Europe War

During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces based in Britain and Italy launched their first round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Their goal: to smash the main factories and production centers of the Luftwaffe while also drawing German planes into an aerial battle of attrition to neutralize the Luftwaffe as a fighting force prior to the cross-channel invasion, planned for a few months later. Officially called Operation ARGUMENT, this aerial offensive quickly became known as “Big Week,” and it was one of the turning-points of World War II.

A new history of Assyria, the ancient civilization that set the model for future empires At its height in 660 BCE, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. It was the first empire the world had ever seen. Here, historian Eckart Frahm tells the epic story...

Inspired by true events, The Wartime Book Club is an unforgettable story of everyday bravery and resistance, full of romance, drama, and camaraderie and a tribute to the joy of reading and the power of books in our darkest hour. The Isle of Jersey was once a warm and neighborly community, but in...

Spanning the years 1940 to 1965, Defender of the Realm, the third volume of William Manchester’s The Last Lion, picks up shortly after Winston Churchill became prime minister - when his tiny island nation stood alone against the overwhelming might of Nazi Germany. The Churchill portrayed by Manchester and Reid is a man of indomitable courage, lightning-fast intellect, and an irresistible will to action.

Experience the events that followed the Sobibor death camp prisoner's decision to escape. Listeners will discover a powerful story of human courage and mankind's fierce will to live.

Established in 1918–19, in the wake of Germany’s catastrophic defeat in the First World War and the revolution that followed swiftly on its heels, the Weimar Republic ushered in widespread social reform, a radical cultural flowering and the most democratic conditions the German people had ever known. The Weimar Years is a vivid narrative of a dramatic period in German history. Year by year, from 1918 to 1933, Frank McDonough covers the major events in both domestic and foreign policy and the personalities who shaped them, together with developments in music, art, theatre and literature.

First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Milton Mayer's book is a study of 10 Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany.

In a work of extraordinary narrative power, filled with brilliant personalities and vivid scenes of dramatic action, Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and Dreadnought, elevates to its proper historical importance the role of sea...

In 1815 deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe--Napoleon's forces on one side, and the Duke of Wellington's on the other.

Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.

In this first volume of a new chronicle, Frank McDonough charts the rise and fall of the Third Reich under Hitler's hand, ending on Germany's comprehensive military defeat of Poland in 1939.

Les mémoires d'Albert Speer sont un document exceptionnel à plus d'un titre : témoignage d'un des plus hauts dignitaires nazis, il relate en détail le fonctionnement de l'appareil d'État vu de l'intérieur, avec le mélange de rationalité bureaucratique et de soumission à l'arbitraire du chef qui le caractérise. Mais c'est aussi l'itinéraire d'un homme brillant, architecte de talent, qui est rapidement séduit par Hitler et qui va progressivement mettre son intelligence et ses compétences au service de la machine de guerre nazie et d'une idéologie totalitaire.

The famous journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich documents his front row seat at the pivotal events leading up to World War II. In the second of a three-volume series, William L. Shirer tells the story of his own eventful life, detailing the most notable moments of his career as a journalist stationed in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. Shirer was there while Hitler celebrated his new domination of Germany, unleashed the Blitzkrieg on Poland, and began the conflict that would come to be known as World War II.

How is it that the small continent of Europe, with its rich multiplicity of cultures and traditions, has managed to exert so profound an influence on the rest of the world? Roberts's sweeping and entertaining history notes the paradoxical effect, for good and ill, on everything touched by those Western values that originated in Europe.

It is remembered in the Netherlands as "the sweetest of springs," the one that saw the country's liberation from German occupation. But for the soldiers of First Canadian army, who fought their way across the Rhine River and then through Holland and northwest Germany, that spring of 1945 was bittersweet. While the Dutch were being liberated from the grinding boot heel of the Nazis, their freedom was being paid for in Canadian lives lost.

This magnificent biography of Henry VIII is set against the cultural, social and political background of his court - the most spectacular court ever seen in England - and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces. An entertaining narrative packed with colourful description and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, but also a comprehensive analytical study of the development of both monarch and court during a crucial period in English history.

The eagerly awaited final volume in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Atkinson's New York Times bestselling Liberation Trilogy. It is the twentieth century’s unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his...

By Winston Churchill's own admission, victory in the Second World War would have been "impossible without her". Until now, however, the only existing biography of Churchill's wife, Clementine, was written by her daughter. Sonia Purnell finally gives Clementine her due with a deeply researched account that tells her life story, revealing how she was instrumental in softening FDR's initial dislike of her husband and paving the way for Britain's close relationship with America.

Written by two of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871-1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning.

In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.