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Author: Julie Peakman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786732998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
*Highly Commended by the British Records Association for the 2019 Janette Harley Prize* In September 1943, at the height of World War II, the Aegean island of Leros became the site of the most pivotal battle of the Dodecanese campaign as the British tried, in vain, to retain control of the island. Over the course of two short months - from 15 September 1943 to 17 November 1943 - almost 1500 men lost their lives and hundreds more ended up in Prisoner-of-War camps. In this book, Julie Peakman, a modern-day resident of Leros, brings to life the story of the men caught up in the battle based on first-hand interviews and written accounts including diaries, letters and journals. She tells of the preparations of the soldiers leading up to the battle, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and the suffering endured from continual bombings. She also shows the extent of the men's despair at the allied surrender, the many subsequent daring escapes as well as the terrible years of incarceration for those who were captured and imprisoned. Many of the heart-rending accounts of the battle are told here for the first time, providing a unique eyewitness take on this forgotten corner of World War II.
Author: Julie Peakman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786732998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
*Highly Commended by the British Records Association for the 2019 Janette Harley Prize* In September 1943, at the height of World War II, the Aegean island of Leros became the site of the most pivotal battle of the Dodecanese campaign as the British tried, in vain, to retain control of the island. Over the course of two short months - from 15 September 1943 to 17 November 1943 - almost 1500 men lost their lives and hundreds more ended up in Prisoner-of-War camps. In this book, Julie Peakman, a modern-day resident of Leros, brings to life the story of the men caught up in the battle based on first-hand interviews and written accounts including diaries, letters and journals. She tells of the preparations of the soldiers leading up to the battle, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and the suffering endured from continual bombings. She also shows the extent of the men's despair at the allied surrender, the many subsequent daring escapes as well as the terrible years of incarceration for those who were captured and imprisoned. Many of the heart-rending accounts of the battle are told here for the first time, providing a unique eyewitness take on this forgotten corner of World War II.
Author: Richard Brooks
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
ISBN: 9781849082372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Osprey's study of the Walcheren campaign of World War II (1939-1945). Walcheren is a saucer-shaped island in the estuary of the river Scheldt, commanding maritime access to Antwerp, the largest port in Western Europe. The Allies captured Antwerp intact on September 4, 1944, but their eyes were on the Rhine crossings at Arnhem, not the lower Scheldt. The failure of Operation Market-Garden later that month brought home the Allies' logistical weakness. As autumn gales drew near, every shell and petrol tin had still to be landed at Cherbourg or across the Normandy beaches. Complete US Army divisions were immobilized for lack of transport. It was vital to re-open Antwerp. The continued German presence on Walcheren, however, prevented Allied shipping from entering the Scheldt. In the fall of 1944, Walcheren had the most heavily fortified coastline in the world. Its seaward defences consisted of 30 coastal and field batteries, mounting 50-60 guns from 75mm to 220mm in caliber, manned by high quality naval personnel behind massive concrete emplacements. Supporting strongpoints had anti-aircraft guns, flame-throwers rocket-launchers and Goliath remote controlled demolition vehicles. The sand dunes protecting the low-lying island from the North Sea were laced with barbed wire, mines and dragon's teeth. Defending infantry came from Generalleutnant Wilhelm Daser's 70.Infanterie-Division, a 'white bread division' consisting of men with gastric problems. Allied intelligence estimated the total garrison at 4,000, but 8,000 eventually surrendered. On November 1, 1944, in a double-pronged attack, the men of 52nd (Lowland) Division plus No. 4 Army Commando seized Flushing (Infatuate I) while in the west 4th Special Service Brigade with three Royal Marine Commandos and No. 10 Inter-Allied Commando would take Westkapelle, and fight their way north and south along the dunes, taking the coastal batteries as they went (Infatuate II). All this was to be supported with HMS Warspite and two 15-inch gun monitors; the Support Squadron Eastern Flank (SSEF) with 25 specialized Landing Craft with guns and rockets; 350 Army guns south of the Scheldt, most of them heavier than 25-pounders; and the Typhoon and Spitfire fighter bombers of 84 Group RAF. In fighting described by one survivor as 'worse than Dieppe and D-Day put together' the Army and Royal Marines forced their way ashore, supported by specialized armour and tracked vehicles, and over the next eight days cleared the positions of their German defenders in bitter street fighting. The first Liberty ships unloaded at Antwerp on December 1, just over a fortnight before the Ardennes offensive began. If Walcheren had not fallen when it did, opening Antwerp just in time, the Allies would have been hard pressed to withstand the German attack, or replace the fuel stocks lost in its opening days, let alone cross the Rhine in the following spring, and meet the Russians on the Elbe. The Walcheren campaign was not merely a dramatic combined operation pulled off against the odds; it helped determine the course of the war and the shape of the post-war world.
Author: Caroline Sturdy Colls
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526149052
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 399
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Book Description
‘Adolf Island’ offers new forensic, archaeological and spatial perspectives on the Nazi forced and slave labour programme that was initiated on the Channel Island of Alderney during its occupation in the Second World War. Drawing on extensive archival research and the results of the first in-field investigations of the ‘crime scenes’ since 1945, the book identifies and characterises the network of concentration and labour camps, fortifications, burial sites and other material traces connected to the occupation, providing new insights into the identities and experiences of the men and women who lived, worked and died within this landscape. Moving beyond previous studies focused on military aspects of occupation, the book argues that Alderney was intrinsically linked to wider systems of Nazi forced and slave labour.
Author: Christof Mauch
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231120449
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
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.
Author: Duncan Barrett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781471166372
Category : Channel Islands
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
True-life recollections from the Channel Islanders who were the only British subjects to live under Nazi rule in WWII.
Author: Lee Eric
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1922387479
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
In the final days of World War II in Europe, Georgians serving in the Wehrmacht on Texel island off the Dutch coast rose up and slaughtered their German masters. Hitler ordered the island to be retaken and fighting continued for weeks, well after the war's end. The uprising had it origins in the bloody history of Georgia in the twentieth century, a history that saw the country move from German occupation, to three short years of independence, to Soviet rule after it was conquered by the Red Army in 1921. A bloody rebellion against the Soviets took place in 1924, but it remained under Russian Soviet rule. Thousands of Georgians served in the Soviet forces during World War II and among those who were captured, given the choice of “starve or fight”, some took up the German offer to don Wehrmacht uniforms. The loyalty of the Georgians was always in doubt, as Hitler himself suspected, and once deployed to the Netherlands, the Georgian soldiers made contact with the local Communist resistance. When the opportunity arose, the Georgians took the decision to rise up and slaughter the Germans, seizing control of the island. In just a few hours, they massacred some 400 German officers using knives and bayonets to avoid raising the alarm. An enraged Hitler learned about the mutiny and ordered the Germans to fight back, showing no mercy to either the Georgians or the Dutch civilians who hid them. It was not until 20 May, 12 days after the war had ended, that Canadian forces landed on the island and finally put an end to the slaughter. Eric Lee explores this fascinating but little known last battle of the Second World War: its origins, the incredible details of the battle and its ongoing legacy.
Author: John Nettles
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780993265747
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"This book was born of a series of documentay films about the German occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945 entitled The Channel Islands at war. It is also the fulfilment of an ambition to tell in much more detail than was possible in those documentaries, the true story of those extraordinary years"--Back cover
Author: Lynne Olson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France. As the only European democracy still holding out against Hitler, Britain became known to occupied countries as “Last Hope Island.” Getting there, one young emigré declared, was “like getting to heaven.” In this epic, character-driven narrative, acclaimed historian Lynne Olson takes us back to those perilous days when the British and their European guests joined forces to combat the mightiest military force in history. Here we meet the courageous King Haakon of Norway, whose distinctive “H7” monogram became a symbol of his country’s resistance to Nazi rule, and his fiery Dutch counterpart, Queen Wilhelmina, whose antifascist radio broadcasts rallied the spirits of her defeated people. Here, too, is the Earl of Suffolk, a swashbuckling British aristocrat whose rescue of two nuclear physicists from France helped make the Manhattan Project possible. Last Hope Island also recounts some of the Europeans’ heretofore unsung exploits that helped tilt the balance against the Axis: the crucial efforts of Polish pilots during the Battle of Britain; the vital role played by French and Polish code breakers in cracking the Germans’ reputedly indecipherable Enigma code; and the flood of top-secret intelligence about German operations—gathered by spies throughout occupied Europe—that helped ensure the success of the 1944 Allied invasion. A fascinating companion to Citizens of London, Olson’s bestselling chronicle of the Anglo-American alliance, Last Hope Island recalls with vivid humanity that brief moment in time when the peoples of Europe stood together in their effort to roll back the tide of conquest and restore order to a broken continent. Praise for Last Hope Island “In Last Hope Island [Lynne Olson] argues an arresting new thesis: that the people of occupied Europe and the expatriate leaders did far more for their own liberation than historians and the public alike recognize. . . . The scale of the organization she describes is breathtaking.”—The New York Times Book Review “Last Hope Island is a book to be welcomed, both for the past it recovers and also, quite simply, for being such a pleasant tome to read.”—The Washington Post “[A] pointed volume . . . [Olson] tells a great story and has a fine eye for character.”—The Boston Globe
Author: Will Fowler
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750968796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
When Germany occupied the originally 'demilitarised' Channel Islands in 1940, Hitler ordered the area to be staunchly fortified with colossal permanent structures like Battery Moltke on Jersey. As it was the only piece of the British Isles in Nazi control, he was determined that the islands should remain German forever. Churchill was equally obsessed, urging numerous commando raids and harebrained schemes for the invasion and liberation of the islands. But when France was freed in 1944, the Channel Islands were completely bypassed. German troops were cut off from their supplies and the island population began to starve. Occupied for almost the entire war, these quintessentially English islands serve as a fascinating microcosm of what Britain might have been like under Nazi rule. With one German soldier to every three islanders, resistance had to remain at a low level: possession of a radio merited a prison sentence. The Last Raid is an atmospheric account of life under German occupation, as well as the political manoeuvring behind the scenes. With the first detailed account in English of the Granville Raid, a unique German commando operation, Will Fowler combines the social experience of war with the military to form a fascinating chronicle of the fight for the Channel Islands during the Second World War.
Author: Eric Kurlander
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
“A dense and scholarly book about . . . the relationship between the Nazi party and the occult . . . reveals stranger-than-fiction truths on every page.”—Daily Telegraph The Nazi fascination with the occult is legendary, yet today it is often dismissed as Himmler’s personal obsession or wildly overstated for its novelty. Preposterous though it was, however, supernatural thinking was inextricable from the Nazi project. The regime enlisted astrology and the paranormal, paganism, Indo-Aryan mythology, witchcraft, miracle weapons, and the lost kingdom of Atlantis in reimagining German politics and society and recasting German science and religion. In this eye-opening history, Eric Kurlander reveals how the Third Reich’s relationship to the supernatural was far from straightforward. Even as popular occultism and superstition were intermittently rooted out, suppressed, and outlawed, the Nazis drew upon a wide variety of occult practices and esoteric sciences to gain power, shape propaganda and policy, and pursue their dreams of racial utopia and empire. “[Kurlander] shows how swiftly irrational ideas can take hold, even in an age before social media.”—The Washington Post “Deeply researched, convincingly authenticated, this extraordinary study of the magical and supernatural at the highest levels of Nazi Germany will astonish.”—The Spectator “A trustworthy [book] on an extraordinary subject.”—The Times “A fascinating look at a little-understood aspect of fascism.”—Kirkus Reviews “Kurlander provides a careful, clear-headed, and exhaustive examination of a subject so lurid that it has probably scared away some of the serious research it merits.”—National Review
