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Gibraltar has been an indispensable naval fortress since 1704, yet in July 1940 it was threatened on four sides: by Vichy France, Nazi Germany, and fascist Italy and Spain. This history of the Rock’s strategic importance during the war also explores the pre-war imperial incursions in the Mediterranean region, which would threaten Gibraltar as a wartime escape route and key link in the ‘steel chain of sea power’.

Brigadier Glyn Hughes was among the first Allied soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen. Rachel Gemuth, then just 15, was one of its inmates. This account by her daughter draws on her memories, Hughes’s diaries, other oral histories and documentary sources to record their respective journeys – following him from Normandy to a defeated Germany, and her from Hungary via Auschwitz to Belsen – before recounting the horror of the camp, and the justice administrated to its perpetrators.

Biteback Espionage Classics reprint vintage accounts of real-life covert intelligence operations and underground networks behind enemy lines, from the First and Second World Wars to the Cold War. The three titles included in this set are: The Unknown Courier (Read more...) MI9 (Read more...) Double Cross in Cairo (Read more...)

Anne Frank’s diary is one of the most widely recognized personal testimonies of the Second World War. The full, definitive text is presented here along with her letters, personal reminiscences, daydreams, essays and a notebook of favourite quotations. Scholarly essays provide background on Anne’s life, her family’s history, and the story of how her diary came to be published. The book also includes numerous photographs of the Franks and the other inhabitants of the annexe in which they hid from the Nazis.

Before his early death, Richard Stevens was the RAF’s highest scoring nightfighter of the Second World War. Without radar, his reliance on pure skill, instinct and marksmanship earned him the nicknames 'Cat's Eyes' and 'Lone Wolf'. Based on years of research, contemporary documents and photographs, Andy Saunders tells the story of an extraordinary pilot.

Rudolf Böhmler was a highly decorated German paratroop officer who participated in various fronts of the Second World War. Afterward, he wrote this description of the Italian campaign, focusing on the exhausted, heavily outnumbered German troops who tenaciously defended the town of Cassino and the Monte Cassino abbey.

Relying on newly declassified files and testimony from eyewitnesses and participants’ families, Damien Lewis recounts the radar war and the birth of British special operations, created by Churchill for specialised missions. After Operation Colossus, an unsuccessful attack on an Italian aqueduct, the book focuses on the more successful Operation Biting, an SOE mission to steal a radar dish from the French coast, along with the crucial technology powering it.

First flown in 1936, the Spitfire became a symbol of Britain’s defiance of Nazi Germany in the summer of 1940. This book celebrates the grace and power of this great British aircraft, and the people who developed and flew it.

Hampered by tactical mistakes in preparation for the invasion and by severely stretched resources, the Germans nevertheless almost repelled the Allies in June 1944 and the Battle of Normandy remained in the balance for two months. This assessment of the D-Day landings and the subsequent struggle for the Falaise Pocket from the defenders' perspective, focuses on the performance of the German commanders on the ground and uses first-hand accounts to give an insight into conditions and contemporary attitudes.

Dunkirk in June 1940 saw the dramatic rescue of 300,000 Allied troops. Drawing on new interviews with survivors, this presents the true history of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians caught up by the lightning German advance into France, and their last-minute evacuation by hundreds of small ships.

Dan Carlin is a broadcast journalist, best known for his Hardcore History podcasts. Here he explores the impact of major crises for humankind, including the fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Death, and the two world wars, considering issues such as whether hard times make people more resilient, and why some civilizations, such as the Assyrian Empire, showed greater longevity than others.

Max Hastings pays tribute to the heroism of the airmen and the inventiveness of Barnes Wallis in this new analysis of the Dambusters raid (Operation Chastise), but he also reveals failures in the mission that severely restricted its ultimate effectiveness. He describes the development of the bouncing bomb and the bombing raid itself as well as discussing the impact of the attack, both in the immediate aftermath and in the months following, as the Germans swiftly repaired the damage.

Concluding his trilogy assessing Roosevelt’s leadership in the Second World War, Hamilton focuses on the president’s role in the D-Day landings and his legacy. Using previously unpublished documents and interviews the book counters the narrative offered in Churchill’s memoirs. It reveals the extent of the president’s influence and argues that despite his failing health FDR played a pivotal role in creating the conditions necessary to build a peaceful, US-backed world order.

Small, dedicated, under-staffed and under-resourced, MI9 supported resistance groups in Nazi-occupied Europe and helped Allied prisoners of war to escape. First published in 1979, this account tells how the organization smuggled money, clothes, maps and equipment past the Germans, and brought out coded letters containing vital intelligence about enemy plans.

Codenamed ‘Cheese’ by MI6, Roberto Levi, an Italian Jew by birth, was one of the most successful double agents of the Second World War. Drawing on recently declassified files, this book reveals how, while pretending to spy for the Germans, he fed them false information about Allied troop deployments and strategy, misleading the Afrika Korps and saving Malta from German occupation.

Based on rare material from German and Russian original sources, this collection of field reports details the tactics and combat activities of the Wehrmacht in Russia. Compiled by historian Bob Carruthers, and supplemented with illustrations from US intelligence files, it focuses on neglected military features including armoured trains, the construction of field defences, street fighting techniques and improvised anti-tank measures.

Despite its ubiquity in newsreels, there were only ever 700 Stukas at a given time, and although the craft had well known technical limitations it nonetheless became an iconic image of the Luftwaffe. This illustrated overview of the dive bomber draws on interviews with pilots and staff officers, and rare translations of articles from Der Adler, the Luftwaffe’s in-house magazine.

In wartime South-East Asia, Allied soldiers occupied an alien environment where knowledge of tropical diseases, plant identification, and survival techniques were crucial. Assembled from their official manuals, with diagrams and drawings, and produced in a contemporary style, this compendium shows how they managed the challenges.

This account of a daring and hastily enacted operation in the face of imminent invasion describes how the King of Norway, his government and 50 tons of gold were smuggled out of the country by road, rail and fishing boat.

As war leader, Churchill was heavily involved in both the overall strategy and the minutiae of the war effort. Lavery recounts his career as an army officer in India, Sudan and South Africa, and argues his direct experience of the different combat branches played a crucial role in his ability to assess their priorities in the most challenging moments of the conflict.

On the night of 16 May 1943, Operation Chastise – the Dambusters Raid, as it became known – was undertaken by 19 Lancasters of 617 Squadron armed with Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs. Their objectives were the great Mohne and Eder dams in Germany's industrial heartland. Meticulously researched, Holland's fast-paced narrative gives a full account of both the engineering ingenuity and the courage of the bomber crews that came together in one of the most daring actions of the Second World War.

Covering the years between the early 1930s and the end of the Second World War, Josh Ireland tells the stories of four men who threw in their lot with the Nazis, betrayed their country and suffered the consequences of their treachery: John Amery, Harold Cole, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) and Eric Pleasants were traitors who ‘led untidy existences that were fat with accident and mess, but that were shaped by the epoch they inhabited’.

Craig Nelson gives a vivid account of the Japanese surprise attack on the American naval and air forces on 7 December 1941. Blending archival research with the individual stories of sailors, soldiers, pilots, diplomats and leaders, he describes the situation in Japan and the US prior to the attack, the immediate result, and the unforeseen consequences that continue to linger.

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As well as a successful military operation, the Normandy invasion of June 1944 was one of the most impressive logistical feats in the history of warfare. Using contemporary photographs and over 90 detailed maps, including declassified secret documents, this analysis explains how the Allies conceived the plan. It reveals how they co-ordinated several armies and deception schemes, meticulously assessed and charted German defences, and organized the 5,000 craft and 150,000 troops for the assault and subsequent breakout from the beachheads.

The midget submarines that were famously used to attack the battleship Tirpitz in 1943 were developed further and the improved 'XE-class' craft were used in a daring attack on Singapore harbour in 1945. This history recounts how 18 British, Australian and New Zealand submariners, two of whom were awarded the Victoria Cross and several others decorated, piloted two XE craft through the Japanese defences to successfully incapacitate the heavy cruiser Takao.

While he commanded the German submarine fleet, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz earned Allied respect as a military leader and formidable enemy, but after he succeeded Hitler as head of the Third Reich, his name became more closely associated with Nazi ideology. Turner's study looks in depth at the Admiral's character and conduct, particularly his Operation Hannibal, which rescued two million civilians and troops from the Russian advance; his negotiations for ending the war; and his actions in its aftermath.

During the Second World War, RAF personnel made more than 1,200 radio broadcasts describing first-hand their operational and combat experiences above Europe and the Atlantic. Originally published in two wartime books, this volume brings together over 50 transcripts of their revealing recordings.

Wing Commander Paddy Finucane was at the height of his powers when, in July 1942, his Spitfire was hit by German fire and ditched in the English Channel. Drawing on family archives, this book tells how the Dublin-born accountant joined the RAF in 1938 and rose swiftly through the ranks, destroying 32 enemy aircraft before his own disappearance.

Drawing on letters, diaries and interviews, Kevin Wilson recreates the experiences of the men of the US 8th Air Force, and the Women’s Army who served alongside them, from their arrival in Britain in February 1944 to victory in May 1945. Their own words offer vivid glimpses of the camaraderie, relations with their British hosts, and the terror of daytime raids over Berlin.

Pigeons were still in use during the Second World War to carry messages from planes and battlefields but Operation Columba set them to work in a more ambitious project gathering intelligence across Nazi-occupied Europe. BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera tells the recently declassified story of the thousands of birds released over Holland, Belgium and France and assesses the value of the information they brought home. Slightly off-mint. Felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.

Erich Sommer flew for the Luftwaffe as both navigator and pilot during the Second World War, from an early posting in Morocco to missions over Britain, the Russian front and Italy. His career culminated in the first reconnaissance sortie in a jet (the Arado AR234). His memoir also reflects on his childhood and early career in the brewing industry in the 1930s and includes insights into life and attitudes in pre-war Germany.

Prepared for the War Office at the end of hostilities, this official history of the PoW camp has never been published before. Drawing on prisoners’ testimonies, it details the German administration of the camp, the morale and conditions of the men, and the many escape attempts, including the famous ‘Wooden Horse’ of October 1943 and the ‘Great Escape’ of March 1944.

Valeriy Zamulin has written extensively on the Battle of Kursk. Here he takes a closer look at aspects of it that have been subject to debate, including examples of friendly fire censored from Soviet history, German preparations for the counterattack, and myths about battlefield tactics.

The Waffen-SS deployed their particular combination of risk-taking, aggression and inventive tactics on every German front (excluding North Africa) throughout the Second World War. Following an introductory essay on their role this photographic history collates rarely seen images of the Nazi special forces in action.

After the Allies secured Sicily and invaded Italy in 1943, Mussolini was deposed and an armistice was signed with the Italians. However the subsequent long, bloody campaign only ended just before the German surrender in 1945. This chronological history by a leading Irish historian covers the crucial battles of Monte Cassino in early to mid-1944, with a particular focus on the Northern Irish troops involved.

A populous city and a centre of manufacturing, Manchester attracted heavy German bombing during the Second World War, as shown in the contemporary photographs illustrating this review of the wartime city.

Outlining the many and varied challenges women faced during the Second World War, this illustrated volume considers both their life at home – with rationing, black-outs and air raids, and on the front line – as nurses, secret agents, journalists and members of the armed forces, interspersed with reminiscences.

With detailed specifications, drawings and archival photographs, this guide to Russian military hardware includes every significant weapon deployed by Soviet forces during the Second World War, some of which provided models for those still in use decades later. Chapters cover tanks and armoured fighting vehicles, artillery and small arms, aircraft and naval weapons, in addition to the lend-lease weapons that were supplied to the Red Army by the Western Allies.

This overview of the Red Army’s air forces in the opening days of the German invasion of 1941 presents a survey of the technical specifications, personnel, key locations and strategic plans of the commanders. A detailed introduction also describes the preparations and the territorial infringements that preceded Operation Barbarossa. Drawing on German and Soviet archives, the book includes maps and over 300 photographs, many of them previously unseen.

The son of a wealthy peer, Ivor Montagu founded the London Film Society to champion the art form – but his overriding interest was in communism. Based on interviews and archival research, this biography follows these two concerns, recounting a career that included making documentaries about the Spanish Civil War, producing several of Hitchcock’s films and spying for Russia, while remaining blind until the end of his life to the horrors of Stalin’s regime.

Giles Milton narrates the momentous events of 6 June 1944 through the voices of individual survivors on all sides. As well as describing the experiences of the young soldiers who helped to secure the beachheads, he tells the stories of those caught in the front line of Operation Overlord, including the German women transcribing coded messages about ‘something serious’, and the commander whose intimate evening with a local lady was cut short by the Allies.

First published in 1953, this book describes how the body of a fictitious Major Martin washed up on the Spanish coast in 1943, carrying plans for an Allied invasion of Italy. It tells how the plans were fabricated to divert the Germans from the real landings, and investigates the identity of the corpse.

Deposited with an aunt in Devon in 1939, Angela (12) and Hugh McBride (3) saw little of their parents for the next five years, moving between various boarding schools and lodgings and finally joining their family after the war on a posting to Australia. This record of their unusual experience is told as two separate memoirs, one by each of the siblings, highlighting their different perspectives on an eventful but unsettled upbringing.

While the story of British agents’ misdirection of Axis intelligence services in the run up to D-Day is well known, fewer people know that this approach originated in the North African campaign. The British were heavily outnumbered and in serious difficulties when General Wavell instigated a campaign to exaggerate their strength using various subterfuges and deceptive manoeuvres, leading to the formation of the ‘A’ force organization which specialized in tactical and strategic deception.

In March and April 1942 more bombs fell on Malta than on Britain during the first year of the Blitz. Rommel was determined to take the island, from which the Allies could attack Axis supply lines to North Africa. This book tells the story through eyewitness accounts: the fighter pilots, anti-aircraft gunners and submariners, and the late cabaret dancer-turned RAF plotter Christina Ratcliffe.

The story of the Nazis’ final defeat in Western Europe is often told from the advancing Allied soldiers’ viewpoint. Jonathan Trigg has centred this book on the accounts of German veterans, whose retreat came with disastrous and brutal consequences. Demonstrating how shambolic and merciless war can be the numerous photographs, some previously unpublished, show revealing details, including helpless German soldiers held captive in Antwerp zoo, and last-minute preparations by Berliner conscripts.

The Hawker Hurricane was designed and built to counteract the growing aerial power of the Axis nations in the 1930s. With its stable firing platform and robust construction, it played a vital role in the RAF’s success. This illustrated guide details the technical history and combat performance of the aircraft, which chalked up more kills than the better-known Spitfire in the battles over Britain and France.

The author and activist Harry Leslie Smith recalls how, as an RAF serviceman stationed in Hamburg, he met the love of his life, a young German woman named Frieda. In a city reduced to rubble by Allied bombing, and populated with refugees, black-marketeers, corrupt businessmen and cynical soldiers, their relationship flourished, despite suspicion and disapproval on both sides. Slightly off-mint.

The bold Allied plan to defeat Germany quickly in September 1944 by capturing the bridges leading to the lower Rhine, was ultimately a failure and led to the complete destruction of Arnhem and cruel reprisals on the Dutch population for the remainder of the war. Antony Beevor’s account describes the airborne assault, its planning and aftermath, drawing on many overlooked and new sources from Dutch, German, Polish, British and American archives. Slightly off-mint.

A leading military historian, who specializes in the Second World War’s Eastern Front, analyses one of the most intriguing periods of the Battles for Kharkov, when German forces retook the city. The conquest seemed decisive, but the complex daily troop manoeuvres and tactical switches that were involved laid the groundwork for the Soviets to reframe their strategy for a final victory later in the year.

Fighter pilot Lanowski tells the story of his Second World War – escape from Axis soldiers in his native Poland, his combat experience with three separate Allied air forces, and his legendary, rebellious exploits – with previously unpublished photographs of his comrades and aircraft.

In 1942–45 Andrew Millar carried out combat operations against the Japanese from India and Burma, initially in Westland Lysanders and then in Hawker Hurricanes, before commanding No. 20 Squadron and being awarded the DFC and DSO. He used his comprehensive logbook and notes from the period, and previously unpublished photographs, for this memoir of the ‘Forgotten War’, which gives an insight into not only the challenges and dangers of operations, but also everyday life and camaraderie.

As an aircraft inspector during the Second World War, Richard Riding's father, Eddie, could only take pictures of the planes surreptitiously, but from 1946 to his death in 1950 he amassed many more images and his collection showcases the British aviation scene of the period. Accompanied by detailed captions, the photographs include air-to-air shots of light aircraft, the new generation of passenger craft operating from Croydon and Heathrow and innovations on display at the Farnborough Airshow.

One of the mainstays of the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, the Focke-Wulf Fw190 was less effective at high altitude and its designer Kurt Tank worked on numerous developments that used turbojets, turboprops, ramjets and rocket engines to increase power. This analysis of these prototype aircraft contains detailed technical information and the author’s hand-drawn diagrams and sketches of each design.

To help Greece respond to Italian attacks from October 1940, the RAF sent three squadrons of Bristol Blenheims (30, 84 and 211 Squadron) to reinforce the Greek Air Force’s own complement of 12 Mark IV Blenheims. Drawing on first-hand accounts, this study describes the efforts of British and Greek airmen against superior forces (particularly after Germany invaded) up to the fall of Crete in May 1941.

The need to gain some material advantage from the inevitable loss of men and machinery in aerial warfare led both the Japanese and German air forces to resort to ramming and suicide tactics during the Second World War. This study of these attacks features detailed technical drawings of the planes used, from the various Japanese kamikaze planes to the Messerschmitts of Germany’s suicide squadron, Rammkommando Elbe.

Robert de La Rochefoucauld was a French aristocrat who was taught sabotage and combat skills by Britain's SOE before teaming up with the French Resistance to organize cells, blow up munitions factories and assassinate prominent Nazis. Drawing on family archives and wide-ranging historical documents, this account tells how he was captured and tortured for months, making two remarkable escapes, one of them from the hands of a firing squad.

The DFC was introduced as the medal for gallantry by airmen when the Royal Air Force was formed after the First World War; multiple awards are recognized with silver ribbon bars. There were sixty recipients of a second bar up to 1955 (only three have been awarded since) and this book profiles each one with a brief biography, contemporary photograph and the original citation that accompanied the award.

For the bombers of the RAF and USAF, supporting the invasion on D-Day was the culmination of a planned series of strategic raids in preparation for the landings. Focusing on the service of eight crews, and drawing on first-hand accounts, this analysis of the campaign explains the wider strategy and describes the personal experiences of the airmen, from raids on German infrastructure in spring 1944 to supporting land forces several months after D-Day.

The codebreaking work at Bletchley Park was supported by an extensive infrastructure of outstations, the largest being at Eastcote, which later became GCHQ. By consulting archival documents, visiting the wartime bases and talking to those with personal knowledge, the author has pieced together the stories of these lesser-known sites. The book also features analysis of the improvements to Alan Turing’s Bombe machine and highlights the vital contribution of the Wrens in operating this equipment.

Danny Orbach explores the perennial question of what could have been done to stop Hitler in this exploration of the Third Reich’s anti-Nazi underground. Disparate small groups based on academic, political, personal and religious affiliations tried repeatedly to end the Führer’s genocidal reign. This is their story of the sometimes ingenious but always doomed efforts, looking at the assassination plans and ethical conflicts surrounding the attempts.

The Second World War was one of the most destructive in history, but also one of the most innovative, sweeping away empires and creating new global institutions. Ranging over five continents, this study examines how the war shaped the modern world, inaugurating the arms race and the space race, the United Nations and Bretton Woods, decolonization and globalization. With demagoguery on the rise again, it argues, we cannot afford to ignore this legacy.

The extravagant and impressive six-wheeled, all-terrain Mercedes G4 was developed for the Nazi leadership in the 1930s, providing a powerful symbol of state. Only 57 of the exclusive limousines were ever built and this tribute traces its history, development and manufacture, examines its use by Hitler and General Franco, and provides an extensive photographic study of one of only four surviving examples.

The Rolls-Royce armoured car first saw action in the First World War in Gallipoli, on the Western Front and with Lawrence of Arabia in the north African deserts, and it ended its active service in Libya in 1941. As well as the history of the vehicle, this Owners’ Workshop Manual covers its design, construction, operation and maintenance, with diagrams, wartime photographs and new photographs of the Tank Museum’s surviving example.

In The Other Schindlers Agnes Grunwald-Spier wrote of the many unsung individuals who helped the Jews during the Nazi persecution; in this study she uncovers the individuals and groups who betrayed them. Quoting extensively from survivors' accounts, and in sometimes shocking detail, she examines betrayals made for ideology or greed, but also the 'commercial betrayals' by the railway companies who transported Jews and the industries that used forced labour, and the betrayals made in fear and desperation.