World War Ii category: 7796 books

**In World War II, over 12,000 Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, and Jewish rabbis left the safety of home to join the Chaplain Corps, following the armed forces into battle across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the high seas. They were officers who displayed uncommon courage and sacrifice....

The Second World War challenged many of the concepts that had provided stability and unity in the world. As totalitarian regimes in Europe and Asia attempted to impose their world view on their neighbours, a struggle for what Winston Churchill described as `Christian civilisation’ took place on...

More than any other sport, professional football contributed fighting men to the battles of World War II, and the 22 or so players or former players that lost their lives are among the riveting stories told in this tribute to football's war heroes that spans many decades and military conflicts. The...

In 1941, Glen Edwards learned to fly in a fabric-covered biplane. Seven years later, he died in the crash of the Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, the Air Force’s most advanced jet warplane and forerunner of the B-2 Stealth bomber of today. As a combat pilot in North Africa and Italy during World War...

The Battle of Britain and the Atlantic and the Blitz are invariably the focus of books and perceptions of the air war over and around Britain during the Second World War. Yet, it was Britain’s more exposed eastern flank, from the South Foreland in the south to Bridlington in the north that faced...

In early June 1943, James Eric Swift, a pilot with the 83rd Squadron of the Royal Air Force, boarded his Lancaster bomber for a night raid on Münster and disappeared. Widespread aerial bombardment was to the Second World War what the trenches were to the First: a shocking and new form of warfare,...

“When we arrived at the 381st Bomb Group at Ridgewell we were advised that the casualty rate was 25%. We were the first replacements for the group in July of 1943. On our very first mission we lost our squadron commander. We didn’t see how we’d survive to see our families again.” The 8th Air...

In May 1940, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the production of 50,000 military airplanes. He then drafted the president of General Motors, William Knudsen, to mobilize industry in the United States. The automotive companies were called upon to produce a massive fleet of bombers, as well as...

The United States Marine Corps was one of the phenomena of the Second World War. Greatly expanded from its prewar order of battle of scattered defense battalions, overseas garrisons and ship detachments, it became a multi-division force bearing the brunt of the hardest fighting across the whole vast...

The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy served with distinction in every theatre of war throughout World War II. From its poorly equipped beginnings it started the war with few suitable, modern, carrier-born fighters to the final campaigns over the Japanese home islands, the FAA proved an effective...

Did the arms race of the 1930s cause the Second World War? In Cry Havoc, historian Joseph Maiolo shows, in rich and fascinating detail, how the deadly game of the arms race was played out in the decade prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. In this exhaustively researched account, he...

A selection of the Military Book Club. This third edition of the The Partisan’s Companion is the last-and-best Red Army manual used to train partisans to fight the Nazi invader. Its usefulness outlived World War II. It was later used to train “third-world” guerrillas in their wars of...

The emergence of the tank in World War I led to the development of the first infantry weapons to defend against tanks. Anti-tank rifles became commonplace in the inter-war years and in the early campaigns of World War II in Poland and the Battle of France, which saw renewed use in the form of the...

The Imperial Japanese Navy was a pioneer in naval aviation, having commissioned the world's first built-from-the-keel-up carrier, the Hosho. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it experimented with its carriers, perfecting their design and construction. As a result, by the time Japan entered World War...