Europe War

How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust - and features over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs and posters from the period.

En el año 2015 se conmemora el 70º aniversario del final de la segunda guerra mundial, la guerra total de la que todos conocemos los grandes hitos: los turbios inicios del nazismo, la invasión de Polonia, la derrota de Francia, el bombardeo de Pearl Harbor, el Afrika Korps, el holocausto judío, la batalla de Stalingrado, el desembarco de Normandía, la batalla final en Berlín, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

"You are to report to Station X at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, in four days time....That is all you need to know." This was the terse telegram hundreds of young women throughout the British Isles received in the spring of 1941, as World War II raged. As they arrived at Station X, a sprawling mansion in a state of disrepair surrounded by Spartan-looking huts with little chimneys coughing out thick smoke—these young people had no idea what kind of work they were stepping into. Who had recommended them? Why had they been chosen? Most would never learn all the answers to these questions.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) inspired and haunted an extraordinary number of exceptional artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Martha Gellhorn, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and John Dos Passos. The idealism of the cause--defending democracy from fascism at a time when Europe was darkening toward another world war--and the brutality of the conflict drew from them some of their best work.

By early 1945 the destruction of the German Nazi State seems certain. The Allied forces, led by American generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower, are gaining control of Europe, leaving German leaders scrambling. Facing defeat, Adolf Hitler flees to a secret bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun, and his beloved dog, Blondi. It is there that all three would meet their ends, thus ending the Third Reich and one of the darkest chapters of history.

Closely modeled on his NATO experience of war gaming future conflicts, War with Russia is a chilling account of where we are heading if we fail to recognise the threat posed by the Russian president. Written by the recently retired Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe and endorsed by senior military figures, this audiobook shows how war with Russia could erupt, with the bloodiest and most appalling consequences, if the necessary steps are not taken urgently.

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.

In this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On holidays in the "Red Riviera" on the Black Sea, she remembers playing on the beach only miles from a bristling electrified fence whose barbs pointed inward toward the enemy: the citizens of the totalitarian regime.

The shattering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that, after nearly 50 years of peace, war could return to Europe. It came to its bloody conclusion in Kosovo in 1999. Tim Marshall, then diplomatic editor at Sky News, was on the ground covering the Kosovo War. This is his illuminating account of how events unfolded, a thrilling journalistic memoir drawing on personal experience, eyewitness accounts, and interviews with intelligence officials from five countries.

In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.

Early May 1945. Murphy’s platoon engages in one last battle against an enemy determined to keep fighting to the bitter end. The men are reluctant to risk their lives so close to the end, but they are US Army Rangers. Not prepared to give ground to a bunch of unrepentant Nazis. They hit the Nazis hard and inflict so many casualties they have no choice but to drop their weapons, throw up their hands and surrender. It is over. Yet it is not over. An SS scientist is on the run. Gottfried Neumann has committed murder on an industrial scale inside the Treblinka death camp. The victims were ...

It is the 20th century’s unrivaled epic: At a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his best-selling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted the history of how the American-led coalition fought its way from North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most dramatic story of all - the titanic battle in Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the war’s final campaign, and Atkinson’s astonishingly fresh account of that enormous gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows.

In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the 19th century.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that in war there are innocents on all sides who suffer. German citizens who had no connection to the atrocities committed by their countrymen nonetheless endured great hardships because of them.

For generations, the great palaces of Britain were home to living histories, noble families that had reigned for centuries. But by the end of the nineteenth century, members of elite society found themselves, for the first time, in the company of arrivistes. Their new neighbors—from chorus girls to millionaire greengrocers to guano impresarios—lacked lineage and were unencumbered by the weight of tradition. In The Power and the Glory, historian Adrian Tinniswood reconstructs life in the country house during its golden age before the Great War.

It is impossible to think of Russia today without thinking of Vladimir Putin. More than any other major national leader, he personifies his country in the eyes of the outside world, and dominates Western media coverage of it to an extraordinary extent. In Russia itself, he is likewise the centre of attention for detractors and supporters alike. But as Tony Wood argues, this overwhelming focus on the president and his personality means that we understand Russia less than we ever did before.

As soon as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, prominent independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar circulated a Facebook petition signed first by hundreds of his cultural and journalistic contacts and then by thousands of others. That act led to a new law in Russia criminalizing criticism of the war, and Zygar fled Russia. In his time as a journalist, Zygar has interviewed President Zelensky and had access to many of the major players—from politicians to oligarchs.

On July 10, 1943, the largest amphibious invasion ever mounted took place, larger even than the Normandy invasion 11 months later: 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops came ashore or were parachuted onto Sicily, signaling the start of the campaign to defeat Nazi Germany on European soil. Operation HUSKY, as it was known, was enormously complex, involving dramatic battles on land, in the air, and at sea. Yet, despite its paramount importance to ultimate Allied victory, and its drama, very little has been written about the 38-day Battle for Sicily.

Closing with the Enemy picks up where D-Day leaves off. From Normandy through the "breakout" in France to the German army's last gasp in the Battle of the Bulge, Michael D. Doubler deals with the deadly business of war - closing with the enemy, fighting and winning battles, taking and holding territory. His study provides a provocative reassessment of how American GIs accomplished these dangerous and costly tasks.

Imagine you are nine years old. Your best friend’s father is arrested, half your classmates disappear from school, and someone burns down the house across the road. Imagine you have to cross a snow-covered mountain range at night in order to escape the soldiers who are trying to kill you. How would you deal with these memories once you are an adult? Jones, a relief worker and child psychiatrist, interviewed over 40 Serb and Muslim children who came of age during the Bosnian War and now returns, 20 years after the war began, to discover the adults they have become.