Europe Books - Page 13

Sigh for a Merlin

Alex Henshaw

By: Arrow Books Ltd Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $48.24

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

stunning war time exploits of legendary pilot alex henshaw 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

The exploits of Alex Henshaw are done some fine justice in this book. It highlights testing of dangerous airplanes during WWII and how so many people contributed without mention. any flying fan will trully love this one! A must for aviation fans.

A nation at war brings the cream to the top - A great read 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

A nation at war, all hands to the tiller. Henshaw, already renowned as a young solo long distance record-breaking pilot, after a brief spell twiddling his fingers at Vickers, Weybridge meets Geoffrey Quill - another talented young flier, already chief test pilot of the Spitfire. In no time at all, he is offered and accepts the post of production test pilot at the massive, barely finished Castle Bromwich factory in the heart of the Midlands, with its Black Country weather.
By the end of the war, Henshaw had flown over 3,000 Spits straight off the line, barrel rolled Lancasters and flown upside down along ....!
Excelling in inverted flight, Henshaw's required to demo the Spit at the drop of a hat, flight test them in appalling conditions and keep a large team of disparate pilots working foir the common good. His sheer professionalism, commitment and outstanding flying skills shine through. Modestly written, a superb account of a great plane and great pilot.

The Combat History of German Heavy Anti-Tank Unit 653 in World War II

Karlheinz Munch

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Stackpole Books Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $14.95

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

* Hundreds of photos, many never published before, of Germany's rarely seen tank destroyers, including the Ferdinand, Elephant, and Jagdtiger

* Color illustrations focus on unit markings, numbering, and camouflage

* Accompanying text chronicles the unit's combat operations

* Personal accounts from the men who rode in these mechanical monsters

German Heavy Anti-Tank Unit 653 was equipped with the heaviest tank destroying vehicles of the German armed forces. Initially activated as an assault gun battalion and redesignated in April 1943, the 653 received its first Ferdinand tank destroyers (later modified and renamed Elephants) in May 1943 and went into action on the Eastern Front a month later. In 1944, the unit converted to the even more massive Jagdtiger. The seventy-five-ton, heavily armored Jagdtiger was the behemoth of the battlefield and boasted a 128mm gun -- as opposed to the Ferdinand's 88 -- with a range of more than thirteen miles, making it deadly despite its limited mobility. Outfitted with these lethal giants, the 653 saw service in Russia, Italy, Austria, and Germany.

Miracles On the Water: The Heroic Survivors of a World War II U-Boat Attack

Tom Nagorski

Amazon Price: $18.21 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Amazon Marketplace: 77 new & used starting at $0.32

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An unforgettable story of children in wartime, of heroism at sea, and -- above all -- of courage and the power of the human spirit

On September 17, 1940, at a little after ten at night, a German submarine torpedoed the passenger liner S.S. City of Benares in the North Atlantic. There were 406 people on board, but the ship’s prized passengers were 90 children whose parents had elected to send their boys and girls away from Great Britain to escape the ravages of World War II. They were considered lucky, headed for quiet, peaceful, and relatively bountiful Canada.

The Benares sank in half an hour, in a gale that sent several of her lifeboats pitching into the frigid sea. They were more than five hundred miles from land, three hundred miles from the nearest rescue vessel.

Miracles on the Water tells the astonishing story of the survivors -- not one of whom had any reasonable hope of rescue as the ship went down. The initial "miracle" involves one British destroyer’s race to the scene, against time and against the elements; the second is the story of Lifeboat 12, missed by the destroyer and left out on the water, 46 people jammed in a craft built and stocked for 30. Those people lasted eight days on little food and tiny rations of drinking water. The survivors have grappled ever since with questions about the ordeal: Should the Benares have been better protected? How and why did they persevere? What role did faith and providence play in the outcome?

Based on first hand accounts from the child survivors and other passengers, including the author’s great-uncle, Miracles on the Water brings us the story of the attack on the Benares and the extraordinary events that followed.

Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945

Paul Addison

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher Amazon Marketplace: 28 new & used starting at $5.41

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

A Mixed Bag 2 out of 5 stars.
11 of 16 people found this review helpful.

There are good and bad points about this book. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good by a bit. There are interesting factoids presented throughout the book, which periodically does illuminate some little-known aspects of the Allied bombing of Germany that in a sense culminated in Dresden. But the book is a mish-mash. Every now and again the author, in explaining topic A, mentions toic B, at which point we get a multi-page exegesis on Topic B. Unfortunately, Topic B is often at best tangential, and at worst almost irrelevant, to the main subjects addressed in the book. It's as if the author either wanted to add words and pages for the sake of increasing volume or to show off his knowledge regarding diverse subjects. Not well edited.

Editorial Review:

On the night of February 13, 1945, British planes bombed the city of Dresden in Germany, causing devastating fires that obliterated the historic city center and killed thousands of people. The next day U.S. bombers returned for another attack. In all, more than a thousand aircrafts dropped almost 3,500 tons of high explosives, incendiaries, and flares on the city; a conservative estimate of the number killed was 25,000. Sixty years later these raids remain one of the most notorious and controversial episodes in the history of World War II. Firestorm assembles a cast of distinguished scholars, including Sebastian Cox, Donald Bloxham, Tami Davis Biddle, Nicola Lambourne, Sonke Neitzel, Richard Overy, Alan Russell, and Hew Strachan to review the origins, conduct, and consequences of the raids. Firestorm cogently demonstrates the reasons why Dresden has come to symbolize the military and ethical questions involved in the waging of total war.

Sting of the Scorpion: The Inside Story of the Long Range Desert Group

Mike Morgan

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The History Press Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $5.26

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Intoxicating STING! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is the amazing story/history of the LRDG, a WWII special forces unit that would probe the desert waste lands to conduct reconnaissance, pathfinding missions, mapping and survey ops as well as limited direct action missions, against Italian targets of opportunity. The unit also ferried the SAS into operations. This book is fabulously written and structured makes the read quite fast and easy. This story covers the LRDG birth in the desert as long-range patrol unit to the LRDG. It covers the personalities, evolution of the unit; operations, equipment and an inside look at many of the tactics and procedures employed at that time for mobility operations. Excellent book if you would like to see the roots of modern special operations. Well worth the read.

Editorial Review:

The Long Range Desert Group was Britain's original Special Force in the Western Desert long before the SAS burst onto the scene. Sting of the Scorpion is the exclusive, authorised, inside story of the tough LRDG raiders of the Second World War, drawn from the unpublished records of the famous force. The unit won unrivalled mastery of the North African desert in their wide-ranging and heavily armed trucks, earning grudging praise even from Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, for their skilful reconnaissance, punishing raids and powers of evasion.

The Stalin and Molotov Lines: Soviet Western Defences 1928-41 (Fortress)

Neil Short

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

During the Russian Civil War, the Red Army created a series of fortified areas, or ukreplinnyje rajony (UR), which were to be used not only for defence but were also to act as staging points for offensive operations. Following the end of the war these defences were extended, creating a front that stretched over 2,000km from the Baltic to the Black Sea, that consisted of more than 3,000 positions from forts to machine gun and antitank positions, emplaced tank turrets, and observation and command positions. By the outbreak of World War II, these defenses - known as the Stalin Line - were largely complete.

However, after the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in October 1939 the Stalin Line was too far behind the new border to be of use as a springboard for an offensive. So, a new set of defenses was begun, named after the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov. Equipment was stripped from the Stalin Line, but only 25 percent of the positions had been completed by the time of the German invasion in June 1941 and it proved no match for the Wehrmacht - positions were mostly empty or simply bypassed during the advance. Illustrated with cutaway artwork and rare photographs this book provides a detailed examination of the development of these defensive lines, and the fighting that took place around them in 1941, and is packed with detail and information that is not readily available in the English.

Death Was Our Companion: The Final Days of the Third Reich

Tony Le Tissier

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

As Hitler's dreams of a Thousand Year Reich crumbled in the face of overwhelming assaults from both East and West in the first months of 1945, the heavily out numbered German armed forces were still capable of fighting with a tenacity and professionalism at odds with the desperate circumstances. While Hitler fantasized about deploying divisions and armies that had long since ceased to exist, boys of fifteen, officer cadets, sailors and veterans of the Great War joined the survivors of shattered formations on the front line. Leading historian Tony Le Tissier gives a German perspective to the mayhem and bloodshed of the last months of the Second World War in Europe. Teenaged Flak auxiliaries recount their experiences alongside veteran Panzergrenadiers attempting to break out of Soviet encirclement. Struggles between the military, industry and the Nazi Party for influence over the defenders of Berlin contrast with a key participant's account of Goebbel's abortive attempt to conclude a cease-fire with the Soviets. This is fascinating reading for anybody interested in the ordinary soldier's experience of the culminating battles in central Europe in 1945.

The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Artificial Life plus The Secrets of Enigma

Alan M. Turing

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Artificial Intelligence -> Cognitive Simulation

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Alan Turing was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. In 1935, aged 22, he developed the mathematical theory upon which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modeled. At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in September 1939, he joined the Goverment Codebreaking team at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire and played a crucial role in deciphering Engima, the code used by the German armed forces to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as 'Fish,' which were used by the German High Command for the encryption of signals during the latter part of the war. His contribution helped to shorten the war in Europe by an estimated two years. After the war, his theoretical work led to the development of Britain's first computers at the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University. Turing was also a founding father of modern cognitive science, theorizing that the cortex at birth is an 'unorganized machine' which through 'training' becomes organized 'into a universal machine or something like it.' He went on to develop the use of computers to model biological growth, launching the discipline now referred to as Artificial Life. The papers in this book are the key works for understanding Turing's phenomenal contribution across all these fields. The collection includes Turing's declassified wartime 'Treatise on the Enigma'; letters from Turing to Churchill and to codebreakers; lectures, papers, and broadcasts which opened up the concept of AI and its implications; and the paper which formed the genesis of the investigation of Artifical Life.

Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment (Annals of Communism Series)

Wojciech Materski

Amazon Price: $29.70 List Price: $45.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Yale University Press Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $28.17

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The 14,500 Polish army officers, police, gendarmes, and civilians taken prisoner by the Red Army when it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939 were held in three special NKVD camps and executed at three different sites in spring 1940, of which the one in Katyn Forest is the most famous. Another 7,300 prisoners held in NKVD jails in Ukraine and Belarus were also shot at this time, although many others disappeared without trace. The murder of these Poles is among the most monstrous mass murders undertaken by any modern government.

 

Three leading historians of the NKVD massacres of Polish prisoners of war at Katyn, Kharkov, and Tver—now subsumed under “Katyn”—present 122 documents selected from the published Russian and Polish volumes coedited by Natalia S. Lebedeva and Wojciech Materski. The documents, with introductions and notes by Anna M. Cienciala, detail the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up, the admission of the truth, and the Katyn question in Soviet/Russian–Polish relations up to the present.

This Is Berlin: Radio Broadcasts from Nazi Germany

William Shirer

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

By the acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the dramatic daily radio broadcasts that described the menacing steps Germany took toward World War II--just as America and the world heard them.

Through his broadcasts for Edward R. Murrow on CBS Radio, William Shirer was a masterful chronicler of the events in Europe that led up to World War II. His first major Berlin broadcast was an eyewitness account of the Anschluss--the fall of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938. Soon after, Shirer covered Neville Chamberlain's betrayal of Czechoslovakia and that country's subsequent capitulation.

For the next eighteen months, Shirer's broadcasts covered German threats against Poland and the subsequent "Blitzkrieg" offensive; the staggering news of the almost unbelievable Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact; the declaration of war by Great Britain and France; the Nazi invasions of Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium; the Battle of France, the Battle of England, and the threatened German invasion across the Channel.

"This Is Berlin"'s reportage offers rich insights into the very last days before total gloom descended and World War II began. A preface by noted historian John Keegan and an introduction by Shirer's daughter, Inga Shirer Dean, both serve to put Shirer's life and work into context.