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Srecond World War
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Title: Bomber Pilot on the Eastern Front
Author: Vasily Reshetnikov
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £19.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Air War
Category: Second World War |
Soviet bombers played a vital role in defeating the Germans on the Eastern Front, yet their contribution is often forgotten. This graphic memoir should help to set the record straight. The author, a leading Soviet bomber pilot who flew throughout the conflict, tells his story from the desperate days of the German assault in 1941 to the point where Germany was invaded and the Nazis were destroyed. He gives a vivid account of his experiences during over 300 bombing missions in the dangerous skies over Russia, the Ukraine, Poland and Germany. His story is compelling reading.
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Title: Ultra Goes to War
Author: Ronald Lewin
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £16.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World War
Category: Second World War
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Ultra was the code word for the method by which the Allies intercepted the German radio transmissions and broke their coded contents during World War II. The author, himself a former field artilery officer with the Eighth Army from Alamein to Tunisia and then from Normandy to the end of the war in Germany, was the first historian to utilize Ultra intercepts to show how the information was used in combat. He was also the first historian to have interviewed the men, both British and American, who produced and used Ultra intercepts in the key positions of leadership throughout the war. The book highlights how Ultra helped to win the Battle of Britain and how its proper use might have prevented the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied defeat at Arnhem. Included too is a documented account of the destruction of Coventry, the reason for the American defeat at the Kasserine Pass and an account of how convoys carrying strategic war supplies to our Allies were decimated because the Germans had broken the Admiralty codes. Other works by Ronald Lewin include "Slim the Standard-Bearer", "The Life and Death of the Afrika Korps" and "Churchill as Warlord". |
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Title: Operation Varsity
Author: Tim Saunders
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £14.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Battles
Category: Second World War
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In Spring 1945, the outcome of the war was ritually certain but the mighty River Rhine still stood in the way of the Allies. Eisenhower's strategy was to guarantee a crossing in the Ruhr area by allocating the main effort to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Monty's task was to envelope and take out the last German war production and open the way onto the North German Plain. On the morning of 24 March 1945, the Normandy veterans of 6th British Airborne Division were to land just three to six miles in front of XII Corps, within supporting distance of their artillery, with the aim of linking up with the ground forces on day one. First in were the two parachute brigades, who benefited from the numbing effect of the Allied bombardment but by the time 6th Airlanding Brigade came in aboard their gliders, the German anti-aircraft gunners were recovering and, on the DZs, resisting and even counter-attacking the British and Canadian paratroopers. Casualties were heavy, not least because the Airlanding Brigade were gliding in amidst an armoured kampfgruppe.
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Title: In Pursuit of Hitler
Author: Andrew Rawson
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £19.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Adolf Hitler
Category: Second World War |
This book is a chronology of the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and the famous victory drive of the Seventh Army. It starts at the Worms' Rhine bridgehead and moves quickly onto Aschaffenburg, before describing the Hammelburg Raid to release US POWs. Driving South through Karlstadt, the Army seized crossing of the River Mainz at Wurzburg (which has a fine castle). The seizure of Nuremberg was hugely symbolic and this beautiful city was the scene both of the infamous Nazi Rallies and of course the War Crimes Tribunals. The road to Munich, always worth visiting (bierfest or no bierfest!) is via the Danube crossings and the book takes in the liberation of the appalling Dachau Concentration Camp and the battle at the SS Barracks. Munich was the centre of Hitler's early life and represented his powerbase. He was imprisoned here and wrote "Mein Kampf". The book climaxes with the approach to the Alps and the superb Eagle's Nest, so popular with tourists.
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Title: Moonless Night
Author: Jimmy James
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £14.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Jimmy James
Category: Biography |
From the moment he was shot down to the final whistle, Jimmy James' one aim as a POW of the Germans was to escape. The Great Escaper describes his experiences and those of his fellow prisoners in the most gripping and thrilling manner. The author made more than 12 escape attempts including his participation in The Great Escape, where 50 of the 76 escapees were executed in cold blood on Hitler's orders. On re-capture, James was sent to the infamous Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp where, undeterred, he tunnelled out. That was not the end of his remarkable story. Moonless Night has strong claim to be the finest escape story of the Second World War.
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Title: The Dambuster Who Cracked the Dam
Author: Arthur G. Thorning
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Price: £19.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Melvin Young
Category: Biography |
On 25 September 1939 Melvin Young reported to No.1 Initial Training Unit. He was selected as a bomber pilot and promoted to Flying Officer. Having undertaken a Lancaster conversion course Melvin and his new crew were posted to 57 Squadron at Scampton - soon to become 617 Squadron. On 15 May the Order for Operation Chastise was issued - the raid to be flown the next night, 16/17 May. The plan for the operation was that three waves of aircraft would be employed. The first wave of nine aircraft, led by Gibson, would first attack the Mohne Dam, then the Eder followed by other targets as directed by wireless from 5 Group HQ if any weapons were still available. This wave would fly in three sections of three aircraft about ten minutes apart led by Guy Gibson, Melvin Young and Henry Maudslay. At 00.43 Melvin and his crew made their attempt on the Mohne dam. Gibson recorded that Young's weapon made 'three good bounces and contact'.Once the dam had been breached Gibson with Melvin as his deputy led the three remaining armed aircraft towards the Eder Dam. On the return trip Melvin Young and his crew fell victim to enemy guns.
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Title: Spying on Ireland
Author: Eunan O'Halpin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Price: £30.00
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Ireland
Category: Irish History |
Irish neutrality during the Second World War presented Britain with significant challenges to its security. Exploring how British agencies identified and addressed these problems, this book reveals how Britain simultaneously planned sabotage in and spied on Ireland, and at times sought to damage the neutral state's reputation internationally through black propaganda operations. It analyses the extent of British knowledge of Axis and other diplomatic missions in Ireland, and shows the crucial role of diplomatic code-breaking in shaping British policy. The book also underlines just how much Ireland both interested and irritated Churchill throughout the war. Rather than viewing this as a uniquely Anglo-Irish experience, Eunan O'Halpin argues that British activities concerning Ireland should be placed in the wider context of intelligence and security problems that Britain faced in other neutral states, particularly Afghanistan and Persia. Taking a comparative approach, he illuminates how Britain dealt with challenges in these countries through a combination of diplomacy, covert gathering of intelligence, propaganda, and intimidation.The British perspective on issues in Ireland becomes far clearer when discussed in terms of similar problems Britain faced with neutral states worldwide.
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Title: Our Longest Days
Editor: Sandra Koa Wing
Publisher: Profile
Price: £8.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Home Front
Category: Second World War |
A powerful, detailed and warming story of the Second World War - told through the previously unheard voices of those (such as Nella Last) who described the home front for the Mass Observation project. Jerry is certainly not getting any change out of us'. For six years the people of Britain endured bombs and the threat of invasion, and more than 140,000 civilians were killed or seriously wounded. Men and women were called to serve in the armed forces in record numbers, and everyone experienced air raids and rationing. In these terrible times, volunteers of almost every age, class and occupation wrote diaries for the "Mass Observation" project, which was set up in the 1930s to collect the voices of ordinary men and women. Using many diaries that have never been published before, this book tells the story of the war - the military conflict, and, mainly, life on the home front - through these voices. Through it all, people carry on living their lives, falling in love, longing for a good meal, complaining about office colleagues or mourning allotment potatoes destroyed by a bomb.
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Title: Inferno
Author: Keith Lowe
Publisher: Penguin
Price: £8.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Bombing of Hamburg
Category: Second World War |
In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs on Hamburg with the intention of erasing the German city from the map. The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead. Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force winds and 800-degree temperatures; of survivors cowering in basements or struggling along melting streets; of a city and its people near annihilated from above. |
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Title: Kursk: The Air Battle
Author: Christer Bergstrom
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Price: £27.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Air War
Category: Second World War
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Compiled by one of the worlds leading experts on the subject of the air war over the Eastern Front, Christer Bergström, Kursk: The Air Battle, is the third in a series of books covering the major phases of the air war in this theatre of operations. It will be required reading for all historians of the Luftwaffe during World War 2 and those with a specific interest in the Eastern Front in particular. The German Kursk offensive, Operation Zitadelle, was launched on 4 July 1943. Strong Soviet defence ensured that the Germans failed to make their planned breakthrough and, after three weeks, defence was turned to attack by the Soviets, as two counter-attacks saw the Red Army seize the initiative and ultimately force the Germans to retreat. During the month of August, Soviet forces recaptured strategic cities such as Oryol, Belgorod and Kharkov. This book provides a detailed history of the air battles where were a part of this operation. To date, no single study has been written in English on the air aspects of the battle in which, literally, thousands of aircraft were pitted against each other. The strength of the authors writing lies in its detail, his ability to tell the story from the viewpoints of both sides and from both strategic and tactical contexts. There is also much unique eye-witness material and the text will be accompanied by a large number of rate and previously unpublished photographs, biography boxes, plus data tables, technical assessments and appendices.
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Title: Panzerwaffe
Author: Mark Healey
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Price: £16.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Panzer Tanks
Category: Second World War |
This is the second book in a series of ten titles using the successful and visually appealing format of the Classic Colours series to examine the German Panzer force from its origins in the immediate post- World War One years through to the end of World War Two. This book describes the continuing Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1940 with the German invasions of Norway and Denmark and the later attack on the Low Countries and France. The narrative text, written by Mark Healy, an authority on German armoured warfare in World War Two, addresses the events of the year 1940.This witnessed the greatest triumph of the German tank arm in the campaign that saw France and the Low Countries vanquished in just six weeks. This was also the year which saw the overwhelming vindication of the armoured warfare tactics advocated by Guderian and his supporters throughout the 1930s. Following the French surrender, and certain in the conviction that he now had to hand a war-winning weapon, Hitler ordered the doubling of the strength of the Panzerwaffe in preparation for its greatest challenge in the summer of 1941. This volume covers all the following areas: Light divisions to Panzer Divisions the Panzerwaffe in the aftermath of the Polish campaign; Panzer operations in Denmark and Norway; the influx of new equipment - Panzerjäger, Sturmgeschütz, Schützenpanzerwagen and the first self-propelled artillery prior to the assualt on the west; the evolution of Case Yellow the attack in the West from October 1939 through to the launch and execution of the devastating armoured assault of May 1940; preparing the panzers for Sealion - the invasion of Britain; the doubling of the size of the Panzerwaffe.
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Title: Behind Enemy Lines
Author: Juliette Pattinson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Price: £55.00
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Special Operations Executive
Category: Second World War |
Behind enemy lines is an examination of gender relations in wartime using the Special Operations Executive as a case study. Drawing on personal testimonies, in particular oral history and autobiography, as well as official records and film, it explores the extraordinary experiences of male and female agents who were recruited and trained by a British organisation and infiltrated into Nazi-Occupied France to encourage sabotage and subversion during the Second World War. With its original interpretation of a wealth of primary sources, it examines how these ordinary, law-abiding civilians were transformed into para-military secret agents, equipped with silent killing techniques and trained in unarmed combat. This fascinating, timely and engaging book is concerned with the ways in which the SOE veterans reconstruct their wartime experiences of recruitment, training, clandestine work and for some, their captivity, focusing specifically upon the significance of gender and their attempts to pass as French civilians.
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Title: Monty and Patton
Author: Michael Reynolds
Publisher: Spellmount
Price: £20.00
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Bernard Montgomery
Category: Second World War |
Of the Allied generals who caught the headlines in the Middle East and Europe in WWII, two predominate - both achieved outstanding successes on the battlefield, both went out of their way to court the headlines and both made serious mistakes that attracted adverse publicity - their names were Bernard Montgomery and George S Patton, Jr - this book summarises and compares their lives and careers. |
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Title: Order of Battle: German Panzers in World War II
Author: Chris Bishop
Publisher: Spellmount
Price: £20.00
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: German Panzers
Category: Second World War
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The German armoured divisions in the Second World War were the iron fist of the Blitzkrieg. Broken down by key battle or campaigns within each theatre of war, this book shows the strengths and organizational structures of the Third Reich's armoured forces campaign by campaign, building into a detailed compendium of information.With extensive organizational diagrams and full-colour campaign maps showing the disposition of units, this is an easy guide to the German panzer forces, their strengths during key campaigns and battles, and details of where they served throughout the war.
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Title: Between Silk and Cyanide
Author: Leo Marks
Publisher: Sutton
Price: £8.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Leo Marks
Category: Second World War |
In 1942, with a black-market chicken under his arm, Leo Marks left his father's famous bookshop, 84 charing cross road, and went to war. He was twenty-two and a cryptographer of genius. In "Between silk and cyanide", his critically acclaimed account of his time in SOE, Marks tells how he revolutionized the code-making techniques of the Allies, trained some of the most famous agents, who dropped into France including Violette Szabo and 'the White Rabbit', and why he wrote haunting verses including his "The Life that I have" poem. He reveals for the first time the disastrous dimensions of the code war between SOE and the Germans in Holland; how the Germans were fooled into thinking a Secret Army was operating in the Fatherland itself; and how and why he broke General de Gaulle's secret code. Both thrilling and Poignant, Marks' book is truly one of the last great Second World War memoirs.
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Title: Voices from the Dark Years
Author: Douglas Boyd
Publisher: Sutton
Price: £19.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: French Resistance
Category: Second World War |
What was life really like in German-occupied France during the Second World War? Douglas Boyd paints the clearest picture yet, using hitherto unpublished first-person accounts of ordinary men and women who lived through this extraordinary and dangerous time, when a few made fortunes, but most went cold and hungry. Less than 1 per cent of the French was pro-German. Is it pure coincidence that the same percentage actively resisted the Germans despite knowing that, if caught, their husbands, wives and children were considered equally culpable under the brutal Teutonic principle of Sippenhaft - guilt by association? Using new, meticulously researched material, Douglas Boyd tells an enthralling and sometimes chilling narrative history of the Occupation, as lived by the French people. It is a record of great heroism and ultimate cruelty. Read it and ask yourself, 'How would I have reacted, living in Occupied France?' The answer may surprise you.
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Title: USN Carriers v IJN Carriers
Author: Mark Stille
Publisher: Osprey
Price: £12.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World War Sea
Category: Second World War |
As the Pacific war escalated into the largest naval conflict in history the role of the carrier, the most revolutionary and formidable of all naval weapons, became the linchpin of American and Japanese naval strategy. Finally in 1942, across the huge expanses of the Pacific, these rival carriers found themselves locked in a death struggle as they duelled for dominance of this critical theatre of war. Exploring the four major carrier clashes of Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, this book dramatically reveals the experiences of the airmen and guncrews of the rival vessels as they battled for victory in a duel of skill, tenacity and guts. |
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Title: Visions of Victory
Author: Gerhard L. Weinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Price: £14.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Adolf Hitler
Category: Second World War
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Visions of Victory explores the views of eight leaders of the major powers of World War II - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt. He compares their visions of the future in the event of victory. While the leaders primarily focused on fighting and winning the war, their decisions were often shaped by their aspirations for the future. What emerges is a startling picture of postwar worlds. After exterminating the Jews, Hitler intended for all Slavs to die so Germans could inhabit Eastern Europe. Mussolini and Hitler wanted extensive colonies in Africa. Churchill hoped for the re-emergence of British and French empires. De Gaulle wanted to annex the northwest corner of Italy. Stalin wanted to control Eastern Europe. Roosevelt's vision included establishing the United Nations. Weinberg's comparison of the individual portraits of the war-time leaders is a highly original and compelling study of history that might have been.
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Title: The Battle of Hurtgen Forest
Author: Charles Whiting
Publisher: Spellmount
Price: £9.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World War Battles
Category: Second World War |
This text is an account of the battle of Hurtgen Forest on the German/Belgian border, in WW2, which ran from September 1944 to February 1945. Thirty thousand US soldiers were killed or wounded during this hellish battle. Thirty thousand American GIs were killed or wounded in the longest battle ever fought by the US Army - a battle that should never have been fought.
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Title: Contesting Home Defence
Author: Penny Summerfield & Corinna Peniston-Bird
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Price: £15.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Home Front
Category: Second World War |
Contesting Home Defence makes a significant and original contribution to debates concerning the British home front in the Second World War. It asks whether the Home Guard was a site of social cohesion or of dissension, explores the competing claims made for it at the time, and traces how it has been remembered since. It argues that the Home Guard at once contributed to and challenged the notion of national unity: official rhetoric was inclusive but recruitment practices were selective – and contested. Left-wingers inspired by international anti-fascist movements trained Home Guards in unauthorised guerrilla techniques; women formed their own armed organisation, sometimes helped by defiant Home Guard commanders. |
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Title: Luftwaffe at War
Author: E. R. Hooton
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Price: £16.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Luftwaffe
Category: Second World War |
As in the campaign against Poland, it was the Luftwaffe that had perhaps the most important role. It won air superiority over the theatre of operations and was able to destroy much of the enemy's material before the army swept forward. This is the second volume in a new series that examines in detail the Luftwaffe's role in the battles of the Spring and Summer of 1940 and will be required reading for all aviation historians as well as those who model the aircraft of the period. |
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Title: The Last of the Hitlers
Author: David Gardner
Publisher: BMM
Price: £16.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Adolf Hitler
Category: Second World War |
At the end of World War II, the man Adolf Hitler called "my loathsome nephew" changed his name and disappeared. The British born William Patrick Hitler, by then settled in the USA, remained anonymous. This title tells the story of David Gardner's search for Hitler, his discovery that he was dead and had had four sons. Those four sons established a pact that, in order for Adolf Hitler's genes to die with them, none of them would have children. |
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Title: T-34 Medium Tank
Author: Mikhail Baryatinskiy
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Price: £14.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: T-34 Tank
Category: Second World War |
This book examines in detail the T-34, one of the most famous and successful vehicles in the history of armoured warfare. The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958 and was widely regarded as the world's best tank when the Soviet Union entered the Second World War, and although its armour and armament were surpassed by later WWII tanks, it is credited as the war's most effective and efficient and influential design. |
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Title: Last of the Ten Fighter Boys
Author: Jimmy Corbin
Publisher: Sutton
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World Air War
Category: Military History |
"The Last of the Ten Fighter Boys" is intended to be both a prequel and a sequel to the chapter Jimmy wrote for "Ten Fighter Boys", filling in the 'missing pieces'. The book charts: his early life before the outbreak of war in 1939; the decisions he made; and, those that were made for him. He describes how an ordinary working class boy from Maidstone was propelled into the most extraordinary of situations, landing him in the thick of the action in the skies over Kent during the summer and autumn of 1940. |
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Title: Make Do and Mend
Author: Jill Norman
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Price: £9.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Home Front
Category: Second World War |
The rationing period during World War II is often described as a difficult time and yet also remembered nostalgically as a time of unity and good sacrifice. In fact, many of its rules and guidelines could still be applied today. "Make Do and Mend" focuses on clothes rationing, which was introduced in June 1940. With the nation's industrial output concentrated on the war effort, basic clothes were in short supply and high fashion was an unknown commodity. Adults were issued as little as 36 coupons a year to spend on clothes. But a man's suit could cost 22 coupons, a coat 16 and a lady's dress 11, so the need to recycle and be inventive with other materials became more and more necessary. The government issued the leaflets included in "Make Do and Mend" to advise on how best to avoid wasting valuable resources by recycling curtains into dresses and old sheets into underwear; in short how to 'make do and mend' rather than buying new clothes. Produced from original material held in archives, the leaflets are also a nostalgic showcase of 1940s' style, which makes them the perfect gift. |
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Title: The King's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens
Author: Helen Fry
Publisher: Sutton
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Germans in Britain
Category: Second World War |
This is the compelling story of the 10,000 German and Austrian nationals who fled Nazi persecution to join the British in their fight against Hitler during the Second World War. Most were Jews but a significant number were political opponents of the Nazi regime and so-called 'degenerate artists'. They arrived in Britain between 1933 and 1939, and at the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939 became 'enemy aliens'. They volunteered to serve in the British forces, donned the King's uniform, swore allegiance to George VI and became affectionately known as 'the King's most loyal enemy aliens'. This compelling story includes previously unpublished interviews with veterans and an impressive selection of archive photographs, many of which are reproduced for the first time. |
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Title: War Brides
Author: Melynda Jarratt
Publisher: Tempus
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Home Front
Category: Second World War |
"We sailed for Canada in April 1945 on a Greek ship, the Nea Hellis. The crossing took three weeks all the while avoiding the torpedoes. There were over 1,000 war brides and children aboard as well as wounded soldiers going home." - Iris Rickets. 'Overpaid, over-sexed and over here' was the verdict of many British civilians of American and Canadian soldiers conscripted to Britain in the Second World War. Yet for thousands of young girls, the influx of handsome young military men meant flirting, 'walking out' - and falling in love. The result was over 48,000 hasty marriages to Canadian soldiers alone, and a mass emigration of British young women to northern America and across the globe in the 1940s. Historian Melynda Jarratt has painstakingly captured the incredible stories of young women - some say brave, some say foolish - who left their families and homes to move to a country thousands of miles away with a man they barely knew. Yet the ensuing decades brought happiness to many, and surviving women share their tales of love, family and starting again. For some brides, the outcome was a very different story, and the darker side of the crossings reveals astonishing accounts of infidelity, domestic violence, venereal disease and even bigamy. This incredible new history draws on archives, rare documents, medical records and key first-hand accounts to tell the amazing story of the war brides in their own words - and shows the love, passion, tragedy and spirit of adventure that thousands of British women experienced in a turbulent time. |
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Title: Stalingrad: The Air Battle
Author: Christer Bergstrom
Publisher: Ian Allan Publishing
Price: £27.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World Air War
Category: Second World War |
This book centres around the huge air battles which took place over Stalingrad between August and November 1942 and the subsequent airlift operation in the winter of 1942/43 intended to relieve the German Sixth Army which was by then trapped in Stalingrad. It also covers the air war during the Russian counter-offensive in early 1943 where the Luftwaffe played a major role in saving the whole German Eastern Front from collapsing. The book contains much eye-witness material and the text is accompanied by a large number of rare and previously unpublished photographs, biographical inserts on some of the leading figures in the struggle, data tables, technical assessments and appendices. |
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Title: VE Day: The People's Story
Author: Russell Miller
Publisher: Tempus
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: VE Day
Category: Second World War
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This inspiring book draws from first-hand interviews, diaries and memoirs of those involved in the VE Day celebrations in 1945. It paints an enthralling picture of a day that marked the end of the war in Europe and the beginning of a new era. VE Day affected millions of people in countless ways. This book records a sample of those views, from both Britain and abroad, from civilians and service men and women, from the famous and the not-so-famous, in order to provide a moving story and a valuable social picture of the times. Mixed with humour as well as tragedy, rejoicing as well as sadness, regrets of the past and hopes for the future, "VE Day: The People's Story" is an inspiring record of one of the great turning points in history.
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Title: Slim's Burma Boys
Author: John Hill
Publisher: Spellmount
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: William Slim
Category: Second World War |
"Slim's Burma Boys" relates the personal experiences of men who fought the "Forgotten War" of the Burma campaign. Hill wanted his readers to know what it was like to be there and with this in mind he selected a variety of operations and events from B Company of the 2nd Battalion, the Royal Berkshire Regiment, which he commanded. He was one of the only men to survive the border crossing into Burma. The Company earned two Military Crosses, a Distinguished Conduct Medal, four Military Medals, and a mention in Despatches. Hill conveys the intensity of involvement in the action, experiencing the adrenaline rush as well as the fear and courage of those who took part in swollen river crossings, patrols, ambushes, skirmishes and major actions against a ruthless and determined enemy who would never surrender. His memoir is of general interest as well as a fitting memoir to his men and should be prescribed reading for all would-be officers and soldiers. |
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Title: A World at Arms
Author: Gerhard L. Weinberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Price: £18.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: Second World War Index
Category: Second World War
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This major work is the first general history of World War II to be based both on the existing literature and on extensive work in British, American and German archives. It covers all the theatres of war, the weaponry used, and developments on the home front. Taking a global perspective, the work deals with all belligerents and relates events in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific to each other. The role of diplomacy and strategy, of intelligence and espionage, and the impact of war upon society are all dealt with, often on the basis of hitherto unknown material. New light is shed on the actions of great and small powers and on topics ranging from the beginning of the war to the dropping of the atomic bombs; the titanic battles on the Eastern Front are fitted into the war as a whole; the killing of six million Jews and millions of other civilians is placed into context; and the fighting at sea and in the air is included in a coherent view of the great conflict.
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Title: Eating for Victory
Author: Jill Norman
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Price: £9.99
Bookshop: Amazon
Spartacus Website: The Home Front
Category: Second World War |
A beautifully packaged and wonderfully nostalgic collection of war-time leaflets, presented in full colour. The period of wartime food rationing is now regarded as a time when the nation was at its healthiest. Food rationing was introduced in January 1940 after food shipments were attacked by German U-boat ‘Wolf Packs’ and everything from butter and sugar to fish and jam were rationed. The leaflets reproduced in Eating for Victory were distributed by the Ministry of Food and advised the general public on how to cope with these shortages. As a result of the stringent rules put in place during wartime, people began to eat more healthily than ever before. Eating for Victory is a great gift book and not only does it offer a nostalgic look back at one of the hardest and yet perhaps healthiest times in history, but it is also a relevant guide on healthy eating for today.
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