This compelling history examines the closing months of the vital campaign which ultimately determined the successful conclusion of the Pacific War for the Allies. But it had not been a smooth process. The campaign continued in fits and starts with both the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy making crucial errors. But as the pendulum of war swung, there was one distinct advantage to the Allies. This was the successful efforts by the United States Army Signals Intelligence Section and the Navy Communication Special Unit to monitor, intercept, decode and translate Japanese messages.

In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful offensive across the Vistula River to drive the Wehrmacht out of Poland, with the intention of securing a start line for an operation that would ultimately result in the capture of Berlin and the end of the war. But, as Prit Buttar expertly reveals, there were other issues at play. Stalin was determined to push the boundaries of the Soviet Union further west, restoring land lost by the tsars and securing vast industrial and mineral wealth.

With the defeat of the Germans and Italians on Sicily in mid-July 1943, the focus of the war in the air shifted toward the battle for the Italian mainland itself. This campaign took place in the context of the coming invasion of northwest Europe, with many of the best units from the North African and Sicilian campaigns withdrawn to prepare for the new front, while those units that remained had a lower priority for replacements of men and material.

In May 1945 and then again in August and early September, the seemingly endless World War II finally came to a close in eight dramatic surrender ceremonies, six in Europe and the last two in Japan. On the 80th anniversary of those historic moments, celebrated historians James Holland and Al Murray chronicle these momentous events in turn, focusing especially on the human dramas behind each surrender and relating stories and perspectives on the end of the war that have not previously been told.

The Reichsverteidigung (Defence of the Reich) was a do or die campaign that saw the very best fighter pilots in the Luftwaffe attempt to defend German skies from increasingly large formations of RAF and USAAF medium and heavy bombers. Flying both piston-engined and, eventually, the first jet-engined fighters to see operational service, the Jagdflieger employed a wide range of weapons and tactics in an effort to blunt the Allied air offensive across Nazi Germany and Occupied Europe.

In May 1945 and then again in August and early September, the seemingly endless World War II finally came to a close in eight dramatic surrender ceremonies, six in Europe and the last two in Japan. On the 80th anniversary of those historic moments, celebrated historians James Holland and Al Murray chronicle these momentous events in turn, focusing especially on the human dramas behind each surrender and relating stories and perspectives on the end of the war that have not previously been told.

Masters and Commanders has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

This compelling history examines the closing months of the vital campaign which ultimately determined the successful conclusion of the Pacific War for the Allies. But it had not been a smooth process. The campaign continued in fits and starts with both the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy making crucial errors. But as the pendulum of war swung, there was one distinct advantage to the Allies. This was the successful efforts by the United States Army Signals Intelligence Section and the Navy Communication Special Unit to monitor, intercept, decode and translate Japanese messages.

The Rhineland was where Adolf Hitler sowed the seeds for the Second World War when he remilitarized it in breach of the Treaty of Versailles in 1936, and by late 1944 the Rhine provided the last major obstacle to the advancing Allied armies that were threatening the Fatherland itself. In this new history of this vital campaign, respected military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones describes the race against time as the Germans fought to stave off the inevitable.

In January 1945, the Red Army launched a powerful offensive across the Vistula River to drive the Wehrmacht out of Poland, with the intention of securing a start line for an operation that would ultimately result in the capture of Berlin and the end of the war. But, as Prit Buttar expertly reveals, there were other issues at play. Stalin was determined to push the boundaries of the Soviet Union further west, restoring land lost by the tsars and securing vast industrial and mineral wealth.

In his riveting debut, Where the Birds Never Sing, Jack Sacco recounts the realistic, harrowing, at times horrifying, and ultimately triumphant tale of an American GI in World War II. Told through the eyes of his father, Joe Sacco—a farm boy from Alabama who was flung into the chaos of Normandy and survived the terrors of the Bulge—this is no ordinary war story. As part of the 92nd Signal Battalion and Patton’s famed 3rd Army, Joe and his buddies found themselves at the forefront—often in front of the infantry or behind enemy lines—of the Allied push through France and Germany.

Following the battles of Kohima and Imphal in mid-1944, the tide was turning against the Imperial Japanese Army. By the end of that fateful year, the Allies were preparing to launch an offensive in the Arakan region of Burma, to deliver a knockout blow to the increasingly desperate Japanese 28th Army. This fascinating new history details the actions of 3 Commando Brigade, who would spearhead this attack in a series of daring amphibious landings into the depths of the Burmese jungle, culminating in the brutal fight for Hill 170.

By mid-1863, the Civil War, with Northern victories in the West and Southern triumphs in the East, seemed unwinnable for Abraham Lincoln. Robert E. Lee’s bold thrust into Pennsylvania, if successful, could mean Southern independence. In a desperate countermove, Lincoln ordered George Gordon Meade—a man hardly known and hardly known in his own army—to take command of the Army of the Potomac and defeat Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Just three days later, the two great armies collided at a small town called Gettysburg.

Combining the personal recollections of soldiers with historical narrative and analysis of the actual invasion as it unfolded, this is a detailed description of the action at Omaha Beach during the Normandy invasion of World War II.

Gettysburg explains the battle's place in the Civil War, why two vast armies clashed there, and how, in the century and a half since, it has been re-imagined, re-created, and re-enacted. It is the story of a battle which no one planned but which became the bloodiest encounter of the war, and one with dramatically high stakes. The postwar romanticization of Gettysburg as the place of "might-have-beens" is based on a kernel of reality.