World War Memoir

"Cold Crematorium is an indispensable work of literature, and a historical document of unsurpassed importance. It should be required reading." —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated The first English language edition of a lost memoir by a Holocaust survivor, offering a...

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians, has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls, and is required reading at military academies to this day. But On War, which was never finished and was published posthumously, is obscure and fundamentally contradictory. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, answers these problems in this fascinating book.

Christa Schroeder est une "ancienne" : membre du secrétariat de Hitler dès 1933, elle y est restée jusqu'au 20 avril 1945 – dix jours avant l'effondrement final du Troisième Reich. Pendant douze ans, elle a accompagné le Führer dans tous ses déplacements entre la capitale, le Berghof et ses divers quartiers généraux de campagne dans l'ouest de l'Allemagne, en Prusse-Orientale et en Ukraine. C'est principalement sur la personnalité de Hitler que Christa Schroeder a reporté toute son attention pendant plus d'une décennie, et c'est ce qui rend son témoignage inestimable.

Robert Oppenheimer had a lot resting on his shoulders. During the Second World War, he was tasked with directing the development of the world’s first nuclear arsenal. Known as the Manhattan Project, this super-secretive wartime project had the stoic visage of Oppenheimer overseeing the greatest experiment ever conducted by humankind. Much had happened in Oppenheimer’s life to lead him to this point, and much would subsequently take place after, but this moment was indeed the pinnacle of his career and his life.

Erik Ronningen was on the 71st floor of the North Tower on September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. After an incredible, near miraculous journey down through the acrid, smoke-filled building, Erik tried to get to the security command center in the South Tower. Unable to do so, he was the last person to make it out of the South Tower alive. Here is the story of his harrowing escape, interwoven with the accounts of 14 others who were lucky enough to be able to recount them.

From the Japanese soldiers' carefully calculated - and ultimately foiled - attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a tenacious adversary and the temperature and terrain of the island itself, Robert Leckie captures the loneliness, the agony, and the heat of 24-hour-a-day fighting on Guadalcanal.

As the Nazi war machine caused death and destruction throughout Europe, one man in the Fatherland began his own reign of terror. This is the true story of the pursuit and capture of a serial killer in the heart of the Third Reich. For all appearances, Paul Ogorzow was a model German. An employed family man, party member, and sergeant in the infamous Brownshirts, he had worked his way up in the Berlin railroad from a manual laborer laying track to assistant signalman. But he also had a secret need to harass and frighten women.

In the spring of 1918, German forces broke through Allied lines in a last-ditch attempt to overcome their enemies. To hold back this tide, inexperienced young men from France, Britain, the United States, Australia, and Canada were sent into war. What was it like to be an eighteen-year-old and sent to the frontlines in the First World War? Frederick James Hodges was one of these young men and his book, Men of 18 in 1918, provides insight into the ordeals of an ordinary soldier who left Britain as a teenager but returned as a man having witnessed the full horrors of war.

Of all the heroic stories to come out of World War II, few are as extraordinary as that of Major Rocky Gause, who was captured by the Japanese, escaped from the infamous Bataan Death March, and, with a fellow soldier, endured a harrowing voyage across the enemy-held Pacific in a leaky, hand-crafted boat. In the battered notebook he kept throughout his journey, Gause traced his steps from the besieged city of Manila on New Year's Eve, 1941, to his safe landing on the Australian coast ten months later.

During the German occupation of Rome from 1942-1944, Irishman Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty ran an escape organization for Allied POWs and civilians, including Jews. Safe within the Vatican state, he regularly ventured out in disguise to continue his mission, which earned him the nickname 'The Pimpernel of the Vatican'. When the Allies entered Rome, he and his collaborators - priests, nuns, and laypeople of numerous nationalities and religious beliefs - had saved the lives of over 6,500 people.

Nicknamed le loup des mers ("the sea wolf") by Napoleon, Thomas Cochrane was one of the most daring and successful naval heroes of all time. In this fascinating account of Cochrane's life, historian David Cordingly unearths startling new details about the real-life "Master and Commander", from his daring exploits against the French navy to his role in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the shock exchange scandal that forced him out of England and almost ended his naval career.

There are few names in the annals of military history that evoke such emotion, and in some cases controversy, as the small Belgian town of Bastogne. The 101st Airborne are the best known defenders of Bastogne, but they only constituted one third of the eventual force that saved the city from total annihilation. This book digs deeper into the defense of Bastogne, revealing more details about those indomitable "Screaming Eagles" and the other units that stood with them during that punishingly bitter cold winter of 1944/45.

A powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps. At the height of the Holocaust twenty-five young inmates of the infamous...

James "Jim" Davis lived what he considered "an impossible dream" as he piloted a B-24, as part of the 8th Air Force, on nearly 30 missions in the European Theatre during World War II. In this memoir, Davis offers heart-wrenching detail concerning the difficulties of qualifying for the U.S. Army Air Forces pilot program, the strenuous nature of the pilot training program, the anxiety caused by a wartime marriage, and the dangers of flying combat missions over Nazi Germany.

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.

On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. Their two-part orders are direct and straightforward: (1) rescue as many trapped sailors and Marines as possible, and (2) resurrect what remains of America's once mighty pacific fleet. Descent Into Darkness tells their story.

The story of eight courageous women who had the courage and strength for which the Anzacs are renowned and the compassion and tenderness that only a woman can bring. One brave nursing sister, Hilda Samsing, became a whistle blower. Nursing aboard the hospital ship Gascon, outraged by the bungled evacuation of wounded Anzacs which was censored out of the press, she let her diary be shown in high places, which raised questions in the House of Commons.

The Marine Corps is known for its heroes, and Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller has long been considered the greatest of them all. His assignments and activities covered an extraordinary spectrum of warfare. With his bulldog face, barrel chest (which earned him the nickname Chesty), gruff voice, and common touch, Puller became - and has remained - the epitome of the marine combat officer. Author Jon Hoffman has been given special access to Puller's personal papers as well as his personnel record. The result will unquestionably stand as the last word about Chesty Puller.

A complex and contradictory figure, Mussolini won the fascination of many statesmen and writers, and their wives. From his early years raised in the traditions of revolutionary Italian Socialism, to his violent execution by Communist partisans at the end of World War II, we watch Mussolini's power ambitions erode his political ideals, as he evolves from brilliant orator and journalist to empire-building dictator enforcing his authority by death squads.

Germany's success in the Second World War was built upon its tank forces; however, many of its leading generals, with the notable exception of Heinz Guderian, are largely unknown. This biographical study of four German panzer army commanders serving on the Eastern Front is based upon their unpublished wartime letters to their wives. David Stahel offers a complete picture of the men conducting Hitler's war in the East, with an emphasis on the private fears and public pressures they operated under.