Germany World War Ii

During the two major wars of the 20th century, America and Germany did indeed clash against each other, and in both cases, American entry into the war was a decisive factor in the defeat of the Germans. In World War I, it was the discovery of a German plan to attack the US through Mexico that overturned public opinion against neutrality, and in World War II, it wasn't until Pearl Harbor. For the Kaiser in the First World War and the Führer in the Second World War, utilizing Mexico as a strategic base to importune and hold back the US was a priority in the Americas.

Major General Sid Shachnow was ten-years-old when he escaped the notorious Kovno concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Later, he traveled to post-war Germany, and he earned a living as a courier for his mother's black market business. His family eventually came to America where he struggled to get an education, held down three jobs, and courted the girl of his dreams, whom he would marry and raise four daughters with.

On June 14, 1940, German tanks rolled into Paris. Eight days later, France accepted a humiliating defeat and foreign occupation. Most citizens adapted and many even allied themselves with the new fascist leadership. Yet others refused to capitulate; in answer to the ruthless violence, shortages, and curfews imposed by the Nazis, a resistance arose. Among this shadow army were Jews, immigrants, communists, workers, writers, police officers, shop owners, including many young people in their teens and 20s.

In May 1940, Nazi Germany was master of continental Europe. The only European power still standing was Great Britain - and the all-conquering German armed forces stood poised to cross the Channel. Following the destruction of the RAF fighter forces, the sweeping of the Channel of mines, and the wearing down of the Royal Naval defenders, two German army groups were set to storm the beaches of southern England.

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous "escape-proof" wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to escape from the massive floodlit stronghold, by any means necessary.

Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm II, who occupied the throne of the German Empire for more than 30 years from June 1888 to November 1918, remains as much an enigma in death as he was in life. Over 70 years after his death in 1941, the mention of his name still sparks unsettled debates among historians. Was he the duty-bound, hands-on leader and passionate pro-British reformer who ruled in challenging times, seemingly mild in comparison to Hitler?

Stalingrad ranks as one of the most infamous, savage and emotive battles of the 20th century. It has consumed military historians since the 1950s and has inspired many books and much debate. This book tells the story of the operation mounted by the Luftwaffe to supply, by airlift, the trapped and exhausted German Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/43. Using previously unpublished diaries, original Luftwaffe reports and specially commissioned artwork, this gripping battle is told in detail through the eyes of the Luftwaffe commanders and pilots.

In 1998, Helga Schneider, in her sixties, was summoned from Italy to the nursing home in Vienna in which her 90-year-old mother lived. The last time she had seen her mother was 27 years earlier, when her mother asked her daughter to try on the SS uniform which she treasures, and tried to give her several items of jewellery, the loot of holocaust victims, which Schneider rejected.

In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let alone secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister, was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life, and finally lost it, through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple his regime.

When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. Never before or since has there been such a detailed study of governmental leaders who orchestrated mass killings.

As war began in Europe in 1939, a naturalized German American was recruited by the Nazis to set up a radio transmitter and collect messages from spies active in the city to send back to Nazi spymasters in Hamburg. This German American, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau's history, the center of a 16-month investigation that led to the arrest of a colorful cast of 33 enemy agents.

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.

October 6, 1944. Twenty-year-old Army Air Corps Second Lieutenant David "Mac" Warren MacArthur was on a strafing mission over Greece when a round of 88-mm German anti-aircraft flak turned his P-38 Lightning into a comet of fire and smoke. Dave parachuted to safety as the Lightning lived up to her name and struck the Adriatic Sea like a bolt of flames. In minutes, he was plucked from the water - only to find himself on the wrong end of a German rifle pointing straight at his head.

Two Lives is both a history of a violent century seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage, and abiding yet complex love. Part biography, part memoir, part meditation on our times, this is the true tale of two remarkable lives, a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.

After the last shots of World War II were fired and the process of rebuilding Germany and Europe began, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union each tried to obtain the services of the Third Reich's leading scientists, especially those involved in rocketry, missile technology, and aerospace research.

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.

Renowned World War Two historian James Holland presents an entirely new perspective on one of the most important moments in recent history. Unflinchingly examining the brutality and violence that characterised the campaign, it's time to draw some radically different conclusions. D-Day and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed have come to be seen as a defining episode in the Second World War. Its story has been endlessly retold, and yet it remains a narrative burdened by both myth and assumed knowledge.

In this gripping fictional naval encounter during World War II, Signalman Bill Johnson aboard the American destroyer USS Atticus recounts navigating the treacherous waters of the North Sea, leading to a face-off against German U-boats. As tensions escalate, a high-stakes battle of wits and courage takes a surprising twist in an already unpredictable warfare situation.

The Rangers’ mission was clear. They were to lead the assault on Omaha Beach and break out inland. Simultaneously, other Ranger units would scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to destroy the ostensibly huge gun battery there and thus protect the invasion fleet from being targeted. But was the Pointe du Hoc mission actually necessary? Why did the Allies plan and execute an attack on a gun battery that they knew in advance contained no field guns? And more importantly, why did they ignore the position at Maisy that did?