World Military History

In late 1944 the Allies invaded the Japanese-held Philippines, and soon the end of the Pacific War was within reach. But for the last 150 American prisoners of war still held on the island of Palawan, there would be no salvation. As soldiers, sailors, and marines were herded into shallow air raid shelters, Japanese soldiers doused them with gasoline and set them on fire. By the next morning, only 11 men were left alive - but their desperate journey to freedom had just begun.

Picking up where his previous memoir leaves off, Sledge, a young marine in the First Division, traces his company's movements and charts his own difficult passage to peace following his horrific experiences in the Pacific. He reflects on his duty in the ancient city of Peiping (now Beijing) and recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and resuming civilian life haunted by the shadows of close combat.

The author describes the experience of being in bombed-out, dangerous, post-war Nuremberg, where she lived for two years while working on the trial. This landmark trial resulted in the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which sets the guidelines for medical research involving human beings. Doctors from Hell is a significant addition to the literature on World War II and the Holocaust, medical ethics, human rights, and the barbaric depths to which human beings can descend.

Generals during World War II usually stayed to the rear, but not Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. During D-Day and the Normandy campaign, these commanders of the 82nd "All-American" and the 101st "Screaming Eagle" Airborne Divisions refused to remain behind the lines and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their paratroopers in the thick of combat. Jumping into Normandy during the early hours of D-Day, Ridgway and Taylor fought on the ground for six weeks of combat that cost the airborne divisions more than 40 percent casualties.

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.

Wounded five times and awarded numerous decorations for valor, Gottlob Herbert Bidermann saw action in the Crimea and siege of Sebastopol, participated in the vicious battles in the forests south of Leningrad, and ended the war in the Courland Pocket. In his memoir, he shares his impressions of countless Russian POWs seen at the outset of his service, of peasants struggling to survive the hostilities while caught between two ruthless antagonists, and of corpses littering the landscape.

A rousing tale of espionage and unsung valor, this is the captivating true story of Vera Atkins, Great Britain's spymistress from the age of 25. With her fierce intelligence, blunt manner, personal courage, and exceptional informants, Vera ran countless missions throughout the 1930s. After rising to the leadership echelon in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert intelligence agency formed by Winston Churchill, she became head of a clandestine army in World War II.

When the United States entered World War II, it had to face its own contradictions at home. Opportunities opened up for Black people and women in support of the war effort. But ideas about race and gender didn't change as swiftly. Listen to the story of the first all-Black battalion in the Women's Army Corps—the Six Triple Eight—and its leader, Major Charity Adams. These women bravely confronted the racism and sexism they experienced. And they did it while creating a system to make sure millions of letters and packages got to soldiers fighting in Europe.

The quiet of the jungle is shattered by a single command. The air fills with voices of death. A Texas cattle call. An Apache war whoop. A piercing scream of bloody blue murder. And a killing chorus of zinging hot lead. A mighty green wave surges up the hill. The Rat Bastards are on the rampage, and what the enemy began, they are about to finish.... The Rat Bastards.

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.

Raised in 1943 with 17-year-olds from the Hitler Youth movement, and following the twin disasters of Stalingrad and "Tunisgrad", the Hitlerjugend Panzer Division emerged as the most effective German division fighting in the West. The core of the division was a cadre of offices and NCOs provided by Hitler's bodyguard division, the elite Leibstandarte, with the aim of producing a division of "equal value" to fight alongside them in I SS Panzer Corps.

In An Army at Dawn - winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943, attack Italy two months later, and then fight their way, mile by bloody mile, north toward Rome. The Italian campaign's outcome was never certain; in fact, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and their military advisors bitterly debated whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even wise.

Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris' world-famous Hôtel Ritz - a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity and of dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance.

In Hitler's Death, author and expert Luke Daly-Groves rigorously looks at the question: Did Hitler shoot himself in the Führerbunker or did he slip past the Soviets and escape to South America? Countless documentaries, newspaper articles, and internet pages written by conspiracy theorists have led the ongoing debate surrounding Hitler's last days. Historians have not yet managed to make a serious response. Until now. This book is the first attempt by an academic to return to the evidence of Hitler's suicide in order to scrutinize the most recent conspiracy arguments.

In the Second World War every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Hitler regime which find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record. It was a simple policy to keep Germany disarmed after the struggle of the First World War and the Victors adequately armed in vigilance. But errors were soon made.

The West and Islam - the sword and scimitar - have clashed since the 17th century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the Roman emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long jihad on Christendom. Sword and Scimitar chronicles the decisive battles that arose from this ages-old Islamic jihad, beginning with the first major Islamic attack on Christian land in 636.

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.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the US in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

They began operations out of England in the spring of '43. They flew their Flying Fortresses almost daily against strategic targets in Europe in the name of freedom. Their astonishing courage and appalling losses earned them the name that resounds in the annals of aerial warfare and made the "Bloody Hundredth" a legend. Harry H. Crosby—soon to be portrayed by Anthony Boyle in the miniseries Masters of the Air developed by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg—arrived with the very first crews, and left with the very last.

How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance.