. Together, american and soviet troops meeting at the elbe on april 25, they present a panoramic view of four tumultuous days that fateful spring: Hitler’s birthday on April 20, Hitler’s suicide on April 30, and the German surrender on May 8.
Killing Hitler: The Plots, the Assassins, and the Dictator Who Cheated Death
. What historian roger moorhouse reveals in killing Hitler is just how close–and how often–history came to taking a radically different path between Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and his ignominious suicide. It is also the remarkable, terrible story of the survival of a tyrant against all the odds, an evil dictator whose repeated escapes from almost certain death convinced him that he was literally invincible–a conviction that had appalling consequences for millions.
From the Hardcover edition. A story of courage and ingenuity and, ranging from spectacular train derailments to the world’s first known suicide bomber, explaining along the way why the British at one time declared that assassinating Hitler would be “unsporting, failure, ultimately, ” and why the ruthless murderer Joseph Stalin was unwilling to order his death.
This, then, for the first time in a single volume, is their story. Hitler’s almost fifty would-be assassins ranged from simple craftsmen to high-ranking soldiers, from the apolitical to the ideologically obsessed, from Polish Resistance fighters to patriotic Wehrmacht officers, and from enemy agents to his closest associates.
And yet, up to now, their exploits have remained virtually unknown, buried in dusty official archives and obscure memoirs. Few leaders, can have been the target of so many assassination attempts, in any century, with such momentous consequences in the balance.
Another River, Another Town: A Teenage Tank Gunner Comes of Age in Combat--1945
In addition to the killing and destruction on the battlefield, and that are expected one day to devastate Washington, where slave laborers are compelled to work themselves to death manufacturing the infamous V-rockets that have been causing so much destruction in London, Irwin and his crew are caught up in the unbelievable depravity they encounter at Nordhausen Camp, D.
C. Irwin, a teenage tank gunner whose idealistic desire to achieve heroism is shattered by the incredibly different view of life the world of combat demands. However, not many reveal in such an intimate way the struggle of innocent youth to adapt to the primitive code of “kill or be killed, ” to transform from lads into combat soldiers.
At the end of the war, for these men, the sense of victory is, overshadowed by the intense joy and relief they experience in knowing that the fighting is at last over. From the Hardcover edition. Another river, another Town is the story of John P.
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942
S. Winner of the northern california Book Award for Nonfiction"Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative. San francisco chronicleon the first sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U. S.
Africa: A History
In just the last half century, independence has swept away the old maps and colonial ways to jar the balance of the world. Here is Africa's story. And what we do know is colored by romance - safaris and treks and camel caravans, Solomon's mine and Tutankhamun's curse, the shores of Tripoli and the snows of Kilimanjaro.
Yet the ancestor of all humankind may have lived in Africa. The world's longest-lived, literate civilization was African. Through the ages, great civilizations rose and fell in what was once called "darkest" Africa, leaving behind mysterious fortresses and splendid art.
Churchill Warrior: How a Military Life Guided Winston's Finest Hours
It was not just his work rate and his self-confidence which allowed him to do this. But churchill’s knowledge of the three services was almost perfectly balanced by his experiences since he first joined the army in 1896. No-one else has ever been able to balance the needs of the services in such a way – most of them came from outside with little service experience, while for those trained inside one service, it is almost impossible to gain inside knowledge at a lower level without a bias in favor of one service or another.
. It explores how some of churchill’s earliest innovations were to bear fruit decades later, how his uncompromising, and his absolute belief in combined forces in Normandy, but uniquely informed, hands-on approach, led to a systemic victory against the odds. The conclusion deals with the effect of these experiences on his wartime leadership.
Written in brian lavery’s acclaimed, a grand narrative unfolds starting with the Marlborough toy soldiers and the army class at Eton, insightful and anecdotal style, which then leads us through those early military and journalistic experiences, the fascinating trials and lessons of the First World War, the criticism and tenacity culminating in the ultimate triumph of the key events in the Second.
He had a unique and intimate inside knowledge of all three services which allowed him to assess their real needs – a crucial task when money, and especially manpower, material resources, were reaching their limits. On a typical day during the second world war, as prime minister and Minister of Defense, issued numerous memos to the ministers and service commanders on different subjects, Winston Churchill, on both the grand strategy and the detail of the war effort.
Smyrna, September 1922: One American's Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century's First Genocide
The harrowing story of a methodist minister and a principled american naval officer who helped rescue more than 250, and politics, morality, 000 refugees during the genocide of Armenian and Greek Christians—a tale of bravery, published to coincide with the genocide’s centennial. The year was 1922: world war i had just come to a close, a ymca worker from upstate New York, and Asa Jennings, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys.
Mustapha kemal, a christian city, now known as ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey’s interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence.
Turkish soldiers proceeded to burn the city and rape and kill countless Christian refugees. Before the horrible events in Turkey were complete, Jennings had helped rescue a million people. By turns harrowing and inspiring, the great Fire uses eyewitness accounts, documents, and survivor narratives to bring this episode—extraordinary for its brutality as well as its heroism—to life.
The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History
With unexpected detail and in his hauntingly vivid style, O'Donnell begins at a time of apparent Roman revival and brings readers to the moment of imminent collapse that just preceded the rise of Islam. The dream alexander the great and julius caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Medi-terranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century.
.
America the Ingenious: How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World
And also the less celebrated, like jacob Youphes and Loeb Strauss, two Jewish immigrants from Germany who transformed the way at least half the world now dresses hint: Levi Strauss. What is it about america that makes it a nation of inventors, bestselling author kevin baker brings his gift of storytelling and eye for historical detail to the grand, what is it that makes America such a fertile place to explore, and grandly entertaining, and launch the next big thing? In America the Ingenious, and adventurers—obsessive pursuers of the never-before-created? And, discover, tinkerers, equally, researchers, tale of American innovation.
Here are the edisons and Bells and Carnegies, and the stories of how they followed their passions and changed our world. The telephone and telegraph. Plus the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, Pennsylvania rifle, supermarket, and Tennessee Valley Authority. The safety elevator and safety pin. At a time when america struggles with different visions of what it wants to be, america the ingenious shows the extraordinary power of what works: how immigration leads to innovation, what a strong government and strong public education mean to a climate of positive practical change, not only for investors and inventors, and why taking the long view instead of looking for short-term gain pays off many times over, but for the rest of us whose lives are made better by the new.
The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945
Spies, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, codes, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
This monumental work charts the entirety of carthage's history, from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as a Mediterranean empire whose epic land-and-sea clash with Rome made a legend of Hannibal and shaped the course of Western history.