Germany World War Ii

During World War II, Heinz Drossel saved Soviet prisoners of war and several Jews, including Marianne Hirschfeld. Again and again, he wasn't afraid to risk his own life when others' safety was at risk. Nearly all of Hirschfeld's family members were murdered by Nazis; she survived in hiding - and met Heinz again by coincidence after the war was over. They married in 1946. At that time, starting over was difficult. In the judicial service, Drossel witnessed Nazis continuing with their careers....

To Command the Sky is a scholarly record of the fight for domination of the skies over Western Europe during World War II. It also explains the technical details of the tactics used to defeat the Luftwaffe. This book is important for serious students of World War II or military aviation.

Scientists have always kept secrets. But rarely in history have scientific secrets been as vital as they were during World War II. In the midst of planning the Manhattan Project, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services created a secret offshoot - the Alsos Mission - meant to gather intelligence on and sabotage if necessary, scientific research by the Axis powers. What resulted was a plot worthy of the finest thriller, full of spies, sabotage and murder.

In a return to sweeping social history of wartime, Patrick Bishop explores the lives and wartime experiences of thousands of men and women who served in all units of the air force. On 1st April 2018, the Royal Air Force will be 100 years old - a short life by military standards but an extraordinarily important and eventful one. From the start it was special, standing sometimes awkwardly but always proudly a little apart from the existing services.

Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths that have often been left out of the legend.

Immensely powerful and thickly armored, armed with eight 15-inch guns aimed by one of the most sophisticated target acquisition systems of its day, the Third Reich's premier battleship, the KMS Bismarck, left an indelible trail of legends behind it during its single, fatal foray against the British in 1941.

On the 75th anniversary of the Coventry bombing, acclaimed historian Frederick Taylor brilliantly details this momentous act and analyzes its impact on World War II and the moral quandaries it still engenders about the nature of warfare.

In the space of a single night, four lives collide as Berlin staggers under the weight of British bombs. Mick, a Lancaster pilot, proposed to Grace on his last leave but one more mission stands in between him and the end of his tour. Grace harbors a secret, one which she fears might change the nature of their relationship forever. Unsure of how he will respond, she has decided to tell him upon his return. In Berlin, 700 miles away, war-weary firefighter Karl is haunted by the images he's seen both on the home front and in Russia. Now he commands of a group of teenage auxiliaries.

March 1945. Allied troops are poised to cross the Rhine and sweep on into Germany. Victory is finally within their grasp. But if they believe this victory can be easily won, they face swift disillusionment. The final 100 days of the Second World War will prove to be bitterly and bloodily fought, village by village, town by town. Acclaimed military historian Peter Caddick-Adams brings this closing stage of the Allies' fight against Nazi Germany brilliantly to life. He explores the immense challenges they faced in crossing the Rhine on a 300-mile front.

In February 1943, a group of journalists - including a young wire service correspondent named Walter Cronkite and cub reporter Andy Rooney - clamored to fly along on a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. Seven of the 64 bombers that attacked a U-boat base that day never made it back to England. A fellow survivor, Homer Bigart of the New York Herald Tribune, asked Cronkite if he’d thought through a lede. "I think I’m going to say," mused Cronkite, “that I’ve just returned from an assignment to hell."

The War Crimes Trials for World War II: The History and Legacy of Nazi Germany and Japan’s War Crimes Trials After the War chronicles the history of the trials from their conception to their completion. You will learn about the trials like never before.

Savage Will brings to life a remarkable story of perseverance, heroism, and survival: the true tale of the American medics and nurses who endured two months in Nazi-occupied Albania - and the fearless citizens and Allied intelligence officers who risked all to save them. On a cold morning in war-ravaged Sicily in 1943, men and women of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron boarded a routine flight to the Italian mainland to care for wounded soldiers.

Seit Anfang der achtziger Jahre hat Professor Guido Knopp, Leiter der ZDF-Redaktion Zeitgeschichte, mit unzähligen Menschen aus dem Umfeld der Paladine Hitlers gesprochen. Er hat Familienangehörige, Freunde, Mitarbeiter und andere Zeitzeugen befragt, und er hat persönliche Dokumente eingesehen. Die daraus entstandenen Bücher, Hitlers Helfer und "Hitlers Helfer - Täter und Vollstrecker" waren sowohl bei der Kritik als auch beim Lesepublikum ein außerordentlicher Erfolg. Erstmals und mit großem Feingefühl beantwortete Guido Knopp die Frage, was die Paladine Hitlers zu Massenmord und Kriegshetze, in Rassenwahn und bedingungslose Gefolgschaft trieb.

Autumn 1945 saw the start of the Nuremberg trials, in which high ranking representatives of the Nazi government were called to account for their war crimes. In a curious yet fascinating twist, witnesses for the prosecution and the defense were housed together in a villa on the outskirts of town. The Witness House reveals the social structures that allowed a cruel and unjust regime to flourish and serves as a symbol of the blurred boundaries between accuser and accused that would come to form the basis of postwar Germany.

Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son - the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel - is curious about Walter's experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on those pages, leading his son to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly, with what he can piece together of his father's early life.

During World War II many escape-line organizations contributed to the Allied cause by funneling hundreds of servicemen out of occupied Europe. As the Germans tightened their noose, the risk of discovery only grew for the servicemen who needed safe passage across the Pyrenees. In early 1944 two important escape-line organizations operated in southwestern France, handing over many fugitives to French passeur Jean-Louis Bazerque. Along with several of his successful missions, his only failure as a passeur is recounted in gripping detail in So Close to Freedom.

[Eric Wiberg] “…builds a character both attractive and intriguing to the reader. I ended genuinely curious about what might come next, and confident that I was in the hands of an expert story-teller.” —William F. Buckley Jr. “Eric Wiberg's ability, to unearth obscure historical facts, keeps me in a constant state of surprise. I commend his relentless determination to verify every detail, with local sources in Nassau's historical community, for corroboration of his findings.”—Capt. Paul C. Aranha, Author, The Island Airman . . . and his Bahama Islands Home. “Eric Wiberg has ...

In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier at the Battle of the Bulge or elsewhere in Europe were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews or were thought to resemble Jews. They were transported in cattle cars to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany, and put to work as slave laborers, mining tunnels for a planned underground synthetic-fuel factory. This was the only incident of its kind during World War II.

The Battle of Stalingrad is rightfully known as the “turning point” of the Second World War. Before the battle, which took place from August 1942 until the beginning of February 1943, the Germans were victorious everywhere, despite some localized setbacks (for example, at Moscow in 1941). After Stalingrad, the Germans were constantly pushed back, with some notable examples being Kursk in the summer of 1943 and the Bulge in 1944.

Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skilfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion. Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Bormann, Hess - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Gerda and Ilse.... These are the women behind the infamous men.