In the late summer of 1944, SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Bittrich found himself in the Netherlands surveying his II SS Panzer Corps, which was in a poor state having narrowly escaped the defeat in Normandy. He was completely unaware that his command lay directly in the path of a major Allied thrust: the 17 September 1944 launch of the largest airborne and glider operation in the history of warfare.

On September 17, 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the groaning roar of airplane engines. He went out onto his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders, carrying the legendary American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne Division. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept, but could it have ever worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch.

Thousands of miles from friendly ports, the US Navy had finally managed to complete the capture of Guadalcanal from the Japanese in early 1943. Now the Allies sought to keep the offensive momentum won at such a high cost. This is the central plotline running through this page-turning history beginning with the Japanese Operation I-Go and the American ambush of Admiral Yamamoto and continuing on to the Allied invasion of New Georgia, northwest of Guadalcanal in the middle of the Solomon Islands and the location of a major Japanese base.

This landmark account of the U.S. Navy in the Cold War, Who Can Hold the Sea combines narrative history with scenes of stirring adventure on—and under—the high seas. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the victorious Navy sends its sailors home and decommissions most of its warships. But this peaceful interlude is short-lived, as Stalin, America’s former ally, makes aggressive moves in Europe and the Far East.

At a huge cost, the Red Army and the civilian population of Leningrad ultimately endured a bitter 900-day siege, struggling against constant bombing, shelling, and starvation. Throughout the siege, Soviet forces tried to break the German lines and restore contact with the garrison. To Besiege a City charts the first of these offensives which began in January 1942 and was followed by repeated assaults.

The fighting between the German and Russian armies in the Rzhev Salient during World War II was so grisly, so murderous, and saw such vast losses that the troops called the campaign 'The Meat Grinder'. Though millions of men would fight and die there, the Rzhev Salient does not have the name recognition of Leningrad or Moscow. It has been largely ignored by Western historians – until now.

In the summer of 1754, deep in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, a very young George Washington suffered his first military defeat, and a centuries-old feud between Great Britain and France was rekindled. The war that followed would be fought across virgin territories, from Nova Scotia to the forks of the Ohio River, and it would ultimately decide the fate of the entire North American continent—not just for Great Britain and France but also for the Spanish and Native American populations.

Pacific War expert Mark Stille examines the key aspects of battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval encounter in history and probably the most decisive naval battle of the entire Pacific War, with new and insightful analysis and dismantles the myths surrounding the respective actions and overall performances of the two most important commanders in the battle, and the “lost victory” of the Japanese advance into Leyte Gulf that never happened.

On August 7, 1942, two events of major military importance occurred on separate sides of the planet. In the South Pacific, the United States went on the offensive, landing the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal. In England, 12 B-17 bombers of the new Eighth Air Force’s 97th Bombardment Group bombed the Rouen–Sotteville railroad marshalling yards in France. While the mission was small, the aerial struggle that began that day would ultimately cost the United States more men killed and wounded by the end of the war in Europe than the Marines would lose in the Pacific War.

Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company, which kept getting the tough assignments. Easy Company was responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. Band of Brothers is the account of the men of this remarkable unit.

It was the afternoon of 18 August 1966, hot, humid with grey monsoonal skies. D Company, 6RAR were four kilometres east of their Nui Dat base, on patrol in a rubber plantation not far from the abandoned village of Long Tan. A day after their base had suffered a mortar strike, they were looking for Viet Cong soldiers. Then—just when they were least expecting—they found them. Under withering fire, some Diggers perished, some were grievously wounded, the rest fought on, as they remained under sustained attack. For hours these men fought for their lives against the enemy onslaught.

The story of the Battle of Saipan has it all. Marines at war: on Pacific beaches, in hellish volcanic landscapes in places like Purple Heart Ridge, Death Valley, and Hell's Pocket, under a commander known as "Howlin' Mad." Naval combat: carriers battling carriers from afar, fighters downing Japanese aircraft, submarines sinking carriers. Marine-army rivalry. Fanatical Japanese defense and resistance. A turning point of the Pacific War. James Hallas reconstructs the full panorama of Saipan in a way that no recent chronicler of the battle has done.

A masterful biography of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations during World War II, Citizen Soldiers provides a compelling account of the extraordinary stories of ordinary men in their fight for democracy. From the high command on down to the enlisted men, Stephen E. Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from men on both sides who were there.

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.

This book tells the story of the Teams operating out of FOB2 Kontum, near the tri-border area, in 1968-69. From recon missions over the fence to the heroic, and sometimes fatal efforts undertaken to try and rescue missing SOG members, the events are told through the words of the men themselves, supported by previously unreleased official documents.

On September 17, 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the groaning roar of airplane engines. He went out onto his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders, carrying the legendary American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the British 1st Airborne Division. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept, but could it have ever worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch.

Renowned historian Antony Beevor, the man who "single-handedly transformed the reputation of military history" (The Guardian) presents the first major account in more than 20 years of the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Paris. This is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the French caught up in the fighting.

A masterful biography of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations during World War II, Citizen Soldiers provides a compelling account of the extraordinary stories of ordinary men in their fight for democracy. From the high command on down to the enlisted men, Stephen E. Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews and oral histories from men on both sides who were there.

Much has been made of - and written about - August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four years, the endgame seems to come as a stunning anticlimax. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns simply fell silent. The Last Battle definitively corrects this misperception. As Hart shows, a number of factors precipitated the Armistice.

One of the last cavalry units to ride horses into battle, the Sherwood Rangers were transformed into a “mechanized cavalry” of tanks in 1942. After winning acclaim in the North African campaign, they spearheaded one of the D-Day landings in Normandy and became the first British troops to cross into Germany. Their courage, skill, and tenacity contributed mightily to the surrender of Germany in 1945.

Stuart Hills embarked his Sherman DD tank on to an LCT at 6:45 a.m., Sunday, June 4th, 1944. He was 20 years old, un-blooded, fresh from a public-school background, and officer cadet training. He was going to war. Two days later, his tank sunk; he and his crew landed from a rubber dinghy with just the clothes they stood in. After that, the struggles through the Normandy bocage in a replacement tank, engaging the enemy in a constant round of close encounters, led to a swift mastering of the art of tank warfare and remarkable survival in the midst of carnage and destruction.

As part of the massive Allied invasion of Normandy, three airborne divisions were dropped behind enemy lines to sow confusion in the German rear and prevent panzer reinforcements from reaching the beaches. In the dark early hours of D-Day, this confusion was achieved well enough, as nearly every airborne unit missed its drop zone, creating a kaleidoscope of small-unit combat.

Richard Freiherr von Rosen was a highly decorated Wehrmacht soldier and outstanding panzer commander. After serving as a gunlayer on a Pz.Mk.III during Barbarossa, he led a company of Tigers at Kursk. Later he led a company of King Tiger panzers at Normandy and in late 1944 commanded a battle group (12 King Tigers and a flak company) against the Russians in Hungary in the rank of junior, later senior lieutenant (from November 1944, his final rank). Only 489 of these King Tiger tanks were ever built.

In September Hope, acclaimed historian John C. McManus explores World War II’s most ambitious invasion, an immense, daring offensive to defeat Nazi Germany before the end of 1944. Operation Market-Garden is one of the war’s most famous, but least understood, battles, and McManus tells the story of the American contribution to this crucial phase of the war in Europe.

In this dramatic account of the 1944-45 winter of war in Bastogne, historian Peter Schrijvers offers the first full story of the German assault on the strategically located town. From the December stampede of American and Panzer divisions racing to reach Bastogne first, through the bloody eight-day siege from land and air, and through three more weeks of unrelenting fighting even after the siege was broken, events at Bastogne hastened the long-awaited end of WWII.

Easy Company, 506th Airborne Division, U.S. Army, was as good a rifle company as any in the world. From their rigorous training in Georgia in 1942 to D-Day and victory, Ambrose tells the story of this remarkable company, which kept getting the tough assignments. Easy Company was responsible for everything from parachuting into France early D-Day morning to the capture of Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden. Band of Brothers is the account of the men of this remarkable unit.

Dünkirchen 1940 is the first major history on what went wrong for the Germans at Dunkirk. As supreme military commander, Hitler had seemingly achieved a miracle after the swift capitulation of Holland and Belgium, but with just seven kilometres before the panzers captured Dunkirk – the only port through which the trapped British Expeditionary force might escape – they came to a shuddering stop. Only a detailed interpretation of the German perspective – historically lacking to date – can provide answers as to why.

In this brilliant narrative of America's first limited war, Toland lets both the events and the participants speak for themselves, employing scrupulous archival research and interviews as the bases for the drama and accuracy of his writing. In Mortal Combat reveals Mao's prediction of the date and place of MacArthur's Inchon landing, Russia's indifference to the war, Mao's secret leadership of the North Korean military, and the true nature of both sides' treatment and repatriation of POWs.

In the cold morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of German soldiers were in position from Port en Bessin eastward past Colleville on the Normandy coast, aware that a massive invasion force was heading straight for them, although according to Allied Intelligence, they shouldn't have been there. The presence of 352 Division meant that the number of defenders was literally double the number expected - and on the best fortified of all the invasion beaches. What makes this account of the bloody struggle unique is that it is told from the German standpoint, using firsthand testimony....

It is the winter of 1944. Allied forces have succeeded in liberating most of Axis-occupied Italy - with one crucial exception: the Nazi headquarters north of the Gothic Line. Heavily guarded and surrounded by rugged terrain, the mountain fortress is nearly impenetrable. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to drive a dagger into the "soft underbelly of Europe." The Allied's plan: drop two paratroopers into the mountains-and take the fortress by storm....