Krig

The Second World War was the most destructive conflict in history. This Very Short Introduction explores the conditions in Europe at the end of the war, how political life took shape, how European societies and economies were rebuilt, the Cold War, the course and consequences of the end of empire, and European cultural life.

The third book in the Women of the Resistance series sees Serbian fighter Alix hoping for a reunion with the American pilot who has captured her heart.

The tenth volume in Graham Hurley's critically acclaimed Spoils of War collection of novels set amongst the key events of World War II and related conflicts.

Arrested as a spy by the Nazis in 1942, Christopher Burney was held in solitary confinement for 526 days in a prison in Paris. This book is his account of how he managed not only to maintain his mental and emotional health but to develop the resilience he later needed to survive in Buchenwald concentration camp. A psychological masterpiece.

". . . masterful, evocative, and original." -Georgina Petty, journalist and author of Top Dogs"A wonderful dance in a beautiful hall of mirrors taking the reader through the decades of glamour and war, love and espionage." -Sarah Ingham, PhD, author of The Military CovenantBriggens House, Essex 1942, the other Bletchley Park - the one you have never heard of . . .Briggens House, Essex 1940. An unassuming country house, home of the Polish Army in exile, houses in its basement a secret Special Operations Executive (SOE) unit where all the forged documents needed by the Allies are made. Here identities are created for agents dropped into enemy territory. Their lives depend on these documents looking authentic.Peter and Elisabeth start an affair while working at Briggens House but lose touch soon after the war ends. Why then, forty years later, does she leave him something in her will?Peter resolves to find out, discovering the extraordinary life she led after the war and the passionate affair that informed the choices she made and the person she became. But Peter, too, is changed by the journey, discovering new ways of seeing his past.Using detailed research into the workings of this crucial but little-known SOE unit, Ipseity weaves a tender, passionate love story with the deception and intrigue of the fascinating world of wartime forgery.

Behind Enemy Lines - The war memoirs of Jedburgh Officer John OlmstedIn Behind Enemy Lines, American OSS agent John Olmsted tells the fascinating story of his experiences as a member of Jedburgh Team 'Dudley', which dropped into occupied east Netherlands on 11/12 September 1944.Together with his two comrades, Dutch officer Henk Brinkgreve and Irish radio operator John 'Bunny' Austin, Olmsted's mission was to help organize the armed resistance in Overijssel in support of the Allied advance during Operation Market Garden, which started six days later.Following the Allied defeat at Arnhem, Olmsted and his team were trapped behind enemy lines. John Olmsted was one of the few Allied soldiers who managed to escape with Operation Pegasus 2 across the Rhine to liberated territory after the Battle of Arnhem. He vividly wrote about his experiences in Overijssel and Gelderland on the boat trip back to the USA shortly after the end of the war.Olmsted's first-person account allows us to see one of the most shocking episodes in Dutch history through the eyes of a young American officer. These are the perspectives of an outsider, who is simultaneously at the center of events. With warmth, humor, and an eye for detail, he grants us a fascinating glimpse into occupied Holland in the fall of 1944.John Malcolm Olmsted (1914-2001) returned to the Netherlands in 1985. During this visit, he handed over a manuscript to historian Dr. Coen Hilbrink, whose family had sheltered Olmsted in 1944, with tragic consequences. Hilbrink added annotations, highlighting the harrowing experiences of the Overijssel Resistance and the tragic fate of Olmsted's fellow team members. Brinkgreve and Austin did not survive the war; both were executed in 1945, just weeks before the Liberation.The manuscript was edited as minimally as possible, preserving Olmsted's unique perspective as both an observer and a participant, making it a distinctive historical document.The cover photo shows what remained of the Twente Resistance headquarters after the raid by the Sicherheitsdienst. Olmsted and his team assisted the Resistance with sabotage.

Bonnier's biography reads like an absorbing novel, with its twists and turns, reconstructed dialogue and author's acute observations. As well as being a tragic human story, It is an illuminating study of the convoluted political context of the affair, which will be unfamiliar to some Anglophone readers.

Pre-order the enthralling story from military museum curator and medal specialist Mark Smith, about his father's missions during the Second World War

Is the NSA spying on Americans? It wouldn't be the first time. Does the CIA still assassinate people? Depends on what you mean by "assassinate." Is the intelligence community really a "deep state" that subverts American democracy? Not exactly, but it has interfered in politics too often in US history. These types of questions have preoccupied the American people and international audiences in recent years. But the origins of these and other controversies reach back even further in US history. The Spy and the State provides readers with the foundation to understand the past, navigate the present, and shape the future of American intelligence.

The Book of Raymond of Aguilers is one of a handful of eyewitness accounts of the First Crusade. This new translation is the first to be based on the critical edition of the Latin text produced by John France and is intended primarily for the benefit of undergraduates and to make Raymond more accessible in the classroom.

In this book David A.J. Richards offers an investigative comparison of two central figures in late 18th century constitutionalism, Edmund Burke and James Madison, at a time when two great constitutional experiments were in play, the Constitution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the U.S. Constitution of 1787.

Andr Trocm is famous for his role in saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis as pastor of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, a story celebrated in literature and film. But who was the man behind the legend, and the how did he become an international hero and uncompromising advocate of nonviolence resistance? Appearing in English for the first time, his private memoirs give a colorful and honest account of a person determined to stay true to his faith and convictions, who despite his quirks was ready to stand his ground when world history came knocking.Written for his children in the 1950s and first published in French in 2020, these memoirs trace Andr Trocms extraordinary life: a bourgeois childhood; teenage years as a World War I refugee; studies abroad in New York City, where he met his future wife, Magda, and tutored the Rockefeller children; military service in Algeria, which cemented his pacifist stance; postings as a pastor in depressed areas of France; resisting fascism and hiding Jews in Le Chambon; a brief imprisonment and a stint underground; and globetrotting leadership in the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Trocm also reveals the impact of personal tragedies: the untimely death of his mother in a car accident for which his father was responsible and, years later, his teenage sons suicide.This detailed first-person account from an eyewitness to pivotal moments in history will be of interest not just to scholars of the Holocaust, World War II, and domestic resistance to fascism, but also to those seeking to follow their conscience and the teachings of their faith in trying times.People who enjoyed Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, A Good Place to Hide and Village of Secrets will appreciate reading the story in Trocm's own words.

A Washington Post Notable Book“Excellent . . . A more intimate picture of the dictator’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before.” —The New York Times“Another triumph from one of our best journalists.” —The Washington Post"Voluminously researched and compulsively readable." —Air MailFrom bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Steve Coll, the definitive story of the decades-long relationship between the United States and Saddam Hussein, and a deeply researched and news-breaking investigation into how human error, cultural miscommunication, and hubris led to one of the costliest geopolitical conflicts of our timeWhen the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved: Why had Saddam seemingly sacrificed his long reign in power by giving the false impression that he had hidden stocks of dangerous weapons? The Achilles Trap masterfully untangles the people, ploys of power, and geopolitics that led to America’s disastrous war with Iraq and, for the first time, details America’s fundamental miscalculations during its decades-long relationship with Saddam Hussein. Beginning with Saddam’s rise to power in 1979 and the birth of Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, Steve Coll traces Saddam’s motives by way of his inner circle. He brings to life the diplomats, scientists, family members, and generals who had no choice but to defer to their leader—a leader directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the torture or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more. This was a man whose reasoning was impossible to reduce to a simple explanation, and the CIA and successive presidential administrations failed to grasp critical nuances of his paranoia, resentments, and inconsistencies—even when the stakes were incredibly high.Calling on unpublished and underreported sources, interviews with surviving participants, and Saddam’s own transcripts and audio files, Coll pulls together an incredibly comprehensive portrait of a man who was convinced the world was out to get him and acted accordingly. A work of great historical significance, The Achilles Trap is the definitive account of how corruptions of power, lies of diplomacy, and vanity—on both sides—led to avoidable errors of statecraft, ones that would enact immeasurable human suffering and forever change the political landscape as we know it.