The story of the rescue of 338,000 Allied troops from the French coast near Dunkirk during World War II.

The successes of the German Blitzkrieg in 1939-41 were as surprising as they were swift. Allied decision-makers wanted to discover the Germans' secrets, even though only partial, incomplete information was available to them. The false conclusions drawn became myths about the Blitzkrieg that have lingered for decades. It has been argued that rather than creating a new way of war based on new technology, the Germans fitted the new weapons into their...

Our story is about the genesis and evolution of these phantoms and men-who-never-were, these artists and magicians at the front line who operated in stealth and secrecy. Throughout the course of World War II, Allied forces engaged in elaborate deceptions to fool Hitler's armies. A ragtag group of Bohemian artists and creatives were assembled to devise these strategies, including rubber dummy tanks, faux railway lines and falsified wireless intelligence....

The battles for the Germans' last line of defense in World War II, including Arnhem, Aachen, the Huertgen Forest, and Metz. How German commanders made decisions under fire.

Narrative histories highlighting organization, combat experiences, and casualties of each division. Lists of constituent units and division commanders. Sources for further reading on each division.

The December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor has been portrayed by historians as a dazzling success. With most American historians concentrating on command errors and the story of participants' experiences, the Japanese attack has never been subjected to a comprehensive critical analysis of the military side of the operation. This book presents a detailed evaluation of the attack on the operational and tactical level. It examines such questions as:...

A concise guide to the Normandy invasion with facts, maps, historical significance, strategies, and more. Operation Overlord, commonly referred to as "D-Day," was the Allied invasion to secure a foothold in northern France to enable the final offensive into Germany. The Normandy invasion would be the largest combined air-sea assault landing in history. This massive feat would finally enable the Allies to deploy forces on the continent, of sufficient...

After the Normandy breakout, the Allies' headlong dash east came to a halt in the autumn with the ill-fated Market Garden operation and overextended supply lines short of the Rhineland. After repulsing the Nazis' daring Ardennes offensive, Montgomery's and Bradley's Army Groups cleared the Reichwald and Rhineland and closed on the Rhine. With both sides aware of the strategic significance of this physical barrier, the stakes could not have been higher....

In January 1944, around the village of Korsun (near the larger town of Cherkassy on the Dneiper), a disaster happened. Six divisions of Germany's Army Group South became surrounded after sudden attacks by the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. The Germans' greatest fear was the prospect of another Stalingrad, the catastrophe that had occurred precisely one year before. Due to both weather and ferocious resistance, the German drive to rescue their trapped...

December 8, 1941 brought the armed might of Japan to the Philippines as part of Japan's effort to bring the Filipinos into the Greater East Asia Prosperity Sphere. Japan accepted the surrender of the Philippines in May 1942. As the occupation of the Philippine nation by Japan commenced, a resistance movement was born among the defeated people. There were many guerrilla organizations operating throughout the 1,000 mile long Philippine Archipelago....