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 Edge of Centre - The Eventful Life of Group Captain Gerald Packer
Edge of Centre - The Eventful Life of Group Captain Gerald Packer
Author: Chris Coulthard-Clark
Edge of Centre - The Eventful Life of Group Captain Gerald Packer
Royal Australian Air Force Museum
1992
Format: PDF
Pages: 197
Language: English
Size: 13.7 MB

Though little known today, Gerald Packer was an influential figure in Australian public affairs for more than 30 years. An original thinker, Packer was prominent in Australia's intellectual circles both before and after the Second World War and contributed to an astonishingly diverse range of contemporary issues — including defense policy, international relations, economics, immigration, transport, business management and civil rights. Edge of Centre traces Packer s life from childhood to his death in 1962. entral to the story are his two periods of service in both the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Air Force. In the 1920s he was the RAAF s leading air photography expert, later becoming chief of intelligence and holding other senior posts at crucial points during the Second World War. His previously unacknowledged role in predicting Japan s entry into the war, the inquiry into the 1942 bombing of Darwin and the 1945 Morotai mutiny places Packer as a figure constantly operating at the edge of the centre. Drawing from extensive family records, Chris Coulthard-Clark has assembled a remarkable array of Packer s published and unpublished writings to provide an impressive testimony to the talents of an extraordinary individual.

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 Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945
Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945
Author: Williamson Murray
Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945
Freundlich Books
1987
ISBN: 0881910317
Format: PDF
Size: 20,5 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 379
Dr. Murray's book provides a detailed analytical study of the development of the Luftwaffe. The author takes an in-depth look at the "easy war" (1939-40) and the turn toward Russia in Operation Barbarossa. Dr. Murray investigates the war of attrition from 1942 through early 1944 and the reasons for the final demise of the Luftwaffe from April through September 1944.

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 Moral Combat - A History of World War II
Moral Combat - A History of World War II
Author: Michael Burleigh
Moral Combat - A History of World War II
Harper Press
2010
Format: PDF
Pages: 657
Language: English
Size: 41 MB

A clear, chronological narrative exploring many of the ethical dilemmas posed for real people during and after the Second World War.
Literature on the Second World War is voluminous. In ‘Moral Combat’, however, Michael Burleigh achieves what few historians can claim to have done; by exploring the moral sentiment of entire societies and their leaders, and how this changed under the impact of total war, he presents readers with an entirely fresh perspective of this conflict.
Opening with the 'predators' - Mussolini, Hitler, Prince Hirohito of Japan - and moving onto appeasement (a popular policy or a 'wrong' policy?), the rape of Poland, Barbarossa, the role of Churchill, and the Holocaust, Burleigh analyses the moral dimension of the Second World War's most important moments. More than merely a history of 'great men', however, Burleigh also examines the moral reasoning of individuals who had to make choices under circumstances difficult to imagine. Stressing the maxim that the past is used to make sense of the present world we live in, he takes us right up to today's war on terror - a war of competing ideas. What, in the end, will constitute its victory? Burleigh's fascinating and deeply engaging exploration refuses to draw lessons from the past for the future, remaining instead firmly focused on the on-the-spot decisions that came to define the conflict.
Original, perceptive and remarkable in scope, this is an unforgettable and hugely important Second World War history.

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 Inside the Third Reich
Inside the Third Reich
Author: Albert Speer
Inside the Third Reich
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0684829495
1997
Format: PDF
Size: 33,9 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 672
From 1946 to 1966, while serving the prison sentence handed down from the Nuremburg War Crimes tribunal, Albert Speer penned 1,200 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. Titled Erinnerungen ("Recollections") upon their 1969 publication in German, Speer's critically acclaimed personal history was translated into English and published one year later as Inside the Third Reich. Long after their initial publication, Speer's memoir continues to provide one of the most detailed and fascinating portrayals of life within Hitler's inner circles, the rise and fall of the third German empire, and of Hitler himself.
Speer chronicles his entire life, but the majority of Inside the Third Reich focuses on the years between 1933 and 1945, when Speer figured prominently in Hitler's government and the German war effort as Inspector General of Buildings for the Renovation of the Federal Capital and later as Minister of Arms and Munitions. Speer's recollections of both duties foreground the impossibility of reconciling Hitler's idealistic, imperialistic ambitions with both architectural and military reality. Throughout, Inside the Third Reich remains true to its author's intentions. With compelling insight, Speer reveals many of the "premises which almost inevitably led to the disasters" of the Third Reich as well as "what comes from one man's holding unrestricted power in his hands."

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 Hazebrouck 1940
Hazebrouck 1940
Author: Heyworth Michael
Hazebrouck 1940
Accrington: The Nayler Group
2004
Pages: 240
Format: pdf
Size: 83 mb
Language: English

This is the microhistory of Brian Kay Heyworth and 1st Buckinghamshire Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1939 and 1940. Major Heyworth was a lawyer when called up with his territorial battalion, and was commanding when killed in the defense of Hazebrouck in Belgium, a delaying action that held up the German advance for 48 hours to give more time to the Dunkirk evacuation. This book is based on Heyworth's letters to his wife, Betty, news clippings, eyewitness reports, and the regimental diary.

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 Flying Legends of World War II (Images of War)
Flying Legends of World War II (Images of War)
Author: Philip Handleman
Flying Legends of World War II (Images of War)
Pen and Sword Military
2011
Format: EPUB
Pages: 112
Size: 3 Mb

More than thirty Allied Forces' WWII aircraft types are illustrated in many rare and previously unpublished black and white and color photographs. Each type is described giving vital data on development history, combat record, famous pilots and significant air battles. Performance, range and weapon loads are also included. The unique color photographs are from the collection of the late William B. Slate, an aviation photographer who strove to capture the thrilling perspective that can only come from close-up, in-flight vantage points from an aircraft flying in formation.

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 Hong Kong 1941-1945
Hong Kong 1941-1945
Author: Benjamin Lai
Hong Kong 1941-1945: First strike in the Pacific War
Osprey Publishing
Osprey Campaign 263
ISBN: 1472801474
2014
Format: PDF (e-book)
Pages: 98
Size: 13 Mb
Language: English

On 8th December 1941, as part of the simultaneous combined attack against Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) invaded the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia and the British colony of Hong Kong. After only 18 days of battle the defenders, a weak, undermanned brigade, were overwhelmed by a superior force of two battle-hardened IJA divisions. What defines the battle of Hong Kong was not the scale - just 14,000 defended the colony - but the intensity of this battle, fought not only by the British Army, Navy and Air Force but also Canadians, Hong Kong’s own defence force, the Indian Army and many civilians.

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 The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
Author: Mary Elise Sarotte
The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall
Basic Books
ISBN: 0465064949
2014
Format: EPUB
Size: 10,3 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 320
On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
It was an accident.
In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin.
We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control.

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 War on the High Seas. The Third Reich Series
War on the High Seas. The Third Reich Series
War on the High Seas. The Third Reich Series
Time Life Books
Author:Time Life Books
1991
Language:English
Format: pdf
Size:26,4 Mb
This volume of Time-Life's classic history of the Third Reich tells of the naval rearmament during the 1930s & the German side of the war at sea, including the submarine campaign which in 1941 would come close to winning the war against Britain.

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 Panzers I & II: Germany's Light Tanks (Hitler's War Machine)
Panzers I & II: Germany's Light Tanks (Hitler's War Machine)
Author: Bob Carruthers
Panzers I & II: Germany's Light Tanks (Hitler's War Machine)
Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781592098
2013
Format: EPUB + PDF (conv)
Size: 1,4 МБ +
Language: English
Pages: 96
The first vehicle to be produced in any numbers for the Panzerwaffe was the tiny Panzer I known as the MG Panzerwagen. Almost from the outset the limitations of the design for the Panzer I were obvious. It was essentially a training vehicle, which was only pressed into service as a last resort. It was to be succeeded by the Panzer II, which could at least engage armoured cars and combat against tanks with approximately the same armor as itself.
Together these two tanks formed the bulk of the armor, which between 1939 and 1941 conquered half of Europe.
Emmy Award winning historian Bob Carruthers compiled this comprehensive overview of the light Panzers in action. It draws heavily on wartime intelligence reports to produce a fascinating insight into the development and combat history of the light Panzers at the tactical and operational level.
Also featured are rare developments such as the Panzer II flamethrower variant alongside unpublished photographs and illustrations, which provide an absorbing study, from an array of primary sources, of the world of the light Panzer and their crews from contemporary Allied sources.

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 The Birth of the Luftwaffe
The Birth of the Luftwaffe
Author: Hanfried Schliephake
The Birth of the Luftwaffe
Henry Regnery Company
1971
Format: PDF
Pages: 232
Language: English
Size: 36.3 MB

A massively detailed history of the Luftwaffe from the end of WW1 through to rebuilding in the the 1930's and up to 1939. The well produced photos cover all aspects of the Luftwaffe and cover both major types like the Bf109 & Ju87 through to less well known Luftwaffe types such as the Hs126 & He51. A very good reference for modellers and Luftwaffe historians.

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 Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day, 18 August 1940
Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day, 18 August 1940
Author: Alfred Price
Battle of Britain: The Hardest Day, 18 August 1940
Charles Scribner's Sons
1979
Format: PDF
Pages: 302
Language: English
Size: 30.2 MB

This is the story of one single day in the Battle of Britain. Sunday 18 August 1940 saw the Luftwaffe launch three major air assaults on Britain and the events of that day changed the destiny of the war. Alfred Price gives a compelling minute-by-minute account of that hardest day as experienced by those involved – RAF and Luftwaffe aircrew, behind-the-scenes planners and strategists, and members of the public above whose towns and villages the battle was waged.

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 Voices from the Luftwaffe (Hitler's War Machine)
Voices from the Luftwaffe (Hitler's War Machine)
Author: Bob Carruthers
Voices from the Luftwaffe (Hitler's War Machine)
Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1781591113
2013
Format: EPUB
Size: 3,2 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 128
"It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders." Hermann Goring This is the history of the Luftwaffe through the eyes of those who served in combat. The rise of the Luftwaffe from the ashes of the Great War is traced through recollections of Luftwaffe personnel who manned the gliders and perpetuated the charade that this was a civilian undertaking. The heady optimism generated by the stunning successes of the Blitzkrieg era are soon overturned by the grim experiences of the Battle of Britain and the life or death fight for the skies over Germany as the road leads ever downwards to defeat and Hitler's promised Gotterdammerung. The book is illustrated throughout with extensive selections from Der Adler, the wartime Luftwaffe propaganda magazine. This book is part of the 'Hitler's War Machine' series; a new military history range compiled and edited by Emmy Award winning author and historian Bob Carruthers. The series draws on primary sources and contemporary documents to provide a new insight into the true nature of Hitler's Wehrmacht. The series consultant is David Mcwhinnie creator of the award winning PBS series 'Battlefield'.

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 The Air War in the West. Sept. 1939-May 1941 (The Military History of World War II vol.6)
The Air War in the West. Sept. 1939-May 1941 (The Military History of World War II vol.6)
Author: Trevor Nevitt Dupuy
The Air War in the West. Sept. 1939-May 1941 (The Military History of World War II vol.6)
Franklin Watts, Inc.
1963
Format: PDF
Pages: 96
Language: English
Size: 36 MB

A retrospective of The Air War in the West. Sept. 1939-May 1941.

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 World War II at Sea: An Encyclopedia (2 Volumes)
World War II at Sea: An Encyclopedia (2 Volumes)
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
World War II at Sea: An Encyclopedia (2 Volumes)
ABC-CLIO
ISBN: 1598844571
2011
Format: PDF
Size: 10,0 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 925
Scholarly treatment of World War II is constantly changing as new materials inform new interpretations. At the same time, current military operations lead to reevaluation of the tactics and technologies of the past. Marshalling the latest information and insights into this epic conflict, World War II at Sea: An Encyclopedia will enable students and other interested readers to explore specific naval engagements, while also charting the transformation of naval history through innovations in ordnance.
In treating the naval aspects of World War II, this two-volume ready reference enhances the understanding of a part of the war that is often overshadowed by the fighting on land and in the air. The encyclopedia focuses on the events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that shaped the world's navies during World War II, as well as the resultant battles that changed naval history. It also covers the numerous innovations that occurred during the conflict and shows how strategies evolved and were executed.

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 Bomber Command: Reflections of War: Volume 4 - The Tide Turns 1943 -1944
Bomber Command: Reflections of War: Volume 4 - The Tide Turns 1943 -1944
Author: Martin Bowman
Bomber Command: Reflections of War: Volume 4 - The Tide Turns 1943 -1944
Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1848844956
2012
Format: PDF (conv)
Size: 11,4 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 256
This, the fourth and penultimate volume in the Bomber Command series, continues with the pace and quality we have come to expect from Martin Bowman. It adds itself to the volume of work published in the previous three volumes by Pen and Sword, and provides a comprehensive insight in to the experiences of Bomber Command's pilots and aircrew throughout World War Two.From the early wartime years when the RAF's first attempts to avenge Germany's onslaught were bedeviled by poor navigation and inaccurate bombing, to the final winning onslaught that finally tamed Hitler in his Berlin lair, these volumes trace the true experiences of the men who flew the bombers. Hundreds of firsthand accounts are punctuated by the author's background information that puts each narrative into wartime perspective. Every aspect of Bomber Commands operational duties are covered; day and night bombing, precision low-level strikes, mass raids and operations throughout all wartime theaters. Contributions are from RAF personnel who flew the command's different aircraft from the early Blenheims and Stirlings to the later Lancasters and Mosquitoes. Each volume is full of accounts that tell of the camaraderie amongst the crews, moments of sheer terror and the stoic humor that provided the critical bond. The five volumes of this work provide the most vivid and comprehensive work on the outstanding part played by RAF Bomber Command in their vital role in the destruction of the Third Reich.

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 The A to Z of World War II: The War Against Japan
The A to Z of World War II: The War Against Japan
The A to Z of World War II: The War Against Japan
Author: Anne Sharp Wells
Scarecrow Press, Inc.
2009
ISBN-13: 978–0810868632
Pages: 494
Language: English
Format: EPUB
Size: 10 MB

World War II dominates world history today as it dominated world attention over 60 years ago. In spite of the alliances that bound many of the same participants, the war was essentially two separate but simultaneous conflicts: one involved Japan as the major antagonist and took place mostly in Asia and Pacific; and the other, initiated by Germany and Italy, was contested mainly in Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. The A to Z of World War II: The War Against Japan traces the brutal conflict from Japan's seizure of Chinese territory in 1931, through the onset of war with the Western Allies in 1941, to the use of atomic weapons by the United States in 1945. It also addresses the aftermath of the war including the formation of the United Nations and the American occupation of Japan. As the first of two volumes covering World War II, this volume concentrates on the war in Asia and the Pacific so the user benefits from the comprehensive explanations of the people, places, and events that shaped much of that region's 20th-century history.

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 The Pacific War: The Story of the Bitter Struggle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II
The Pacific War: The Story of the Bitter Struggle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II
Author: Bernard C. Nalty
The Pacific War: The Story of the Bitter Struggle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II
Combined Publishing
ISBN: 184065094X
1999
Format: PDF
Size: 6,9 МБ
Language: English
Pages: 272
The American commanders conducting the war against Japan in World War II faced unique challenges. In spite of being ordered to fight a limited war until Germany could be defeated, U.S. naval and ground forces used their limited resources to launch an aggressive campaign to win back the Pacific islands occupied by the Japanese. Inter-service rivalry, the vast distances to be covered and a difficult climate continually hampered operations against an overextended but dedicated enemy.

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 1945: The Year of Liberation
1945: The Year of Liberation
Author: Stephen Goodell
1945: The Year of Liberation
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
1995
Format: PDF
Pages: 324
Language: English
Size: 46 MB

On January 17, 1945, after the last evening roll call, the SS commandant ordered the evacuation of the giant Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex. At that time, there were still about 65,000 prisoners in the camp complex, including the Auschwitz central camp, the Birkenau extermination camp, and the Monowitz (Buna) camp with its satellite labor camps. Throughout January 18, large columns of prisoners were marched toward the west, guarded by heavily armed SS troops.

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