Germany War Ii

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.

In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat, complete with its crew of 60 men, not too far off the New Jersey coast. The divers, realizing the momentousness of their discovery, began probing the mystery. Over the next six years, they became expert and well-traveled researchers, taught themselves German, hunted for clues in Germany, and constructed theories corrective of the history books, all in an effort to identify this sunken U-boat and its crew.

As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by large segments of the population and firmly supported by the Nazi regime, Hitler is poised to subjugate Europe. Nine years later, his vaunted war machine destroyed, Allied forces sweeping across Germany, Hitler will end his life with a pistol shot to his head.

Fall, 1944. Paris has been liberated, saved from destruction, but this diversion on the road to Berlin has given the Germans time to regroup. The American and British armies press on from the west, facing the enemy time and again in the Hurtgen Forest, during the Market-Garden invasion, and at the Battle of the Bulge, all while American general George Patton and British field marshal Bernard Montgomery vie for supremacy as the Allies’ top battlefield commander.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.

It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed.

By early December 1941, war had changed much of the world beyond recognition. Nazi Germany occupied most of the European continent, while in Asia, the Second Sino-Japanese War had turned China into a battleground. But these conflicts were not yet inextricably linked - and the United States remained at peace. Hitler’s American Gamble recounts the five days that upended everything: December 7 to 11.

Are you ready for the truth about World War Two? In the first of an extraordinary three-volume account of the war on land, in the air and at sea, James Holland not only reveals the truth behind the familiar legends of the Second World War but he also unveils those lesser known events which were to have the greatest significance. The first book to consider the economic, political and social as well as the military aspects of World War Two, this is a unique retelling of a monumental event in all its terrible and majestic glory.

By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands. In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity.

On July 5, 1943, the greatest land battle in history began when Nazi and Red Army forces clashed near the town of Kursk, on the western border of the Soviet Union. Code named Operation Citadel, the German offensive would cut through the bulge in the eastern front that had been created following Germany's retreat at the battle of Stalingrad. But the Soviets, well informed about Germany's plans through their network of spies, had months to prepare.

Here, from New York Times best-selling historian Francis Russell, is the dramatic story of Germany - from the rise of Charlemagne to the age of Martin Luther, from the 30 Years' War to the iron rule of Otto von Bismarck, and from the formation of the Weimar Republic to the fighting of two world wars.

On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women - many of them teenagers - were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few survived.

Berlin, 1944: Amira and Gisele have been best friends since they were children, and now Gisele is the only person who knows Amira’s secret. A secret that puts her and everyone she loves in unimaginable danger amid the daily horror and violence of Nazi Germany. With the threat of exposure drawing closer, Gisele’s suggestion that Amira marries her friend Fred, a famous pianist, might just be the lifeline she needs to keep them both safe. Because Fred has secrets too.

In the early years of World War II, Germany shocked the world with a devastating blitzkrieg, rapidly conquered most of Europe, and pushed into North Africa. As the Allies scrambled to counter the Axis armies, the British Eighth Army confronted the experienced Afrika Corps, led by German field marshal Erwin Rommel, in three battles at El Alamein. In the first battle, the Eighth Army narrowly halted the advance of the Germans during the summer of 1942. However, the stalemate left Nazi troops within striking distance of the Suez Canal, which would provide a critical tactical advantage to the controlling force. War historian Glyn Harper dives into the story, vividly narrating the events, strategies, and personalities surrounding the battles and paying particular attention to the Second Battle of El Alamein, a crucial turning point in the war that would be described by Winston Churchill as "the end of the beginning."

At the start of World War II, the US Army had two cavalry divisions - and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions, some of whom by 1943 blocked the Allied advance in the Italian campaign. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers, and others with outdoor experience.

Nazi Germany expected its airborne attack on Crete in 1941 to be a textbook victory based on tactical surprise. Little did they know that the British, using Ultra intercepts, had already laid a careful trap. It should have been the first German defeat of the war, but a fatal misunderstanding turned the battle around.

London, 1940. Britain is gripped by the terror of the Blitz, forcing Nell Spelman to flee the capital with her young daughter - leaving behind her husband, Arthur, the clockmaker who keeps Big Ben chiming. When Arthur disappears, Nell is desperate to find him. But her search will lead her into far darker places than she ever imagined.

The Crimea was one of the crucibles of the war on the Eastern Front, where first a Soviet and then a German army were surrounded, fought desperate battles, and were eventually destroyed. The fighting in the region was unusual for the Eastern Front in many ways, in that naval supply, amphibious landings, and naval evacuation played major roles, while both sides were also conducting ethnic cleansing as part of their strategy - the Germans eliminating the Jews and the Soviets purging the region of Tartars.

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.