numerous interviews personally conducted by Heaton from the 1980s through the 2000s. The four ex-Luftwaffe fighter aces bring the past to life as they tell their stories about the war, their battles, their off-duty lives, their lives after the war, and perhaps most importantly, how they felt about serving under the Nazi leadership of Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler.  

NOW WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY W. STANLEY MOSS'S DAUGHTER GABRIELLA BULLOCK AND AN AFTERWORD BY PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR Ill Met By Moonlight is the true story of one of the most hazardous missions of the Second World War. W. Stanley Moss is a young British officer who, along with Major Patrick Leigh...

The true story of World War 2’s legendary Hell’s Angels—the 8th Air Force’s 303rd Bomb Group. Although the United States declared war against Germany in December 1941, a successful assault on Nazi-occupied Europe could not happen until Germany’s industrial and military might were...

Using his own experiences, log books, and correspondence with other U-boat crewmen, Hans Goebeler offers rich and personal details about what life was like in the German Navy under Hitler. Since his first and last posting was to U-505, Goebeler's perspective of the crew, commanders, and war patrols paints a vivid and complete portrait unlike any other to come out of the Kriegsmarine. He witnessed it all, from deadly sabotage efforts that almost sunk the boat to the tragic suicide of the only U-boat commander who took his life during World War II.

World War II tail gunner Gene Moran fell four miles through the sky without a parachute and lived. Captured by the Germans, he survived a harrowing eighteen months as a prisoner of war, including a six-hundred-mile death march in 1945 across Central Europe. When Gene returned home, he kept those memories locked up for nearly seventy years. His nine children knew little of their dad's war story. But when John, a young history teacher, learns of Gene's amazing fall, he's desperate to learn more. Finally, Gene agrees.

In 1938, 29-year-old 'Nicky' cancelled a ski holiday and instead spent nine months masterminding a seemingly impossible plan to rescue hundreds of Jewish children and find them homes in the UK. Over 6,000 people are alive today because of his efforts. What motivated an ordinary man to do something so extraordinary? This book, written by his daughter, Barbara, explores the 106-year life of an incredible humanitarian, a man whose legacy only came to public light decades later.

This is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front. >William Lubbeck, age 19, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa.

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, 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. 

*The instant New York Times bestseller* The untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II—all Medal of Honor recipients—from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler’s own mountaintop fortress, by the national bestselling author of The First Wave “Pitch-perfect...

In June 1940, a covert new force - the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - was set up to wage a secret war. Its agents were tasked with sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines, and over the course of the next five years, 470 special agents would be sent into France. Only 25 female SOE agents would return. None before have told their story in their own words.

Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway. Reg made the deadly jungle work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber.

Growing up on a farm in Ohio, George always preferred being outdoors and exploring. This made school a challenge, but his hunting, fishing, and trapping skills helped put food on his family's table. As a poor teenager living in a rough area, he got into regular brawls, and he found holding down a job hard because of his wanderlust. After working out West with the CCC, he decided that joining the Marines offered him the opportunity for adventure plus three square meals a day; so he and his brother joined the Corps in 1941.

Panzer Gunner is a unique memoir of a Canadian serving in a German armored division. Bruno Friesen explains what it was like to fight in a tank on the Eastern Front and provides details on the battlefield performance of the Panzer IV tank. Six months before World War II erupted in 1939, Bruno Friesen was sent to Germany by his father in hopes of a better life. Friesen was drafted into the Wehrmacht three years later and ended up in the 7th Panzer Division. Friesen experienced intense combat against the Soviets in Romania, Lithuania, and West Prussia. 

The true story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War: the battlefield odyssey of a maverick U.S. Army officer and his infantry unit as they fought for over five hundred days to liberate Europe - from the invasion of Italy to the gates of Dachau. From...

Between April and July 1944, Truman Smith flew 35 bombing missions over France and Germany. He was only 20 years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime's worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith's gripping memoir of that time.