World War Ii Memoir

Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination.

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp.

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.

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.

Joey Jacobson, a young Jewish man from Westmount on the Island of Montreal, trained as a navigator and bomb-aimer in Western Canada. On arriving in England, he was assigned to No. 106 Squadron, a British unit tasked with the bombing of Germany. Joey Jacobson’s War tells, in his own words, why he enlisted, his understanding of strategy, tactics, and the effectiveness of the air war at its lowest point, how he responded to the inevitable battle stress, and how he became both a hopeful idealist and a seasoned airman.

From the author of Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 comes a riveting account of the dictator's final years, when he got the war he wanted but his leadership led to catastrophe for his nation, the world, and himself. Volker Ullrich offers fascinating new insight into Hitler's character and personality, vividly portraying the insecurity, obsession with minutiae, and narcissistic penchant for gambling that led Hitler to overrule his subordinates and then blame them for his failures.

At the height of his fame and influence during World War II, Ernie Pyle’s nationally syndicated dispatches from combat zones shaped America’s understanding of what the war felt like to ordinary soldiers, as no writer’s work had before or has since. From North Africa to Sicily, from the beaches of Anzio to the beaches of Normandy, and on to the war in the Pacific, where he would meet his end, Ernie Pyle had a genius for connecting with his beloved dogfaced grunts. In The Soldier's Truth, acclaimed writer David Chrisinger brings Pyle’s journey to vivid life in all its heroism and pathos.

General Chuck Yeager was the greatest test pilot of them all - the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound...the World War II flying ace who shot down a Messerschmitt jet with a prop-driven P-51 Mustang...the hero who defined a certain quality that all hotshot fly-boys of the postwar era aimed to achieve: the right stuff. Now he tells his whole incredible life story with the same “wide-open, full throttle” approach that has marked his astonishing career.

In this classic portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower the soldier, best-selling historian Stephen E. Ambrose examines the Allied commander's leadership during World War II. Ambrose brings Eisenhower's experience of the Second World War to life, showing in vivid detail how the general's skill as a diplomat and a military strategist contributed to Allied successes in North Africa and in Europe and established him as one of the greatest military leaders in the world.

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews with Sneum, Mark Ryan describes how Tommy made an incredible escape from Denmark in a battered old Hornet Moth aircraft - which he had to refuel in mid-air by climbing out on the wing. Later, he escaped from Denmark again - by walking across a treacherous frozen sea on which two of his companions died. Tommy brought over precious intelligence about the Nazi radar installations in Denmark and their atom bomb.

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.

In this book, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces - John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" - and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving.

Lieutenant General James Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division during WWII, is one of the best-known figures of the war. Beginning as the commander of the 505th Parachute Combat Team that spearheaded the American assault on Sicily in July 1943, Gavin advanced to division command and finally command of US forces in Berlin. He kept a wartime diary that starts in April 1943, as the unit was preparing to go to northern Africa and continues through to his final entry on September 1, 1945, during the occupation of Berlin.

Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich.

Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the 20th century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. Studying his life is a fascinating way to imbibe the history of his era and gain insight into key events that have shaped our time.

One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters - a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now.

In the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson, the author’s father, kissed his twenty-one-year-old wife and two baby children goodbye. The twenty-five-year-old first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P-61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his night fighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where, for the last five and a half months of World War II, he flew approximately seventy-five missions, largely in pitch-black conditions. His wife would wait out the war at the home of her small-town Ohio parents.

The war on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945 was the bloodiest combat theater in the bloodiest war in history. Oberleutnant Friedrich Wilhelm Sander experienced this bloodshed firsthand when serving with the 11th Panzer-Regiment. This regiment made up the core of the 6th Panzer-Division, one of Hitler's top armored formations, which was involved in most of the major campaigns on the Eastern Front; campaigns such as Operation Barbarossa and Operation Winter Storm.

Jock Heidenstein, Anita Lasker, Chana Zumerkorn, and Regina Feldman all faced the Holocaust in different ways. While they did not know each other—in fact had never met—each had a red sweater that would play a major part in their lives. In this absorbing and deeply moving account, award-winning clothes historian Lucy Adlington documents their stories, knitting together the experiences that fragmented their families and their lives. Adlington immortalizes these young women whose resilience, skills, strength, and kindness accompanied them through the darkest events in human history.

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.