Showing titles in World War II

The men and women honored in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation speak in this collection of letters from and about the Depression and World War II.

Der Großvater erzählt dem Enkel vom Krieg - so wie er ihn erlebt hat - ohne Umschweife und verklärten Pathos. Die Fehler der Herrschenden werden stets von den einfachen Leuten mit Blut bezahlt. Das war schon zu allen Zeiten so. Nicht anders erging es einem steirischen Bergbauernsohn, der, in der Blüte seiner Jugend stehend, in den Fleischwolf der Ostfront geschmissen wurde. Das in einer Phase, wo der Krieg für das Dritte Reich so gut wie verloren war. Im Greisenalter erinnert sich der Bergbauernsohn an jene dunklen Stunden zurück, die ihn Zeit seines Lebens verfolgt haben.

A major historical biography of George C. Marshall - the general who ran the U.S. campaign during the Second World War, the Secretary of State who oversaw the successful rebuilding of post-war Europe, and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize - and the first to offer a complete picture of his life.

The Japanese onslaught on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, devastated Americans and precipitated entry into World War II. In the aftermath, Admiral Husband Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, was relieved of command, accused of negligence and dereliction of duty, and publicly disgraced. But the admiral defended his actions through eight investigations and for the rest of his long life. The evidence against him was less than solid.

While Pilot Officer Geoffrey Myers was caught up in the Battle of Britain, his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in increasingly dangerous circumstances in Nazi-occupied France. In intimate, frank, and powerful letters, Myers kept a record of his war, his deep love for his wife Margot and their children, and his heart-wrenching fear for their safety as they tried to escape. Secret Letters: A Battle of Britain Love Story is an incredibly rare personal account of some of the major turning points of WWII.

Die Erinnerungen von Christa Schroeder, die Hitler zwölf Jahre als Sekretärin diente, zeigen den Diktator als Privatmann: seinen Umgang mit Mitarbeitern, seine Haltung gegenüber Frauen, sein Urteil über Kunst und Musik. Auch von seinen Gesundheitsproblemen und seinem Umgang damit entsteht ein anschauliches Bild, man erfährt seine Meinung über Politiker und Staatenlenker seiner Zeit, ebenso lernt man andere, weniger bekannte Facetten Hitlers kennen.

In June 1944, the Nazis locked 18-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruellest camp in the Reich. After 10 months in the granite mines of Mauthausen's nearby sub-camp, Gusen, he weighed less than 80 lbs., nothing but skin and bones. As Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over 30 miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped.

Rudolfs Krieg ist die Geschichte eines Soldaten der Panzertruppe, welcher vom Richtschützen bis zum Ersatz Kommandanten aufgestiegen ist. In den Jahren an der Ostfront fand er Kameraden und Freunde, sah Tod und Verderben und blieb dabei trotzdem ein Mensch. Er erzählt seine Geschichte, durchzogen von Erfolgen und Verlusten, von Siegen und Niederlagen. Familie und Heimat bestimmen seine Sichtweise sowie auch Freundschaften unter den Soldaten. Aus diese Sicht hat noch keine über den Panzerkrieg im zweiten Weltkrieg berichtet.

This is the true story of an eighteen-year-old Utah boy who was drafted in 1944 to fight in World War II. Assigned to the 423rd Regiment, Company L, of the 106th Infantry Division, he was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. He was transported in a boxcar to Stalag IX-B and then sent to Berga, a slave labor camp. Discover his harrowing escape from Hitler’s SS Troopers during a Death March from Berga.

Sgt. Steve Maharidge, like many of his generation, hardly ever talked about the war. The only sign he'd served in it was a single black and white photograph of himself and another soldier tacked to the wall of his basement workshop. After Steve Maharidge's death, his son Dale, now an adult, began a 12-year quest to understand his father's preoccupation with the photo. What had happened during the battle for Okinawa, and why had his father remained silent about his experiences and the man in the picture, Herman Mulligan? In his search for answers, Maharidge sought out the survivors of Love Company.

Who were the unsung heroes that shaped the outcome of World War II? What acts of bravery went unnoticed in the chaos of battle? How did ordinary Americans become extraordinary warriors? Discover the incredible, untold stories of bravery, sacrifice, and heroism in American Heroes of World War II: True Stories of Individual Bravery From the Battlefields of World War II. This gripping collection shines a light on lesser-known American heroes who played pivotal roles in the Allies' victory.

An American Hero: One Man’s Legacy of Fatherhood and Faith is a poignant and inspiring journey through four generations, revealing how one World War II survivor’s resilience, integrity, and unwavering faith forged a life-giving legacy that transformed not only his family but also countless lives around him.

Much has been documented about Himmler as the incarnation of pure evil and the puppet master behind the Holocaust. Now, history’s verdict reveals that he was much more than a mere slaughterer of Jews. For all his ills, Himmler was a visionary. He longed for a utopia based on the blood community of the Aryan race. What lengths was he prepared to go to in order to obtain "good blood" as well as removing the bad? The infamous SS is also examined in detail. Were they just the machinery of murder? What other duties did they perform to help the Nazi war effort?

This is the story of Nancy Harkness Love who, early in World War II, recruited and led the first group of 28 women to fly military aircraft for the US Army. Love was hooked on flight at an early age. At 16, after just four hours of instruction, she flew solo “a rather broken down Fleet biplane that my barnstorming instructor imported from parts unknown”. The year was 1930: Record-setting aviator Jacqueline Cochran (and Love’s future rival) had not yet learned to fly, and the most famous woman pilot of all time, Amelia Earhart, had yet to make her acclaimed solo Atlantic flight.

Telling the rousing story of a Jewish boy who fled persecution and returned to prosecute the Nazi oppressors, Walter Wolff's daughter Nina has reconstructed these events from family lore and her father’s own cache of more than 700 wartime letters and 200 photographs, which he revealed to her shortly before he died.

On November 18, 1944, the end of the war in Europe finally in sight, American co-pilot Lieutenant Lee Lamar struggled alongside pilot Randall Darden to keep Bottoms Up, their B-24J Liberator, in the air. They and their crew of eight young men had believed the intelligence officer who, at the pre-dawn briefing at their base in southern Italy, confided that their mission that day would be a milk run. It was not....

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.

Soldier Keith Nightingale has conducted terrain walks in Normandy for over forty years with veterans, active-duty military, and local French civilians. Over the decades Nightingale conducted dozens of formal interviews and informal conversations with many of the principals of the day, including Generals Bradley, Collins, Gavin, Ridgway, and Hill. Added to this rare new primary material from the top brass are numerous conversations with lower-ranking vets who did the heavy lifting.

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.

With his parting words "I shall return," General Douglas MacArthur sealed the fate of the last American forces on Bataan. Yet one young Army Captain, named Russell Volckmann, refused to surrender. He disappeared into the jungles of north Luzon where he raised a Filipino army of over 22,000 men. For the next three years he led a guerrilla war against the Japanese, killing over 50,000 enemy soldiers. At the same time he established radio contact with MacArthur's HQ in Australia and directed Allied forces to key enemy positions.