Novedades

Rarely has a book had such an impact on so many of us here at Ignatius Press. It is one of the most powerful and moving books we have come across. If you can only buy one book this season, this must be the one. Here is the astonishing true story of the harrowing experiences of a young German seminarian drafted into Hitler’s dreaded SS at the onset of World War II.

Before the Second World War, Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was one of the most famous performers in the world. She made her name dancing on the Parisian stage, but when war broke out she decided not to return to America. Instead, Baker turned spy for the French Secret Services. In this engaging, deeply researched study, Hanna Diamond tells the full story of Baker’s actions for the French and Allied powers in World War Two.

On November 29, 1943, as the Allies’ primary leaders met in Tehran, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin his idea for the organization that would become the United Nations. The American president suggested that the active arm of the organization be “the Four Policemen”: the U.S., USSR, UK, and China. Stalin agreed with much of the framework in principle, but asserted that China likely would not possess the strength after the war to assist.

Airpower over the Rhine is a critical new perspective on the air battle between the French Air Force (FAF) and the Luftwaffe in the skies over France during May and June 1940. Author James F. Slaughter III examines how each country's leadership created the circumstances that enabled the Luftwaffe's victory over the FAF and Germany's ultimate defeat of France.

After the fall of France in June 1940, all that stood between Adolf Hitler and total victory was a narrow stretch of water and the defiance of the British people. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart, and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination. By early 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place.

At the height of World War II, five hundred Army flight nurses served with the Army Air Forces as members of thirty-one medical air evacuation squadrons located throughout the world on both the European and Pacific fronts. Their work was not insignificantover one million patients were evacuated by air between January 1943 and May 1945. These specially trained Army nurses took nursing to new heights. Often decorated for their accomplishments, they exemplify the ability of a group of nurses to cope successfully with the challenges of war.

THE RESCUE MAN presents the unique journey of a World War II rescue pilot, First Lieutenant Frank Philby “Bud” Hayes, from his childhood in Idaho through his training for and service during World War II. Bud helps tell this story himself through his letters and records, which are this book’s main foundation and reveal tales of trials and tribulations, achievement, heroism and ultimately tragedy and mystery. The U.S. Army Air Force’s Second Emergency Rescue Squadron that Bud served in saved over seven hundred downed pilots during the war, making them responsible for thousands of ...

To save their daughter, they handed her over to strangers. Now he wants her back — but her heart has found a new home. Warsaw, 1942. With deportations looming and time running out, Aaron and Raizel make an impossible decision: to entrust their seven-year-old daughter, Machale, to a Catholic family. It is a desperate act of love — and perhaps her only chance to survive. But after Raizel perishes in the ghetto and Aaron is deported to a death camp, all contact is lost. And when the payments cease and danger escalates, her protectors quietly let the river take her. Magda — a devout, ...

World War II was more than just a clash of armies—it was a battle of ideologies, economies, and strategies on a global scale. It was the deadliest conflict in human history, involving more than 30 countries and resulting in the deaths of an estimated 70 to 85 million people, including both military personnel and civilians. For a time, it seemed as though Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, might succeed in reshaping the world according to its vision. Germany’s early victories stunned observers and instilled fear across Europe.

The German Army lost two consecutive wars and the conclusion is often drawn that it simply wasn't able to cope with its opponents. This image is constantly reinforced in literature and in the media, where seemingly brainless operating German units led by fanatical officers predominate. Nothing was as far from the truth. The records show that the Germans consistently outfought the far more numerous Allied armies that eventually defeated them: their relative battlefield performance was at least 1.5 and in most cases three times as high as that of its opponents.

The wartime interest in Greenland was a direct result of its vital strategic position—if you wanted to predict the weather in Europe, you had to have men in place on the vast, frozen island. The most celebrated example of Greenland's crucial contribution to Allied meteorological services is the correct weather forecast in June 1944 leading to the decision to launch the invasion of Normandy. In addition, both before and after D-Day a stream of weather reports from Greenland was essential for the Allied ability to carry out the bombing offensive against Germany.

"Dear Phil" Letters To And From Philmore G. Minter, Company H, 116th Regiment, 29th Division, tells the story of a D-Day survivor through the letters he wrote and were sent to him. Wounded by friendly fire a month after landing on Omaha Beach, Minter returned home to face a tough life before his death. This is the third book written by Thomas D. "Tom" Perry while working with David Minter, son of Philmore G. Minter

Normally transport squadrons aren't in the front line, but during Operation Market Garden No. 437 Squadron RCAF found themselves over Arnhem delivering supplies to the British 1st Airborne Division. This is their story.

This work is a snapshot of one of the engineer units that took part in Operation Market Garden, the 35,000 man airborne assault into The Netherlands to capture a series of bridges that would lead around the West Wall and into the heart of Germany. If all had gone well, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group probably would have beaten the Russians to Berlin and ended the war before Christmas 1944. This epic battle has been told many times from an overall view and has been the subject of many debates as to why the operation failed. This will not be repeated here. Instead, I offer a worm’s eye view ...

John Sliz has previously written on Operation Berlin, the evacuation of the British 1st Airborne Division from Arnhem, from the engineer's perspective and this time he concentrates on the Glider Pilots who lost their lives during the evacuation. This article first appeared in the December 2014 issue of The Eagle.

At the beginning of the Second World War, a team of unlikely and ill-assorted characters assembled in their secret country headquarters. They had left their civilian roles as politicians, journalists, novelists and spies, advertisers, artists and even forgers, to work for a covert government organisation preparing to broadcast British propaganda into occupied territory. These men and women would become the Political Warfare Executive.

On the morning of 16 December 1944, a monumental German force of six hundred thousand men crashed into the Allied lines in the snowbound hills of the Belgian Ardennes. Why were Allied forces so surprised by this counterattack? And why have the German sabotage and deception operations that disrupted supply lines and outwitted Allied intelligence been so overlooked by historians?

Nicht weit des ostpreußischen Rastenburg, des heutigen Ketrzyn in Polen, befand sich ein zentraler Ort des Zweiten Weltkriegs: das »Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze«. Dort verbrachte Adolf Hitler nach dem Angriff auf die Sowjetunion den Großteil seiner Zeit. Dort wurde über die systematische Ermordung der europäischen Juden entschieden. Dort ereignete sich am 20. Juli 1944 das Stauffenberg-Attentat, das der Diktator nur leicht verletzt überlebte. Auf der Basis von Zeitzeugnissen und bislang unveröffentlichten Dokumenten rekonstruiert Felix Bohr den Alltag in der »Wolfsschanze«.

In Hitler’s Path to Power: The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany: A Deep Dive Into History’s Darkest Regime, acclaimed historian and true crime author Isabella Hayes unpacks how Adolf Hitler transformed from a fringe agitator into the dictator of a totalitarian regime that plunged the world into war and genocide.

In March 1944, eleven young men lost their lives in a plane crash on Patrick County Virginia's Bull Mountain on a training mission. Educator Clarence Hall spent many years researching the crash. He and others put up two memorials to the men who lost their lives on the mountain and at the county courthouse in Stuart, Virginia. Historian Thomas D. "Tom" Perry tells the story of the men, their mission and the memorials to their sacrifice.