Militaria

//Militaria
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  • 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.
  • In the space of three and a half weeks during May and June of 1940, Nazi Germany came perilously close to winning the war a scant ten months after it started. The British Expeditionary Force and the French and Belgian allies were cut off in the North and driven to the very sands of the Channel and the ruins of Dunkirk, the lone port still in the hands of the B.E.F. Britain faced catastrophe. How that catastrophe was averted through a combination of enemy blunders and British resourcefulness is told here in an account that exposes the 'miracle' of Dunkirk.  Here is the true story, chronicled through diaries, memoirs and personal reminiscences of the hundreds of men who lived through those weeks; COs, foot soldiers, generals and privates. Very in-depth.

  •  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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The extraordinary phenomenon of the war postcard  - reflections of the full range of responses to the most murderous and ghastly of all wars.  The chapters herein include: story postcards, military subjects, heroism and agony, religious themes, humour, animal and field postcards - even those embroidered with silk and very beautiful still today.  Even propaganda is represented.   Almost three hundred post cards are reproduced - individual historic documents of a bygone age.  Photos in colour and black and white.
  • 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.
  • From the author of The Longest Day. On Monday, April 16, 1945, an artillery barrage announced the opening Russian attack against Berlin. Russian troops were less than thirty-eight miles from Berlins centre. In fourteen days Hitler would be dead. In twenty-one days, the war would be over.  Forty-five miles to the west, advance units of the U.S. Ninth army were angrily and reluctantly turning back. Berlin was no longer a military objective. This book is the story of three weeks in which the city of Berlin - gutted, smouldering, terrorised, yet miraculously still  alive -  was the focal point of millions of lives: the last obstacle of the triumphant Allies, the last defence for the Germans and the last refuge for Hitler. Illustrated with black and white photos.

  • The author, a TV reporter and journalist, has condensed his experiences and observations of the Indo-China battlefields over a thirty-five year period. Sights, sounds and smells come alive in the graphic and vivid recreation by a neutral yet passionately involved eye-witness.  Scholl-Latour first traveled to South-East Asia on a troop-ship in 1945 and since then has covered three wars: the war against French colonialism, the American involvement in Vietnam and the final devastation of Kampuchea. He sees those years as a tragedy that has shattered every illusion of freedom as the French, the Americans and the Khmer Rouge each tried to impose their versions of freedom by force.