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If much of the attention in Summer 1944 was on Normandy and the progress of the Allies through France, another enormous multinational army was also fighting doggedly further south and facing the last formidable barrier of German defensive positions, the Gothic Line, stretching from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean across mountainous northern Italy. This analysis of a year of fighting on the front tells the story through the varied experiences of 13 men and women from seven different countries.

During the Second World War, German-occupied Bordeaux was a hotbed of espionage as the Gestapo attempted to thwart clandestine British efforts to support the Resistance. Drawing on newly discovered documents, the late Paddy Ashdown and Sylvie Young reveal the deadly game of cat and mouse played out by three men – one British, one French and one German – against a backdrop of intrigue, treachery and death.

This collection of archival images from The Times and Kemsley Newspapers, many published here for the first time, documents remarkable scenes from the Allies’ invasion of Europe, including the capture of Berlin, where a sombre Churchill inspects the site at which Hitler’s body was burnt. Set against a backdrop of devastation, action shots of airdrops, beach landings, tank battles and troop manoeuvres contrast with the delighted faces of liberated civilians, telling stories as compelling as they are harrowing.

The government lost no time in making plans to manage the inevitable food shortages that would come with war, registering everyone in the country for ration books in September 1939, before rationing was actually introduced in January 1940. With chapters on wartime food, clothing, home life, air raids and transport, this book recalls life for ordinary Britons during the Second World War and is illustrated with hundreds of contemporary posters, coupons, advertisements, public information leaflets and photographs.

Partly thanks to their potentially bomb-resistant solidity, The Ritz, the Savoy, Claridges and the Dorchester became central to the cultural and political life of the country during the Second World War. This colourful history explores a remarkable period when cabinet ministers, military officials, exiled foreign dignitaries, journalists, spies, artists and chancers all used the hotels as meeting places, makeshift offices, temporary embassies and social centres.

From the fall of Poland in September 1939, to the invasion of Norway in April 1940, the Norwegian historian Geirr Haarr describes fierce naval struggles, including the sinking of Courageous, the German mining of the British East Coast and the Altmark incident. In this meticulously detailed study, Haarr shows that there was no ‘phoney war’ at sea in those early months of the Second World War.

Donald Duck was the most frequent star of Disney's films in the early 1940s; Goofy and Pluto also did their bit and the Disney studios contributed to the war effort in a host of other ways. This well-illustrated book examines the propaganda and training films produced and the work of the department producing insignia artwork for military units, as well as entertainment shorts such as Private Pluto and Commando Duck.

‘In 1940 the only major power fighting Germany was Britain. Had Britain collapsed and Europe become Nazified, the future of the West would have been very bleak.’ In this book Robin Prior re-examines a vast range of official, semi-official and private documentary sources to give a full account of political and military events, and the many crises that threatened the nation during the year that Britain fought alone, from Dunkirk to the Blitz.

For carrying out an audacious ambush to free her husband and other prisoners from a Gestapo van in 1943, Lucie Aubrac (1912–2007) is still hailed as a heroine of the French Resistance. This first full English-language biography tells her compelling story but also analyses the Aubracs' defence of inconsistencies in her account, which were exposed when the former head of the Gestapo claimed that the couple had become informers and betrayed their comrades.

The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is one of the heroes of the Second World War, whose courageous actions saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis – and ultimately cost him his life. Juxtaposing Wallenberg’s story with a compelling account of the author’s search for the truth, this biography reveals how he and his helpers created a system of protected passports and safe houses, and uncovers the truth about his mysterious death at the hands of the Soviets.

Airey Neave was the first British officer to escape from Colditz and make a ‘home-run’ back to Britain. On his return in 1942, he began working for MI9 in the War Office, an organization that helped maintain escape lines across occupied Europe to usher stranded servicemen into neutral territory for evacuation. Neave’s account of MI9, first published in 1969, includes many remarkable escape stories and lauds the bravery of escapees and volunteers alike.

By the summer of 1940 nearly a million and a half British men had joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), a response to the very real threat of invasion by a rapidly advancing German Army. This book explores the LDV’s transformation from an enthusiastic yet ill-equipped organisation into the capable Home Guard, which, as the threat of invasion receded, nevertheless became key to the UK’s local defence strategy, as well as a means of combating the purported Fifth Column. Off-mint.

In this revealing investigative history, Malcom Atkin attempts to reconstruct the story of a secret intelligence operation designed to counter a Nazi occupation of Britain during the Second World War. Examining the philosophy behind the multi-layered initiatives for the defence of the realm, he discovers that some of the resistance organizations, including Section VII of the Secret Intelligence Service, planned to resort to the brutal and ‘ungentlemanly’ tactics of guerrilla warfare, including military and economic sabotage and assassination.

Bernard Fergusson was with Orde Wingate's 'Chindits' in Burma in 1943 and, once the success of their guerrilla tactics had been acknowledged by Allied commanders, was sent back in 1944 to establish strongholds in Japanese-occupied territory. This book is a reprint of his account of the period, first published in 1946, and contains reflections on coping with the jungle conditions as well as military operations.

In early 1945, the Nazis were engaged in secret programmes to develop faster aircraft, with greater range and anti-radar, or stealth characteristics; a turbojet ‘flying wing’ was already under construction. Illustrated with detailed technical drawings, this book provides an in-depth study of these radical fighter and bomber projects, and shows how close Hitler may have come to having long-distance bombing capability and winning the war in the air.

To defend the home counties from the terrifying V2 rocket attacks, formations of Mark XVI Spitfires carrying 250 lb and 500 lb bombs divebombed launch sites in Holland between 1944 and 1945. Drawing on records declassified in 2004, this updated account of Whitehall’s covert operation not only covers the daring raids of five different Spitfire squadrons, but also the intelligence-gathering activities in Europe of special commando units, including Ian Fleming’s 30 Assault Unit.

This illustrated account of Monte Cassino – a ‘four-month-long bloodbath... in one of the worst battlefields in history’ – includes expert analysis of the four stages of the battle and first-hand accounts by some of the combatants.

From plain infantryman on the Eastern Front, to highly decorated war hero, to Soviet prisoner: Williamson traces the military career of Hans Sturm and the moral values he upheld despite the Nazi regime.

A soldier in the Germany infantry, Friedrich Reiner Niemann (1922–1945) served on the Eastern Front from 1941 until his disappearance during the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive. He wrote over 100 letters home; translated and introduced here by Denis Havel.

Long before the USA entered the Second World War, William Ash (1918–2014) had left Texas, joined up in Britain and was flying Spitfires with 411 squadron. In 1942 he was shot down over France, captured and incarcerated in Stalag III; he spent the rest of the war trying to escape from various Nazi PoW camps, including Oflag XXIB in Poland. In this book, Bishop explores the PoW experience while telling the exciting and inspirational story of Ash’s determined efforts to break free.

The 'Warburg Wire Job' was an audacious escape plan by 40 British, Australian, New Zealand and South African POWs from Oflag VI-B in Warburg, Germany. With the camp lights fused, the prisoners laid scaling ladders constructed from bed boards over the high perimeter fence and 28 made it across. Mark Felton's history tells the story of the planning and execution of the breakout and the stories of the escapees' attempts to evade recapture and return home.

After Himmler’s suicide in 1945, his letters were believed lost. Then, in 2014, they were discovered in Tel Aviv and authenticated by historians. Edited by his great niece, they present a chilling glimpse into the mind of a mass murderer. Alongside banal family details and fanatical devotion to the Nazi cause, they reveal him to have been much closer to Hitler than previously thought, and remove any doubt that he was the architect of the Final Solution.

If much of the attention in Summer 1944 was on Normandy and the progress of the Allies through France, another enormous multinational army was also fighting doggedly further south and facing the last formidable barrier of German defensive positions, the Gothic Line, stretching from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean across mountainous northern Italy. This analysis of a year of fighting on the front tells the story through the varied experiences of 13 men and women from seven different countries.

TRIPLEX was the code name for one of the most sensitive intelligence sources of the Second World War: material extracted illicitly from the diplomatic bags of neutral countries in London. The MI5 officer who oversaw the operation was Anthony Blunt – and the rest is history. Drawing on newly released Soviet intelligence documents, this book reveals for the first time the full extent of the damage done by the Cambridge Five to British intelligence, and its impact on the Cold War.

Geoffrey Page was shot down and badly burned in 1940 but was back flying by 1942. His biography, first published as Tale of a Guinea Pig, details his experiences as a fighter pilot as well as post-war campaigning.

Tim Vigors' memoir recounts his early life and his wartime experiences, from flying fighters during the Battle of Britain and in the Far East to being shot down and badly burned in northern Malaya.

In 1939, the first attempts of the government to bolster morale with poster campaigns were largely ineffective but as the war progressed, propaganda became more sophisticated, using contemporary design, memorable slogans and humour to inform and direct the public. This analysis draws on the collection of the Imperial War Museum and explores such classic campaigns as 'Dig for Victory' and 'Make Do and Mend'.

Long before the USA entered the Second World War, William Ash (1918–2014) had left Texas, joined up in Britain and was flying Spitfires with 411 squadron. In 1942 he was shot down over France, captured and incarcerated in Stalag III; he spent the rest of the war trying to escape from various Nazi PoW camps, including Oflag XXIB in Poland. In this book, Bishop explores the PoW experience while telling the exciting and inspirational story of Ash’s determined efforts to break free.

Craig Nelson gives a vivid account of the Japanese surprise attack on the American naval and air forces on 7 December 1941, describing the situation in Japan and the US prior to the attack, the immediate result, and its later, unforeseen consequences.

Pet owners were advised in 1939 that destroying their cats and dogs would be kinder than allowing them to face the Blitz. Later in the war family dogs were recruited into service as guards and mine detectors. This book investigates the wartime challenges for domestic pets and their owners, from bombed-out cats rescued from the rubble to the dogs that parachuted into France on D-Day.

The final effort of the Second World War against Japan is remembered as mainly an American affair, but the British fleet was there too and British airmen flying from carriers, mostly in leased American Corsair planes. This book recounts those last days of the Pacific War through the eyes of the Royal Navy pilots who flew hundreds of missions over Japan and in the face of desperate Japanese kamikaze attacks during the summer of 1945.

In this study of Winston Churchill and the small group of men – the 'team of rivals' – that he chose to help him guide Britain through the grave crisis it faced in May 1940, Schneer examines Churchill's leadership and the relations between the War Cabinet ministers – among them Eden, Beaverbrook, Bevin, Attlee, Morrison and Stafford Cripps. He also looks beyond the war to the Cabinet's response to public expectations after six years of hardship – domestic issues which demanded a new kind of leadership.

Drawing on the ‘massive and labyrinthine’ archives of the Army Chaplaincy in the Second World War and the recollections and reflections of hundreds of army, navy and marine veterans, Snape’s study shows how, despite constitutional constraints, pre-war ‘religious depression’, and the pitfalls of war itself, religion played a crucial role in helping more than 16 million American service men and women through the ordeal of war in Europe and the Pacific.