World War Memoir

The Cold War’s greatest traitor wasn’t in Moscow—he was in MI6. Harold “Kim” Philby was the golden boy of British intelligence—handsome, brilliant, and deeply embedded in the highest levels of MI6. But behind the polished exterior was a double agent loyal to the Soviet Union. Over the course of two decades, Philby betrayed hundreds of operations, exposed agents, and fed a constant stream of secrets to Moscow. Kim Philby: The British Mole Who Betrayed the West is a gripping biography that explores how one man’s ideology, ambition, and duplicity changed the face of espionage forever.

Nicht weit des ostpreußischen Rastenburg, des heutigen Ketrzyn in Polen, befand sich ein zentraler Ort des Zweiten Weltkriegs: das »Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze«. Dort verbrachte Adolf Hitler nach dem Angriff auf die Sowjetunion den Großteil seiner Zeit. Dort wurde über die systematische Ermordung der europäischen Juden entschieden. Dort ereignete sich am 20. Juli 1944 das Stauffenberg-Attentat, das der Diktator nur leicht verletzt überlebte. Auf der Basis von Zeitzeugnissen und bislang unveröffentlichten Dokumenten rekonstruiert Felix Bohr den Alltag in der »Wolfsschanze«.

He was one of America's most exciting and secretive generals - the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, "Wild Bill" Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country's first national intelligence agency) and the father of today's CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before.

When the name General Patton comes to mind, we are automatically inundated with themes of strength and tough resolution. Patton was a man who seemed to embody the old American ethos of the rugged individual who shattered all expectations, decimated the status quo, and pulled himself up by his bootstraps. In order to understand Patton, you can’t focus on just one side of this larger-than-life personality; you have to take in the whole picture. This audiobook allows you to do just that.

He was known as the "Desert Fox", and outfox his enemies he often did, leaving whole armies confounded and demoralized in his wake, and yet, the one adversary that Erwin Rommel could not outfox was his own government. On that rather unlucky day of October 14, 1944, when the SS came knocking on Rommel’s door, even his legendary heroism couldn’t save him from the monstrous regime for which he had once fought so hard.

Eine eindrucksvolle, mitreißende Familienchronik - der Bestseller der bekannten Journalistin endlich als ungekürzte Lesung. Am 26. August 1944 wird der Abwehroffizier Hans Georg Klamroth wegen Hochverrats hingerichtet. Jahrzehnte später sieht seine jüngste Tochter in einer Fernsehdokumentation über den 20. Juli Bilder ihres Vaters aufgenommen während des Prozesses im Volksgerichtshof. Ein Anblick, der Wibke Bruhns nicht mehr loslässt. Wer war dieser Mann, den sie kaum kannte, der fremde Vater, der ihr plötzlich so nah ist.

* AN OBSERVER AND DAILY MAIL "BOOKS OF 2022" PICK * Melvyn Bragg's first ever memoir - an elegiac, intimate account of growing up in post-war Cumbria, which lyrically evokes a vanished world. In this captivating memoir, Melvyn Bragg recalls growing up in the Cumbrian market town of Wigton, from...

The New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girls shares the riveting story of an unsung World War II hero who saved countless American lives in the Philippines. When Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a...

Toto Koopman - beautiful, mixed-race, bisexual Vogue cover girl in 1930s Paris and lover of the all-powerful press baron and wartime cabinet minister Lord Beaverbrook. Coco Chanel, brilliant couturier and parfumier, rich beyond dreams and friend of Winston Churchill, the greatest-ever Briton. Both the toast of Parisian and London high society.

Discover the lives and legacies of some of history’s most famous conquerors. History has no shortage of great kings and military leaders, but few rose to the power and prominence of the men in this biography bundle. Their legacies are far-reaching, forming entire empires and drastically altering the path of human civilization. Now, this biography examines the lives of three of the world’s most famous conquerors.

Listen to this captivating memoir by Wilhelm Johnen who flew his first operational mission in July 1941, having completed his blind-flying training. In his first couple of years he brought down two enemy planes. The tally went up rapidly once the air war was escalated in spring 1943, when Air Marshal Arthur Harris of the RAF Bomber Command began the campaign dubbed the Battle of the Ruhr.

Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, was born to power and command. But history has not been kind to "Charley", as the king called him, because, in his own words, he "backed the wrong horse", and a very dark horse indeed: Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Londonderry was hardly the only British aristocrat to do so, but he was the only Cabinet member to do so, and it ruined him. Author Ian Kershaw is not out to rehabilitate Lord Londonderry but to understand him and to expose why he was made a scapegoat.

After Germany's humiliating World War II defeat, numerous German generals published memoirs claiming that their country's brilliant military leadership had been undermined by the Führer's erratic decision making. The author of three highly acclaimed books on the era, Stephen Fritz upends this characterization of Hitler as an ill-informed fantasist and demonstrates the ways in which his strategy was coherent and even competent.

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood through the late 1950s, when his book The Tin Drum was published. During the Second World War, Grass was drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous.

From the plains of Kansas to the war rooms of London and the beaches of Normandy, The Man Who Led the Liberation of Europe traces Dwight D. Eisenhower’s extraordinary journey. He wasn’t a battlefield general in the traditional sense—but he wielded one of the most powerful weapons of the war: strategy. Balancing complex alliances, clashing egos, and an enemy entrenched across the continent, Eisenhower’s role as commander required more than just military brilliance—it demanded diplomacy, emotional intelligence, and nerves of steel.

In a unique combination of innovative style and thorough scholarship, Warlords tells the story of World War II through the lives of the four great war leaders: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. While their nations fought battles with weapons, the four warlords of the twentieth century fought a war of the mind. Structured along the lines of a cinematic thriller, rapidly cutting from one man to the next, the book takes us blow by blow as they try to outthink and outfight each other.

Growing up on a farm in Ohio, George always preferred being outdoors and exploring. This made school a challenge, but his hunting, fishing, and trapping skills helped put food on his family's table. As a poor teenager living in a rough area, he got into regular brawls, and he found holding down a job hard because of his wanderlust. After working out West with the CCC, he decided that joining the Marines offered him the opportunity for adventure plus three square meals a day; so he and his brother joined the Corps in 1941.

In 1930, as a young woman, Christa Schroeder became a stenographer for the Nazi party, before being noticed by Hitler who, in 1933, hired her as his private secretary. Schroeder remained by Hitler's side, fiercely loyal, for twelve years, living at the Wolfsschanze and even joining him and his staff in the Führerbunker in Berlin in January 1945.

The vivid and emotional story of one soldier's heroic struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.1944: Norm Bussel, an introspective and happy-go-lucky teen from Memphis, finds himself bailing out of a burning B-17 bomber just months after his 19th birthday. Touching-down in a field outside Berlin, Norm was immediately seized by local farmhands, who were in the process of lynching him when a passing German soldier put a stop to the execution.

The late Van Slayden trained on the PT-3 kite-like biplane in 1937, but he learned fighter pilot operations flying "by the seat of his pants," walking away from five crashes. Shortly after the invasion of Normandy, he landed on Utah Beach to help establish a US Army Air Forces' (AAF's) presence in Europe. He flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a fighter-bomber, in combat over Northern France and commanded the 36th Fighter Group—the "Fightin' 36th"—at Batogne, St. Vith, the Bridgehead at Remagen, Operations Grenade, Clarion, Varsity and other missions.