Showing titles in World War II

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.

Lieutenant General James Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division during WWII, is one of the best-known figures of the war. Beginning as the commander of the 505th Parachute Combat Team that spearheaded the American assault on Sicily in July 1943, Gavin advanced to division command and finally command of US forces in Berlin. He kept a wartime diary that starts in April 1943, as the unit was preparing to go to northern Africa and continues through to his final entry on September 1, 1945, during the occupation of Berlin.

This celebrated classic gives a soldier's-eye-view of the Guadalcanal battles; crucial to World War II, the war that continues to fascinate us all. Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. One of only two on-location news correspondents, he lived alongside the soldiers: sleeping on the ground - only to be awoken by air raids - eating meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II.

The nearly half-million American air crewmen who served during World War II have almost disappeared. And so have their stories. Award-winning writer and former fighter pilot Jay A. Stout uses Unsung Eagles to save an exciting collection of those accounts from oblivion. These are not rehashed tales from the hoary icons of the war. Rather, they are stories from the masses of largely unrecognized men who - in the aggregate - actually won it.

Die Wiederentdeckung nach 70 Jahren, erstmals auf Deutsch: »Ein literarischer Diamant, scharfkantig und kristallklar«, schreibt die »Times« über József Debreczenis Erinnerungen an Auschwitz. Sein bewegender Bericht aus den Vernichtungslagern gilt als eines der größten Werke der Holocaust-Literatur. Der renommierte ungarische Journalist und Dichter József Debreczeni wurde 1944 als Jude nach Auschwitz deportiert, es folgten zwölf albtraumhafte Monate in verschiedenen Konzentrationslagern.

There was a place far worse than Changi - Singapore's Outram Road Gaol. Deprivation here was so extreme that there really was a fate worse than death. Stubborn Buggers is the story of 12 Australian POWs who fought and survived the battle for Malaya, then captivity and slave labour, followed by the unimaginable hardships of Outram Road Gaol.

It is a story of how they dealt with the brutality of the Japanese military police, the feared Kempeitai.

The Cooler King tells the astonishing story of William Ash, an American flier, who after being shot down in his Spitfire over France in early 1942 spent the rest of the war striving to escape from every prisoner of war camp in which he was incarcerated. It is a saga full of high drama, climaxing in a break out via a tunnel dug in the latrines of the Oflag XXIB prison camp in Poland.

James "Jim" Davis lived what he considered "an impossible dream" as he piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly 30 missions in the European Theatre during World War II. In this memoir, Davis offers heart-wrenching detail concerning the difficulties of qualifying for the U.S. Army Air Forces pilot program, the strenuous nature of the pilot training program, the anxiety caused by a wartime marriage, and the dangers of flying combat missions over Nazi Germany.

On a cold May morning in 1940, Adrian Vincent arrived in France with his battalion. His war didn’t last long. Within five days the Siege of Calais was over, and nearly all his comrades were killed, wounded or, like him, taken prisoner. After a brutal journey across the breadth of Germany, Vincent and his fellow survivors began their life in Stalag VIIIB, set to work in terrible conditions down a Polish mine. For the next five years, they waged a war not against enemy soldiers but instead versus monotony, disease, cruelty, starvation, and hopelessness.

Elliot Carlson's biography of Captain Joe Rochefort is the first to be written of the officer who headed the U.S. Navy's decrypt unit at Pearl Harbor and broke the Japanese Navy's code before the Battle of Midway. Listeners will share Rochefort's frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto's fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and share his joy when he succeeds in tracking the fleet in early 1942 and breaks the code that leads him to believe Yamamoto's invasion target is Midway.

The death of General George S. Patton is shrouded in mystery. While officially the result of an unfortunate car accident, the evidence points to a far more malevolent plot: murder. So says investigative and military journalist Robert K. Wilcox in his book Target: Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton. Written like a WWII spy thriller and meticulously researched, Target: Patton leads you through that fateful December day in 1945, revealing a chilling plan to assassinate General Patton.

An engrossing, epic history of the US Army in the Pacific War, from the acclaimed author of The Dead and Those About to Die “This eloquent and powerful narrative is military history written the way it should be.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian "Out here, mention...

Im Frühjahr 1940 verlässt Amon Leopold Göth die Familie und bricht auf in den "Gangster Gau" des großmäuligen Hans Frank, hier winken Abenteuer und Karriere: Im Februar 1943 wird Göth zum Kommandanten des Zwangsarbeitslagers Plaszów bei Krakau ernannt. 500 Tage wird er als "König von Plaszów" herrschen, Herr über Leben und Tod sein, gefürchtet von Zehntausenden, die schutzlos seiner entsetzlichen Lust am "Abknallen" und "Umlegen" ausgesetzt sind.

In 2004 the world was first introduced to The Filthy Thirteen, a book describing the most notorious squad of fighting men in the 101st Airborne Division (and the inspiration for the movie “The Dirty Dozen”).

Ten thousand Allied troops landed in the Netherlands in September 1944. This was the largest airborne invasion ever undertaken and it ended in utter disaster. Eight thousand men were killed, wounded, or captured during the Battle of Arnhem. Yet, what of those who escaped? And how did they manage it when surrounded by German troops? Leo Heaps' remarkable book, The Grey Goose of Arnhem, charts the activities of 250 men who, with the aid of Dutch Resistance, made it back across the Rhine to Allied lines.

Listeners around the world have been enthralled by Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and Killing Jesus—riveting works of nonfiction that journey into the heart of the most famous murders in history. Now from Bill O'Reilly, iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor, comes the most epic audiobook of...

Esplosa nel maggio 1945, dopo anni di conflitto e con gli schieramenti in lotta ormai allo stremo delle forze, la battaglia casa per casa con la quale l'Armata Rossa conquistò Berlino pose fine alla guerra in Europa.

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an...

Keggie Carew grew up in the gravitational field of an unorthodox father who lived on his wits and dazzling charm. As his memory begins to fail, she embarks on a quest to unravel his story, and soon finds herself in a far more consuming place than she had bargained for. Tom Carew was a maverick...

When Helga Schneider was four, her mother, Traudi, abandoned her to pursue her career. In 1998, Helga received a letter asking her to visit Traudi, now 90-years old, before she dies. Mother and daughter have met only once after Traudi left, on a disastrous visit where Helga first learnt the...