Hitler`s Atlantic Wall: Pas de Calais tells the history of how & why the giant batteries were built, the origins of their weaponry & the ingenious engineering & military operations that defeated them finally. The book describes the massive effort that the occupying Nazi forces put into the construction of the Eastern section of the Atlantic Wall. While the D-Day invasion was unaffected by the fortifications in this area, they still posed a significant threat from the mighty gun batteries (such as Batteries Todt & Lindemann) that threatened Channel shipping & the South Coast of Engl&. While isolated from the main Allied advance, the Festung ports of Calais, Boulogne & Dunkirk were denied to Allied use. This was of major strategic significance as the lines of supply were becoming ever longer & more vulnerable. Using rare archive material, the book takes the reader on a fascinating journey along the coast that Hitler was wrongly convinced would be the site of the Allied landings. The acclaimed “ Battleground” series from the renowned military publishers Pen & Sword provides an extensive range of titles describing specific battles, particularly during the two World Wars. Well written & illustrated with contemporary photos, drawings & maps, the books give much more detailed & vivid descriptions than found in more general titles, bringing the battlefields alive for visitors as well as informing & entertaining readers at home. Where appropriate, the guides include recommendations for visiting the memorials, cemeteries, monuments & museums by local walks and/or car tours & include recommendations for further reading. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

From his first visit to Berlin in 1916, Hitler was preoccupied & fascinated by Germany`s great capital city. In this vivid & entirely new account of Hitler`s relationship with Berlin, Thomas Friedrich explores how Hitler identified with the city, how his political aspirations were reflected in architectural aspirations for the capital, & how Berlin surprisingly influenced the development of Hitler`s political ideas. A leading expert on the twentieth-century history of Berlin, Friedrich employs new & little-known German sources to track Hitler`s attitudes & plans for the city. Even while he despised both the cosmopolitan culture of the Weimar Republic & the profound Jewish influence on the city, Hitler was drawn to the grandiosity of its architecture & its imperial spirit. He dreamed of transforming Berlin into a capital that would reflect his autocracy, & he used the city for such varied purposes as testing his anti-Semitic policies & demonstrating the might of the Third Reich. Illuminating Berlin`s burdened years under Nazi subjection, Friedrich offers new understandings of Hitler & his politics, architectural views, & artistic opinions. ...

True-life recollections from the Channel Islanders who were the only British subjects to live under Nazi rule in WWII. ` An absolutely fascinating account of life under German rule in the Channel Islands during the war. As a Guernsey girl I grew up with these stories & recognise family & friends in these pages. Duncan Barrett has done a brilliant job of reflecting the peculiar challenges that existed for those living under occupation. It is an under-told story of an extraordinary time in recent British history.`
- Sarah Montague, The Today Programme presenter.** The new book from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Sugar Girls** In the summer of 1940, Britain stood perilously close to invasion. One by one, the nations of Europe had fallen to the unstoppable German Blitzkrieg, & Hitler`s sights were set on the English coast. & yet, following the success of the Battle of Britain, the promised invasion never came. The prospect of German jackboots landing on British soil retreated into the realm of collective nightmares. But the spectre of what might have been is one that has haunted us down the decades, finding expression in counterfactual history & outlandish fictions. What would a British occupation have looked like? The answer lies closer to home than we think, in the experiences of the Channel Islanders
- the only British people to bear the full brunt of German Occupation. For five years, our nightmares became their everyday reality. The people of Guernsey, Jersey & Sark got to know the enemy as those on the mainland never could, watching in horror as their towns & villages were suddenly draped in Swastika flags, their cinemas began showing Nazi propaganda films, & Wehrmacht soldiers goose-stepped down their highstreets. Those who resisted the regime, such as the brave men & women who set up underground newspapers or sheltered slave labourers, encountered the full force of Nazi brutality. But in the main, the Channel Islands occupation was a `model` one, a prototype for how the Fuhrer planned to run mainland Britain. As a result, the stories of the islanders are not all misery & terror. Many, in fact are rather funny
- tales of plucky individuals trying to get by in almost impossible circumstances, & keeping their spirits up however they could. Unlike their compatriots on the mainl&, the islanders had no Blitz to contend with, but they met the thousand other challenges the war brought with a similar indomitable spirit. The story of the Channel Islands during the war is the history that could so nearly have come to pass for the rest of us. Based on interviews with over a hundred islanders who lived through it, this book tells that story from beginning to end, opening the lid on life in Hitler`s British Isles.


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Hitler`s British Traitors is the first authoritativeaccount of a well-kept secret: the British Fifth Column & its activitiesduring the Second World War. Drawing on hundreds of declassifiedofficial files
- many of them previously unpublished
- Tim Tate uncovers thelargely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted, mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, andseveral hundred British Fascists who were interned without trial on evidencethat they were working on behalf of the enemy. Four were condemned to death;two were executed. Thisengrossing book reveals the extraordinary methods adopted by MI5 to uncover British traitors & their German spymasters, as well as two serious wartime plots bywell-connected British fascists to mount a coup d`etat whichwould replace the government with an authoritarian pro-Nazi regime. The book also shows how archaicattitudes to social status & gender in Whitehall & the courts ensured thatjustice was neither fair nor equitable. Aristocratic British pro-Nazisympathizers & collaborators were frequently protected while theless-privileged foot soldiers of the Fifth Column were interned, jailed or evenexecuted for identical crimes.

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It`s April 1940 & German troops are pouring onto the streets of Denmark. 12-year-old Bamse is ordered by his father to keep his head down & stay out of trouble. But Bamse & his daring friend Anton can`t resist playing the occasional practical joke on the invading soldiers. When it becomes clear that the trouble isn`t just going to pass them by, the people of Denmark decide to take action & Bamse & his eccentric family are about to take part in one of history`s most dramatic rescues
- smuggling Denmark`s Jewish population, across the water to Sweden, & safety. Many of the characters are based on Sandi`s own family, including her father, Bamse, & the book was inspired by the stories her told to her.
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` More than 70 years ago I was a ”gift” for Adolf Hitler. I was stolen as a baby to be part of one of the most terrible of all Nazi experiments: Lebensborn.` The Lebensborn programme was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race, leaving behind thousands of displaced victims in the wake of the Nazi regime. In 1942 Erika, a baby girl from Sauerbrunn in Yugoslavia, was taken for a `medical` examination by the Nazi occupiers. Declared an ` Aryan`, she was removed from her mother & held in a children`s home; her true identity erased, she became Ingrid von Oelhafen. Later, as Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme & the Nazi obsession with bloodlines became clear
- including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her, & the deliberate murder of children born into the programme who were deemed `substandard`. Written with insight & compassion, this is a powerful meditation on the personal legacy of Hitler`s vision, of Germany`s brutal past & of a divided Europe that for many years struggled to come to terms with its own history.
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On 30th April 1945 Germany is in chaos
- Russian troops have reached Berlin. All over the country, people are on the move
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On 30th April 1945 Germany is in chaos... Russian troops have reached Berlin. All over the country, people are on the move
- concentration
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Ernst Hanfstaengl was court jester, pianist, & foreign press chief for Hitler, he even claimed to have devised the chant of Sieg Heil, but when the two men fell out he fled to Britain, where he was interned & transferred to America. There he worked as the star of Roosevelt`s `S-Project, ` informing on 400 leading Nazis & creating a detailed psychological portrait of Hitler. Through newly declassified documents, interviews with surviving family members & original writing by Hanfstaengl himself, Peter Conradi recounts a remarkable life. ...

A madcap new novel from the one-of-a-kind author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window & The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden IT`S NEVER TOO LATE TO START AGAIN. & AGAIN. It`s always awkward when five thousand kronor goes missing. When it happens at a certain grotty hotel in south Stockholm, it`s particularly awkward because the money belongs to the hitman currently staying in room seven. Per Persson, the hotel receptionist, just wants to mind his own business, & preferably not get murdered. Johanna Kjellander, temporarily resident in room eight, is a priest without a vocation, &, as of last week, without a parish. But right now she has two things at her disposal: an envelope containing five thousand kronor, & an excellent idea.. . Featuring one violent killer, two shrewd business brains & many crates of Moldovan red wine, Hitman Anders & the Meaning of It All is an outrageously zany story with as many laughs as Jonasson`s multimillion-copy bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window & Disappeared. ...