Download or read book The Unseen War in Europe written by John H. Waller and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1996 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deputy Middle East Theater Chief of OSS during World War II draws upon newly released documents and his own experience to offer new insights into the greatest conflict of the century. Waller tells how British Prime Minister Chamberlain mismanaged British intelligence which contributed to the debacle at Munich. and scores of other stories during the war.
Download or read book Europe s Last Summer written by David Fromkin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable. In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.
Download or read book The Unseen War in Europe written by John H. Waller and published by I.B.Tauris. This book was released on 1996 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victory in World War II depended heavily on Allied successes in espionage and conspiracy. Although individual episodes of intelligence acitvity have been documented, there is no comprehensive account of this vital aspect of the conflict. John Waller has personal experience of espionage, and this work includes new material from recently released documents.
Download or read book World War II written by Mémorial Caen Normandie (Museum) and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assembles a unique and rich trove of historical images and artefacts of World War II, collected in Caen - one of the French cities devastated by the pivotal conflict. Including imagery that has never before been available to readers outside France, as well as a concise historical atlas - replete with full-colour maps, rare colour photographs, period artwork, timelines and reproductions of fascinating letters, documents and historical objects - this beautiful and cutting-edge history offers a completely new overview of the modern era's most destructive war.
Download or read book The Unseen War written by Benjamin S Lambeth and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s second war against Iraq differed notably from its first. Operation Desert Storm was a limited effort by coalition forces to drive out those Iraqi troops who had seized Kuwait six months before. In contrast, the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was a more ambitious undertaking aimed at decisively ending Saddam Hussein’s rule. After several days of intense air strikes against fixed enemy targets, allied air operations began concentrating on Iraqi ground troops. The intended effect was to destroy Iraqi resistance and allow coalition land forces to maneuver without pausing in response to enemy actions. Iraqi tank concentrations were struck with consistently lethal effect, paving the way for an allied entrance into Baghdad that was largely unopposed. Hussein’s regime finally collapsed on April 9. Viewed in hindsight, it was the combination of allied air power as an indispensable enabler and the unexpected rapidity of the allied ground advance that allowed coalition forces to overrun Baghdad before Iraq could mount a coherent defense. In achieving this unprecedented level of performance, allied air power was indispensable in setting the conditions for the campaign’s end. Freedom from attack and freedom to attack prevailed for allied ground forces. The intended effect of allied air operations was to facilitate the quickest capture of Baghdad without the occurrence of any major head-to-head battles on the ground. This impressive short-term achievement, however, was soon overshadowed by the ensuing insurgency that continued for four years thereafter in Iraq. The mounting costs of that turmoil tended, for a time, to render the campaign’s initial successes all but forgotten. Only more recently did the war begin showing signs of reaching an agreeable end when the coalition’s commander put into effect a new counterinsurgency strategy in 2007 aimed at providing genuine security for Iraqi citizens. The toppling of Hussein’s regime ended the iron rule of an odious dictator who had brutalized his people for more than 30 years. Yet the inadequate resourcing with which that goal was pursued showed that any effective plan for a regime takedown must include due hedging against the campaign’s likely aftermath in addition to simply seeing to the needs of major combat. That said, despite the failure of the campaign’s planners to underwrite the first need adequately, those who conducted the three-week offensive in pursuit of regime change performed all but flawlessly, thanks in considerable part to the mostly unobserved but crucial enabling contributions of allied air power.
Download or read book Hitler s Spy Chief written by Richard Bassett and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable tale of espionage and intrigue—the true story of Hitler’s intelligence chief and his role in the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Adolf Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fu¨hrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war. For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, became suspicious of Canaris and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war. In a riveting true story of intrigue and espionage, Richard Bassett reveals how Admiral Canaris’s secret work against the German leadership changed the course of World War II.
Download or read book The Silent Unseen written by Amanda McCrina and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mesmerizing historical novel of suspense and intrigue about a teenage girl who risks everything to save her missing brother. Poland, July 1944. Sixteen-year-old Maria is making her way home after years of forced labor in Nazi Germany, only to find her village destroyed and her parents killed in a war between the Polish Resistance and Ukrainian nationalists. To Maria’s shock, the local Resistance unit is commanded by her older brother, Tomek—who she thought was dead. He is now a “Silent Unseen,” a special-operations agent with an audacious plan to resist a new and even more dangerous enemy sweeping in from the East. When Tomek disappears, Maria is determined to find him, but the only person who might be able to help is a young Ukrainian prisoner and the last person Maria trusts—even as she feels a growing connection to him that she can’t resist. Tightly woven, relentlessly intense, The Silent Unseen depicts an explosive entanglement of loyalty, lies, and love during wartime, from Amanda McCrina, the acclaimed author of Traitor, a debut hailed by Elizabeth Wein as “Alive with detail and vivid with insight . . . a piercing and bittersweet story.”
Download or read book Ireland s Helping Hand to Europe written by Jérôme aan de Wiel and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-war Marshall Plan aid to Europe and indeed Ireland is well documented, but practically nothing is known about simultaneous Irish aid to Europe. This book provides a full record of the aid – mainly food but also clothes, blankets, medicines, etc. – that Ireland donated to continental Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Balkans, Italy, and zones of occupied Germany. Starting with Ireland’s neutral wartime record, often wrongly presented as pro-German when Ireland in fact unofficially favoured the western Allies, Jerome aan de Wiel explains why Éamon de Valera’s government sent humanitarian aid to the devastated continent. His book analyses the logistics of collection and distribution of supplies sent abroad as far as the Greek islands. Despite some alleged Cold-War hijacking of Irish relief – and this humanitarianism was not above the politics of that East-West confrontation – it became mostly a story of hope, generosity and European Christian solidarity. Rich archival records from Ireland and the European beneficiary countries, as well as contemporary local and national newspapers across Europe, allow the author to measure and describe not only the official but also the popular response to Irish relief schemes. This work is illustrated with contemporary photographs and some key graphs and tables that show the extent of the aid programme.
Download or read book Taking Leave Taking Liberties written by Aaron Hiltner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American soldiers overseas during World War II were famously said to be “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” But the assaults, rapes, and other brutal acts didn’t only happen elsewhere, far away from a home front depicted as safe and unscathed by the “good war.” To the contrary, millions of American and Allied troops regularly poured into ports like New York and Los Angeles while on leave. Euphemistically called “friendly invasions,” these crowds of men then forced civilians to contend with the same kinds of crime and sexual assault unfolding in places like Britain, France, and Australia. With unsettling clarity, Aaron Hiltner reveals what American troops really did on the home front. While GIs are imagined to have spent much of the war in Europe or the Pacific, before the run-up to D-Day in the spring of 1944 as many as 75% of soldiers were stationed in US port cities, including more than three million who moved through New York City. In these cities, largely uncontrolled soldiers sought and found alcohol and sex, and the civilians living there—women in particular—were not safe from the violence fomented by these de facto occupying armies. Troops brought their pocketbooks and demand for “dangerous fun” to both red-light districts and city centers, creating a new geography of vice that challenged local police, politicians, and civilians. Military authorities, focused above all else on the war effort, invoked written and unwritten legal codes to grant troops near immunity to civil policing and prosecution. The dangerous reality of life on the home front was well known at the time—even if it has subsequently been buried beneath nostalgia for the “greatest generation.” Drawing on previously unseen military archival records, Hiltner recovers a mostly forgotten chapter of World War II history, demonstrating that the war’s ill effects were felt all over—including by those supposedly safe back home.
Download or read book The Battle for Western Europe Fall 1944 written by John A. Adams and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engrossing and meticulously researched volume reexamines the decisions made by Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff in the crucial months leading up to the Battle of the Bulge. In late August 1944 defeat of the Wehrmacht seemed assured. On December 16, however, the Germans counterattacked. Received wisdom says that Eisenhower's Broad Front strategy caused his armies to stall in early September, and his subsequent failure to concentrate his forces brought about deadlock and opened the way for the German attack. Arguing to the contrary, John A. Adams demonstrates that Eisenhower and his staff at SHAEF had a good campaign strategy, refined to reflect developments on the ground, which had an excellent chance of destroying the Germans west of the Rhine.
Download or read book Counterspy written by Richard W. Cutler and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, Richard W. Cutler was an officer with the elite X-2 counterintelligence branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and with its successor, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU). Counterspy offers a rare firsthand account of the secret war against Hitler and the postwar competition with the Soviets for German intelligence assets.While with X-2, Cutler analyzed the super-secret Ultra intercepts and vetted agents about to be sent into Nazi Germany. Cutler provides an insightful overview of OSS operations during the war and their contribution to the Alliesa victory. This is also one of the few books to describe the role of the OSS and the SSU in the postwar occupation of Germany. Cutleras first job after the German surrender was to vet all of Allen Dullesas wartime sources inside Germany, who were aptly nicknamed the Crown Jewels. Just as the OSS was reorganized into the SSU, Cutler moved to Berlin, where his first task was to collect intelligence from former Nazis. Soon he became chief of counterespionage in Berlin. Soviet intelligence had already begun recruiting former German intelligence officers to spy on Americans, so Cutleras top priority was to uncover Soviet objectives and either neutralize or double their agents. Cutler reveals previously unpublished case histories of double agents against Soviet intelligence and details agentsa recruitment, missions, methods of operation, successes and failures, and fates. All of these events are recounted against the fascinating background of postwar Germany. He provides a vivid picture of the mood of the German people, how they rationalized war guilt, and how they coped with the devastation throughout the country. With photographs and a foreword by bestselling author Joseph E. Persico (Rooseveltas Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage), Counterspy is a unique account of espionage during the momentous years of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War."
Download or read book Where Brave Men Fall The Battle of Dieppe and the Espionage War Against Hitler 1939 1942 written by George Robert Fosty and published by Stryker-Indigo Publishing Company, Inc. New York . This book was released on 2020-07-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George & Darril Fosty controversial book "Where Brave Men Fall: The Battle of Dieppe and the Espionage War Against Hitler, 1939-1942" points a damning finger at American and British news organizations, including "Time" and "Life" magazines, accusing them of leaking pre-raid information to the Germans resulting in the deaths, woundings, and capture of over 4,300 American, British and Canadian soldiers. "Where Brave Men Fall" explores the controversial 1942 Battle of Dieppe looking at pre-raid advertisements in what the authors claim was part of a complex campaign initiated at the highest levels of American and British political and military circles designed to tip off the Germans prior to the August 1942 raid and thus ensuring the raid's failure. The revelations, stunning in detail and scope, are the latest accusations to surface concerning the battle. A Controversial Battle Becomes Even More Controversial On August 19, 1942, an Allied naval armada of 237 ships arrived off the coast of Dieppe, France carrying ten thousand sailors and soldiers determined to assault Adolf Hitler’s Fortress Europe in what was coined Operation JUBILEE. What these men thought would be a textbook lesson in amphibious warfare turned instead into a slaughter. In only seven hours of battle, the Allies, consisting mostly of Canadian troops, lost more men than the United States during either the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, or the Spanish-American War. Before the day was ended, the Canadians recorded a 68 percent casualty rate. Of the 5,086 Canadians who landed at Dieppe only 1443 returned to England, many of whom were wounded. What was to have been the first Allied attempt to land a large force on the European Continent since Dunkirk instead, turned into a horrendous failure. The Battle of Dieppe was the first serious Allied assault against Hitler’s western European defense system in World War Two. Historically, it is regarded as the preamble to the June 6, 1944, D-Day Landings. Yet, there has never been a detailed and complete examination of the political, military, or strategic reasons behind the raid, the countless security leaks preceding the battle, nor the claims by both German and Allied troops that the Germans had been forewarned. "Where Brave Men Fall" is a riveting journey across the pages of WWII military and political history. Painstakingly researched, the authors tell the story of American and British political, military, media, and espionage intrigues and the events leading up to and culminating in the Battle of Dieppe. Their conclusions are both profound and sobering, revealing how the Dieppe Raid was part of a grand British military deception resulting in the cold-blooded and calculated sacrifice of Canadian troops, in part to prevent Hitler from freeing up his western forces for an anticipated German invasion of Spain. A fact that has never been revealed before in any military history written on the Dieppe Raid. Of the more than five hundred books and studies written on the Dieppe Raid since the end of World War Two, "Where Brave Men Fall" is the first and only book to document German plans for an invasion of Spain and neighboring Portugal as they pertained to the Dieppe Raid. The book also goes into great detail showing the political and military links between the Dieppe Raid, the planning for the Second Front in Europe, and the subsequent Allied Operation Torch landings in North Africa. Twenty-Five Years in the Making At times, "Where Brave Men Fall" appears as two stories in one. In 1986, George and Darril Fosty, two young researchers who were just beginning their careers as historians received an invitation to attend the South Saskatchewan Regiment Reunion in Langley, British Columbia, for the purpose of interviewing veterans of the Dieppe Raid. The invitation had been arranged by their uncle, a Canadian military veteran who had fought alongside these prairie warriors during the Battle of the Scheldt and the 1944 Liberation of Holland. The South Saskatchewan Regiment was one of the greatest military regiments in Canadian military history. There exploits at Dieppe made famous in James Leasor's book, "Green Beach." Recounts George Fosty, "We were just two young kids who wanted to write about Dieppe. Darril was only 17- years of age at the time, and I had just turned 26. Together we drove down from our home in Kamloops to the reunion and were shocked to find that we were the only so-called 'historians' on hand for the event. A reporter from a local newspaper eventually showed up, but she seemed very uninterested in these men and their stories, and she quickly left. At the time, Expo 86 was taking place in Vancouver and it appeared that the last thing the local media wanted to do was to interview a group of old men at some war reunion. Darril and I spent two-days interviewing these veterans and attempting to document their stories. It was our first project together and Darril and I had no idea where it would lead nor how many years we would continue to research this history." Little did the Fosty brothers realize that the 1986 Reunion would mark the beginning of a 25-year journey which would lead from a Canadian Legion Hall in British Columbia to the espionage streets of New York City, the back rooms of American and British politics, and the forgotten battlefields of France. Along the way, the brothers would not only discover new and disturbing truths behind the Dieppe Raid, but would also succeed in recording a rare account of the lives of a group of South Saskatchewan Regiment veterans forever changed by Dieppe. Adds Darril Fosty, " Two-years after the reunion we sent letters to a number of veterans seeking additional information in hopes of confirming some of our research. During the 1990's we continued to research the story on and off, often failing to find the answers we were seeking. By 1996, we were frustrated by our lack of success and we turned our attention to other projects in order to take a break from the project. In 2002, I went over to France and toured the battlefields. I was disturbed by what I found. Walking those beaches, I gained a perspective of Dieppe that I had never had before. I returned home even more determined to see us finish this book and to answer some of the political and military questions that previous historians had failed to resolve." Were 10,000 Allied Troops Betrayed? At the heart of the Fosty brother's latest research and claims are disturbing and detailed evidence documenting the role played by the American and British press in the months preceding the Battle of Dieppe. The authors point to a series of articles, images, and advertisements in both "Life" and "Time" magazines in the months and days prior to the Dieppe Raid which appears to telegraph the upcoming operation. According to George Fosty, "Early in our research, we were told by a number of Dieppe veterans that they believed the Germans had been forewarned. These men recounted specific incidents during the battle and following their capture that could only be explained if one accepted the fact that the Germans had forehand knowledge of the Raid. The dilemma we faced as historians were to either dismiss these accounts outright or to investigate these allegations to their proper end. We chose to accept the accounts of the veterans as fact and then set out to find proof of security leaks and pre-raid breaches to support their claims. It was a process that took us years to complete with more dead-ends than one could imagine. It was not until after we began to research American magazines and newspapers from the 1942 era that we began to see disturbing references and evidence implying a serious security breach. The more we researched New York City-based American magazines and newspapers, the more disturbing these so-called 'coincidences' became. It was these security breaches that led us to examine the espionage operations staged by the U.S., the British, and the Germans in the New York area during World War Two in hopes of determining who was behind these postings. These discoveries were both disturbing and amazing as they validated the accounts of the Dieppe veterans and answered questions that had for too long eluded us." One of the most glaring security breaches discovered by the authors was an August 17, 1942 Honeywell advertisement that appeared in "Life" Magazine. The ad was titled: "194? We'll Be Ready." The authors write: "On August 17, 1942, Life Magazine followed up their earlier Commando 'postings' with a cover magazine photo of a Canadian Guerrilla fighter. The magazine was notable for the unusual advertisement from Brown and Minneapolis-Honeywell that simply stated: "194? We'll Be Ready." This advertisement was unique. When taken in context with the previous Time and Life Magazine postings it implies some code or message was being sent. August 19 - 4 a.m. was the time when the first Allied troops were scheduled to begin landing on the beaches in and around Dieppe. The unusual advertisements appearing in British and American publications along with a series of breaches in security leading up to the operation suggests the Germans were being forewarned of the raid. What also raises serious questions is the fact this Honeywell ad, along with Time Magazine’s Mountbatten of the Commandos - His boys in blackface will see the day of wrath, would appear in Henry Luce owned publications. An early organizer in moving the United States towards direct intervention and conflict, Luce remained the editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964. He was a man noted and respected for his painstaking attention to detail supervising every aspect of the content for both Time and Life Magazines. Luce’s editorial and advertising offices operated out of Rockefeller Center adjacent to the very men of the intelligence services of which he had worked closely during his time with The Century Group - Office of War Information’s Elmer Davis, American Intelligence’s William Donovan and Allen Dulles along with British Intelligence’s William Stephenson. Coincidence is one thing. However, a series of unusual postings indicate something more sinister. Were the Allies deliberately forewarning the Germans through Luce’s and other publications?" Another example of security and espionage leaks documented by the authors concerns a Sylvan Flakes soap advertisement that appeared in British newspapers less than a week before the battle. They write: "On August 13th a Sylvan Flakes advertisement was run in various London Newspapers subsequently raising eyebrows. The ad titled "BEACH COAT from DIEPPE" showed an image of a woman in a coat pruning a rose bush. It was later claimed by many, including the great English writer George Orwell, as evidence of a tip-off to the raid. Some speculated this ad could be interpreted as BEACH ... Combined Operations ATtack from Dieppe. The date of the planned landing was to be August 19th, six days after the publication of the ad, corresponding with the six buttonholes on the coat. As later reported in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic in September of 1942, "The spare time Sherlocks figured the shears were a warning to somebody that the British were bringing tanks - to cut through barbed wire on the beach." In an October 4, 1963, article in the Daily Sketch newspaper entitled “Did This Betray 6,000 Men At Dieppe,” writer Louis Kirby asked the obvious question, "How many women had holidayed in Dieppe before the war - and brought back with them a "flippant" beach coat?” By holding the Sylvan ad horizontally, the true nature of the image is revealed. What appears is the aerial layout of the beachfront of Dieppe, including the Casino and the curved beach wall. The beachfront also contains the natural curvature of the mile-long shoreline. The striped pattern on the woman's jacket no longer appears as a simple design but is now clearly the image of the ocean. The four buttons suddenly serve a new purpose as they now reveal the exact landing points for the Royal Marines, Fusiliers-Mont Royal, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, and the Calgary Tank Regiment. The tree limbs also take on a new meaning when viewed horizontally. Again, the map is of Dieppe, though this time at a higher altitude. Visible is the coastline, the harbor, and the nearby rivers that run to the ocean. Three branches point inland from the ocean. These three limbs are again the exact landing and directional routes for the Royal Marines, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, and the Calgary Tanks. The limb representing the Calgary Tanks even has a bend at the tip showing the last directional change the tank landing craft were to take moments before they were to reach the shore. After news of the failed Dieppe Raid many came to question whether this ad was intended to tip-off the Germans. The Sylvan ad kicked off such a controversy British government officials were forced to investigate the claims. Sylvan claimed the ad was part of a series of garments with geographical ties like Bali, the Tyrol, and China. In addition, the agency responsible was seemingly above recuse as their "work consists of a series of anti-fifth-column posters for the government." On September 17th, officials concluded, after giving due consideration to all of these interpretations, "they found the ad was just that, without any sinister hidden motive." How military investigators could later dismiss this advertisement and claim the ad was not espionage-related remains one of the great mysteries surrounding the raid." No Strangers To Controversy In 2003, George and Darril Fosty released their first book, "Splendid Is The Sun: The 5,000 Year History of Hockey." The book angered many in Canada for its contention that the roots of hockey dated back to ancient times. A year later, they added more fuel to the fire with the release of "Black Ice: The Lost History Of The Colored Hockey League Of The Maritimes, 1895 to 1925." "Black Ice" would eventually climb to number 71 on the Amazon bestseller's list becoming one of the highest-charting hockey books in history. To this day, both books are considered landmark achievements and are credited with rewriting hockey history and resurrecting the legacy of African-Canadian hockey, a history that had been deliberately removed from the Canadian historic record. About The Book "Where Brave Men Fall" is guaranteed to re-ignite long-simmering controversies and emotions surrounding the Battle of Dieppe, the role of the Canadian Army, and the actions of British and American politicians, the press, and military officials in World War Two. Twenty-five years in the making, the book is a groundbreaking and disturbing history that exposes Allied backroom politics, treason, and wartime espionage while laying bare the story of one of the greatest military disasters and betrayals of World War Two. Adds Darril Fosty, "Dieppe was our first project. Our most difficult project. This has been a long journey with amazing story twists and discoveries." "Where Brave Men Fall" is a must-read guaranteed to leave the reader angry and shaken, forever changing one's perspective of World War Two history.
Download or read book The Shadow War Against Hitler written by Christof Mauch and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with revelations and replete with telling detail, this riveting book lifts the curtain on the United States' secret intelligence operations in the war against Nazi Germany.
Download or read book Engineers of Victory written by Paul Kennedy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success. In January 1943, FDR and Churchill convened in Casablanca and established the Allied objectives for the war: to defeat the Nazi blitzkrieg; to control the Atlantic sea lanes and the air over western and central Europe; to take the fight to the European mainland; and to end Japan’s imperialism. Astonishingly, a little over a year later, these ambitious goals had nearly all been accomplished. With riveting, tactical detail, Engineers of Victory reveals how. Kennedy recounts the inside stories of the invention of the cavity magnetron, a miniature radar “as small as a soup plate,” and the Hedgehog, a multi-headed grenade launcher that allowed the Allies to overcome the threat to their convoys crossing the Atlantic; the critical decision by engineers to install a super-charged Rolls-Royce engine in the P-51 Mustang, creating a fighter plane more powerful than the Luftwaffe’s; and the innovative use of pontoon bridges (made from rafts strung together) to help Russian troops cross rivers and elude the Nazi blitzkrieg. He takes readers behind the scenes, unveiling exactly how thousands of individual Allied planes and fighting ships were choreographed to collectively pull off the invasion of Normandy, and illuminating how crew chiefs perfected the high-flying and inaccessible B-29 Superfortress that would drop the atomic bombs on Japan. The story of World War II is often told as a grand narrative, as if it were fought by supermen or decided by fate. Here Kennedy uncovers the real heroes of the war, highlighting for the first time the creative strategies, tactics, and organizational decisions that made the lofty Allied objectives into a successful reality. In an even more significant way, Engineers of Victory has another claim to our attention, for it restores “the middle level of war” to its rightful place in history. Praise for Engineers of Victory “Superbly written and carefully documented . . . indispensable reading for anyone who seeks to understand how and why the Allies won.”—The Christian Science Monitor “An important contribution to our understanding of World War II . . . Like an engineer who pries open a pocket watch to reveal its inner mechanics, [Paul] Kennedy tells how little-known men and women at lower levels helped win the war.”—Michael Beschloss, The New York Times Book Review “Histories of World War II tend to concentrate on the leaders and generals at the top who make the big strategic decisions and on the lowly grunts at the bottom. . . . [Engineers of Victory] seeks to fill this gap in the historiography of World War II and does so triumphantly. . . . This book is a fine tribute.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Kennedy] colorfully and convincingly illustrates the ingenuity and persistence of a few men who made all the difference.”—The Washington Post “This superb book is Kennedy’s best.”—Foreign Affairs
Download or read book Rezident written by Robert K. Baker and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2015-05-21 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vasily Zarubin ranked as an important Soviet intelligence officer, but he has received little recognition in the history of intelligence in the United States. In Rezident, author Robert K. Baker, who worked with foreign counterintelligence matters for the FBI during a thirty-three-year career, presents the first English language biography of Zarubin, Stalins principal intelligence officer in this country during World War II. Rezident recounts the exploits of Zarubins work with Soviet intelligence during the twentieth century narrating how his odyssey extended from the Soviet Far East during the early years of Soviet Russia to deep cover assignments with his wife, Elizaveta, in France, Nazi Germany, and the United States. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin appointed Zarubin as his intelligence emissary to the United States to gather political, military, and technological information. Zarubin was successful in providing valuable information to the Soviet Union during the war years. This biography of Zarubins life and times provides a greater appreciation and understanding of the role of the security and intelligence services in the sphere of national security.
Download or read book The Many Not The Few written by Richard North and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immortalized in Churchill's often quoted assertion that never before "was so much owed by so few," the top-down narrative of the Battle of Britain has been firmly established in British legend: Britain was saved from German invasion by the gallant band of Fighter Command Pilots in their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the public owed them their freedom. Richard North's radical re-evaluation of the Battle of Britain dismantles this mythical retelling of events. Taking a wider perspective than the much-discussed air war, North takes a fresh look at the conflict as a whole to show that the civilian experience, far from being separate and distinct, was integral to the Battle. This recovery of the people's stolen history demonstrates that Hitler's aim was not the military conquest of England, and that his unattained target was the hearts and minds of British people.
Download or read book The Guns at Last Light written by Rick Atkinson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now, in The Guns at Last Light, he tells the most dramatic story of all—the titanic battle for Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich—all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory. With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson's accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West. One of The Washington Post's Top 10 Books of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
