Showing titles in Military

As governor of Galicia, SS Brigadesführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter presided over an authority on whose territory hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles were killed. By the time the war ended in May 1945, he was indicted for 'mass murder'. He spent three years hiding in the Alps before making his way to Rome and being taken in by the Vatican where he remained for three months. While preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline' he died unexpectedly, in July 1949, a few days after having lunch with an 'old comrade' whom he suspected of having been recruited by the Americans. 

The finest fighting force in the world. Escape. Evade. Survive. Repeat. Seven gripping tales of overcoming the impossible. Arguably the finest special forces troops of the Second World War, the SAS was the jewel in the British military crown. But the near-impossible nature of their heroic missions sometimes left them trapped behind enemy lines, the enemy closing and forced to endure the unendurable. But the unendurable is all in a day’s work for these magnificent seven. Incredible odds. Outstanding bravery. Real adventure.

Immerse yourself in the vanished world inhabited by Jane Austen's contemporaries. Packed with detail and anecdotes, this is an intimate exploration of how the middle and upper classes lived from 1775, the year of Austen's birth, to the coronation of George IV in 1820. Sue Wilkes skillfully conjures up all aspects of daily life within the period, drawing on contemporary diaries, illustrations, letters, novels, travel literature, and archives. 

Brought to you by Penguin. From the bestselling author of Chernobyl comes a sweeping history of the geopolitics behind the nuclear arms race, from the first atomic bomb to today On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words of J. Robert...

Operation Mongoose is the untold story of America’s most relentless covert campaign against Fidel Castro’s Cuba, launched in the bitter aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster. What began as a demand for payback became a secret war of sabotage, infiltration, propaganda, and plots—an invisible struggle conducted in the shadows, yet powerful enough to shake the entire Cold War. With vivid narrative clarity, this book takes you behind closed doors where intelligence officers and political leaders convinced themselves that pressure could break a revolution.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Battle of the Atlantic, written and read by Jonathan Dimbleby. The Battle of the Atlantic was - though often overlooked - crucial to victory in the Second World War. If the German U-boats had prevailed, the maritime artery...

The Sunday Times No.1 Bestseller ‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in...

FULLY UPDATED CENTENARY EDITION ‘An important book’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times ‘An intriguing history of covert surveillance … thoroughly engaging’ Daily Telegraph GCHQ is the largest and most secretive intelligence organisation in the UK, and has existed for 100 years – but we still...

Brought to you by Penguin. There are no such thing as an easy victory in war but after triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of the Sicilian invasion, and with the Italian surrender, the Allies were confident that they would be in Rome before Christmas 1943. And yet it didn't happen. Hitler...

Code of the Samurai is a 400-year-old explication of the rules and expectations embodied in Bushido, the Japanese Way of the Warrior. With a bright, conversational narrative by Thomas Cleary, this book is indispensable to corporate executives, students of Asian culture, martial artists, or anyone sincerely interested in Japan and its people.

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER A Times Best History Book of the Year; A Waterstones Best Book of the Year 'Reads like a thriller… I couldn't put Max Hastings's new book down' DAILY MAIL 'Hastings is a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier' THE TIMES...

The civil war that tore Spain apart between 1936 and 1939 and attracted liberals and socialists from across the world to support the cause against Franco was one of the most hard-fought and bitterest conflicts of the 20th century: a war of atrocities and political genocide and a military testing...

In the days between May 24th and 28th, 1940, the British War Cabinet held a historical debate over whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue the war. In this magisterial work, John Lukacs demonstrates the decisive importance of those five days. Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical unfolding of events at 10 Downing Street, where Churchill, who had only been prime minister for a fortnight, painfully considered his war responsibilities.

With an introduction read by Max Hastings. Bomber Command's offensive against the cities of Germany was one of the epic campaigns of the Second World War. More than 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF's attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle began in 1939 with a few score primitive Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons, and ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes razing whole cities in a single night.

In his debut audiobook, Lessons from the Edge, Aldo will inspire listeners with his jaw-dropping stories and show them how to survive and thrive through sheer strength of mind and sharp decision-making. It will reveal how this tough military man was able to cope with suddenly feeling worthless, how he overcame doors literally slamming in his face, how he came to realise that you can't wait for things to happen and instead how he rediscovered his identity and harnessed his emotions to his advantage to find determination, purpose and a renewed sense of belonging.

'Sebestyen reminds us once again why he is one of the best historians writing today' ANDREW ROBERTS, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny In the years after the First World War, Berlin was - as Vladimir Nabokov described it - a place 'of dangerous glamour and worldliness, of tawdry cynicism...

The last half century has seen society, technology, the character of conflict and the British Army itself all change greatly. From a low point in the 1970s, the Army’s war fighting capability increased in the 1980s in the face of a prospective war with the Soviet Union. This capability was then tested on operations from Kuwait in 1991 through to Afghanistan in 2001 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Opening the Gates of Hell is based on over a decade’s research in archives and sites across Europe. It is a ground-breaking examination of the start of the Nazi–Soviet conflict, a narrative history not just of the fighting, but also the impact on civilians, the atrocities committed by both sides and ethnic cleansing carried out by the inhabitants of the regions invaded. This fascinating history tells the stories of bravery, cowardice, misery and horror through the eyes of those who were there including ordinary soldiers, generals, leaders, politicians and civilians on both sides.

‘Napoleon is an out-and-out masterpiece and a joy to read’ Sir Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad A landmark new biography that presents the man behind the many myths. The first writer in English to go back to the original European sources, Adam Zamoyski’s portrait of Napoleon is...

Penguin presents Somme by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, read by Roy McMillan. No conflict better encapsulates all that went wrong on the Western Front than the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The tragic loss of life and stoic endurance by troops who walked towards their death is an iconic image which will...