Militaria

//Militaria
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  • Could Napoleon have won the battle of Waterloo? And what would have happened if he had? Or suppose Nelson had not destroyed the French fleet at Aboukir, would Napoleon have conquered India and become Emperor of the East? What if Hitler had not halted his panzer forces before Dunkirk and had entrapped the entire British Expeditionary Force? How would Churchill have then denied the Wehrmacht? If by chance Hitler had been assassinated in 1944 and the German General Staff taken control, would there have been a totally different kind of surrender? In examining these and other contingencies, Major General Strawson brings his experience of command in war and his skill as a military historian to present us with an enthralling catalogue of chance and speculation, while emphasising how profoundly the character of commanders influenced events and how events affected their character.
  • Volume 3 of the award winning series that covers the dynamic history of the railroads during warfare from the American Civil War to World Wars I and II, Korea and Vietnam. Whether under full attack or evacuating the wounded, the trains kept running.
  • By the summer of 1941 Rommel was Hitler's favourite general. Sent to North Africa to halt the British advance into Libya, he not only stopped the British offensive but drove them back to their Egyptian base. He seemed unbeatable on the field so the British planned to kill him. On the eve of the British offensive Operation Crusader, a specially trained commando team marched into the desert and attacked Rommel's headquarters. At the same time, the newly created SAS parachuted sabotage teams close to the German airfields to knock out the enemy air forces on the ground.  The author reveals how poor planning and incompetence in high places was counterbalanced by fantastic bravery and brilliant improvisation that enabled a handful of survivors to escape back to British lines and tell the true story of Operation Flipper: the plot to kill Rommel.

  • Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence and unmatched courage. In performance and character, he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go, he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man, Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust. This is a remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together. They depended on each other for survival. And when the chips were down, Bill's heroic efforts and exceptional instincts in battle saved the lives of Shanahan and four of his men. By September 1918, 'Bill the Bastard' was known by the entire Light Horse regiment, who used his name not as an insult, but as a term of endearment. Bill had become a legend, a symbol of the courage and unbreakable will of the Anzac mounted force. There was no other horse like Bill the Bastard.
  • Warren Tute (1914-1989) a naval officer who took part in the Normandy landings, collaborated with historians John Costello & Terry Hughes to produce this volume book for the 30th anniversary of the D-Day landings.  The book opens with a facsimile of a letter from Eisenhower to the troops and there is a foreword by Lord Mountbatten. There are the newspaper headlines of the day, cartoons, maps and fabulous colour and black and white photos - a comprehensive, pictorial study of the preparation for and the events of the epic force that was the  D-Day landings of 1944.
  • When the author, a wounded veteran of 21, arrived in Rome in 1944, the question most Italians asked him was: 'What took you so long?' What indeed? Were the Allied High Command to blame? Were the generals incompetent? Was the Anzio landing itself a tactical error? In 1956 Raleigh Trevelyan published, as The Fortress, the diaries he had surreptitiously kept in the Anzio trenches and, as a result, made contact with a number of Germans who had been only yards away from him twelve years earlier. Now that statesmen and generals have published their memoirs and official histories of the war have been written, it seems possible at long last to attempt an answer. This is a remarkable book, bringing together the skill and insight of an accomplished historian, the narrative drive of a gifted storyteller, and the rage and terror of a man experiencing at first hand the momentous events from Anzio to Monte Cassino and on to Rome. The reader follows the fate of the 'poor bloody infantry' on both sides of the line; sees a group of Romans adapting to the idea that the Germans are still there; penetrates the secrets of the Vatican; watches the Allied and German generals on the spot fight with their High Commands and hears what Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin thought about it at the time. Illustrated with black and white photographs and even some contemporary cartoons.
  • The story of the famous Polish Squadron stationed in Britain in Word War II. Their hearts are with their families and loved ones at home but their fears and feelings must be put aside when the German offensive intensifies and they are called up to defend Britain from Hitler's Luftwaffe. Also starring Cara Theobald, Anna Prus and Andrew Woodall.
  • In the darkest days of World War II, this is the true story of ten brave young men flying their twenty-fifth and final bombing mission in the Flying Fortress, Memphis Belle. Some say the team is exceptional; others that the Memphis Belle is the luckiest plane in the war. But this is a mission that can change everything. Only if the men can successfully destroy the munitions factory in the heart of Germany will they get to go home. Dangerous, almost impossible, it is a mission that will test their skill and teamwork to the limit - and each man will become a hero - whether he lives or dies. Monte Merrick also wrote the screenplay for the Warner Bros film of the same name.
  • By late May 1940 the German Army had raced across Northern France cutting the Allied armies in two. The British Expeditionary Force ,and thousands of French and Belgian soldiers, found themselves squeezed into a ever smaller pocket by the Wehrmacht while the Luftwaffe pounded them from the sky. For nine terrible days they held their ground until - eventually - they had to evacuate. A quarter of a million men battled their way across the bullet-swept beaches to ships - and escape. This is the story of what is simultaneously a terrible defeat and a stirring victory.
  • The story of the five battles that changed Australia forever. This compelling narrative incorporates hundreds of interviews with the soldiers of the A.I.F and the young Militia conscripts who fought at Kokoda, Milne Bay, Gona, Buna, and Sanananda in 1942 and 1943. Also revealed is the inside story of how Generals MacArthur and Blamey and other senior Australian commanders sacrificed many of their senior field commanders as scapegoats to protect their own positions; and how false legends were created by lies. Many of the interviews were conducted by the author, who also travelled to the battlegrounds. Illustrated with black and white photographs and maps.
  • It was at Dunkirk that Toosey's charisma and fortitude were first noted and in 1941 he was given command of an artillery regiment. Sent to fight in the Far East he and his men were embroiled in the battle for Singapore and were taken prisoner after the island's fall in 1942. The Japanese, scornful of the Allied forces for surrendering, determined to make use of the new workforce now at their disposal. Toosey was sent to Thailand to command the 'bridge camp' at Tamarkan  where he was ordered to supervise the construction of two railway bridges over the river Khwae Mae Khlong. Starvation rations and harsh working conditions mean that dysentery and cholera were rife and a quarter of the 60,000 prisoners working on the Burma Railway wold perish.  Toosey insisted on high standards of hygiene and discipline, giving back the men their self-respect and making himself a buffer for the cruel excesses if the guards.  The author is Toosey's grand-daughter. Illustrated with black and white photographs and sketches.

  • Bletchley Park was where one of Word War II's most famous and crucial achievements was made: the cracking of Germany's Enigma code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house was home to Britain's most brilliant mathematical brains - including Alan Turing - and the scene of immense advances in technology—...indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. Plenty has been written about the scientists and the code-breaking, in both fact and fiction, —from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing—. But what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during World War II? This is not only a history of life at Bletchley Park; this is also an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds and the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels - and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other's work. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • The author assesses and explains the role of Goering, dismissing the popular image of the corrupt and indolent buccaneer in order to show the central and serious political role that Goering played in the Third Reich. He shows all facets of Goering's personality, as well as the political context in which he exercised so much power.

  • Ken Bartlett, an Australian sailor in a corvette in the Atlantic, took on a cloak-and-dagger mission into Nazi Germany.  It was the start of a long and dangerous trail that led him to suspect that Allied firms traded with Germany and Japan during World War II.  After arduous service in corvettes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, he returned to his job as a journalist and followed the scent of the treason trade.  This proved even more hazardous, with the FBI, CIA and thugs hired by the double-dealers out to get him. He achieved a victory - yet it was bitter.

  • An oral history of D-Day where the stories of that long and violent day on the Calvados Coast of Normandy are told in the words of the men who were Americans, British, Canadians, French and German. Follow these men ashore, up the beach, and into the battle for Normandy. The men who landed on UTAH and OMAHA beach, cracked the Atlantic Wall at Arromanches, parachuted into Carantan or Ste Mere Eglise, or stormed Pegasus Bridge and the Merville battery, tell the reader what it was like to be there, in the midst of the most important single battle of World War II. The view from landing ship, tank turret, parachute harness or infantry fox hole has never been better told than in the pages of this absorbing book. Illustrated with archival photographs.
  • In many ways, the Digger is a study in contradictions: he doesn't crave war, yet he will fight with unequalled ferocity; he hates spit and polish but will hold his discipline under the most trying conditions; he is tough, yet compassionate; he hates his enemy until he surrenders, then is generous in victory; he despises histrionics but will cry unashamedly at the loss of a mate...The Digger is a key piece of the complex jigsaw puzzler that makes up 'The Australian' - but who is the Digger, exacatly? What elements have gone into forging his spirit?They have won acclaim for their fighting prowess and  bravery, while retaining their larrikin spirit, their compassion and their strong sense of mateship. Those who fought in the trenches of Gallipoli, the Somme and Ypres have an immediate kinship with those who followed in NorthAfrica and New Guinea; then later in Korea, Vietnam, East Timor, Iran and Iraq. Australians can be proud of the heritage our Diggers have bequeathed to us. Illustrated with black and white photos.
  • Since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the British people have confronted no greater threat to their freedom than in 1940, when Hitler's armies swept through France in a  few scant weeks and stood poised twenty-one miles from Dover. Had the Luftwaffe then gained air supremacy over the English Channel, nothing could have prevented the first invasion of Britain in over 900 years.  This is the story of how Britain turned the prevailing tide, against all the odds - and won the day. Illustrated with photographs from private collections, drawings, diagrams and charts that clarifies the day by day events on both sides accompanied by text from witnesses and combatants that evoke those few desperate weeks of human endeavour and how the delicate balance was tipped - only just - in Britain's favour.
  • More and more Australians are reflecting on the soldiers who helped shape our nation. Many are choosing to make pilgrimages to the battlefields of our history, to bring to life names like the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres. This is the essential companion for anyone visiting the Western Front, presenting well-illustrated walking tours across fourteen of the most important battlefields on easily accessible walking routes, it points out to readers the battlefield landmarks that still exist - the memorials to the men who fought there and the cemeteries where many of them still lie. There are moving quotes and black and white illustrations revealing the experiences of war from the common Aussie digger together with easy-to-follow- directions that allows anyone to visit the battlefields and walk in the footsteps of the first ANZACS.
  • The Solomon Island archipelago stretches in a roughly east-west direction from New Guinea to San Cristobal. For the Imperial Japanese forces in 1942, it was a natural highway into the South Pacific. When checked at Guadalcanal, these forces realized they had moved east too quickly, and that their defeat was caused in part by inadequate air bases between the front and their head-quarters at Rabaul, more than six hundred miles away. As the last Japanese battalions were wrecking themselves against the Marine defensive perimeter on Guadalcanal, the decision was made to build the Munda airfield on New Georgia, right in the middle of the Solomons chain. This is the dramatic, harrowing story of green American soldiers encountering for the first time impenetrable swamps, solid rain forests, invisible coconut-log pillboxes, tenacious snipers tied into trees, torren-tial tropical rains, counterattack by enemy aircraft and naval guns, and the logistical nightmare of living and moving in endless mud.
  • Published for the Australian Military Forces by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, in 1944. Full of sketches, poems, colour plates and photographs, cartoons and jokes, as well as those fabulous yarns that Aussies can tell so well - and all by the service personnel who were engaged in the South West Pacific during World War II.  Contributors are identified only by their service numbers...so your grandfather or great grandfather may be among the authors.  Here we do not find battle statistics, plans or  generals - just the down to earth Australian Diggers.

  • A book full of information, pictures and maps of land battles throughout history that proves it was not always about who had the biggest army. In this volume - Metaurus - after the toughest forced march in history, Nero slays Hasdrubal; Agincourt - massed archers and infantry slaughter the French cavalry; Bunker Hill - a thousand farmers ignite the flame of American independence; Austerlitz - Napoleon crushes an army bigger than his own; Balaclava - a battle of idiocy and sheer courage; Second Bull Run - a high spot for the South in the American Civil War; The Somme - slaughter on a scale never seen before or since; Cambrai - tanks explode into action for the first time; Gazala - Rommels' fast moving tactical brilliance; Stalingrad - Hitler's obstinacy leads the Wehrmacht to disaster; Cassino and Anzio - Allied forces combine to force a breakthrough; The Battle Of The Bulge - fast moving Panzers against Eisenhower, Montgomery and Patton; Operation Commando - a true 'United Nations; against the Chinese in Korea. Illustrated with archival photographs, artists' representations and maps.
  • You can read history - or you can learn history from the people who lived it.  This compilation of accounts of life during the First World War are from diaries and letters: from those at home, from the trenches, from men and women in the armed forces...there's even a section devoted to the modern machineries of war and what those on the front line thought of them. Here are the voices of that time and they are the ones who know what life was like then.
  • An Australian soldier's letters to his friends from World War II. When written, these letters did not mention place names other than those permitted by the censor.  In order to make a continuous and intelligible narrative, these place names (now permitted) have been inserted. A rare glimpse from the war front.

  • A volume of military activity, weaponry and technology from 1987. Arenas of activity covered: The Middle East - Tripoli; Lebanon; the Gulf War; South Yemen and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Europe, North America and the Soviet Union: Terrorism and Power Politics; The Superpower Relationship; NATO and the Warsaw Pact; International Terror; Northern Ireland. Asia - Islam's Guerrillas; The Tamil Tigers; The Philippines; Vietnam and Cambodia' Sikh Separatists. Africa - South Africa; Mozambique; Angola; Chad; The Sudan; Ethiopia; The Boy Soldiers of Uganda. Latin America: Guerrillas and Contras; El Salvador; Nicaragua; Peru; Chile. Military Technology: The War Machine; Aerial Warfare; Space and Missiles; Land Warfare; Naval Warfare. A wealth of information for the war history buff with plenty of colour photographs.
  • Shot down in 1942, young Australian fighter pilot John Williams DFC became a POW in the notorious Stalag Luft III camp in Germany. John had joined the air force shortly before the outbreak of war and, in the larrikin tradition, led his squadron into air combat over the deserts of Libya and Egypt dressed in sandals and shorts. John and his best mate Rusty Kierath were among the 76 POWs who tunnelled their way out of the supposedly escape-proof camp under the noses of their German guards in what later became the Hollywood blockbuster, The Great Escape. Their families never learned what really happened once the pair made it out into the forest. John's niece Louise Williams has pieced together his life, from his upbringing in a tight-knit family hit hard by the Depression, to his exploits in the air, and the many missing details of the tragic escape. It is a powerful and intimate story of one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II. Illustrated with black and white photographs.
  • The story closely follows key events of the Xinhai Revolution, with focus on Huang Xing and Sun Yat-sen. It begins with the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 and follows through historical events such as the Second Guangzhou Uprising on 27 April 1911, the deaths of the 72 martyrs, the election of Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president of the new Provisional Republic of China, the abdication of the last Qing dynasty emperor Puyi on 12 February 1912, and Yuan Shikai becoming the new provisional president in Beijing on 10 March 1912. Also known as Xinhai Revolution and 1911.
  • Patton's aggression and theatrical personality made his units the most successful and efficient and he believed that it should be his Army that should lead the Allied attacks.  This brought him into constant conflict with Eisenhower and Montgomery, with Patton doing nothing to hide his belief that he would win the war if properly supported. He expected the same aggression from his men and was probably the best American field commander in the European theatre.