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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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The prosecutor : one man's battle to bring Nazis to justice / by Fairweather, Jack,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Volunteer, the powerful true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after World War II to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past. At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge from Stuttgart who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the shadowy, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler's former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer landed on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he wouldn't be intimidated. His journey took him deep into the dark heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice would set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies bent on silencing him. In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man's courage in forcing his people--and the world--to face the truth"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Bauer, Fritz, 1903-1968.; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Jewish lawyers; Lawyers; War crime trials; 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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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: 0 / 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: 0 / Total copies: 1
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To die beautiful : a novel / by Jackson, Buzzy,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A gripping and timely debut novel by award-winning nonfiction writer Buzzy Jackson based on a true story of the life of the heroic Hannie Schaft: a young Dutch woman who joined the Resistance in Holland during World War II and became one of the Nazis' most lethal adversaries. Hannie Schaft, a young woman living in Nazi-occupied Holland, never intended to be a fighter. Her dream was to finish law school in Amsterdam and join the League of Nations. But when Hannie's two Jewish best friends are in danger, and she crosses paths with Resistance recruiters while doing volunteer work with refugees, she realizes she cannot deny the urgent cause at hand and the changes happening around her. Driven by outrage and a fierce protectiveness for her friends, Hannie quickly becomes a valued member of the Resistance movement. As the simmering menace of Nazi-occupied Holland reaches a boiling point, Hannie becomes ever more daring, assassinating powerful Nazis point blank, blowing up munitions factories, and constantly improvising with last-minute Resistance orders, even getting Hitler's notice who dubs her 'the Girl with Red Hair.' She also falls deeply in love with a dashing fellow resister at a tremendous cost and finds a chosen family with the other women in the resistance. And while humanity falls apart around her, Hannie's greatest weapon is her determination not to become a monster herself: blijf altijd menselijk. Stay human. A mantra that is sorely tested as the war nears its bitter end ... To Die Beautiful, taken from a quote of Hannie's, is an unputdownable novel about love (for one's friends, family, and country) and loyalty, but with the emotional resonance of meticulously researched, lived history"--
Subjects: Biographical fiction.; Historical fiction.; Novels.; Schaft, Hannie, 1920-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Alone : Britain, Churchill, and Dunkirk : defeat into victory / by Korda, Michael,1933-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War II and the great events that led to Dunkirk. In an absorbing work peopled with world leaders, generals, and ordinary citizens who fought on both sides of World War II, Alone brings to resounding life perhaps the most critical year of twentieth-century history. For, indeed, May 1940 was a month like no other, as the German war machine blazed into France while the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line crumbled, and Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in an astonishing political drama as Britain, isolated and alone, faced a triumphant Nazi Germany. Against this vast historical canvas, Michael Korda relates what happened and why, and also tells his own story, that of a six-year-old boy in a glamorous movie family who would himself be evacuated. Alone is a work that seamlessly weaves a family memoir into an unforgettable account of a political and military disaster redeemed by the evacuation of more than 300,000 men in four days--surely one of the most heroic episodes of the war. "The incredible, almost miraculous story of what happened at Dunkirk in the year 1940--and why--is unfolded in Alone with great narrative skill and superb delineation of a highly interesting cast of characters, including, importantly, the author himself and his own remarkable family." -- David McCullough.
Subjects: Korda, Michael, 1933-; Dunkirk, Battle of, Dunkerque, France, 1940.; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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