World Military History

Their names were Bob Palmer, Gordy Cox, Tim McCoy, and Chuck Vervalin, and in 1941, when they joined the Navy, they were not trying to prove their patriotism - they were just looking for a job that would provide "three hots and a cot". But on April 22, 1943, the war took a terrible turn for them. Their submarine, the USS Grenadier, was torpedoed. Listed as lost in action and given up for dead, all four had in fact miraculously escaped, only to be captured by the Japanese.

Throughout the war on the Eastern Front, there were two consistent trends. The Red Army battled to learn how to fight and win, while involved in a struggle for its very survival. But by 1944 it had a leadership that was able to wield it with lethal effect and with far more effective equipment than before. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had commenced a slow process of decline after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler became increasingly unwilling to delegate decision-making to commanders in the field, which had been crucial to earlier success.

Arriving as a fresh US Army Air Forces pilot in New Guinea in late 1942, Richard Bong wasted no time taking on the Japanese, shooting down two planes in an early skirmish—an action that earned him a Silver Star. Over the next two years, Bong would amass the US armed forces’ most impressive record of aerial victories of the entire war, surpassing even the great Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I tally and notching forty kills. In December 1944, he was personally awarded the Medal of Honor by General Douglas MacArthur.

At dusk on December 8, 1941, the carrier Enterprise and her escort of cruisers and destroyers entered Pearl Harbor. Officers and men lined the rails, watching in stunned silence. The twisted, smoldering superstructure of the Arizona was still aflame, and there was a stench of charred wood and fuel oil in the air.

On 21 July 1942, a large Japanese reconnaissance mission landed along the north-eastern coastline of Papua. It would soon turn into an all-out attempt to capture Port Morseby. This is the powerful story of the three weeks of battle by a small Australian militia force, the 39th Battalion, supported by the 1st Papua Infantry Battalion and the Royal Papuan Constabulary, to keep the Japanese at bay. Outnumbered by at least three to one, they fought courageously to hold the Kokoda Plateau - the gateway to the Owen Stanleys.

In December 1937, in the capital of China, one of the most brutal massacres in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking and within weeks not only looted and burned the defenseless city but systematically raped, tortured and murdered more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. Amazingly, the story of this atrocity- one of the worst in world history- continues to be denied by the Japanese government.

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and author. In this New York Times bestselling biography, Eric Metaxas takes both strands of Bonhoeffer's life—the theologian and the spy—and draws them together to tell a searing story of incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil.

"Previously published as Victory at Hawaii by Frank Jefferson" In this exciting story, Pearl Harbor Victory: America Defeats the Japanese Attack on Hawaii, December 1941, Robert Evans, a brilliant physicist and time traveler, embarks on a daring mission to alter the course of history. Armed with knowledge of the future, he travels back to 1941 to prevent one of America's darkest days—Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. As Evans navigates the tension-filled corridors of Washington and works with President Roosevelt, General Marshall, and our military leaders, he must convince them of the ...

Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky’s Red Army and the single-minded Communist dictatorship under Lenin.

Secrets of Encirclement Warfare: A Gripping Exploration of the Intersection of Land and Air Power Imagine being surrounded by enemy forces, with limited supplies and no clear escape route. This is the harsh reality of encirclement warfare, a tactic that has been used to devastating effect throughout history. From the frozen tundras of World War II to the jungles of Vietnam, encirclement has proven to be a game-changer on the battlefield. In this fascinating and deeply researched book, we delve into the world of encirclement warfare, exploring the successes and failures of this complex and ...

Mitsuo Fuchida was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service who is perhaps best known for leading the first air wave attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Fuchida was responsible for the coordination of the entire aerial attack working under the overall fleet commander Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. After World War II ended, Fuchida became an evangelist and Christian preacher, and frequently traveled to the United States to minister to the Japanese expatriate community.

The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to1949, was unprecedented in human history - an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation.

Author of the best-seller FDR, Jean Edward Smith is a master of the presidential biography. Setting his sights on Dwight D. Eisenhower, Smith delivers a rich account of Eisenhower’s life using previously untapped primary sources. From the military service in WWII that launched his career to the shrewd political decisions that kept America out of wars with the Soviet Union and China, Smith reveals a man who never faltered in his dedication to serving America, whether in times of war or peace.

They were called Easy Company, but their mission was never easy. Immortalized as the Band of Brothers, they suffered huge casualties while liberating Europe in an unparalleled record of bravery under fire. Dick Winters led them through the Battle of the Bulge, the attack on Foy, where Easy Company reached its breaking point, and finally into Germany, by which time each member had been wounded. Outside Munich, they liberated an S.S. death camp and captured Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat.

Notes on one of the most infamous and bloody battles of World War II - from the German perspective. As the Allied armies swept toward the Reich in late 1944, the German high command embarked on an ambitious plan to gain the initiative on the western front and deal a crippling blow to the Allied war effort. As early as August 1944, when the Germans were being crushed in the east and hammered in Normandy, Hitler was talking of an offensive aimed at destroying as many American and British divisions as possible in a massive surprise assault.

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans. In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated - Operation Mincemeat.

This illuminating study explores the ways in which the shattering defeat of the Japanese in World War II, followed by over six years of American military occupation, affected every level of Japanese society. The author describes the countless ways in which the Japanese met the challenge of "starting over", from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes, fears, and activities of ordinary men and women in every walk of life.

In The March of Folly, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government.

A riveting new account of Theodore Roosevelt's impassioned crusade for military preparedness as America fitfully stumbles into World War I, spectacularly punctuated by his unique tongue-lashings of the vacillating Woodrow Wilson, his rousing advocacy of a masculine, pro-Allied "Americanism", a death-defying compulsion for personal front-line combat, a gingerly rapprochement with GOP power brokers - and, yes, perhaps, even another presidential campaign.

With the Battle of Britain won, Winston Churchill and his military chiefs faced an even more fearsome challenge in the Battle of the Atlantic. Thwarted in his plans to invade, Hitler decided he would starve Britain into submission instead. Operating in conjunction with U-Boats, long-range Condor aircraft manned by élite German airmen attacked Allied ships far beyond the range of any land-based RAF fighters, with devastating results.