Recommendations based on "Bolt Action: Campaign: D-Day: Overlord"

From Neil MacGregor, the author of A History of the World in 100 Objects, this is a view of Germany like no other For the past 140 years, Germany has been the central power in continental Europe. Twenty-five years ago a new German state came into being. How much do we really understand this new Germany, and how do its people now understand themselves? Neil MacGregor argues that uniquely for any European country, no coherent, over-arching narrative of Germany's history can be constructed, for in Germany both geography and history have always been unstable. Its frontiers have constantly floated. Königsberg, home to the greatest German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is now Kaliningrad, Russia; Strasbourg, in whose cathedral Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest writer, discovered the distinctiveness of his country's art and history, now lies within the borders of France. For most of the five hundred years covered by this book Germany has been composed of many separate political units, each with a distinct history. And any comfortable national story Germans might have told themselves before 1914 was destroyed by the events of the following thirty years. German history may be inherently fragmented, but it contains a large number of widely shared memories, awarenesses and experiences; examining some of these is the purpose of this book. Beginning with the fifteenth-century invention of modern printing by Gutenberg, MacGregor chooses objects and ideas, people and places which still resonate in the new Germany - porcelain from Dresden and rubble from its ruins, Bauhaus design and the German sausage, the crown of Charlemagne and the gates of Buchenwald - to show us something of its collective imagination. There has never been a book about Germany quite like it.

From the quintessential author of wartime Germany, A Time to Love and a Time to Die echoes the harrowing insights of his masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front.After two years at the Russian front, Ernst Graeber finally receives three weeks’ leave. But since leaves have been canceled before, he decides not to write his parents, fearing he would just raise their hopes.Then, when Graeber arrives home, he finds his house bombed to ruin and his parents nowhere in sight. Nobody knows if they are dead or alive. As his leave draws to a close, Graeber reaches out to Elisabeth, a childhood friend. Like him, she is imprisoned in a world she did not create. But in a time of war, love seems a world away. And sometimes, temporary comfort can lead to something unexpected and redeeming.“The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review

Offering a uniquely new perspective on the psyches of Germany and Japan after World War II, an expert on those two countries' politics and history explores how each country dealt with its past and their legacies of guilt in light of the atrocities which were committed during the war.

Discover the key battles, tactics, technologies and turning points of the Second World War - the epic conflict that shaped the modern world.Combining authoritative, exciting text and bold explanatory graphics The World War II Book explores the causes, key events, and lasting consequences of the Second World War.Using the original, graphic-led approach of the series, entries profile more than 90 of the key ideas and events during and surrounding the conflict - from the rise of Hitler and Fascism in the 1930s to Pearl Harbor, the D-Day landings, and the bombing of Hiroshima to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.Offering a uniquely compelling, accessible, and immediate history of the war, The World War II Book shows how key battles, political and economic forces, individual leaders, and technological advances influenced the course of the conflict.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER ‘Elegantly written and powerfully argued ... it ranks among the best works on this terrible period’ Sunday Times A biographical study of Hitler's inner circle offers a new way to understand the horrors of the Nazi regime Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us. Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler’s orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways. Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.

Within days of the D-Day lanings, the 'Das Reich' 2nd SS Panzer Division marched north through France to reinforce the front-line defenders of Hitler's Fortress Europe. Veterans of the bloodiest fighting of the Russion Front, 15,000 men with their tanks and artillery, they were hounded for every mile of their march by saboteurs of the Resistance and agents of the Allied Special Forces. Along their route they took reporisals so savage they will live for ever in the chronicles of the most appalling atrocities of war. Max Hasting's powerful account of their progress is a true military classic.

In this powerful and revelatory new work, historian Mary Fulbrook takes on one of the most fraught issues in modern times: the role of ordinary Germans in enabling the rise of Nazism and with it the exclusion, persecution, and then extermination of millions of people across Europe. The question often asked of the Nazi era―what and when did ordinary Germans know about the crimes being committed in their name?―is, Fulbrook argues, the wrong one. The real question is how they interpreted and acted―or failed to act―upon what they knew; and how, in the process, became complicit.To address these issues, Fulbrook examines German society before and during the Nazi regime, exploring the social conditions that eventually facilitated mass murder. She explores the creation of a "bystander society," one in which the majority of Germans were either unable to act or developed growing indifference to the fate of those deemed "non-Aryan"―mainly Jews― and therefore outside the Volksgemeinschaft, or national community. Over the course of the 1930s, from Hitler's assumption of the German chancellorship, through the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, to the devastation of Kristallnacht, this "bystander society" became more entrenched. Ordinary Germans became passive about the fate of "non-Aryans" and, by turning away, contributed to their isolation from mainstream society. For many citizens of the Reich, conformity led progressively through growing complicity in everyday racism to more active involvement in genocide during World War Two. In other words, social changes under Nazi rule shaped the perceptions and responses of German citizens, creating the conditions that made the Holocaust possible.Based on an extraordinary archive of personal accounts, Bystander Society moves between the individual and the wider context, highlighting the significance of changing social and political circumstances over the course of the Nazi period by offering first-hand testimony both from those who were its primary victims, and those who initially sought to stay on the side lines but could not avoid being caught up in the violence of the times. These accounts illuminate how interpersonal relations in everyday life shifted, such that some fellow citizens could first be viewed as outcasts and then, in wartime, deported―most often to their deaths―in full view of those who would later often claim ignorance of their fates.Chilling and illuminating, Bystander Society reconceives the whole notion of "bystanding" within Nazi Germany, offering an interpretation of the conditions for inaction, one with wide and enduring relevance.

Winston Churchill's six-volume history of the cataclysm that swept the world remains the definitive history of the Second World War. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable both for its breadth and sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, it is universally acknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction and is an enduring, compelling work that led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Closing the Ring chronicles the period between June 1943 and July 1944 as the Allies consolidated their gains towards a drive to victory - the fall of Mussolini, Hitler's 'secret weapon', the mounting air offensive on Germany, strategies to defeat Japan and the plans for D Day.

Set in the years from 1937 to 1939, these novels paint an unforgettable portrait of a continent on the precipice of war. In THE POLISH OFFICER, Captain Alexander de Milja will become a spymaster in the anti-Nazi underground, posing as a poet, coal merchant and fascist sympathiser. In KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, a Hungarian cavalry officer will trade conspiracies with British spies and SS renegades on the orders of his uncle, a mysterious Count. And in DARK STAR, Andre Szara - a Pravda journalist and survivor of the Polish pogroms - quickly finds himself out of his depth after being sent to retrieve a battered briefcase. Suffused with romance, period detail and haunting tension, these novels show Furst at his inimitable best.

Based largely on formerly top-secret Soviet archival documents (including 66 reproduced documents and 70 illustrations), this book portrays the inner workings of the communist party and secret police during Germany's horrific 1941–44 siege of Leningrad, during which close to one million citizens perished. It shows how the city's inhabitants responded to the extraordinary demands placed upon them, encompassing both the activities of the political, security, and military elite as well as the actions and attitudes of ordinary Leningraders.