Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent air campaign over Syria took the world by surprise. The capabilities and efficiency of Moscow’s armed forces during both operations signalled to the world that Russia was back in business as a significant military actor on the international stage.

In this cutting-edge study, Bettina Renz provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of Russia’s military revival under Putin’s leadership. Whilst the West must adjust to the reality of a modernised and increasingly powerful Russian military, she argues that the renaissance of Russian military might and its implications for the balance of global power can only be fully understood within a wider historical context.

Assessing developments in Russian Great Power thinking, military capabilities, Russian strategic thought and views on the use of force throughout the post-Soviet era, the book shows that, rather than signifying a sudden Russian military resurgence, recent developments are consistent with longstanding trends in Russian military strategy and foreign policy.

Scorched Earth is the first book to chronicle the effects of chemical warfare on the Vietnamese people and their environment, where, even today, more than 3 million people—including 500,000 children—are sick and dying from birth defects, cancer, and other illnesses that can be directly traced to Agent Orange/dioxin exposure. Weaving first-person accounts with original research, Vietnam War scholar Fred A. Wilcox examines long-term consequences for future generations, laying bare the ongoing monumental tragedy in Vietnam, and calls for the United States government to finally admit its role in chemical warfare in Vietnam. Wilcox also warns readers that unless we stop poisoning our air, food, and water supplies, the cancer epidemic in the United States and other countries will only worsen, and he urgently demands the chemical manufacturers of Agent Orange to compensate the victims of their greed and to stop using the Earth’s rivers, lakes, and oceans as toxic waste dumps. Vietnam has chosen August 10—the day that the US began spraying Agent Orange on Vietnam—as Agent Orange Day, to commemorate all its citizens who were affected by the deadly chemical. Scorched Earth will be released upon the third anniversary of this day, in honor of all those whose families have suffered, and continue to suffer, from this tragedy.Review“I consider Scorched Earth to be the Silent Spring of chemical warfare in Vietnam, a powerful clarion call [that brings together] scientific evidence, passionate argument, Vietnamese interviews and documentation, review of the class action suits… and new and little known evidence gathered by Vietnamese scholars… to form one coherent argument.”—Dr. John Marciano, Vietnam scholar, and professor emeritus, State University of New York–Cortland“A fascinating and compelling book on the effects on the Vietnamese people of the Agent Orange defoliation campaign during the Vietnam War, a personal, impassioned account on the part of the victims, a fascinating and at times shocking tale of an important and unresolved episode in American history.”—Dr. Michael Viola, director, Medicine for Peace, and retired chair, oncology department, State University of New York–Stonybrook

2 April 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the invasion of the Falkland Islands. This is the thrilling untold story of the young helicopter pilots – most barely out of their teens – who risked their lives during this brief but ferocious war.In April 1982 Harry Benson was a 21-year-old Royal Navy commando helicopter pilot, fresh out of training and one of the youngest helicopter pilots to serve in the Falklands War. These pilots, nicknamed ‘junglies’, flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their Sea King and Wessex helicopters. Much of what happened in the war – the politics, task force ships, Sea Harriers, landings, Paras and Marines – is well-known and documented. But almost nothing is known of the young commando helicopter pilots and aircrewmen who made it all happen on land and sea. This is their ‘Boys Own’ story, told for the very first time. Harry Benson has interviewed forty of his former colleagues for the book creating a tale of skill, initiative, resourcefulness, humour, luck, and adventure. This is a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a Wessex helicopter. Few of these pilots have spoken publicly about:• The two helicopter crashes and eventual rescue following a failed SAS mission high up on an in hospitable glacier in South Georgia • The harrowing story of the Exocet strike that sunk the transport ship Atlantic Conveyor• The daring missile raid on the Argentine high command in Port Stanley• The constant mortar fire faced while supporting troops and evacuating casualties • The hair-raising head-on attacks by Argentine jets on British helicopters • The extraordinarty courage shown during the evacuation of the bombed landing ship Sir Galahad• The secret nighttime low-level missions to insert and resupply SAS and SBS using night vision gogglesIf you liked Apache, Vulcan 607 and Chickenhawk, you’ll love Scram!The word “Scram” was used to warn other junglies to go to ground or risk being shot down by their own side as Argentinean jets blasted through ‘bomb alley 014’.From the Inside Flap‘Scram! Scram! was all I heard though my coms as I caught sight of two Argentine A-4 Skyhawks blasting through bomb alley toward the anchored British flotilla. In front of me every ship opened up with everything they had as missiles and tracer streaked though the sky to meet the incoming aircraft. All we could do as helicopter pilots caught out in the open was head for the hills. Literally.’Soon after the Argentine army invaded the Falklands in the early hours of 2 April 1982, it was the Royal Navy commando helicopter pilots, nicknamed junglies, who flew most of the land-based missions in the Falklands in their Sea King and Wessex helicopters. Facing both mortar fire and head-on attacks by Argentine jets, they inserted SAS patrols at night, rescued survivors of Exocet attacks and mounted daring missile raids, as well as supporting the British troops and evacuating casualties, often in appalling weather conditions.Harry Benson was a twenty-one-year-old junglie Wessex pilot, fresh out of training, when war started. He has interviewed over forty of his former colleagues for this book, creating a fast-paced, meticulously researched and compelling account written by someone who was there, in the cockpit of a Wessex helicopter.

Praleidęs fronte tik šešis mėnesius, šios knygos autorius, kovojęs Rytų fronte kaip snaiperis, iššovė 209 patvirtintus taiklius šūvius. Atsižvelgiant į jo itin trumpą buvimo fronte laiką, jį, ko gero, būtų galima laikyti geriausiu šios kariuomenės rūšies pavieniu kovotoju visame Vokietijos Vermachte. Brunas Sutkus yra apdovanotas itin retu trečios pakopos snaiperio ženkleliu. Šioje knygoje jis išsamiai aprašo savo įvairiapusišką snaiperio patirtį, įgytą fronte. Antroje knygos dalyje pasakojama apie sunkią Bruno Sutkaus dalią, kuri jam teko, pasibaigus karui. Dvidešimt dvejus metus Sutkus praleido tremtyje. Nors jam ne kartą buvo grasinama mirtimi, jis įstengė atsispirti visiems sovietų bandymams jį užverbuoti ir padaryti jų šnipu Vakarų Vokietijoje. Ilgus dešimtmečius sovietai laikė jį savo nelaisvėje ir neleido išvykti iš šalies. Tik 1997 m. iš Rytprūsių kilęs Brunas Sutkus grįžo į savo gimtąją Vokietiją. Šioje knygoje pasakojama ir įdomi, ir tragiška bei itin savita Antrojo pasaulinio karo frontininko gyvenimo istorija.

Iraq, 2004. Sgt. Dan Mills and the rest of the 1st Battalion, The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, were supposed to be winning hearts and minds. They were soon fighting for their lives…Within hours of the battalion’s arrival in Iraq, a grenade bounced off one of their Land Rovers, rolled underneath, and detonated. The ambush marked the beginning of a full-scale firefight during which Mills killed a man with a round that removed his assailant’s head.The mission had already gone from bad to worse. Throat-burning winds, blast bombs, and militias armed with AKs, RPGs, and a limitless supply of mortar rounds were the icing on the cake for Mills and his men. For the next six months—isolated, besieged, and under constant fire—their battalion refused to give an inch. This is thebreathtaking true chronicle of their endurance, camaraderie, dark humor, and courage in the face of relentless, lethal assault.

KurzbeschreibungDieses Buch legt auf der Basis von 150.000 Seiten Abhörprotokollen erstmals eine überzeugende Mentalitätsgeschichte des Krieges vor. In von Briten und Amerikanern eigens eingerichteten Lagern wurden deutsche Kriegsgefangene aller Ränge und Waffengattungen heimlich abgehört. Sie sprachen über militärische Geheimnisse, über ihre Sicht auf die Gegner, auf die eigene Führung und auf die Judenvernichtung. Das Buch zeigt die Kriegswahrnehmung von Soldaten in historischer Echtzeit und vermittelt eine faszinierende und erschreckende Innenansicht des Zweiten Weltkriegs durch jene Soldaten, die große Teile Europas verwüsteten. Zudem wird im Vergleich zu anderen Kriegen herausgearbeitet, was am Fühlen und Handeln der deutschen Soldaten spezifisch für den Nationalsozialismus war und was nicht.

In 2001, spurred by a nagging curiosity over a transcript of a secretly recorded conversation he had come across in his research on the German U-boat wars, historian Sönke Neitzel paid a visit to the British national archives. He had heard of the existence of recorded interrogations of German POWs, but never about covert recordings taken within the confines of the holding cells, bedrooms, and camps that housed the prisoners. What Neitzel discovered, to his amazement, were reams of untouched, recently declassified transcripts totaling nearly eight hundred pages. Later, Neitzel would find another trove of protocols twice as extensive at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.Though initially recorded by British intelligence with the intention of gaining information that might be useful for the Allied war effort, the matters discussed in these conversations ultimately proved to be limited in that regard. But for Neitzel and his collaborator, renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, they would supply a unique and profoundly important window into the mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general, almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war. It is a myth these transcripts unequivocally debunk.Soldaten closely examines these conversations, and the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them, from a historical and psychological perspective. What factors led to the degradation of the soldiers’ sense of awareness and morality? How much did their social environments affect their interpretation of the war and their actions during combat? By reconstructing the frameworks and situations behind these conversations, and the context in which they were spoken, a powerful, unflinching narrative of wartime experience emerges. The details of what these soldiers did, after all, are not filtered the way they might be in letters to family, or girlfriends and wives, or during interrogations by the enemy. In Soldaten, Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer offer an unmitigated window into the mind-set of the German fighting man, potentially changing our view of World War II.Review“Unique—and essential to any understanding of German mentalités in the Hitler era.”—Kirkus“Celebrated narrator Simon Prebble does a masterly job solemnly conveying this powerful, dramatic material…. Essential for university history and military/World War II research collections.”—Library JournalReview“These extraordinary bugged conversations reveal through the eyes of German soldiers with stark clarity and candor the often brutal reality of the Second World War, providing remarkable insight into the mentality and behavior of the Wehrmacht.”—Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler: A Biography“The myth that Nazi–era German armed forces [were] not involved in war crimes persisted for decades after the war. Now two German researchers have destroyed it once and for all…. The material [they] have uncovered in British and American archives is nothing short of sensational…. [Soldaten] has the potential to change our view of the war.”—Der Spiegel (Germany)“This should be required reading for all those who believe that wars could be done cleanly.”—Martin Meier, Neues Deutschland“A significant contribution on the mental history of the Wehrmacht… The authors have written an incredibly readable book.”—Die Zeit“An equally fascinating and shocking book about the everyday madness of the Nazi war of extermination, which once again confirms Hannah Arendt’s thesis about the ‘banality of evil’… A scholarly sensation.”—Goethe Institut

In 2001, spurred by a nagging curiosity over a transcript of a secretly recorded conversation he had come across in his research on the German U-boat wars, historian Sönke Neitzel paid a visit to the British national archives. He had heard of the existence of recorded interrogations of German POWs, but never about covert recordings taken within the confines of the holding cells, bedrooms, and camps that housed the prisoners. What Neitzel discovered, to his amazement, were reams of untouched, recently declassified transcripts totaling nearly eight hundred pages. Later, Neitzel would find another trove of protocols twice as extensive at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.Though initially recorded by British intelligence with the intention of gaining information that might be useful for the Allied war effort, the matters discussed in these conversations ultimately proved to be limited in that regard. But for Neitzel and his collaborator, renowned social psychologist Harald Welzer, they would supply a unique and profoundly important window into the mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general, almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war. It is a myth these transcripts unequivocally debunk.Soldaten closely examines these conversations, and the casual, pitiless brutality omnipresent in them, from a historical and psychological perspective. What factors led to the degradation of the soldiers’ sense of awareness and morality? How much did their social environments affect their interpretation of the war and their actions during combat? By reconstructing the frameworks and situations behind these conversations, and the context in which they were spoken, a powerful, unflinching narrative of wartime experience emerges. The details of what these soldiers did, after all, are not filtered the way they might be in letters to family, or girlfriends and wives, or during interrogations by the enemy. In Soldaten, Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer offer an unmitigated window into the mind-set of the German fighting man, potentially changing our view of World War II.

No publicity, no media. We move in silently, do our job, and melt away into the background. If you have the stamina, the willpower and the guts, we’ll welcome you with open arms and you one of us. And if you haven’t, then it’s been very nice knowing you. Eighteen years in the SAS saw Pete Winner, codenamed Soldier ‘I’, survive the savage battle of Mirbat, parachute into the icy depths of the South Atlantic at the height of the Falklands War, and storm the Iranian Embassy during the most famous hostage crisis in the modern world.For the first time Pete also details his close-protection work around the world, from the lawless streets of Moscow to escorting aid convoys into war-torn Bosnia. He also unveils the problems of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder faced by many Special Forces veterans, and how he battled his own demons to continue his roller-coaster career. This is his story, written with a breathtaking take-no-prisoners attitude that brings each death-defying episode vividly to life.

A leading reporter offers a tour of military working dogs’ extraordinary training, heroic accomplishments, and the lasting impacts they have on those who work with them.People all over the world have been riveted by the story of Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who was a part of the Navy SEAL team that led the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. A dog’s natural intelligence, physical abilities, and pure loyalty contribute more to our military efforts than ever before. You don't have to be a dog lover to be fascinated by the idea that a dog—the cousin of that furry guy begging for scraps under your table—could be one of the heroes who helped execute the most vital and high-tech military mission of the new millennium.Now Maria Goodavage, editor and featured writer for one of the world's most widely read dog blogs, tells heartwarming stories of modern soldier dogs and the amazing bonds that develop between them and their handlers. Beyond tales of training, operations, retirement, and adoption into the families of fallen soldiers, Goodavage talks to leading dog-cognition experts about why dogs like nothing more than to be on a mission with a handler they trust, no matter how deadly the IEDs they are sniffing, nor how far they must parachute or rappel from aircraft into enemy territory.“Military working dogs live for love and praise from their handlers,” says Ron Aiello, president of the United States War Dogs Association and a former marine scout dog handler. “The work is all a big game, and then they get that pet, that praise. They would do anything for their handler.” This is an unprecedented window into the world of these adventurous, loving warriors.Review“A moving portrait of the loyal, courageous, furry warriors who truly are an enlisted Man's Best Friend.”— People Magazine“Soldier Dogs is a fascinating book about the valiant things that military dogs do as told through the words of the soldiers who fight beside them. It also shows you how military service dogs are created, told through the words of the trainers and scientists who know the process. It is written in an easy and entertaining style and will acquaint you with dozens of canine heroes ranging from Stubby, who fought in WWI, to Cairo, who was a member of the raiding party that took down Osama Bin Laden. It is a great read for anyone who appreciates dogs and heroes.”— Stanley Coren“If the idea of dogs at war conjures up thoughts of harsh methods and unrelenting discipline, think again. Maria Goodavage's revealing and engaging books exposes the unexpected trust and affection that flows both ways between dog and handler. You may already care about dogs: This book will heighten your respect for them.”-John Bradshaw, author of Dog Sense“Inspiring personal stories of the many canine allies (and their handlers) who have dramatically enhanced military command units and examines how this indelible human-canine bond often transcends the atrocities of wartime violence.”— Kirkus Reviews“Stories of spooked pups aboard battle-bound Hueys and dogs in the line of fire reveal surprisingly human-like response to war, and posit these military mutts as admirable—and capable—soldiers.”— Publishers Weekly

The primary goal of Stories of Faith & Courage from World War II is to strengthen the faith of its readers by showing the power of others’ faith under the most extreme circumstances imaginable. This is accomplished through 365 one-page stories from America’s greatest conflict presented in a daily devotional format with relevant scripture readings for each day of the year. Additionally, the book presents a unique and concise history of World War II with summaries, maps, and photographs of the major campaigns of the war. On this level, the individual stories provide insights into the war and combat not found in typical historical accounts.Review2009 Silver Medal Winner from the Military Writers Society of AmericaFirst Place Winner of the 2009 Bransom Stars & Flags Book AwardAbout the AuthorLarkin Spivey is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and a retired Marine Corps officer. He commanded infantry and reconnaissance units in combat as well as being trained in parachute, submarine, and Special Forces operations. He was with the blockade force during the Cuban Missile Crisis and served President Nixon in the White House. As a faculty member at The Citadel, he taught courses in U.S. military history, a subject of life-long personal and professional interest. He is the author of God in the Trenches and Miracles of the American Revolution. He now writes full time and resides in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with his wife, Lani, and their four children. He is a lay eucharistic minister of the Episcopal Church and is actively involved in the Cursillo renewal movement and the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association.Jocelyn Green is an award-winning freelance writer who pens articles for dozens of magazines, including Christianity Today, Today's Christian, Today's Pentecostal Evangel, Baptist Bulletin, EFCA Today, InSite and more. She also writes for nonprofits, universities and corporations such as Juicy Juice, Nestle, Publix and General Mills. Wife of a former Coast Guard officer, she authored Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives (Moody Publishers 2008). She also edited and contributed to Stories of Faith and Courage from World War II by Larkin Spivey, a 2009 Military Writers Society of America Silver Medal Winner. She is a member of the Evangelical Press Association and the Christian Authors Network. She and her husband have two children, a dog and a cat, and reside in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Strong Men Armed relates the U.S. Marines’ unprecedented, relentless drive across the Pacific during World War II, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, detailing their struggle to dislodge from heavily fortified islands an entrenched enemy who had vowed to fight to extinction—and did. (All but three of the Marines’ victories required the complete annihilation of the Japanese defending force.) As scout and machine-gunner for the First Marine Division, the author fought in all its engagements till his wounding at Peleliu. Here he uses firsthand experience and impeccable research to re-create the nightmarish battles. The result is both an exciting chronicle and a moving tribute to the thousands of men who died in reeking jungles and on palm-studded beaches, thousands of miles from home and fifty years before their time, of whom Admiral Chester W. Nimitz once said, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”Strong Men Armed includes over a dozen maps, a chronology of the war in the Pacific, the Marine Medal of Honor Winners in World War II, and Marine Corps aces in World War II.

Submarine warfare of to-day: how the submarine menace was met and vanquished, with descriptions of the inventions and devices used, fast boats, mystery ships, nets, aircraft, &c., &c., also describing the selection and training of the enormous personnel used in this new branch of the navy.This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org.http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29685Best viewed with CoolReader.

Robert D. Kaplan is one of our leading international journalists, someone who can explain the most complicated and volatile regions and show why they’re relevant to our world. In Surrender or Starve, Kaplan illuminates the fault lines in the Horn of Africa, which is emerging as a crucial region for America’s ongoing war on terrorism. Reporting from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, Kaplan examines the factors behind the famine that ravaged the region in the 1980s, exploring the ethnic, religious, and class conflicts that are crucial for understanding the region today. He offers a new foreword and afterword that show how the nations have developed since the famine, and why this region will only grow more important to the United States. Wielding his trademark ability to blend on-the-ground reporting and cogent analysis, Robert D. Kaplan introduces us to a fascinating part of the world, one that it would behoove all of us to know more about.

With bullets flying, wounded soldiers scream out in pain as the Chinook comes in to land in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. At the machine’s controls is one man and if he doesn’t stay calm then everyone could die. That man is Flt Lt Alex ‘Frenchie’ Duncan and he’s been involved in some of the most daring and dangerous missions undertaken by the Chinook force in Afghanistan. In this book he recounts his experiences of life under fire in the dust, heat and bullets of an active war zone.At 99ft long, the Chinook is a big and valuable target to the Taliban, who will stop at nothing to bring one down. And yet Frenchie and his crew risk everything because they know that the troops on the front line are relying on them. Sweating the Metal is the true story of the raw determination and courage of men on the front line – and it’s time for their story to be told.

With bullets flying, wounded soldiers scream out in pain as the Chinook comes in to land in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. At the machine’s controls is one man and if he doesn’t stay calm then everyone could die. That man is Flt Lt Alex ‘Frenchie’ Duncan and he’s been involved in some of the most daring and dangerous missions undertaken by the Chinook force in Afghanistan. In this book he recounts his experiences of life under fire in the dust, heat and bullets of an active war zone.At 99ft long, the Chinook is a big and valuable target to the Taliban, who will stop at nothing to bring one down. And yet Frenchie and his crew risk everything because they know that the troops on the front line are relying on them. Sweating the Metal is the true story of the raw determination and courage of men on the front line – and it’s time for their story to be told.

Look at me. Do you see me? Do you see me in my olive-green uniform, beret, and shiny black boots? Do you see the assault rifle slung across my chest? Finally! I am the badass Israeli soldier at the side of the road, in sunglasses, forearms like bricks. And honestly—have you ever seen anything quite like me?

Joel Chasnoff is twenty-four years old, an American, and the graduate of an Ivy League university. But when his career as a stand-up comic fails to get off the ground, Chasnoff decides it’s time for a serious change of pace. Leaving behind his amenity-laden Brooklyn apartment for a plane ticket to Israel, Joel trades in the comforts of being a stereotypical American Jewish male for an Uzi, dog tags (with his name misspelled), and serious mental and physical abuse at the hands of the Israeli Army.

The 188th Crybaby Brigade is a hilarious and poignant account of Chasnoff’s year in the Israel Defense Forces—a year that he volunteered for, and that he’ll never get back. As a member of the 188th Armored Brigade, a unit trained on the Merkava tanks that make up the backbone of Israeli ground forces, Chasnoff finds himself caught in a twilight zone-like world of mandatory snack breaks, battalion sing-alongs, and eighteen-year-old Israeli mama’s boys who feign injuries to get out of guard duty and claim diarrhea to avoid kitchen work. More time is spent arguing over how to roll a sleeve cuff than studying the mechanics of the Merkava tanks. The platoon sergeants are barely older than the soldiers and are younger than Chasnoff himself. By the time he’s sent to Lebanon for a tour of duty against Hezbollah, Chasnoff knows everything about why snot dries out in the desert, yet has never been trained in firing the MAG. And all this while his relationship with his tough-as-nails Israeli girlfriend (herself a former drill sergeant) crumbles before his very eyes.

The lone American in a platoon of eighteen-year-old Israelis, Chasnoff takes readers into the barracks; over, under, and through political fences; and face-to-face with the absurd reality of life in the Israeli Army. It is a brash and gritty depiction of combat, rife with ego clashes, breakdowns in morale, training mishaps that almost cost lives, and the barely containable sexual urges of a group of teenagers. What’s more, it’s an on-the-ground account of life in one of the most em-battled armies on earth—an occupying force in a hostile land, surrounded by enemy governments and terrorists, reviled by much of the world. With equal parts irreverence and vulnerability, irony and intimacy, Chasnoff narrates a new kind of coming-of-age story—one that teaches us, moves us, and makes us laugh.

Life in the Israeli Army with author Joel Chasnoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T85k8p1awkI

From the air, the Pacific island of Iwo Jima looks like a large, gray pork chop. Its strategic location, midway between the U.S. B-29 airfields on the Marianas Islands and the Japanese home islands meant that it had to be seized no matter what the cost. On February 19, 1945, the invasion of Iwo Jima was launched. It became the greatest battle fought by the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. From it came the most famous image of the war, the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. When it ended a month later, the Marines had suffered 20,000 casualties—almost 5,000 men killed in action. And an astonishing twenty-six Marines were awarded America's highest decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor.Best viewed with CoolReader.

From the preeminent Hitler biographer, a fascinating and original exploration of how the Third Reich was willing and able to fight to the bitter end of World War II. Countless books have been written about why Nazi Germany lost World War II, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the equally vital question of how and why it was able to hold out as long as it did. The Third Reich did not surrender until Germany had been left in ruins and almost completely occupied. Even in the near-apocalyptic final months, when the war was plainly lost, the Nazis refused to sue for peace. Historically, this is extremely rare.Drawing on original testimony from ordinary Germans and arch-Nazis alike, award-winning historian Ian Kershaw explores this fascinating question in a gripping and focused narrative that begins with the failed bomb plot in July 1944 and ends with the German capitulation in May 1945. Hitler, desperate to avoid a repeat of the “disgraceful” German surrender in 1918, was of course critical to the Third Reich’s fanatical determination, but his power was sustained only because those below him were unable, or unwilling, to challenge it. Even as the military situation grew increasingly hopeless, Wehrmacht generals fought on, their orders largely obeyed, and the regime continued its ruthless persecution of Jews, prisoners, and foreign workers. Beneath the hail of allied bombing, German society maintained some semblance of normalcy in the very last months of the war. The Berlin Philharmonic even performed on April 12, 1945, less than three weeks before Hitler’s suicide.As Kershaw shows, the structure of Hitler’s “charismatic rule” created a powerful negative bond between him and the Nazi leadership- they had no future without him, and so their fates were inextricably tied. Terror also helped the Third Reich maintain its grip on power as the regime began to wage war not only on its ideologically defined enemies but also on the German people themselves. Yet even as each month brought fresh horrors for civilians, popular support for the regime remained linked to a patriotic support of Germany and a terrible fear of the enemy closing in.Based on prodigious new research, Kershaw’s The End is a harrowing yet enthralling portrait of the Third Reich in its last desperate gasps.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle AwardTWENTY-FIVE YEARS after its initial publication, The Making of the Atomic Bomb remains the seminal and complete story of how the bomb was developed, from the turn-of-the-century discovery of the vast energy locked inside the atom to the dropping of the first bombs on Japan.Few great discoveries have evolved so swiftly—or have been so misunderstood. From the theoretical discussions of nuclear energy to the bright glare of Trinity, there was a span of hardly more than twenty-five years. What began as merely an interesting speculative problem in physics grew into the Manhattan Project, and then into the bomb, with frightening rapidity, while scientists known only to their peers—Szilard, Teller, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Meitner, Fermi, Lawrence, and von Neumann—stepped from their ivory towers into the limelight.Richard Rhodes gives the definitive story of man’s most awesome discovery and invention. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a narrative tour de force and a document with literary power commensurate with its subject.