Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download From Calais to Colditz PDF full book. Access full book title From Calais to Colditz by Philip Pardoe. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Philip Pardoe Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473875412 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 178
Book Description
From Calais to Colditz has never been published before but readers will surely agree that the wait has been worthwhile. The author was a young platoon commander when his battalion were ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to defend Calais to the last man and so distract German attention from the evacuation of the BEF at Dunkirk.After an intense four day battle, the survivors were subjected to a gruelling twelve day march towards Germany. There followed incarceration in a succession of POW camps during which the author succeeded in escaping twice, both over the wire and by tunnelling, remaining at large on one occasion for twelve days. These exploits qualified him for a place in the notorious Colditz Castle, the supposed escape-proof camp. The descriptions of his colourful fellow prisoners, their captors and their extraordinary experiences are as good as any of the previous accounts and in many respects more revealing.How fortunate it is that From Calais to Colditz can now be read by a wide audience.
Author: Philip Pardoe Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473875412 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 178
Book Description
From Calais to Colditz has never been published before but readers will surely agree that the wait has been worthwhile. The author was a young platoon commander when his battalion were ordered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to defend Calais to the last man and so distract German attention from the evacuation of the BEF at Dunkirk.After an intense four day battle, the survivors were subjected to a gruelling twelve day march towards Germany. There followed incarceration in a succession of POW camps during which the author succeeded in escaping twice, both over the wire and by tunnelling, remaining at large on one occasion for twelve days. These exploits qualified him for a place in the notorious Colditz Castle, the supposed escape-proof camp. The descriptions of his colourful fellow prisoners, their captors and their extraordinary experiences are as good as any of the previous accounts and in many respects more revealing.How fortunate it is that From Calais to Colditz can now be read by a wide audience.
Author: Ben Macintyre Publisher: Crown ISBN: 0593136357 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “entertaining [and] often-moving account” (The Wall Street Journal) of the remarkable POWs whose relentlessly creative attempts to escape a notorious Nazi prison embodied the spirit of resistance against fascism, from the author of The Spy and the Traitor “Macintyre has a knack for finding the most fascinating story lines in history.”—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend. But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs. Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.
Author: Robert Verkaik Publisher: Headline Welbeck Non-Fiction ISBN: 1802790772 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 333
Book Description
'A vastly entertaining tale, bursting with astonishing stories and extraordinary characters ... A fascinating read' Sunday Telegraph 'Brilliant ... An amazing story, one I hadn't heard too much about' Dan Snow IT IS THE DEPTHS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. The Germans like to boast that there is 'no escape' from the infamous fortress that is Colditz. The elite British officers imprisoned there are determined to prove the Nazis wrong and get back into the war. As the war heats up and the stakes are raised, the Gestapo plant a double-agent inside the prison in a bid to uncover the secrets of the British prisoners. Captain Julius Green of the Army Dental Corps and Sergeant John 'Busty' Brown must risk their lives in a bid to save the lives of hundreds of Allied servicemen and protect the secrets of MI9. Drawn from unseen records, The Traitor of Colditz brings to light an extraordinary, never-before-told story from the Second World War, an epic tale of how MI9 took on the Nazis and exposed the traitors in their midst.
Author: Gris Davies-Scourfield Publisher: Casemate Publishers ISBN: 1783460229 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 376
Book Description
This is a wartime escape memoir that ranks with the finest. Seriously wounded and captured at Calais, the Author recovered to escape from his POW camp in a load of rubbish. He was on the run thanks to the Polish Underground for nine months and was recaptured within sight of the Swiss border. Interrogation by the Gestapo failed to break him—his greatest fear was that he would betray his friends. Sent to Colditz he again escaped only to be recaptured, due to a minor misspelling on his documents.
Author: Howard R. Simkin Publisher: Casemate ISBN: 1636241964 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
"This book belongs on every World War II bookshelf, filling in the gaps on what is known about this oft-mentioned but little understood topic of wartime escape and evasion." —The NYMAS Review Imagine that you are deep behind enemy lines. Your plane was shot down or perhaps you have just escaped from a prisoner of war camp. The enemy is hunting you, seeking to throw you behind barbed wire for the duration of the war. What will you do? Do you have a plan, and the skills, to make it to friendly territory? During World War II, the Germans and Japanese held over 306,000 British and 105,000 U.S. service members as prisoners. The number of successful evaders and escapers, both U.S. and British, exceeded 35,000. Many of these were aircrew, who received intense training because of the high risk that they would have to evade or escape. This book will relate how they fared in enemy hands or managed to remain free. This book provides a complete overview of U.S. and British escape and evasion during World War II. It tells the story of the escape and evasion organizations, the Resistance-operated lines, and the dangers faced by the escapers and the evaders in a logical and compelling narrative. Heroism, betrayal, sacrifice, and cowardice are all elements of this fascinating part of the rich tapestry of World War II.
Author: James Moore Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 075095163X Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Did you know that Winston Churchill narrowly avoided assassination in the Second World War? Or that Prince Albert helped Britain avoid war with the United States in the nineteenth century from his deathbed? In this riveting read, James Moore and Paul Nero reveal fifty of history’s most dramatic narrow escapes. From wars that were averted to invasions, revolutions and apocalyptic scenarios that we avoided by the skin of our teeth, History's Narrowest Escapes chronicles such stories as how a Soviet Army colonel stopped the Third World War in 1983, and how Nelson’s heroics at The Battle of Trafalgar might never have happened if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of a humble seaman eight years before. Full of fascinating little-known facts, heroic acts, daring deeds and stories of serendipity, this book reveals how our history could have been very different ... and possibly much worse!
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 786
Book Description
Contains a collection of alphabetically arranged entries that provide definitions of terms related to prisoners of war and interned civilians from ancient times to the present.
Author: David Greentree Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472812417 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 84
Book Description
When Hitler's forces poured into France and the Low Countries in 1940, the uneasy peace of the 'Phoney War' was shattered, and Europe was ripped apart by another Blitzkrieg. Forming the backbone of the German advance were the well-equipped Schützen (Rifles), motorized infantry who embodied the essence of the fluid, swift warfare that had characterized World War II thus far. Facing them were infantrymen of the British Expeditionary Force, units of considerable fighting quality who had nevertheless received no special training to conduct combined-arms warfare in conjunction with armour. This study investigates the combat between the two adversaries at small-unit level, recreating the ferocity of the fighting on the front lines of the Battle of France in three key clashes at Arras, Calais and Merville. Assessing the training, organization and unit ethos of both sides in the context of a new type of mobile warfare, David Greentree reveals the extraordinary difficulties encountered by infantry units in trying to remain in contact with their armoured and mechanized formations.
Author: Dilip Amin Publisher: Air World ISBN: 1399049321 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 349
Book Description
Enemy Sighted is the story of the world’s first integrated air defense system and how the coalition of Hurricanes and Spitfires, Fighter Command’s Operations Rooms and Sector Stations, Radar Stations, Observer Corps posts, anti-aircraft gun and searchlight batteries, and balloon barrages, stood resolutely in the way of Operation Seelöwe, Hitler’s plan for invading Britain in the Summer of 1940. Dilip Amin provides a fascinating insight into their development and eventual operationalization. The system provided a recognized air picture, giving everyone the same information at the same time, much like computers linked through the internet do today, except, in 1939 there was no computer and there was no internet! Fundamental to its telling is the 11 Group Operations Room, today referred to as the Battle of Britain Bunker, and the people who worked there, deep below RAF Uxbridge. It was after visiting the Bunker that Churchill first uttered the immortal words, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. Hidden underground, with its large map table and squadron display boards, and balloon and weather states, it is preserved as it was on 15 September 1940, the date celebrated as Battle of Britain Day. Dilip Amin describes how the Bunker operated, transporting the reader back to the time of the Battle of France and the final evacuation from Dunkirk. He guides the reader through the Battle of Britain, examining in detail, the events of 15 September, as seen by those in the Bunker and the combat reports of those flying the Hurricanes and Spitfires on that tumultuous day. Finally, the book provides an insight into how the Bunker operated to protect Britain during the Blitz; support the exploratory raid on Dieppe; shield the troops landing in Normandy; and defend against Hitler’s V1 and V2 Vengeance Weapons. Enemy Sighted provides a compelling insight into the remarkable history of a secret Operations Room, that was pivotal within a world leading air defense system, and without which, an Allied victory in the Second World War would have been far from certain.
Author: Evan McGilvray Publisher: Helion ISBN: 1912174340 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 167
Book Description
This work is a reexamination of the decisions regarding the 1944 Warsaw Uprising made by the leadership of the underground Polish Army (AK), as well as the questionable attitudes of senior Polish commanders in exile in London. The questions raised are, was the uprising necessary and why was it so poorly conducted by a totally indifferent leadership? The challenge is made that the Polish leaders in Warsaw and in London were clearly unfeeling. In Warsaw the uprising was allowed to happen and was doomed from the very beginning owing to poor generalship. The Soviets can be seen rather than to have betrayed the Poles, to have behaved in the same manner as they had always behaved to the Poles and Poland, that is underhanded and with great deceit. Therefore why did the Warsaw Poles rise up when encouraged by the Soviets? The Poles should have known that it was a trick. Despite plans laid down by the Allies to support such uprisings, as had been the case in Paris during August 1944, the Red Army watched the AK be destroyed by the Germans, to save themselves the same job. Once the uprising failed, the Polish leadership went into what could only be described as ‘genteel’ captivity, compared with the fate of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen and women who were herded out of Warsaw by German armed forces and sent to concentration camps, illegal prisoner of war camps or forced into slave labor. In the West senior Polish commanders did not consider a 100% casualty rate to be unacceptable as they pushed for Allied flights to resupply Warsaw. This callous disregard for life was part of the lack of understanding in the leadership of the reality of the Polish situation in 1944: the war was not about Poland but the complete defeat of Germany. If Polish freedom came out of this, then good, otherwise the Allies were not going to be diverted from the constant aerial bombardment of Germany, as the Allies swept eastward and westward towards Germany. This work is supplemented with Polish sources as well as interviews with five women who had been involved in the Warsaw Uprising as young women and girls in 1944. Now in their 80s these ladies kindly granted interviews with the author in Poland during 2012.
Author: Philip Pardoe
Author: Philip Pardoe
Author: Ben Macintyre
Author: Robert Verkaik
Author: Gris Davies-Scourfield
Author: Howard R. Simkin
Author: James Moore
Author: 
Author: David Greentree
Author: Dilip Amin
Author: Evan McGilvray