Militaria

//Militaria
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  • Arthur Gould Lee, who retired as an RAF air vice marshal, had the privilege of recording his feelings and actions during World War I in his letters home and what's more, his letters survived. A courageous 22-year-old, devoted to duty and well aware of the hazards he faced on the Western Front, Lee was more mature than most of his colleagues, in part by virtue of being married and in part because he had had the good fortune to have crashed during training, allowing him to log more hours of flight training  than the average replacement pilot. He didn’t like the fact that the Germans had superior aircraft, and noted the qualitative differences in opposing Albatross D.Is, D.IIs and D.IIIs, the latter dubbed the “V-strutter” and carrying two machine guns to the single one carried by the Sopwith Pup. He writes about flying through a shell-laden sky, vulnerable to bullets from above and below. He never forgot the RFC's needless sacrifices and examines the failure of the Army High Command to provide efficient planes until mid-1917 and parachutes throughout the entire war. With black and white photos.
  • The appointment of Major-General H.L. Ismay to the Chiefs of Staff Committee was made on May 1st, 1940, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty. On May 10th he succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister and Ismay's position at once became of the first importance. His functions were ill defined. He liked to call himself Churchill's "agent"; but he was very much more than that term usually implies. Out of his close association with the Prime Minister there grew a deep understanding and friendship. Accompanying him everywhere from blitzed areas in London to major conferences all over the world, or sharing with him his moments of relaxation after the heat of the day, Ismay had unique opportunities to observe the Colossus who was his master and his memoir paints a full portrait of Churchill. In 1925 Ismay was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Committee of Imperial defence. By the  outbreak of the Second World War he was very experienced in committee work. The waging of total war in a democracy is a complex business: committees and conferences have to do their work, temperaments have to be reconciled and methods of implementing decisions arrived at. It is this aspect of the war covered by Lord Ismay. He was important as a peacemaker and mediator; there was no lack of potential friction between the Chiefs of Staff and their political superiors in World War II and the fact that this friction remained largely potential was largely due to Ismay. After his years in India, Somaliland and Whitehall and his work in World War II, he returned post-war to India as the personally invited advisor to the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, to contribute to the settlement of Partition, and after its successful conclusion Lord Ismay crowned his career of public service as the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) where he strove to prevent a future war with the same energy as he had helped to win the past one.
  • In 1999, General Peter Cosgrove was thrust into the full glare of the nation's spotlight following his appointment as Commander of the International Forces in East Timor. (INTERFET) Always in his slouch hat, he was a reassuring figure and we watched with pride the professionalism and concern of our peacekeeping forces who under his direction helped lay the foundations of a new nation. In his subsequent rise to Chief of Army and then, in July 2002, to Chief of the Defence force, the General cemented his reputation as a modern-day warrior chieftain as he displayed those characteristics we value most as Australians - strength, determination, intelligence, compassion and humour.

  • Most dramas end in anti-climax, but not in Nazi Germany. Everything about its demise was tragic crescendo. This is a dramatic countdown of the final months of World War II in Europe, bringing to life the waning power and the ultimate submission of the Third Reich. To reconstruct the tumultuous hundred days between Yalta and the fall of Berlin, John Toland traveled more than 100,000 miles in twenty-one countries and interviewed more than six hundred people - from Hitler’s personal chauffeur to Generals von Manteuffel, Wenck, and Heinrici; from underground leaders to diplomats; from top Allied field commanders to brave young GIs. When it was first published, The Last 100 Days made history, revealing after-action reports, staff journals, and top-secret messages and personal documents previously unavailable to historians. Illustrated with black and white archival photographs.
  • The in-depth inside story of the victory in Africa and Europe by Montgomery's Chief-of-Staff.  This is not just a re-telling of the battles and campaigns de Guingand fought with Montgomery, the Eighth Army and the 21st Army Group; it is also an insight into what it takes to get armies equipped and in place to achieve those victories as well as an evaluation of some of the personalities of the leadership of the Western Allies through defeat onward to victory.
  • By 194o, the isle of Jersey was well and truly under the Nazi jackboot. The legitimate authorities collaborated with the occupying power.  For islander Anthony Faramus, this would have horrific consequences. When the local police reported him to the Germs for possession of a British leaflet, Faramus was jailed for one month. Then the Jersey authorities prosecuted him for defrauding his employer of 90 Occupational Marks. His employer was the collaborationist state, which put him to work in a motel commandeered by the Germans. This time he got six months' hard labour. Shortly after his release, Faramus was sent to Occupied France as a political prisoner. The authorities had sent young Anthony Faramus on the first stage of a journey into the dark heart of Nazi tyranny - but to begin with, imprisonment in France's Fort de R9omainville was surprisingly enjoyable, with fellow prisoners, men and women, from a fascinating cross-section of society. But after Romainville came selections... transports...and the death camps of  Buchenwald and Mauthausen...
  • Written in 1933, this book caused furor in many quarters. It's a far cry from Nichols' usual light-hearted badinage, being a bitter denunciation of the world's attitude toward peace and war and a thorough research into the activities of offensive preparations going on in the armament factories in England and on the Continent. It also covers the ineffectual preparations being made for defensive measures. Faced with the fact that war was brewing, the League of Nations was rendered virtually impotent through the media of the day and public opinion and that the civilian population is certain to be the victim in the next European War, his findings are far from negligible. The last half of the book is a succession of challenging dialogues, in which socialism, capitalism, militarism and pacifism are all given ardent advocates.  Time and events  demonstrated that Nichols predicted how World War II would proceed with uncanny 99% accuracy.
  • For four years in World War II, out of an unquestioned love for their mother country, the Russian people heroically defended their soil with their blood. Here is the full story of the valor of the sons and daughters, soldiers and villagers, Cossacks and snipers who battled in Moscow and Stalingrad, in the Caucasus and the Arctic, at the Brest fortress and Kursk Bulge. From the account of the aging Russian general who suffered drenchings in ice-cold water rather than collaborate with his Nazi captors to that of the nineteen-year-old private who flung himself on the gun port of a German pillbox so that his comrades could advance, these pages not only chronicle extraordinary selfless acts of heroism but also rectify an astonishing oversight in innumerable histories of World War II.  With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.
  •  Here for the first time is the complete history of Hitler's empire.  No other empire ever bequeathed to historians such mountains of evidence about its rise and fall as the Third Reich. The Allied demand for unconditional surrender produced - before the Nazis could destroy their files - an almost hour-to-hour record of the nightmare realm created by Hitler. This record includes the testimony of Nazi leaders, concentration camp inmates, the diaries of officials, transcripts of secret conferences, army orders, private letters - all the vast paper work behind a conspiracy to conquer the world. This is also the story of Hitler the man - his love affairs, his imprisonment, his suicide.  There is also details of the plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and hundreds of other inside stories. Most of all, it is the story of how Hitler destroyed his beloved Germany. The author, who watched and reported on the Nazis since 1925 had been reporting on-the-spot from Germany and Europe for almost forty years and spent over five years sifting the mountains of paper that eventually became this definitive history.