World War Ii Memoir

Virginia Hall left her comfortable Baltimore roots in 1931 to follow a dream of becoming a Foreign Service Officer. After watching Hitler roll over Poland and France, she enlisted to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret espionage and sabotage organization. She was soon deployed to occupied France where, if captured, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Gestapo was all but assured.

An unforgettable and moving story of tragedy, heroism, resilience, and redemption that is sure to become an enduring document of American history, All the Brave Men is a sailor's moment-by-moment eyewitness account of the Japanese surprise attack that decimated the US Pacific Fleet in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and his inspiring return to active duty to carry on the Allied fight in the Pacific.

Fourteen-year-old Lisa Jura was a musical prodigy who hoped to become a concert pianist. But when Hitler's armies advanced on pre-war Vienna, Lisa's parents were forced to make a difficult decision. Able to secure passage for only one of their three daughters through the Kindertransport, they chose to send gifted Lisa to London for safety. As she yearned to be reunited with her family while she lived in a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane, Lisa's music became a beacon of hope. A memoir of courage, survival, and the power of music to uplift the human spirit....

Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh.

Relli, a Jewish girl in Poland, was denied a normal childhood. When Relli was just a baby, the Nazis occupied Poland and she, together with her parents, were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto, a way station before death. Her parents correctly assessed the new situation and decided to act heroically in order to save their only child. They succeeded in smuggling her out of the Ghetto and entrusted her to a Gentile Polish couple who agreed to hide her for the duration of the war under a false identity.

In Churchill's D-Day, Allen Packwood and Richard Dannatt narrate and analyze Sir Winston Churchill's emotional turmoil and epic decision-making before, during, and after the world-defining action of D-Day. Culled from the official Churchill Papers at the Churchill Archives Centre, the book features historical documents, letters, and more, for a Churchillian experience of D-Day leadership, military strategy, and humanity.

Reinhard Heydrich is widely recognized as one of the great iconic villains of the 20th century, an appalling figure even within the context of the Nazi leadership. Chief of the Nazi Criminal Police, the SS Security Service, and the Gestapo, ruthless overlord of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and leading planner of the "Final Solution," Heydrich played a central role in Hitler's Germany.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary, a riveting first-hand account of the Battle of Okinawa from the first officer ashore, who served at the front for the battle’s entire 82-day duration, heroism that earned him a Bronze Star. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, 1,500 Allied ships and 1.5 million men gathered off the coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa and launched the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War. The first American officer ashore was Major Art Shaw, a unit commander in the US Army’s 361 Artillery Battalion of the 96th Division, often called the Deadeyes.

Der Fotograf Otto Eder ist als Funker in Frankreich stationiert, bevor er mit seiner Division nach Jugoslawien geschickt wird. Als der Befehl kommt, an die Ostfront zu ziehen, verlieren viele seiner Kameraden in schweren und zum Teil sehr verlustreichen Kämpfen das Leben. Die Versorgungswege der Truppe werden immer länger, Verpflegung und Munition gehen zu Ende. Über den Kaukasus geht es weiter zum Kuban-Brückenkopf. Otto wird schwer verletzt und nach seinem Genesungsurlaub in Italien eingesetzt.

Born and raised in Mississippi, Peter K. Lutken, Jr. (1920–2014) joined the army in 1941 and was assigned to the Coast Artillery. Originally sent to India to guard airfields, he was reassigned to the British V Force, then the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services and precursor to the CIA) after he volunteered for reconnaissance missions behind Japanese lines. Skills he had learned as a boy in the backwoods and swamps around the Pearl River stood him in good stead, and by the end of the war, he attained the rank of major, commanding an entire battalion of ethnic Kachins and other local people of northern Burma (now called Myanmar).

Do you want to learn more about the Winston Churchill, but don’t have time to listen to huge, long biographies. Then let The History Journals take you on an hourly history tour of his tenure in World War 2. Winston Churchill had undeniably given his all for King and country and an allied victory promised to be his finest hour; but he was wise to be cautious, and quite incredibly his own future as the nation’s Prime Minister was far from assured.

Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.

For decades, the dramatic stories of World War II soldiers have been the stuff of memoirs, interviews, novels, documentaries, and feature films. Yet the men and women who served in less visible roles, never engaging in physical combat, have received scant attention.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution.

Dive into a riveting historical journey that reveals the courageous triumph of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, even if history tried to silence them. Have you ever wondered about the unsung heroes who dared to stand against tyranny? Does mainstream history leave you yearning for compelling stories of the figures who defied the odds? Are you searching for an engaging narrative that will challenge your intellect and resonate deeply with your sense of justice?

In 1943 Polish underground fighter John Wiernicki is captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. In this chilling memoir, Wiernicki, a Gentile, details life in the infamous death camp, and his battle to survive, physically and morally, in the face of utter evil. The author begins by remembering his aristocratic youth, an idyllic time shattered by German invasion.

Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.

We almost didn't know. For 57 years, Alfred Endres told his family he had been a barber, chauffeur, and translator in World War II. But following the death of his wife, Alfred quietly started sharing a glimpse into his actual wartime experiences. His daughter first began capturing those fractions of stories on napkins during her weekly nursing home visits, which grew into a nearly two-decade deep dive into his true role in the war a reluctant front-line machine gunner in Europe from 1944 to 1945.

Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast.

The stories of 15 combat veterans featured in this audiobook tell of the experiences of average Americans who fought US enemies on Pacific islands, in China, and in Burma during World War II. They relate much previously unavailable information about the military in which they served and the battles they fought. The possibility of death and permanent physical and mental injury was a common experience. This audiobook is a "must listen" for those who think they have learned all there is to know about World War II.