Showing titles in World War II

>In the months before Pearl Harbor, Kerns had passed the Army's flight training admission exam with flying colors. But because he lacked a high school diploma, the Army refused to give him flying lessons. Undaunted, Private Kerns took lessons with a civilian flying school and was actually scheduled for his first solo flight on the afternoon of December 7, 1941. Notwithstanding his lack of diploma, Kerns graduated from Officer Candidate School and then completed flight training in the L-4 Piper Cub in late 1942.

Known by his troops in World War II as "The GI General" because of his close identification with the men under his command, Omar Bradley commanded the U.S. Twelfth Army Group in Europe. By the spring of 1945, this group contained four field armies, 12 corps, 48 divisions, and more than 1,300,000 men, the largest exclusively American field command in U.S. history.

October 6, 1944. Twenty-year-old Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant David "Mac" Warren MacArthur was on a strafing mission over Greece when a round of 88-mm German anti-aircraft flak turned his P-38 Lightning into a comet of fire and smoke. Dave parachuted to safety as the Lightning lived up to her name and struck the Adriatic Sea like a bolt of flames. In minutes, he was plucked from the water - only to find himself on the wrong end of a German rifle pointing straight at his head.

Six Americans refused surrender when Japan captured Guam. Five were executed. One sailor survived 31 months evading the Japanese. December 10, 1941. George Tweed became the longest-surviving American fugitive of World War II, hiding in northern Guam's limestone cliffs. His survival depended on Chamorro families who shared their food, built underground networks, and endured Japanese torture to protect him.

Se trató de una campaña sofisticada y sorprendentemente bien financiada para socavar las instituciones democráticas, promover el antisemitismo y destruir la confianza ciudadana en sus líderes electos, con el objetivo final de derrocar al Gobierno estadounidense e instaurar un régimen autoritario. Algunos de los funcionarios electos más influyentes del país, incluyendo senadores y miembros del Congreso, trabajaron para difundir argumentos nazis, mientras que paramilitares fascistas almacenaban bombas y armas preparándose para una insurrección violenta.

Stephen E. Ambrose, acclaimed author of Band of Brothers and Undaunted Courage, carries us into the skies of World War II aviation, flying aboard the crowded and dangerous B-24 bombers as their crews fought to destroy the German war machine and secured Allied victory. The young men who flew the...

This “engrossing” (The Wall Street Journal) national bestseller and true “heartbreaking tale of tragedy and redemption” (Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers) reveals how a discovered diary—found during a brutal World War II battle—changed our war-torn society’s...

This is Jack's story, told through over 100 letters he wrote home, his 1995 recollections after 50 years of silence, and the after-action reports that documented every day of the battle.

Angesichts der neuen Bedrohung der Demokratie durch Rassismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit erinnert der Schauspieler Matthias Brandt an den Mut der Widerstandskämpfer und -kämpferinnen gegen das NS-Regime, zu denen auch seine Eltern gehörten. Matthias Brandt hielt 2025 eine denkwürdige Rede zur Erinnerung an die Widerstandskämpfer des 20. Juli 1944 in der Gedenkstätte Berlin-Plötzensee – dem Ort, an dem viele der Beteiligten an dem Attentat gegen Adolf Hitler hingerichtet wurden.

Fünf Beispiele von vielen aus diesem Buch, das die Menschen und Ereignisse der Nachkriegszeit lebendig werden lässt, den Tanz zwischen Trümmern, das Drama der deutschen Teilung, die Erfahrung einiger »Wunder« – vom »Wirtschaftswunder« bis zum »Wunder von Bern«. Gleichzeitig beschreibt es Kontinuitäten über das Schwellenjahr 1945 hinweg. Gab es die »Stunde Null«? So einfach war es damals nicht.

Im Greisenalter erinnert sich ein Niederschlesier an jene Zeit zurück, als er nach einer fliegerischen Ausbildung in einem Sonderkommando der Kriegsmarine an Süd- und Ostfront eingesetzt wurde. Im Schutze der Dunkelheit schwamm er im Mittelmeer und der Oder Sabotageeinsätze gegen Schiffe und Brücken. Walter Lewandowski erlebte eine der wohl außergewöhnlichsten Ausbildungen in den deutschen Streitkräften, wurde mehrfach ausgezeichnet und berichtet detailreich von seinem Werdegang im „Lehrkommando 700" und der „Einsatzgruppe Keller".

The Memoirs of a Gunner offer a powerful, documentary style reflection of a young U.S. gunner's experiences in five major World War II battles. Written six decades later, he shares a rare, balanced and convincing view of the war he was part of as a paratrooper and combat soldier capturing both youthful emotion and enduring humanity. He describes several times moments of tragic events, which are part of the price for the later outcome. David Bowman talks not only about combat actions. There was still life 'in between' worth telling, when a huge army prepared for the next combat.

Few disasters have touched Australia as profoundly as the sinking of the hospital ship Centaur – one of the deadliest wartime attacks ever on Australia – killing 268 souls on a mission of mercy. Ellen Savage, a fearless nurse from country New South Wales, was the only woman to survive. For more than 34 hours, she and other heroes fought off sharks and helped the injured until rescuers arrived. She was awarded the George Medal for her bravery.

The Memoirs of a Gunner offer a powerful, documentary style reflection of a young U.S. gunner's experiences in five major World War II battles. Written six decades later, he shares a rare, balanced and convincing view of the war he was part of as a paratrooper and combat soldier capturing both youthful emotion and enduring humanity. He describes several times moments of tragic events, which are part of the price for the later outcome. David Bowman talks not only about combat actions. There was still life 'in between' worth telling, when a huge army prepared for the next combat.

L'exploit d'Oskar Schindler est connu, celui de Felix Kersten l'est beaucoup moins. Pourtant, un mémorandum du Congrès juif mondial établissait dès 1947 que cet homme avait sauvé en Allemagne « 100 000 personnes de diverses nationalités, dont environ 60 000 juifs ». Pour reconstituer cette dernière au travers des archives, des mémoires, des journaux, des notes et des dépositions des principaux protagonistes, il fallait un historien spécialiste de la Seconde Guerre mondiale qui soit également polyglotte.

V roce 1939 zorganizoval Sir Nicholas Winton záchrannou akci, během které se mu podařilo zachránit 669 českých dětí z nacisty okupovaného Československa. Jedním ze zachráněných dětí byl také Otto Pick (1925 – 2016). V Praze vychodil obecnou školu, ve studiu pokračoval na Anglickém gymnáziu. Díky transportu Sira Nicholase Wintona se ve 14 letech dostal do Velké Británie, kde po dostudování střední školy získal stipendium na Oxfordské univerzitě. V roce 1943 však vstoupil do československé armády v Anglii a jako spojař a radista se zúčastnil i vylodění v Normandii.

Surviving Hell is a harrowing account of Lieutenant Colonel William Miner, taken prisoner for 39 months after his unit surrendered to the Japanese on the island of Cebu, Philippines, during World War II. Despite losing every friend in his unit and suffering from torture and deprivation that would “warp men’s souls,” Bill Miner professed, “I am lucky. People fell beside me and people were blown apart beside me. Anywhere I went as a prisoner, I tried to be aware of the situation and use it the best I could to survive.”

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.

"In this oddly entertaining audiobook, narrator Pete Cross takes listeners through the many experiments and devices created by the R&D branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during WWII... Listeners will be both transfixed and horrified by the decisions weighed, and taken." - AudioFile...

In the spring of 1939, a top-secret organization was founded in London: Its purpose was to plot the destruction of Hitler's war machine through spectacular acts of sabotage. The guerrilla campaign that followed was every bit as extraordinary as the six men who directed it. One of them, Cecil Clarke, was a maverick engineer who had spent the 1930s inventing futuristic caravans. Now his talents were put to more devious use: He built the dirty bomb used to assassinate Hitler's favorite, Reinhard Heydrich.