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Battle of Britain : Canadian airmen in their finest hour / by Barris, Ted,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The gripping and heroic story of fighter pilots defending the skies over Britain from unprecedented Nazi attack. For 113 terrifying days in 1940, Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe, threw everything it had at Great Britain in hopes of early victory in World War II. The task of defending southern England from airborne attack fell to pilots in the Royal Air Force, supplemented in their darkest hour by more than 100 flyers from Canada. These Canadians, some from famous families, some straight off the farm, served in forty-seven different Battle of Britain squadrons. Now, for the first time, bestselling military historian Ted Barris tells the riveting story of their crucial role in this do-or-die-battle: how they accounted for 130 German aircraft destroyed, another thirty probably destroyed and more than seventy damaged, with twenty pilots dying in action and twelve awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses. The Battle of Britain, And Canada's Gallant Airmen is a must for enthusiasts of military and aviation history."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Great Britain. Royal Air Force.; Britain, Battle of, Great Britain, 1940.; Fighter pilots; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Midnight on the Marne / by Adlakha, Sarah,author.;
"Set during the heroism and heartbreak of World War I, and in an occupied France in an alternative timeline, Sarah Adlakha's Midnight on the Marne explores the responsibilities love lays on us and the rippling impact of our choices. France, 1918. Nurse Marcelle Fournier has important secrets to keep. Her role as a spy has made her both feared and revered, but it has also put her in extreme danger from the approaching German army. American soldier George Mountcastle feels an instant connection to the young nurse. But in times of war, love must wait. Soon, George and his best friend Philip are fighting for their lives during the Second Battle of the Marne, where George prevents Philip from a daring act that might have won the battle at the cost of his own life. On the run from a victorious Germany, George and Marcelle begin a new life with Philip and Marcelle's twin sister, Rosalie, in a brutally occupied France. Together, this self-made family navigates oppression, near starvation, and unfathomable loss, finding love and joy in unexpected moments. Years pass, and tragedy strikes, sending George on a course that could change the past and rewrite history. Playing with time is a tricky thing. If he chooses to alter history, he will surely change his own future-and perhaps not for the better"--
Subjects: Alternative histories (Fiction); Novels.; Man-woman relationships; Marne, 2nd Battle of the, France, 1918; Military occupation; Nurses; Soldiers; Twin sisters; World War, 1914-1918;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Operation Biting : the 1942 parachute assault to capture Hitler's radar / by Hastings, Max,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British special forces raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr R.V. Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth. Taking us from the War Room to boots-on-the-ground action, and recounted in Hastings's signature bestselling style, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history.
Subjects: Raids (Military science); Special operations (Military science); World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Escaping Hitler : heroic true stories of great escapes in Nazi Europe / by Halls, Monty,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-303).Some of the most extraordinary stories of courage and endurance in the Second World War concern the freedom trails, the dangerous escape routes out of Nazi Occupied Europe. Over 5,000 British, Commonwealth and American servicemen made the journey over the Pyrenees, the Slovenian mountains and the Italian alps. Many also died en route, killed by the perilous conditions or caught by the German army. Here, Monty Halls recreates the stories of some of the most charismatic figures of the Second World War, men like Major Gordon Lett who escaped a POW camp in Italy and fought behind enemy lines at the head of the International Brigade. He was joined by an SAS team who took on the German army in Operation Galia and then, exhausted and pursued by the enemy, made a perilous escape across the Apennine mountains in Italy. There's also Australian Ralph Churches who orchestrated the mass escape of 100 POWs from Slovenia - the largest successful Allied escape of the entire war. And Len Harley, a Londoner who owed his life to a young Italian girl called Rosina. Monty also describes the bravery of the local people who sheltered POWs and kept the escape routes open - often paying a terrible price. Andree de Jongh risked her life to smuggle men through occupied France, survived being sent to two concentration camps, and has been described by MI-9 as 'the greatest of our war-time agents'. Mixing new research, interviews with survivors and his own experience of walking the trails, Monty brings the past to life in this dramatic and gripping slice of military history.
Subjects: Halls, Monty; Escaped prisoners of war; Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Prisoners of the castle [text (large print)] : an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz, the Nazis' fortress prison / by Macintyre, Ben,1963-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, a definitive and surprising new narrative of one of history's most famous prisons--and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried to relentlessly escape their Nazi captors. The myth of Colditz, the most infamous prison in history, has stood unchallenged for 70 years: prisoners of war, mustaches firmly set on stiff upper lips, defying the Nazis by tunnelling out of a grim Gothic castle on a German hilltop. Like all legends, that story contains only part of the truth. In Ben Macintyre's brilliant, cliche-smashing new history, he offers a vision of Colditz previously unimagined, a story of much more than an escape, just as the prison's inmates were far more complicated than the cardboard saints depicted in post-war pop culture. Colditz was a miniature replica of office-class society at the time, only far stranger: a lethal, high stakes boarding school surrounded by barbed wire, initially containing prisoners of all Allied nations, including Canada, but eventually only Britons and Americans, a heavily guarded cage with its own culture, eccentricities, and internal tensions. In intimate and compelling detail, Macintyre explores what happens to people when they are locked up without committing a crime and with no idea when or if they might be liberated. Colditz, then, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, hidden sexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity, and farce. With access to declassified archives, private papers, and never-before-seen photos, the author reveals a remarkable cast of characters, previously hidden from history: Indian doctor Birendranath Mazymdar, the only non-white prisoner, whose ill-treatment, hunger-strike and eventual escape reads like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; Christoper Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture escape aids for POWs, from maps hidden in playing cards to a compass secreted inside a walnut; and many others. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed stunning new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told."--
Subjects: Large type books.; Schloss Colditz (Colditz, Germany); Prisoner-of-war escapes; Prisoners of war; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The vanishing sky : a novel / by Binder, L. Annette,1967-author.;
"In 1945, as the war in Germany nears its violent end, the Huber family is not yet free of its dangers or its insidious demands. Etta, a mother from a small, rural town, has two sons serving their home country: her elder, Max, on the Eastern front, and her younger, Georg, at a school for Hitler Youth. When Max returns from the front, Etta quickly realizes that something is not right-he is thin, almost ghostly, and behaving very strangely. Etta strives to protect him from the Nazi rule, even as her husband, Josef, becomes more nationalistic and impervious to Max's condition. Meanwhile, miles away, her younger son Georg has taken his fate into his own hands, deserting his young class of battle-bound soldiers to set off on a long and perilous journey home. The Vanishing Sky is a World War II novel as seen through a German lens, a story of the irreparable damage of war on the home front, and one family's participation-involuntary, unseen, or direct-in a dangerous regime. Drawing inspiration from her own father's time in the Hitler Youth, L. Annette Binder has crafted a spellbinding novel about the daring choices we make for country and for family"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; World War, 1939-1945; Families; Soldiers; Students; Nazis; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Choice (Psychology);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Iceman / by Deutermann, Peter T.,1941-author.;
"The Iceman is an action-packed World War II military thriller featuring a daring United States Navy submarine commander during the Pacific war in 1942-43. In 1942, off the port city of St. Nazaire in occupied France, a United States Navy S-class submarine assigned to the Royal Navy lurks just outside the borders of the minefield protecting a German U-boat base. Lieutenant Commander Malachi Stormes, the boat's skipper, patrols dangerously close to the minefield entrance and manages to trap and sink three outbound U-boats in one spectacular attack. Britain decorates him, the U.S. Navy promotes him and then gives him command of a brand new class of submarine, a fleet boat called Firefish. Based in Perth, Australia, having been driven out of the Philippines by the Japanese juggernaut, the Perth boats are the only American forces capable of hitting the Japanese in the western Pacific. Stormes, with his cold, steely-eyed focus on killing Japanese ships, is an enigma to his officers and crew, especially when it becomes clear that he is willing to take huge chances to achieve results. Firefish sinks more ships than any Perth boat on her first war patrol, but Stormes' unconventional tactics literally frighten his crew. Driven by a past steeped in the whiskey-haunted violence of the Kentucky coal fields, whose psychological scars torment his sleep and close him off from personal relationships, Stormes is nicknamed The Iceman. His crew is proud of their boat's accomplishments, but wonder if their iron-willed skipper will bring them home alive. With intense action and featuring authentic submarine tactics in the early years of the Pacific war, The Iceman continues P. T. Deutermann's masterful, award-winning cycle of thrillers set during World War II"--
Subjects: War fiction.; Submarines (Ships); World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Daughters of the occupation : a novel / by Sanders, Shelly,1964-author.;
"Based on a true story, this is a powerful novel about a Jewish family who were victims of Nazi genocide in Latvia, one of the Baltic states. It is based on the little known, horrific Rumbula Massacre when 30,000 Jews were slaughtered in two days in 1941. In 1941, Miriam, the matriarch of the family, is the sole survivor of this horrendous massacre. She has had to make a 'Sophie's Choice' - and abandon her children to the care of a Gentile friend who hides them. She and her parents are rounded up and made to live in the Jewish Ghetto in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Miriam, along with thousands of other Jews, is forced marched to the execution pits. Incredibly, she manages to escape the carnage when night falls. Through a series of dramatic events, she finds sanctuary in the countryside - and manages to hide for three years to survive the war. Consumed by guilt, she is reunited finally with her daughter - but has lost her son. Thirty-five years later, living in Chicago with her family, Miriam's grand-daughter Sarah tries desperately to ferret out Miriam's family secret to find out what happened. Miriam does not want to revisit the past. But Sarah persists and eventually finds out enough to impel her to travel to Riga, then under Soviet control and at the height of the Cold War, to try to find her uncle, Miriam's lost son. But her search for the truth may threaten her freedom, when she comes face to face with the KGB. Told in alternating chapters between 1941 and 1976, this gripping novel delves into the trauma that survivors of genocide face down through the generations"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Jewish families; Rumbula Massacre, Rumbula, Latvia, 1941; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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1941 : the year Germany lost the war / by Nagorski, Andrew,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."By 1941, Nazi armies were ruling Europe, bombing London, and sinking British and American ships. The U.S. was undeclared and Britain was alone. But Nagorski shows that Hitler's grave miscalculations had already assigned Germany to ruin. By the end of that year Hitler had taken almost every wrong decision possible and though the fighting went on until 1945, Germany was already vanquished. As Nagorski demonstrated in The Greatest Battle, the Germans lost their first major battle in 1940 because Hitler meddled with and overruled his generals. Throughout 1941, Hitler continued to indulge his ego and make disastrous decisions. By invading the USSR he brought the Soviets to the Eastern Front. By declaring war on the U.S. he added the power of the U.S. to the Western Front. England was no longer alone. The Americans launched their attacks from its shores. The German's brutal treatment of the Russia and Polish POWs and citizens energized their will to fight back. The Year that Germany Lost the War is a stunning portrait of leadership. Churchill elegantly holding a battered Britain together; FDR biding his time until American forces can come aide the allies; Stalin fighting brutally, but enslaving Eastern Europe and planning a Cold War. And Hitler dragging his nation to physical and moral ruin before he took his life in ignominy."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945; World War, 1939-1945; Nineteen forty-one, A.D.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Come from away / by Graham, Genevieve,author.;
"In the fall of 1939, Grace Baker's three brothers, sharp and proud in their uniforms, board Canadian ships headed for a faraway war. Grace stays behind, tending to the homefront and the general store that helps keep her small Nova Scotian community running. The war, everyone says, will be over before it starts. But three years later, the fighting rages on and rumours swirl about "wolf packs" of German U-Boats lurking in the deep waters along the shores of East Jeddore, a stone's throw from Grace's window. As the harsh realities of war come closer to home, Grace buries herself in her work at the store. Then, one day, a handsome stranger ventures into the store. He claims to be a trapper come from away, and as Grace gets to know him, she becomes enamoured by his gentle smile and thoughtful ways. But after several weeks, she discovers that Rudi, her mysterious visitor, is not the lonely outsider he appears to be. He is someone else entirely--someone not to be trusted. When a shocking truth about her family forces Grace to question everything she has so strongly believed, she realizes that she and Rudi have more in common than she had thought. And if Grace is to have a chance at love, she must not only choose a side, but take a stand. Come from Away is a mesmerizing story of love, shifting allegiances, and second chances, set against the tumultuous years of the Second World War"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; World War, 1939-1945; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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