James Holland

'If Hitler fails to invade or destroy Britain, he has lost the war,' Churchill said in the summer of 1940. He was right. The Battle of Britain was a crucial turning point in the history of the Second World War....

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....

In February 1944, a rag-tag collection of clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews, managed to hold out against some of the finest infantry in the Japanese Army....

There are no such thing as an easy victory in war but after triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of the Sicilian invasion, and with the Italian surrender, the Allies were confident that they would be in Rome before Christmas 1943.

Holland has spent over 12 years unearthing new research, visiting archives, battlefields and the very people who fought and lived through the conflict....

Renowned World War Two historian James Holland presents an entirely new perspective on one of the most important moments in recent history....

Combining his own research with only recently accessible archive material, James Holland looks afresh at this cataclysmic conflict, reassessing long-held views and challenging assumptions....

It should have been an easy victory....

From the Italian Alps to northern Germany, to London, New York, Washington and Tokyo, Victory ’45 tells the story of the extraordinary summer when the greatest conflagration the world had ever known finally came to an end after six surrenders that heralded the Allied victory.

It was the night of May 16th, 1943. Nineteen specially adapted Lancaster bombers take off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, each with a huge cylindrical bomb strapped underneath them....

Code-named Operation HUSKY, the Allied assault on Sicily on 10 July 1943 remains the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted in world history, landing more men in a single day than at any other time....

During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany....

May 1940: Sergeant Jack Tanner has been posted to a training company on the southeast coast of England where the mysterious deaths of two Polish refugees lead him to believe there has been foul play....

Listen to this captivating memoir by Wilhelm Johnen who flew his first operational mission in July 1941, having completed his blind-flying training. In his first couple of years he brought down two enemy planes....

Crete, May 1941. In the face of a German invasion, Sergeant Jack Tanner is embroiled in a deadly game of survival that will test his resolve more than ever before....

The village of Alvesdon has been home to the Castells for generations. But the year is 1939 and the peace and tranquillity there is about to be shattered once more by the stormclouds of war in Europe.....

April 1940: Nazi Germany has invaded neutral Norway. Fleeing north from their brutal blitzkrieg advance are three officers of the King's Guard - men who have been entrusted by the Norwegian King with a vitally important mission....

August, 1942. North Africa. The desert war hangs in the balance. When the commander of the Eighth Army, General Gott, is killed, it's clear that foul play is at work....

July, 1943.With North Africa secured, the Allies launch an invasion of Sicily....