Armageddon : The battle for Germany 1944-1945 by Max Hastings

$10.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: good

A stunning new book from one of Britain's most highly regarded military historians - destined to be the Keegan of his generation.One of the greatest military feats during the Second World War was the transformation of the German force's activities in the weeks following the battles in Holland and the Ge rman border, where the Allies had finally inflicted the greatest catastrophes of modern war on them.Somehow the Germans found the strength to halt the Allied advance in its tracks and to prolong the war to 1945. This book is the epic story of those last eight months of the war in northern Europe. ...Show more

With the Old Breed - The World War Two Pacific Classic by E B Sledge

$12.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands... Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of t he fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier has for his enemy. During temporary lapses in the fighting, conditions on the islands mean that the Marines often can't wash, stay dry, dig latrines, or even find time to eat. Suffering from constant fear, fatigue, and filth, the struggle of simply living in a combat zone is utterly debilitating. Yet despite horrendous conditions Sledge finds time to keep notes that he would later turn into a book. Described as one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war, With the Old Breed tells with compassion and honesty of the cruelty, bravery and deaths of the men he fought alongside, and of his own journey from patriotic innocence to batte-scarred veteran. ...Show more

The Unforgettable Army - Slim's XIVth Army in Burma by Michael Hickey

$25.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

They Gave Me a Seafire by Mike Crosley

$20.00 NZD

Category: Aviation | Reading Level: very good

A classic in every sense of the word, the re-issuing of this book is sure to provoke an enthusiastic response. First published in 1986 by Airlife, its publishing history has seen a great number of glowing reviews generated, coming from both historians and participants in the proceedings that the author so eloquently relays. The book charts Crosley's service career in the Fleet Air Arm during the entire period of the Second World War. Part of his service saw him in action aboard HMS Eagle, flying Sea Hurricanes on the Harpoon and Pedestal Malta convoys of June and August 1942. It was during this time that he shot down his first enemy aircraft and survived the dramatic sinking of HMS Eagle. From there he graduated on to Seafires, (the Naval equivalent of the Spitfire), and flew this type in Combat Air Patrols over Norway and ramrod strikes from Operation Torch (the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942), through to D-Day in June 1944 in the European Theatre of Operations, and then in the Pacific abroad HMS Implacable as part of the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 until the end of the Pacific War, by which time he had command of his own combined squadron, 801 and 880. The narrative is well written in a frank and often scathingly critical way of Fleet Air Arm operations during the Second World War and beyond. The book looks set to bring the endeavours of Crosley to a whole new generation of enthusiasts, and it should appeal across the board to fans of aviation, naval history and families and friends of Armed Forces, past and present. ...Show more

The Atlantic Star 1939-45 by David A Thomas

$20.00 NZD

Category: Naval | Reading Level: very good

Monte Cassino - The story of the most controversial battle of World War II by David Hapgood; David Richardson

$14.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

Hunting Hitler's Nukes - The Secret Race to Stop the Nazi Bomb by Damien Lewis

$15.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

In the Spring of 1940, as Britain reeled from defeats on all fronts and America seemed frozen in isolation, one fear united the British and American leaders like no other: the Nazis had stolen a march on the Allies towards building the atomic bomb. So began the hunt for Hitler's nuclear weapons - nothin g else came close in terms of priorities. It was to be the most secret war of those wars fought amongst the shadows. The highest stakes. The greatest odds. Prior to the outbreak of the war the massive German chemicals conglomerate I.G. Farben - the future manufacturers of Zyklon-B, the gas used in the Nazi concentration camps - had started producing bulk supplies of deuterium oxide - heavy water - at the remote Norwegian plant of Vemork. This was the central target of three separate missions - Operations GROUSE, FARSIDE and GUNNERSIDE - over the ensuing four years. As Churchill commented: 'The actual facts in many cases were equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle with tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent,gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party were interwoven in a texture so intricate as to be incredible yet true.' Damien Lewis's new bestseller intercuts the hunt for the scientists, the raw materials and the plant with the cloak and dagger intelligence game being played in the shadows. This relied in part on ENIGMA intercepts to guide the SOE's hand. Lewis delves into some of the most extraordinarily inventive and Machiavellian innovations at the SOE, and their related research and training schools, whereby the enemy were tricked, deceived,framed, blackmailed and double and triple-crossed, all in the name of stopping the Reich from getting the bomb. ...Show more

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang

$12.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

This is the critically acclaimed, best-selling account of the forgotten story of one of history's most brutal massacres. In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and mur dered - a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written the definitive history of this horrifying episode. "The Rape of Nanking" tells the story from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone which saved almost another 300,000 Chinese. Among the heroes was the German John Rabe, a Nazi, whose diaries Chang discovered and whom she calls the "Oskar Schindler of China". More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, "The Rape of Nanking" analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. It also tells of the concerted effort during the Cold War on the part of the West and even China to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. ...Show more

Escaping Hitler - Heroic True Stories of Great Escapes in Nazi Europe by Monty Halls

$10.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

'I was on a train, and a German soldier began shouting at me and poking me in the ribs with his machine gun. I just thought that was it, the game was up . . .'Downed airman Bob Frost faced danger at every turn as he was smuggled out of France and over the Pyrenees. Prisoner of war Len Harley went on the run in Italy, surviving months in hiding and then a hazardous climb over the Abruzzo mountains with German troops hot on his heels. These are just some of the stories told in heart-stopping detail as Monty Halls takes us along the freedom trails out of occupied Europe, from the immense French escape lines to lesser-known routes in Italy and Slovenia. Escaping Hitler features spies and traitors, extraordinary heroism from those who ran the escape routes and offered shelter to escapees, and great feats of endurance. The SAS in Operation Galia fought for forty days behind enemy lines in Italy and then, exhausted and pursued by the enemy, exfiltrated across the Apennine mountains. And in Slovenia Australian POW Ralph Churches and British Les Laws orchestrated the largest successful Allied escape of the entire war.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. ...Show more

Conquest Without Victory - A New Zealander's experiences in the Resistance Movement in Greece and France by William Jordan

$20.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand | Reading Level: very good

Passage to Tobruk - The diary of a Kiwi in the Middle East by Francis Jackson

$20.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand | Reading Level: very good

The Conquerors - Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany by Michael R. Beschloss

$18.00 NZD

Category: World War II | Reading Level: very good

The Conquerors provides a fascinating insight into the behind-the-scenes negotiations during World War II that led to the emasculation of Germany. As Presidents Roosevelt and Truman led the United States in World War II in Europe, they had to deal with the question of what kind of government should be i mposed on Nazi Germany to ensure that Germany could never again drag the world into war. The Conquerors tells the story with much intimate detail and colour of how Roosevelt and Truman privately struggled in their own minds and with titanic allies like Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, through summits and secret messages, to answer this question. Roosevelt did not react to increasing evidence of the Holocaust, but close friend and Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., privately pressed Roosevelt to accept what was soon called the "Morgenthau plan" - teach the Germans a lesson and destroy their ability to make war by destroying their industrial base and letting many Germans starve to death. Bechloss also revels how Harry Truman, on abruptly assuming the Presidency, was briefed on the Morgenthau Plan and was appalled. Truman, backed by Cabinet members, turned his back on the plan, fired Morgenthau, and moved toward Germany's division between East and West, allowing West Germany to become the bulwark of Western opposition to Soviet expansionism in Europe. ...Show more