Books - History, WWII

1945: The War That Never Ended. Dallas, Gregor. New Haven: Yale University Press 2005. "Beginning with the siege of Berlin, Dallas describes in simple human terms the interactions of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Zhukov, Truman, de Gaulle, Macmillan, along with others relatively unknown, vividly portraying the interpenetration of the daily with the epochal, the obscure with the great political events taking place on the world stage. A grand narrative of diplomatic mistakes, military accidents, and the chaos inherent in human affairs ..."
Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945. Hastings, Max. New York: Knopf, 2004. "In September, 1944, the Allies believed that Hitler's army was beaten, and expected that the war would be over by Christmas. But the disastrous Allied landing in Holland, American setbacks on the German border and in the Hürtgen Forest, together with the bitter Battle of the Bulge, drastically altered that timetable. Hastings tells the story of both the Eastern and Western fronts, and paints a vivid portrait of the Red Army's onslaught on Hitler's empire." Includes excerpts from interviews with 170 survivors, both military and civilian.
The Battle Of The River Plate: The Hunt For The German Pocket Battleship Graf Spee. Pope, Dudley. Ithica NY USA: 2005. "The Battle Or The River Plate follows the machinations of the German war machine as Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff commands the pocket battleship Graf Spee on a mission to cripple British shipping. Through clever subterfuge and daring, the Graf Spee takes ship after ship, ultimately forcing the British Navy to send twenty ships in search of the elusive Spee. In the estuary of the River Plate along the southeast coast of South America, the final battle is joined: three lightly armored British cruisers take on one of the mightiest warships in the Atlantic."
Daring Missions Of World War II. Breuer, William B. Edison NJ USA: Castle Books, 2001. "...brings to light largely-unknown stories of behing-the-scenes bravery and covert activities that helped the Allies win critical victories both on the ground and in the air. Here are more than seventy tales of espionage, sabotage, and derring-do, including thrilling accounts of 'impossible' rescues, ingenious secret networks, and high-stakes U.S. Ranger missions within enemy territory."
Hell Is Upon Us: D-Day In The Pacific, June-August 1944. Brooks, Victor. Da Capo Press, 2005. "On June 14, 1944, little more than a week after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, another mighty fleet steamed towards its own D-Day landing. A huge U.S. flotilla of 800 ships carrying 162,000 men was about to attempt to smash onto the outer defenses of the Japanese Empire. Their target: the Marianas Island group, which included Saipan, home to an important Japanese base and a large population of Japanese civilians, and Guam, the first American territory captured in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. ... When [this operation] was over, 60,000 Japanese ground troops and most of the carrier air power of the Imperial Navy were annihilated."
Hitler's Secret Headquarters: The Führer's Wartime Bases, From the Invasion of France to the Berlin Bunker. Seidler, Franz W. and Zeigert, Dieter. Mechanicsburg PA USA: The Military Book Club, 2004. "This is the first and most comprehensive record of all of Hitler's bunkers and command centers - including those built and used, those under construction, and those that never got past planning - throughout World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 almost twenty Führerhauptquartiere were completed. At the end of the war numerous projects were being built and countless other suitable sites were being investigated." Includes information on Hitler's "special trains", as well.
The Last Stand Of The Tin Can Sailors. Hornfischer, James D. New York: Bantam, 2004. This is the story of an upset victory off the Philippines on October 25, 1944, by a small group of six US Navy escort carriers, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts over a Japanese fleet contingent that included four battleships and nine cruisers - which thought it was attacking the main US carrier force. This, the Battle off Samar, was the primary action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. From Wikipedia: "...the Japanese were forced to scuttle three heavy cruisers, and a fourth limped back to base seriously damaged, having lost its bow. All of Kurita's battleships except Yamato suffered considerable damage, and apart from the Yamato, all of the heavy ships stayed inactive in their bases for the remainder of the war." American losses were two escort carriers, two destroyers and one escort destroyer.
Monte Cassino: The Hardest-Fought Battle of WWII. Parker, Matthew. New York: Doubleday, 2004. A detailed account of one of the bloodiest battles in the European Theatre of WWII, with the Allies pushing up the Italian peninsula and the Germans making a mountain stand at their defensive Gustav Line at the town and monastery of Cassino, in the winter of 1943-44 - "the coldest, rainiest winter in Italian history [which] rendered air and armor power useless, and turned the landscape into a hellish killing ground." The book reveals the rivalries and lack of coordination between Allied commanders that worsened the situation.
Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy. Lewis, Norman. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1978. "As a young intelligence officer stationed in Naples following its liberation from Nazi forces, Norman Lewis recorded the lives of a proud and vibrant people forced to survive on prostitution, thievery, and a desperate belief in miracles and cures. ... Naples '44 is a landmark poetic study of the agony of wartime occupation and its ability to bring out the worst, and often the best, in human nature."
When The Airlines Went To War. Sterling, Robert J. New York: Kensington Books, 1997. "...takes you inside the hulls of the transport planes, through harrowing, secret missions from Newfoundland to India and Guadalcanal, and into the top-level meetings between the airline owners and Roosevelt's White House that led to the development of the ATC (Air Transport Command) and the NATS (Naval Air Transport Service). A story of courageous pilots and remarkable flying feats, this is also a history of legendary aircraft, including the C-47 'Gooney Bird', famous for its ability to fly when badly damaged, and Pan Am's doubled-decked B-314 'flying boat', a gigantic seaplane that was the forebear of the modern 747."

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