War Diaries

Napoleon’s surrender and retreat from Moscow in 1812 is a pinnacle of military horror. Of the 600,000 men who crossed into Russia in June of 1812, only 25,000 would survive. Jakob Walter, a conscript soldier, was one of those survivors. His observant diary captures the everyday circumstances that soldiers suffered during the campaign.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Now she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author.

A giant in American journalism in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation" reveals his World War II experiences in this National Geographic book. More than 100 of Cronkite's letters from 1943-45 (plus a few earlier letters) survive. They reveal surprising and little-known facts about this storied public figure in the vanguard of "The Greatest Generation". They chronicle both a great love story and a great war story.

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp.

As Assistant Private Secretary to four monarchs, 'Tommy' Lascelles had a ringside seat from which to observe the workings of the royal household and Downing Street during the first half of the 20th century. These fascinating diaries begin with Edward VIII's abdication and end with George VI's death and his daughter Elizabeth's Coronation. In between we see George VI at work and play, a portrait more intimate than any other previously published.

A groundbreaking historical contribution, The Devil's Diary is a chilling window into the mind of Adolf Hitler's "chief social philosopher", Alfred Rosenberg, who formulated some of the guiding principles behind the Third Reich's genocidal crusade.

Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. A federal judge ordered his release in March 2010, but the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to let him go.

The diary of a young Jewish housewife who, together with her husband and five-month-old baby, fled the Warsaw ghetto at the last possible moment, and survived the Holocaust hidden on the "Aryan" side of town in the loft of a run-down tinsmith's shed. Rescued from the Ashes documents the incredible life story of Leokadia Schmidt and her small family and their daily struggle to survive the Warsaw Ghetto.

This celebrated classic gives a soldier's-eye-view of the Guadalcanal battles; crucial to World War II, the war that continues to fascinate us all. Unlike some of those on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, Richard Tregaskis volunteered to be there. One of only two on-location news correspondents, he lived alongside the soldiers: sleeping on the ground - only to be awoken by air raids - eating meager rations, and braving some of the most dangerous battlefields of World War II.

This short account documents Joseph’s tour in India in the closing days of World War Two, based on his diaries and letters to his wife Mary, the account is augmented with some of the stories he loved to tell us. This is not a tale of high adventure, nor an intricate analysis of the battles and politics in WWII. It is the diary and missive of an ordinary man being plucked from his home and wife at the tender age of 23 to be deployed in a country which was completely alien to him. There are three phases of the story, shock and bewilderment at the living conditions he faced, learning to ...

On March 21, 2022, The New York Times for the first time published excerpts from the diary of Nadiya Sukhorukova, who noted evidence of Russia's real crimes in Ukraine. "A neighbor said that God left Mariupol. He was afraid of everything he saw," Ms. Sukhorukova wrote in a series of Facebook posts posted after her escape late last week. "I am alive and now I will live long. And my city is dying a painful death," she added. "For twenty days I was dying with it. I was in hell.” (Megan Specia, The New York Times). Excerpts from the diary have been published in UK, USA, Germany, Ukraine, and ...

A radio broadcaster and journalist for Edward R. Murrow at CBS, William L. Shirer was new to the world of broadcast journalism when he began keeping a diary while on assignment in Europe during the 1930s. Shirer’s Berlin Diary, which is considered the first full record of what was happening in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, appeared in 1941. Shirer returned to the European front in 1944 to cover the end of the war. End of a Berlin Diary chronicles this year-long study of Germany after Hitler.

A boy's own adventure along the length of the Iron Curtain. This book, based on Allan's diary, is a day-by-day summary of his experiences from both sides of the Iron Curtain whilst backpacking with a quixotic friend. The Cold War was a reality of Allan's entire life to 1981. The situation that was set in Europe in the late 1940s and early 50s was still in play; Communist eastern Europe was divided from western Europe. Through both alliances and history, Australia was aligned with the nations of western Europe. In the early 1980s, Allan was working towards graduating as an Australian Army ...

The Thornton Families were in the Americas before the founding of The United States of America, and throughout history, their sons served honorably in defense of this country. Later, the Thornton families answered the call when the United States joined Europe's war in April 1917. In the spirit of the Founding Fathers, Elmer Ray Thornton enlisted in The New York State National Guard, the 10th New York, which later became The 51st Pioneer Infantry Regiment. Elmer kept a diary of his experiences from when he left home on May 28, 1918, until he returned home on July 15, 1919. As a young man ...

This is the original diary of the wife of Confederate General James Chesnut, Jr., who was an aide to President Jefferson Davis. It is a fascinating narrative of all the years of the American Civil War. It focuses on the daily lives and hardships of all who suffered through the war, from ordinary people to the Confederacy's generals and political elite. Mary Chesnut's prose has lost none of its provocative bite through the ages.

"War Diary: The Diary of Mike Rogers" is a poignant historical record that chronicles the experiences of a young boy, Mike Rogers, during World War II. The diary begins in 1939, capturing the tense atmosphere as Britain enters the war. It provides detailed daily entries that cover the significant and mundane aspects of wartime life, from the fear of air raids and the impact of rationing to personal reflections and observations of everyday occurrences.

The war on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 was the bloodiest combat theater in the bloodiest war in history. Oberleutnant Friedrich Wilhelm Sander experienced this bloodshed firsthand when serving with the 11th Panzer-Regiment. This regiment made up the core of the 6th Panzer-Division, one of Hitler's top armored formations, which was involved in most of the major campaigns on the Eastern Front; campaigns such as Operation Barbarossa and Operation Winter Storm.

The late Dr. Michihiko Hachiya was director of the Hiroshima Communications Hospital when the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Though his responsibilities in the appalling chaos of a devastated city were awesome, he found time to record the story daily, with compassion and tenderness. Dr. Hachiya's compelling diary was originally published by the UNC Press in 1955, with the help of Dr. Warner Wells of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Da Nang Diary is the story of how, in Vietnam, an elite group of Air Force pilots fought a secret air war in Cessna 0-2 and OV-10 Bronco prop planes - flying as low as they could get. The eyes and ears of the fast-moving jets who rained death and destruction down on enemy positions, the forward air controller made an art form out of an air strike - knowing the targets, knowing where friendly troops were, and reacting with split-second, life-and-death decisions as a battle unfolded.

Jane Sagan: Soldier. Killer. Lover. Dreamer. In John Scalzi's best-selling Old Man's War series of science-fiction novels, we see this warrior woman as the other characters see her - silent and strong, from the outside. But now The Sagan Diary shows us Sagan from another point of view: her own, as she prepares to leave military life and join her new husband and adopted daughter on a colony world.