Showing titles in World War II

Author Jeff Spevak was confronted with a dilemma: How do you tell the story of a man who can’t bring himself to talk about the most epic moment of his life? A clever fellow who’d scrapped to survive in a fashion that seems quaint today, Coleman tested himself as a teenager by swimming across lakes, building homes from foraged lumber, and running a navy carpentry shop as though he were a member of the scamming crew of McHale’s Navy. He was a self-taught sailor who’d become a legend on Lake Ontario. At age 96, Ernie was still sailing.

World War II changed the course of history. Douglas MacArthur changed the course of World War II. Macarthur at War goes deeper into this transformative period of his life than previous biographies, drilling into the military strategy that Walter R. Borneman is so skilled at conveying and exploring how personality and ego translate into military successes and failures.

From the beginning, it was clear that Ralph Nutter was an exceptional navigator. Rapid promotion followed when he was assigned as Maj. Gen. Curtis the Eagle LeMay's personal navigator. Later, he was picked by Maj. Gen. Haywood Possum Hansell, the 20th Air Force Commander, to be his personal navigator. The author's vivid recollections of those halcyon years make for exciting, informative listening.

In this third installment of the Great Generals series, WWII expert John Wukovits explores Dwight D. Eisenhower's contributions to American warfare. Eisenhower led the assault on the French coast at Normandy and held together the Allied units through the European campaign that followed.

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.

Terry de la Mesa Allen’s mother was the daughter of a Spanish officer, and his father was a career US Army officer. Despite this impressive martial heritage, success in the military seemed unlikely for Allen as he failed out of West Point - twice - ultimately gaining his commission through Catholic University’s R.O.T.C. program. In World War I, the young officer commanded an infantry battalion and distinguished himself as a fearless combat leader, personally leading patrols into no-man’s-land.

Chesty Puller is an American legend. He began his career fighting guerrillas in Haiti and Nicaragua during the 1920s and 1930s before displaying astonishing battlefield bravery in the Pacific during World War II. From Henderson Field to Peleliu, his courage under fire and unbreakable devotion to his men inspired not just those under his own command but marines everywhere. As the war marched on, one bloody battle after another, Chesty became the most decorated marine in US history.

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.

Historian Mark Hager builds on hundreds of hours of interviews with Harold Frank, sharing the intimate and heart-pounding account of Frank’s journey as a child of the Great Depression to the bloody shores of the D-Day invasion, into the bowels of Nazi Germany, and back to the U.S. where as a young man Harold would spend years resolutely dealing with the lingering effects of starvation rations while determinedly building a new life—a life always mindful of the legacy of his POW experience and his faithful service in America’s hard-fought war against Nazi aggression.

Spitfire Ace provides a vivid portrait of the few that flew in the Battle of Britain. The battle, in 1940, was one of the most famous air battles in the history of warfare. It is a story of ruthless organisation, and brilliant control and command. And at its heart is a legendary figure, the RAF fighter pilot, and one particular plane, a piece of machinery of almost mythic historical glamour: the Supermarine Spitfire.

Ende 1944 wird der 16-jährige HJler zu einer Grundausbildung der Wehrmacht nach Böhmen geschickt, im März 1945 wird er für die «Kampfgruppe Böhmen in der SS-Panzergrenadierdivision Hitlerjugend» rekrutiert. Einen Monat später werden die Jungen an die Front bei Wien geschickt. Das Kind kämpft und tötet – und gerät in sowjetische Gefangenschaft. Es beginnt eine jahrelange Odyssee durch diverse Lager im Baltikum und in Russland. Erst 1950 kehrt er nach Hamburg zurück, von jeglicher patriotischer Abenteuerlust kuriert.

The late Van Slayden trained on the PT-3 kite-like biplane in 1937, but he learned fighter pilot operations flying "by the seat of his pants," walking away from five crashes. Shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Utah Beach to help establish a US Army Air Forces' (AAF's) presence in Europe. He flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a fighter-bomber, in combat over Northern France and commanded the 36th Fighter Group—the "Fightin' 36th"—at Batogne, St. Vith, the Bridgehead at Remagen, Operations Grenade, Clarion, Varsity and other missions.

A post-Depression 11-year-old farm boy sees a Piper Cub for the first time and chases the dream of being a pilot. When war breaks out, Ralph T. Alshouse does the unthinkable-he leaves the family farm to enlist in the Navy and as one of a handful of high school graduates, was accepted as an Aviation Cadet and eventually won U.S. Navy Wings of Gold. After flight school, he was assigned to one of the most labor-intensive jobs in the Navy-to test and deliver Navy operational aircraft from the factories in the U.S. and Canada to destinations and ports of embarkation on the East and West coasts.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, forcing the U.S. to enter WWII, MAC was 23 years old. He had graduated with honors from high school, served two years in the Merchant Marine, and had a year of college under his belt. During the summer he had graduated from DePaul University's preliminary army air course to become a pilot and graduated as their highest-ranking student. Joining the U.S. Army Air Forces, he was assigned to the newly formed 307th BG and trained to fly the brand-new B-24 Liberator.

In June 1944, German and American forces converged on an insignificant bridge a few miles inland from the invasion beaches. If taken by the Nazis, the bridge might have gone down in history as the reason the Allies failed on D-Day. The narrow road over it was each side’s conduit to victory. Continued Nazi control over the bridge near an old manoir known as La Fière—one of only two bridges in the region capable of supporting tanks and other heavy armor—would allow the Germans to reinforce their defenses at Utah Beach, one of the five landing areas chosen for Operation Overlord.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, millions of young American men were eager to join up and defend their country. William Swanson was among them. The View from My Foxhole tells William Swanson's story of fighting in the jungles of Bougainville and Guam and the ash heap of Iwo Jima. Through it he maintains his sense of humor and thanks his lucky stars for every day he survives.

Joey Jacobson, a young Jewish man from Westmount on the Island of Montreal, trained as a navigator and bomb-aimer in Western Canada. On arriving in England, he was assigned to No. 106 Squadron, a British unit tasked with the bombing of Germany. Joey Jacobson’s War tells, in his own words, why he enlisted, his understanding of strategy, tactics, and the effectiveness of the air war at its lowest point, how he responded to the inevitable battle stress, and how he became both a hopeful idealist and a seasoned airman.

On the 8th June 1940, the Nazi battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau opened their guns on the aircraft-carrier HMS Glorious. Within minutes, the Glorious was taking on water, and the order was given to abandon ship. Only 40 men survived this ordeal, one of which was Royal Marine Ronald "Tubby" Healiss, who served as a member of a 4.7 gun crew on the Glorious. His award-winning account is a true and terrible record of suffering, which uncovers one of the greatest undocumented naval stories of the Second World War.

General George S. Patton Jr. is one of the most successful yet misunderstood figures in American military history. Despite the many books and articles written about him, none considers in depth how his love of history shaped the course of his life. In this thematic biography, Furman Daniel traces Patton’s obsession with history and argues that it informed and contributed to many of his successes, both on and off the battlefield. Most scholars have overlooked this element of Patton’s character, which Daniel argues is essential to understanding the man’s genius.

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.