True World War Ii

Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to make their names in the male-dominated field of flight in 1930s Germany. With the war, both became pioneering test pilots and were awarded the Iron Cross for service to the Third Reich. But they could not have been more different, and neither woman had a good word to say for the other.

Berlin, 1939. Edith Falkenstein once lived a fairy-tale life. Falling in love with Julius introduced her to a world she had only dreamed of. She wore the finest silk dresses to host parties in their historic mansion home. But those days are a distant memory. Under Nazi rule, her Jewish husband, Julius, has been stripped of everything. Now the couple share a cramped apartment with other destitute families, and the priceless jewels that once adorned Edith’s neck have been sold to buy food on the black market.

1938, Italy. Six-year-old Lia loves to build sandcastles at the beach and her biggest problem is her shyness and quiet, birdlike voice—until prime minister Mussolini joins forces with Hitler in World War II, and everything changes. Now there are laws saying Jewish children can’t go to school, Jews can’t work, or go on vacation. It’s difficult for Lia to understand why this is happening to her family. When her father loses his job, they must give up their home and move from city to city.

In March 1944, as the Nazis occupied Paris, the French Police and Fire Brigade were called to investigate a vile-smelling black smoke that had been pouring from the chimney of 21 Rue Le Sueur for days. The thick black smoke was rising from a series of wood-burning stoves throughout the property that were stocked with human remains. The homeowner was Dr. Marcel Petiot, an admired and charismatic physician. When questioned, Dr. Petiot claimed that he was a part of the Resistance and the bodies they discovered belonged to Nazi collaborators that he killed for the cause.

The life of the vibrant Schwartz Family changes completely overnight. The sudden illness of Noa, the family's youngest daughter, forces them to attain a great sum of money for an urgent operation, and they are at a loss. Daria, the oldest sister, is the only one who believes that the not so distant past of the intricate Hungarian family holds an old secret that could lead the way to save her little sister's life. Armed with great determination, Daria goes on a cross-continent journey to investigate the Schwartz dynasty's origins.

The scrap of folded paper weighed heavy in Saskia’s pocket. The Nazi guards were patrolling the streets in ever-increasing numbers and every time she passed one on her bicycle she felt herself tense. The note she held told a story of unbelievable courage. The Nazis wanted the prisoners to give up hope inside the camp but Saskia was smuggling letters to them from their loved ones, giving them a reason to survive.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Sisters of Battle Road by J. M. Maloney, read by Annie Aldington. In 1939, Annie Jarman and her six young daughters were evacuated from their South London home and sent to the Sussex countryside to wait out the war. Little did they know what was in store for them or how their lives would change.

On December 13, 1944, POW Estel Myers was herded aboard the Japanese prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, with more than 1,600 other American captives. More than 1,100 of them would be dead by journey's end... The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the Navy's medical corps, Myers arrived in Manilla shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military.

Hell Above Earth tells an unforgettable story of two World War II American bomber pilots who forged an unexpected but enduring bond in the flak-filled skies over Nazi Germany. But there's a twist: one of them was related to the head of the Luftwaffe, Reich Marshal Herman Goering, and the other had secret orders from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to kill him if anything went wrong during their missions.

In the spring of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona and sent them to incarceration camps across the West. Nearly 14,000 of them landed on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, at the base of Heart Mountain. Behind barbed wire fences, they faced racism, cruelty, and frozen winters. Trying to recreate comforts from home, they established Buddhist temples and sumo wrestling pits. Kabuki performances drew hundreds of spectators — yet there was little hope.

1942. Pilot Dave Delham revels at the success of his historic Japanese bombing mission. Until he's caught and endures years of torture at the hands of cruel captors. Despairing that he'll survive, Dave vows if he escapes, he'll answer God's call on his life. Osaka, Japan, 1948. Miyako Matsuura longs to restore her family's shattered honor. After watching her little brother die in a horrific American air raid, she was reduced to selling her body to survive.

In 1949 Noor Inayat Khan was awarded the George Cross posthumously. How did this young lady from a noble upbringing with a pacifist belief have the desire, dedication, and willingness to risk everything to become one of the bravest and courageous agents during World War II? Starting her career with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Noor soon wanted to make more of an impact on the war effort. This, combined with her incredible willpower and determination were soon noticed and she was recruited as a Special Operations Executive.

The astounding memoir of a World War II veteran who spent three and a half years in the slave-labor camps made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman’s Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indies - now Indonesia - where he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave-labor camps.

The Allied invasion of Europe during summer 1944 was widely expected, and it fell to the Axis intelligence services to provide High Command with advance warning of the precise date and place of the landings. Using cryptanalysis of Allied signals, undercover agents and ships, and photographic evidence, Axis intelligence was pitted directly against their Allied counterparts, who actively tried to create a decoy and aim their enemies at the wrong location.

In pre-World War II Vienna, Lisa Jura was a musical prodigy who hoped to become a concert pianist. But when enemy forces threatened the city—especially its Jewish population—Lisa's parents were forced to make a difficult decision. They secured passage for only one of their three daughters through the Kindertransport, and chose to send gifted Lisa to London for safety. As she yearned to be reunited with her family where she lived in a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane, Lisa's music became a beacon of hope for all of her peers.

Their wings were weak, their talons broken…yet they flew the Soviets into winning the war against the Nazis. They were ignored, laughed at, and forced to do chores beneath their ranks. Why? They were the "weaker" gender. Despite being capable, they were initially denied entry into combat. And when they did enlist, their treatment only worsened: They were assigned worn-out uniforms and left to the mercy of rusted equipment on the battlefield. These adversities didn’t stop the Soviet female fighters from going ahead and showing unprecedented excellence in warfare.

No Better Friend tells the incredible true story of Frank Williams, a radarman in Britain's Royal Air Force, and Judy, a purebred pointer, who met as prisoners of war during World War II. Judy, who became the war's only official canine POW, was a fiercely loyal dog who sensed danger - warning her fellow prisoners of imminent attacks and protecting them from brutal beatings. Frank and Judy's friendship, an unbreakable bond forged in the worst circumstances, is one of the great recently unearthed stories of World War II.

June, 1941. Eleven-year-old Shmuel Sucha is startled awake by the sound of German planes over his hometown in western Ukraine. As the Nazi shadow begins to fall on their small Jewish community, Shmuel’s parents smuggle their son away to a local farm, just on the border of the surrounding forest.

After Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, over 100,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to leave their homes. The government was afraid that because they looked like “the enemy,” they might be spies. One American, librarian Clara Breed, was heartbroken and outraged. As the San Diego Public Library’s Children’s Librarian, Miss Breed was close to many of the children who were evacuated. She went to the train station the day they left, handing out postcards and telling them to send her letters.

Committed in utmost secrecy in April-May 1940 by the NKVD on the direct orders of Joseph Stalin, for nearly 50 years the Soviet regime succeeded in maintaining the fiction that Katyn was a Nazi crime, their story unchallenged by Western governments fearful of upsetting a powerful wartime ally and Cold War adversary. Surviving Katyn explores the decades-long search for answers, focusing on the experience of those individuals with the most at stake.