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Australian actor and comedian Slim DeGrey (1918 - 2007), known for his roles in They're A Weird Mob, You Can't See Around Corners and many other Australian film and T.V. productions was a member of the A.I.F. Prisoners' Concert Party in the infamous Changi Gaol. There was a funny side; not often and not always, but hilarious and absurd incidents did occur and together with the infamous style of Australian dry humour, helped sustain morale and relieve the drab lives of the P.O.Ws. Littered with fabulous Australianisms and droll sketches, Slim DeGrey definitely found Changi's funny side. -
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. -
Regarded as the classic text on the Weimar Republic, Nicholls begins with Germany's defeat in 1918 and the revolutionary disturbances that followed the collapse of Wilhelm II's Empire. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of the new regime, and the stresses created by the economic difficulties of the 1920s. Adolf Hitler's career is traced from its early beginnings in Munich, and the nature of his movement is assessed. -
Tobruk 1941: Peter Cochrane
$15.00No surrender...no retreat. When the 9th Division of the AIF withdrew into the desert fortress town of Tobruk in April 1941, a siege began that would make its mark on the course of World War II and the popular memory of a nation. The siege was intended to last no longer than two months, but ultimately extended to eight. Under the command of Morshead, the Allied troops employed an aggressive, daring defence that put a sizeable dent ion Rommel's aura of invincibility. The defiant Aussie diggers distinguished themselves through their determination and unquenchable cheerful spirit. The success of the Rats of Tobruk inspired hope for the possibility of effective resistance in the midst of the darkest days of the war. Illustrated with archival black and white photographs. -
Frank Dell's experience as a Second World War pilot with the Royal Air Force's Light Night Striking Force took an even more dramatic turn when his Mosquito was shot down over Germany on the night of 14/15 October 1944. Frank recounts his escape from the disintegrating aircraft, his descent by parachute, and how, battered and bruised, he finds himself in a field adjacent to a German V2 rocket launch pad. Determined to avoid capture Frank crosses Nazi Germany and finds refuge in Holland with a Dutch Resistance group. A schoolboy when the conflict broke out, Frank Dell's extraordinary war takes him from a Home Guard unit defending the English coast against enemy invasion in 1940, to a tragic incident leading to the execution of Dutch civilians only weeks before the end of the hostilities. Frank's observant eye gives insight into what it is like to train and fly operationally with RAF Bomber Command, followed by the even greater challenges he confronts as he narrowly escapes capture while on the run from the Germans. -
Red Morgan's story begins in the great depression of the thirties to the forties, when Morgan and his sisters had to line up at the cake shop for stale cakes and then scavenge through the market garbage tips for enough food to survive on. It takes the reader through his service in the Royal Navy Cadets at the age of twelve then into the Welsh Home Guard at the age of fourteen. England was under threat of being invaded by the Germans and his home town of Swansea was being bombed every night. At fifteen he tried to join the British Merchant Navy but was told he was too young. He then joined the Norwegian Maritime Service which requested a letter and signature from his father and proof of age. He wrote a note, forged his father's signature and was on a Norwegian tanker the very next day. The war was raging now, and ships were being sunk faster than they could be built and at fifteen, Morgan was right in the middle of it all. Life at sea was hell and there are tears, laughter and one hell of a lot of loving going on during the war years as he served on petrol tankers, the most dangerous ships afloat. The story moves from ports in America, Iran, Iraq, Durban, Cape Town, India, Lorenco Marques, Italy, Alexandria and many more around the world - and many nights spent in the lockups in some of these ports. This book is a true story, written in a manner which makes the readers feel that they are in the book with the author and in his exploits around the world, written as it happened with no punches pulled, warts and all. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
World War I saw a significant and tragic change to the prosecution of war. Allied passenger and merchant ships were blatantly attacked by the enemy, resulting in dreadful civilian losses. The mystery ships were then created - they were disguised as peaceful merchant ships, but which were equipped with guns hidden until a few seconds before opening fire on enemy submarines. They cruised on the trade routes, hoping to encounter enemy submarines and attract them to attack, and when the submarine came to the surface, bombard her with heavy armament. The guns had to be accurate, necessitating rigid drill and discipline - one officer or man making an error would give the show away and risk the ship and crew. This book, first published in 1928, is the first to tell the real story of life on board and the stories of attacks on and by submarines as well as describing the life on board - the discomforts, difficulties and dangers of this method of fighting back. There was also an explanation of the attraction this form of service has for men who were independent and courageous with a strict sense of moral duty. The crew were constantly on alert: one false step could lead to the ship being torpedoed, with those left to try and save themselves or being taken prisoner; discipline and readiness for immediate action were strict from the moment of leaving harbour until safe within the harbour on return. Campbell served on the mystery ships from 2015 to 2017, beginning as a Lieutenant-Commander R.N., and ending that part of his naval career as a Captain R.N. with a V.C. and three D.S.O.s. A little-known and over-looked part of war history. With illustrations by Lieutenant J.E. Broome, R.N. -
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.
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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. -
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. -
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.
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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.
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For the first time since its establishment in 1917, the Imperial War Museum has produced a substantial, fully illustrated volume of largely unpublished material from its almost endless reserve of pictures, posters, postcards, art, photographs, films, pamphlets, books, diaries, letters, and documents that detail the massive British effort to fight and win 'the war to end all wars'. This is the voice of the individual caught up in this cataclysmic conflict: the vivid experiences of the fighting fronts and the home fronts from soldiers, factory workers, nurses at the Front; early pilots, civilians in the Zeppelin raids, the gunners behind the howitzers, prisoners of war, sailors, the bereaves, the wounded, the brave, the bemused and much, much more. Illustrated with colour and black and white photographs and art. -
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. -
To many people the most glamorous of aeroplanes is the fighter, by the idea of men flying alone high above the earth in the open cockpit of First World War aircraft, as they fought the gaily-coloured Fokker, Albatross and Pfalz of the German Air Service. This 'feeling for the fighter' was strengthened in 1940 when the Hurricanes and Spitfires of the Royal Air Force saved Britain from German invasion. This book describes the fighters of both wars; there is also the entire development of the fighter from its primitive beginnings up to the supersonic age. The most significant fighters of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Japan and the U.S.S.R. are among those featured. Illustrated with black and white photos. -
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.
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Blitzkrieg: Traces the origins of the war starting with the Armistice at Compiègne in 1919, covering the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, the first terrible months of the Blitzkrieg, the imperialistic aggression of Japan in the Far East, the period of Allied appeasement, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the fall of France. Siege: Begins with the dogged and courageous stand of the British against the onslaught of the Nazi war machine, the war in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, the invasion of the Balkans and Greece, the harsh and brutal war in the North African desert, the suicidal German attack on Russia, the cruelty of the winter war and the attack on Pearl Harbour. Counterattack: The initial period of the Axis reversals and the first steps on the Allied road to victory; the three great turning points of the war ( Stalingrad, Midway and El Alamein) Rome has fallen; the Nazis are reeling under the Russian counter-offensive and the first of the costly, bloody Pacific campaigns. Victory: The last stages of the war in both the European and Pacific theatres; the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy, the battle of France, the Red Army offensive, the Yalta conference and the capitulation of the Third Reich, concluding with the bitter Pacific Island campaigns, MacArthur's retrurn to the Philippines, the dropping of the atomic bomb and Japan's surrender. Each volume contains rare photographs; over four volumes, 500 photographs and 100,000 words. -
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.
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The Holy Fox: Andrew Roberts
$95.00The life of Lord Halifax, remembered as the architect of the policy of achievement of Nazi Germany. His meeting with Hitler in 1937 was a milestone in appeasement yet just days before the 1938 Munich conference, Halifax repudiated the policy and demanded the destruction of Nazism. By May 1940, it was he rather than Churchill who was the choice for Britain's war leader. His public life also included Viceroy of India from 1926 - 31 and a deal with Gandhi that ended the Civil Disobedience campaign before it could force the British to quit. -
The Australian Army at Home and Overseas, by Some of the Boys and published by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1942. Chapters include: Star Over Bethlehem; Diggers in Britain; Midnight Messiah; Purple's Pup; Arab Justice; Digger v. Doughboy and so much more. Our boys' impressions of Christmas in a cold climate and local customs as well as the American servicemen and women here in Australia. The colour plates, interestingly, are pasted in. Tales, jokes, sketches, cartoons and on-the-spot experiences a-plenty. Illustrated in colour and black and white. A treasure mine of information. -
In September 1945, the fate of Hitler was a complete mystery. He had simply disappeared, missing for four months. The author, a British counter-intelligence officer, was given the task of solving this mystery. His brilliant piece of detective work not only proved that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin, but also produced one of the most fascinating history books ever written, telling the extraordinary story of those last days in the Berlin Bunker. Chapters include: Hitler and His Court; Hitler In Defeat; The Court in Defeat; Crisis and Decision; Siege of the Bunker. Et Tu, Brute. The Death of Hitler. Epilogue. -
Traitors: Frank Walker
$20.00In October 1943 Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin signed a solemn pact that once their enemies were defeated the Allied powers would 'pursue them to the uttermost ends of the earth and will deliver them to their accusers in order that justice may be done'. Nowhere did they say that justice would be selective. But it would prove to be just that. This book outlines the treachery of the British, American and Australian governments who turned a blind eye to those who experimented on Australian prisoners of war with details on how Nazis hired by ASIO were encouraged to settle in Australia and how the Catholic Church, CIA and MI6 helped the worst Nazi war criminals escape justice. While our soldiers were asked to risk their lives for King and country, Allied corporations traded with the enemy; Nazi and Japanese scientists were enticed to work for Australia, the US and UK; and Australia's own Hollywood hero Errol Flynn was associating with Nazi spies...What else did they hide? -
What possessed the German people to embrace Hitler and his politics of mass murder? The author, an eminent historian, points to Goebbels' brilliant manipulation of the mass murderer as the key to the Fuhrer's success. Goebbels' diabolical propaganda machine exploited all communication: radio, posters, magazines, documentaries, brochures and spectacular films in the drive to capture the minds of millions. By the use of patriotic myth and tradition, a nation fell under a mass hypnosis on a scale never before paralleled. Illustrated with black and white photos. -
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. -
Regarded as one of the best books ever written about Australian servicemen in action. It captures the spirit of the whole United Nations' effort to halt aggression in the Land of the Morning Calm. The back-drop of three years of bitter fighting are the snow-capped jumble of mountain peaks swept by chilling winds, the ice-packed rivers, the stark slopes gripped by the cruel cold of winter that froze the steel of men's arms to their flesh and the clouds of stench-laden dust that choked the valleys in summer. Apart from being the story of the exploits of the few thousands of Australian soldiers, airmen and sailors it is also an excellent short history of the whole Korean war. The dramatic events, as told by the men themselves, take the reader to the battlefront in all its grimness. There are also stories from war correspondents, combatants. clergymen and others: some humorous, some hard but all of interest. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
World War II, the most massive and appalling military conflagration in history began on September 1, 1939 when Hitler's troops invaded Poland and from there, it spread inexorably in all directions. On December 7 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, thus bringing the huge American armies into the picture and the Pacific was ablaze as Japan and America fought a devastating island-hopping war across the ocean. As well as swallowing millions of lives, the demands of the military machine gave rise to the atom bomb and the computer; the British Empire was dying but the Commonwealth was heralded; the war made Churchill and the 'spiv'; it created rationing and the Welfare State; it slaughtered 6,000,000 Jews, broke marriages and laid waste to the European economy. This is a graphic account of the fateful years that changed the world forever. Illustrated with black and white photos.
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They were American and British air force officers in a German prison camp. With only their bare hands and the crudest of homemade tools, they sank shafts, forged passports, faked weapons, and tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes. They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from German surveillance. It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men - every one of them, every minute, every hour, every day and night for more than a year. With black and white photographs.
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