Showing titles in World War II

The P-38 Lightning was one of the fastest operational fighters of World War II, famous for its successes in North Africa and the Pacific. In The P-38 Lightning and the Men Who Flew It, Wolfgang W. E. Samuel shares the stories of the young men who climbed into the cockpits of the P-38 to fight for freedom, and of those who created, tested, and deployed these fearsome machines. The P-38 was the product of the Lockheed Corporation, the first fighter they ever built, principally conceptualized by Kelly Johnson, whose design was to meet Air Corps specifications. But it was no easy plane to fly.

Sent to France with the Royal Flying Corps at just 17, and later a member of the famous 56 Squadron, Cecil Lewis was an illustrious and passionate fighter pilot of the First World War, described by Bernard Shaw in 1935 as 'a thinker, a master of words, and a bit of a poet'. In this vivid and spirited account the author evocatively sets his love of the skies and flying against his bitter experience of the horrors of war. We then follow his progress from France and the battlefields of the Somme to his pioneering defence of London against deadly nighttime raids.

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.

The vivid and emotional story of one soldier's heroic struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.1944: Norm Bussel, an introspective and happy-go-lucky teen from Memphis, finds himself bailing out of a burning B-17 bomber just months after his 19th birthday. Touching-down in a field outside Berlin, Norm was immediately seized by local farmhands, who were in the process of lynching him when a passing German soldier put a stop to the execution.

Bernard Montgomery, “the Spartan General”, was one of the giants of World War II. He was a field marshal, as well as an entirely powerful personality, who shaped much of how that aforementioned cataclysmic conflict turned out. If it weren’t for Montgomery’s steady hand in North Africa, for example, it would have been much harder for the Allies to prevail. Montgomery was born the humble son of a minister. As he matured, he grew increasingly bold and confident in his own abilities. He realized he was a natural leader of men—and others quickly came to realize it as well.

The Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy in 1943 were bloody and pivotal, securing the Mediterranean, capitalizing on the overthrow of Mussolini, and pinning down German troops that could have been used on the Russian Front or in France after D-Day. The men who made the Allied victories in Sicily and Italy possible - soldiers and officers, bombardiers and drivers, doctors and generals - are honored and remembered in these minutes by famed war correspondent Richard Tregaskis.

Between 1941 and 1945, Wynne Brooks waited for her young soldier husband, Mickey, to return to her. In all the time he was away she wrote to him - first daily, then weekly, never knowing his whereabouts. In 1945, at the end of the war, her letters were returned, their messages of comfort and love unread, bearing the War Office stamp "No Trace".

Douglas MacArthur is best remembered for his adaptability, a quality which hoisted him to his greatest accomplishments. Adaptability now reigns as the most indispensable trait for high military leadership in this era of technological leaps, which guarantee radical changes in the nature of war during the span of an ordinary career.

The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” returns with this brilliant final volume.

From the plains of Kansas to the war rooms of London and the beaches of Normandy, The Man Who Led the Liberation of Europe traces Dwight D. Eisenhower’s extraordinary journey. He wasn’t a battlefield general in the traditional sense—but he wielded one of the most powerful weapons of the war: strategy. Balancing complex alliances, clashing egos, and an enemy entrenched across the continent, Eisenhower’s role as commander required more than just military brilliance—it demanded diplomacy, emotional intelligence, and nerves of steel.

This book presents the remarkable personal journals of German soldier Hans Roth. Writing as events transpired, he recorded the mystery and tension as the Germans deployed on the Soviet frontier in June 1941. In these journals, battles are described in "you are there" detail, as Roth wrote privately, as if to keep himself sane, knowing that his honest accounts of the horrors in the East could never pass through Wehrmacht censors.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Six Weeks of Blenheim Summer by Alastair Panton, read by Jonathan Keeble. As I write, I can clearly recall the stinging heat of a burning Blenheim, smells, tastes, expressions, sounds of voices and, most of all, fear gripping deep in me. Flying Officer Alastair Panton was just 23 when his squadron deployed across the Channel in the defence of France. They were desperate days. Pushed back to the beaches as the German blitzkrieg rolled through the Low Countries and into France, by June 4th 1940 the evacuation of the Allies from Dunkirk was complete. A little over two weeks later France surrendered.

Of all the celebrities who served their country during World War II - and they were legion - Jimmy Stewart was unique. On December 7, when the attack on Pearl Harbor woke so many others to the reality of war, Stewart was already in uniform - as a private on guard duty south of San Francisco at the Army Air Corps Moffet Field. Seeing war on the horizon, Jimmy Stewart, at the height of his fame after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and his Oscar-winning turn in The Philadelphia Story in 1940, had enlisted several months earlier.

Dark skies and barbed wire fences were all Bluma Plaskovsky saw as she stepped down from the train onto the main platform of Auschwitz-Birkenau. After surviving the Wehrmacht’s decimation of her hometown, Bluma and what remained of her family were finally put on the long, harsh train ride through inhuman conditions that seemed to last an eternity.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary, a riveting first-hand account of the Battle of Okinawa from the first officer ashore, who served at the front for the battle’s entire 82-day duration, heroism that earned him a Bronze Star. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, 1,500 Allied ships and 1.5 million men gathered off the coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa and launched the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War. The first American officer ashore was Major Art Shaw, a unit commander in the US Army’s 361 Artillery Battalion of the 96th Division, often called the Deadeyes.

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances.

War Is Not Just for Heroes rescues the incredible true stories of United States Marine Corps. Written by one marine, Claude R. "Red" Canup, a combat correspondent in the Pacific during World War II, these dispatches and private letters provide insight into the grind of war and ordinary men and women who carried out their duty. Thoughtfully edited and contextualized by a preface and prologue by his daughter, Linda M. Canup Keaton-Lima, War Is Not Just for Heroes combines documentary and biography to provide the human dimensions of those in combat and those who reported out.

Germany's success in the Second World War was built upon its tank forces; however, many of its leading generals, with the notable exception of Heinz Guderian, are largely unknown. This biographical study of four German panzer army commanders serving on the Eastern Front is based upon their unpublished wartime letters to their wives. David Stahel offers a complete picture of the men conducting Hitler's war in the East, with an emphasis on the private fears and public pressures they operated under.

Tank Driver is the story of a young man’s combat initiation in World War II. Based on letters home, the sparse narrative has the immediacy of on-the-spot reporting. Ted Hartman was a teenager when he was sent overseas to drive a Sherman tank into combat to face the desperate German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hartman gives a riveting account of the shifting tides of battle and the final Allied breakout. He tells about the concentration camps, the spectacle of defeated Germans, and the encounter with Russian soldiers in Austria that marked combat’s end.

As an RAF medical officer, Aidan McCarthy served in France, survived Dunkirk, and was plunged into adventures in the Japanese-American arena comparable with those of famous war heroes. Interned by the Japanese in Java, he helped his fellow prisoners with amazing ingenuity in awful conditions. En route back to Japan in 1944, his ship was torpedoed, but he was rescued by a whaling boat and re-interned in Japan.