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From the start of the war on the Eastern Front, Hitler's Ostheer, his Eastern Army, and its associated forces would wage a vernichtungskrieg, or war of annihilation, in the East. Never before had such a wide-reaching campaign been fought.The preparations for the war against the partisans began before the launch of Operation Barbarossa, during which the Axis forces immediately put their plans into effect. The effects upon the newly conquered territories were soon being felt.The end of the initial phase of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was met by a Red Army winter offensive which began on 5 December 1941. As the author shows, this had repercussions behind the German lines, where the nascent Soviet partisan movement was attempting to grow and gain a foothold. By the spring of 1942 those early Soviet partisan units were ready to expand. The Germans, aware of the military situation both on the frontlines and in the rear of their armies, also prepared to counter the growing partisan threat. The partisans undoubtedly made a significant contribution to Stalin's war effort by countering Axis plans to exploit occupied Soviet territories economically, as well as providing valuable assistance to the Red Army by conducting systematic attacks against Hitler's rear communication network.As the German military planned to continue the Russian campaign into the summer of 1942, new security forces were gathered together and sent to the Soviet Union, and a new headquarters specifically organized to fight the guerrilla menace, was established. In this follow-up study, author Antonio Muñoz picks up the partisan and anti-partisan struggle in the East, where Hitler's War Against the Partisans During Operation Barbarossa left off.The struggle behind the frontlines in Russia proved to be as grand and epic as the fight along the front lines. Dr. Muñoz describes this war of attrition along the entire breath of the USSR. In 1942 the Ostheer, acting on Adolf Hitler's orders, launched their 1942 summer offensive which was aimed at capturing the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian oil fields that lay there.Dr. Muñoz not only covers the war behind the lines in every region of the occupied USSR, but also describes the German anti-partisan effort behind the lines of Army Group South, as its forces drove into the Caucasus Mountains, the Volga River bend and Stalingrad. No other work has included the guerrilla and anti-partisan struggle specific to the Stalingrad campaign. Muñoz manages to accomplish this, but also to convey the story of the rest of the partisan and anti-guerrilla war in the rest of the USSR from the spring of 1942 to the spring of 1943.

Walk in the tank tracks and footsteps of Major General Stanislaw Maczek and his 1st Polish Armoured Division (1PAD) soldiers who fought, fell or were wounded liberating the town of Ypres on 6th September 1944. Also revealed is the great support offered by local Resistance groups who supplied topographical assistance, information concerning enemy strong points and troop numbers, offered limited engagements, and finally assisted with the temporary gaoling of the many German prisoners of war. The book also commemorates those townsfolk including children who lost their lives over this period of short but intense fighting. Such was the cost of freedom for the beleaguered citizens of Ypres during WW2. Also remembered are those Czechoslovak officers attached to 1PAD from the Independent Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade Group commanded by Brigadier General Alois Liska, whose HQ was located at nearby Wormhout, France, in preparation for his own Battlegroup's 'Siege of Dunkirk' deployment.

By September 1944 the Western Allies had reached the approximate positions they had held back in September 1939 at the outbreak of war. It had taken more than four years to claw back the territory lost in 1940. It was four years in which the strategic bomber had failed to deliver the victory the bomber advocated had promised. With Allied armies converging on Germany from all directions, they were running out of time to prove that countries could be bombed into defeat.Baughen describes the fierce battles that were fought right up to the German surrender in May 1945. He also explores the equally fierce debates behind the scenes about how air power should be used to complete the Allied victory, and analyses the lessons learned from six years of war.Even before Germany's surrender, thoughts were turning to the new enemy. The wartime alliance between Communist East and Capitalist West had always been one of convenience. Within weeks of the German surrender hostilities between the wartime allies were already a possibility. The seeds for post-war defence policy were already being sown.Meanwhile, in the Far East Hiroshima and Nagasaki had become the victims of the first atomic bombs. Days later Japan surrendered. The bomber advocates appeared to have the proof that bombing could win wars. But how related were the two events?Using contemporary documents, Baughen describes the how British air policy evolved in the late 1940s. Would the atomic bomb change the way wars were fought? Would conventional armies have any role in future wars? In the new atomic age, were there any lessons to be learned from the Second World War? How would the emerging cruise and ballistic missiles and associated guidance systems affect defence policy? Was a conventional defence to Soviet aggression possible?This is the story of the contribution air power made in the final battles of the Second World War, how the lessons of that conflict were misinterpreted and how the policies developed to incorporate the atomic bomb into Cold War defence thinking was leading the country into grave danger.

Foot by foot Titanic's lifeboat No.11 slowly jerked its way down the sides of the great ocean liner as it slipped beneath the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic. For the fifty or so men, women and children crammed into the lifeboat, survival was all that mattered. Even then, though, the American fashion designer Edith Rosenbaum Russell ferociously clung to her pig-shaped music box until she was rescued, its tunes helping to quell the fears of the frightened children onboard. Unlike so many of those onboard Titanic that fateful night in April 1912, everyone in lifeboat No.11 would be rescued.Bridget McDermott had brought a new hat before she set off for America. Bridget climbed into one of the lifeboats, believed to be No.13, before realising she had left her precious purchase behind. She climbed out of the lifeboat, retrieved her hat from her cabin, ran back to the open deck and jumped fifteen feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. Other garments played an important part in the survival of one of the lifeboats which sprung a leak, with the people onboard using clothes to plug the hole.Charles Joughin, the head baker aboard Titanic, floated in the near-freezing ocean for around two hours before being pulled out of the water onto one of the lifeboats. He had not succumbed to the cold due to the amount of alcohol he had drunk.Masabumi Hosono, a civil servant from Tokyo, was the only Japanese passenger onboard Titanic and, being a man, he accepted that the women and children first policy had sealed his fate. However, when a crew member shouted that there were two spaces left in a lifeboat, No.10, Hosono jumped in. As Japanese honour considered it far better for a man to suffer an honourable death than to survive in a shameful manner, when he reached his homeland he was ostracized by his family and lost his job.When it sailed, Titanic carried twenty lifeboats that, between them, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,209 on board the night the liner sank. Eighteen of these life-saving craft were used that night, but tragically only 706 people found a space in them. This is the dramatic and moving story of the men, women and children who made it into the lifeboats that fateful night in April 1912.

When Allied forces landed on D-Day, the Jedburgh teams went into action behind German lines. These usually three-man teams, often composed of one British, one American and one from the country into which they were sent to operate, spread chaos and confusion in the enemy's rear. Working with the marquis and other resistance groups, mainly in France, but also later in the Low Countries, the Jedburgh teams, each of which included a radio operator, were the vital link between the local groups and Allied high command. Their other main function was to organise airdrops of arms and equipment from the Special Operations Executive, via the RAF, to the resistance forces.This official history details the formation and the selection of these all-volunteer teams. It also details how the men were trained in parachuting, amphibious operations, skiing, mountain climbing, radio operations, Morse code, small arms, navigation, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and espionage tactics.It also spells out the objectives of the Jedburghs. This was to impede the movement of the enemy's reserves to the battle front; to disrupt the enemy's lines of communication in the rear areas; and to compel the Germans to hold large reserves back from the front to contain the resistance operations. They provided leadership to resistance groups who had lost their own leaders and helped focus efforts against the Germans where the Allied forces were meeting stiff opposition.The effect the Jedburgh teams had on Operation Overlord was enormous and this history details the objectives of each Jedburgh team and their successes. This section of the book also lists the personnel of each team. In addition to their offensive actions, the Jedburghs set up hospital installations in the rear areas and mopped-up any remaining enemy positions by-passed by the main Allied forces.The Jedburgh teams also cooperated with the resistance forces in the south of France in Operation Dragoon, while four Jedburgh teams were also deployed in the Market element of Operation Market Garden.Supreme Allied Headquarters estimated that the contribution made by the Jedburghs and the groups they supplied and assisted was the equivalent of 'at least' one army division in the landings in and in the liberation of France.

With the ending of the Second World War, Lief Bangsboll, after distinguished service with the O.S.S. behind enemy lines in Denmark, prepared himself for a life of peace and hopefully love with the young Canadian girl he had met while training at Camp X during the war. But the United States War Department and the Office of Strategic Services had other plans for the young soldier/agent.In September 1945, Lieutenant Bangsboll was secretly sent into Soviet-occupied Germany to assess and report upon Russian military activities in and around Berlin. In December 1945, a deadly incident occurred in which a KGB agent was killed, and Leif and his O.S.S. team were forced to escape back into the American sector of Germany. With his O.S.S. identity compromised and himself now target of the KGB, Lieutenant Bangsboll was re-assigned to the regular U.S. Army and became a member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. With the outbreak of the Korean War, Leif was part of the first airborne operation in which he and the 187th Airborne Regiment Combat Team parachuted into North Korea as part of the US/United Nations force confronting the North Korean invasion.During his year of combat in Korea, Captain Bangsboll, the platoon leader for the Headquarters Intelligence & Reconnaissance platoon, worked under Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Bank, also a former OSS agent. During that assignment Leif led numerous special operations missions behind enemy lines, including a mission to recover a large cache of American gold bullion which had been left behind when the U.S. 8th Army was overrun during a North Korean offensive. He also led a secret parachute mission to rescue American /United Nations' prisoners of war held in North Korea and a daring assault on a North Korean base which earned him the Silver Star for 'extraordinary courage in combat'.Captain Bangsboll played a crucial role in the develop of the United States' first Special Forces unit and was appointed as one of the initial Company Commander of a Green Beret/Special Forces unit. Then, as the Army Liaison Officer to the 302nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing in Sembach, West Germany, he flew as an observer, reporting on Soviet troop movements over Warsaw Pact held territory and instructed American pilots the skills of escape and evasion. As a Company Commander with the 10th Special Forces Group in Ulm, West Germany, he stood his ground, facing Soviet and East German combat troops poised to invade Western Europe during the tense days during the U2 spy plane incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

These are the memories of a man who had been a young Jewish boy in Central Poland. His 9th birthday came in mid July 1939. Less than two months later they are his memories of the Nazi era, from the very beginning of WWII until he was liberated by the Russians on the 8th May 1945. This age of death when Nazis attempted the absolute annihilation of all Jews in Europe regardless of age, character or gender, is now referred to as the Holocaust.These memories include those of his vibrant family life in Poland before the war. They are his homage and his memorial to his parents, his little sister and numerous uncles, aunts and cousins who were wiped out by the Nazis along with centuries of their culture.Arriving in the UK on 14th August 1945 he was in the first group of Concentration Camp child survivors brought into England at the invitation of King George VI. The story of these children's arrival and initial rehabilitation in the Lake District is told in the 2020 BBC film The Windermere Children.His memories conclude with some glimpses of his life immediately after liberation, and later when he was settled in the UK.From dozens of known relatives, he and his elder brother thought for a long time that they were the only family members to have survived from their town. Later they discovered there was a third survivor, an even younger cousin.The author married the Holocaust survivor of this memoir. He wanted the tale of how they met to be told and the book begins with this. All the material concerning life in Poland, life during the war and vignettes of post war life have simply been written down by the author. Everything was read and re-read by the survivor who felt that these recollections were true to what he remembered.

It seems fair to suggest that Bernard Law Montgomery remains a controversial and divisive figure, even fifty years after his death. Some see him as the greatest military commander and strategist of his generation, others as a deeply flawed character, solely responsible for all the ills that befell the troops under his command. In some estimates he was responsible for ponderous and overly cautious campaigning where he was unable or unwilling to admit to anything that might be construed as a failure. In others that he brilliantly conserved meagre manpower resources whilst overwhelming a series of consummate opponents.Added into the mix is Montgomery's singular character. He seems able to engender some form of adoration in some and the deepest loathing in others. Certainly, he could come across as abrasive and egotistical, abrupt and inclined toward condescension. At the same time, he was a committed and dedicated professional soldier who was widely respected and adept at nurturing junior officers. This account, then, is an opportunity to look in-depth at the three pivotal years that took him from El Alamein to the Baltic and projected him to world attention. To achieve this the reader is guided through the environment in which his tactical headquarters operated, its organisation and equipment whilst overlaying the campaigns it fought and, most particularly, the sometimes fractious relationships on which much of the history that is handed down is based.

In July 1936 a military revolt brought civil war to Spain; it erupted into a bitter political contest and a brutal land war which have been well covered by historians - a less appreciated dimension of the conflict was the crucial role played by the navies of both sides. This new book describes and explores the naval operations that played out over thirty-eight months and spread well beyond the seas of Spain. Spanish guns thundered off the English coast and as far south as the Bay of Guinea. Submarines lurked in the Aegean, waiting to torpedo ships bringing supplies from the Black Sea. To the west, operations extended into the Atlantic as warships searched for blockade runners and moved between the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. The book begins by describing of the Spanish navy pre-war, then covers the generals' revolt of July 1936 and its effect in the fleet. Subsequent chapters deal with the naval war as it unfolded. It describes Franco's attempts to move the battle-hardened Spanish troops in Africa to the Spanish mainland, then shifts focus to the northern Spanish coast, where an isolated Republican enclave depended on the sea to receive weapons, food, and fuel. The author then pursues a split narrative, interweaving developments in the north and the Mediterranean and following the war to its conclusion. Significant actions fought between the two navies are all covered in detail. In addition, the book describes the crucial roles played by the British, French, German, and Italian navies in the Spanish struggle. Throughout, the author challenges the common view that the Republican navy was incompetent and inert. Based on primary as well as secondary sources, in both the English and Spanish languages, this book sheds genuinely new light on the Spanish navies of this civil war era and brings into focus their significance in the broader struggle.

Dorothy L. Sayers: the name conjures images of Lord Peter Wimsey's sleuthing adventures, and masterful translations of Dante. Yet, she was more than a literary luminary of the interwar Golden Age of crime fiction; she was a trailblazer, a feminist, and a scholar, whose influence resonates to this day. In this new biography, delve into the complexities of Sayers' life and legacy. From her iconic status as one of the 'Queens of Crime' alongside Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, to her thought-provoking explorations of feminism and Christian philosophy. Through thematic analysis of Sayers' writings and beliefs, the author illuminates the depth and breadth of her influence. From her incisive fiction and scholarly interests to her contributions as an advertising copywriter where she penned the line, 'Guinness is good for you', Sayers left an indelible mark on literature and beyond. As a crime writer, historian, and poet, Wade brings his own passion and expertise to this rich investigation. Join him on a journey through the life and works of Dorothy L. Sayers, and discover the enduring legacy of a true literary icon whose influence is rich and productive, mainly in her fiction, but also in many other areas of life.