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Author: Simon Hamon Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1473893801 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
In 1940 British forces were withdrawn from the Channel Islands, allowing the Germans to occupy British territory. Hitler was determined to hold onto what he saw as a valuable prize, and the islands were heavily fortified. However, despite being extensively defended, the occupied Channel Islands remained vulnerable to commando-style raids. Indeed, a total of nine such operations were conducted between 1940 and 1943. Many others were planned but never executed. Each one was a bold and dangerous expedition, with small groups of men daring to trespass on Hitler’s cherished British stronghold. The first of these attacks, Operation Ambassador, took place on the night of 14/15 July 1940. The second ever raid undertaken by the Commandos, it was focused on the island of Guernsey. Though the mission failed to achieve any of its objectives, valuable lessons were learnt. In the weeks, months and years that followed, raids were also undertaken against Jersey, Sark, Herm, Burhou and the Casquets lighthouse off Alderney. The final attack, Hardtack 22, was one of the three carried out against the German garrison on Sark. After the second mission, Hardtack 7, had to be aborted, the Commandos returned to the island on the night of 26/27 December 1943, tasked with undertaking a reconnaissance and capturing prisoners. This too was a failure after the raiders entered a minefield; two men were killed and most of the others wounded. Compiled from official reports and first-hand accounts, each of the raids is packed with intrigue and drama – including the fear of reprisals being taken against the islanders. Each of the missions are explored on the ground today by the authors, with the routes taken and all key locations relating to each attack photographed and described. The planned but never executed raids are also explored. Never before have these stories been told in such detail, and never before in the words of those that took part in the raids and those who ultimately, were most affected.
Author: Simon Hamon Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1473893801 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
In 1940 British forces were withdrawn from the Channel Islands, allowing the Germans to occupy British territory. Hitler was determined to hold onto what he saw as a valuable prize, and the islands were heavily fortified. However, despite being extensively defended, the occupied Channel Islands remained vulnerable to commando-style raids. Indeed, a total of nine such operations were conducted between 1940 and 1943. Many others were planned but never executed. Each one was a bold and dangerous expedition, with small groups of men daring to trespass on Hitler’s cherished British stronghold. The first of these attacks, Operation Ambassador, took place on the night of 14/15 July 1940. The second ever raid undertaken by the Commandos, it was focused on the island of Guernsey. Though the mission failed to achieve any of its objectives, valuable lessons were learnt. In the weeks, months and years that followed, raids were also undertaken against Jersey, Sark, Herm, Burhou and the Casquets lighthouse off Alderney. The final attack, Hardtack 22, was one of the three carried out against the German garrison on Sark. After the second mission, Hardtack 7, had to be aborted, the Commandos returned to the island on the night of 26/27 December 1943, tasked with undertaking a reconnaissance and capturing prisoners. This too was a failure after the raiders entered a minefield; two men were killed and most of the others wounded. Compiled from official reports and first-hand accounts, each of the raids is packed with intrigue and drama – including the fear of reprisals being taken against the islanders. Each of the missions are explored on the ground today by the authors, with the routes taken and all key locations relating to each attack photographed and described. The planned but never executed raids are also explored. Never before have these stories been told in such detail, and never before in the words of those that took part in the raids and those who ultimately, were most affected.
Author: Simon Hamon Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1473893798 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
In 1940 British forces were withdrawn from the Channel Islands, allowing the Germans to occupy British territory. Hitler was determined to hold onto what he saw as a valuable prize, and the islands were heavily fortified. However, despite being extensively defended, the occupied Channel Islands remained vulnerable to commando-style raids. Indeed, a total of nine such operations were conducted between 1940 and 1943. Many others were planned but never executed. Each one was a bold and dangerous expedition, with small groups of men daring to trespass on Hitler’s cherished British stronghold. The first of these attacks, Operation Ambassador, took place on the night of 14/15 July 1940. The second ever raid undertaken by the Commandos, it was focused on the island of Guernsey. Though the mission failed to achieve any of its objectives, valuable lessons were learnt. In the weeks, months and years that followed, raids were also undertaken against Jersey, Sark, Herm, Burhou and the Casquets lighthouse off Alderney. The final attack, Hardtack 22, was one of the three carried out against the German garrison on Sark. After the second mission, Hardtack 7, had to be aborted, the Commandos returned to the island on the night of 26/27 December 1943, tasked with undertaking a reconnaissance and capturing prisoners. This too was a failure after the raiders entered a minefield; two men were killed and most of the others wounded. Compiled from official reports and first-hand accounts, each of the raids is packed with intrigue and drama – including the fear of reprisals being taken against the islanders. Each of the missions are explored on the ground today by the authors, with the routes taken and all key locations relating to each attack photographed and described. The planned but never executed raids are also explored. Never before have these stories been told in such detail, and never before in the words of those that took part in the raids and those who ultimately, were most affected.
Author: Richard Brooks Publisher: Osprey Publishing ISBN: 9781849082372 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Osprey's study of the Walcheren campaign of World War II (1939-1945). Walcheren is a saucer-shaped island in the estuary of the river Scheldt, commanding maritime access to Antwerp, the largest port in Western Europe. The Allies captured Antwerp intact on September 4, 1944, but their eyes were on the Rhine crossings at Arnhem, not the lower Scheldt. The failure of Operation Market-Garden later that month brought home the Allies' logistical weakness. As autumn gales drew near, every shell and petrol tin had still to be landed at Cherbourg or across the Normandy beaches. Complete US Army divisions were immobilized for lack of transport. It was vital to re-open Antwerp. The continued German presence on Walcheren, however, prevented Allied shipping from entering the Scheldt. In the fall of 1944, Walcheren had the most heavily fortified coastline in the world. Its seaward defences consisted of 30 coastal and field batteries, mounting 50-60 guns from 75mm to 220mm in caliber, manned by high quality naval personnel behind massive concrete emplacements. Supporting strongpoints had anti-aircraft guns, flame-throwers rocket-launchers and Goliath remote controlled demolition vehicles. The sand dunes protecting the low-lying island from the North Sea were laced with barbed wire, mines and dragon's teeth. Defending infantry came from Generalleutnant Wilhelm Daser's 70.Infanterie-Division, a 'white bread division' consisting of men with gastric problems. Allied intelligence estimated the total garrison at 4,000, but 8,000 eventually surrendered. On November 1, 1944, in a double-pronged attack, the men of 52nd (Lowland) Division plus No. 4 Army Commando seized Flushing (Infatuate I) while in the west 4th Special Service Brigade with three Royal Marine Commandos and No. 10 Inter-Allied Commando would take Westkapelle, and fight their way north and south along the dunes, taking the coastal batteries as they went (Infatuate II). All this was to be supported with HMS Warspite and two 15-inch gun monitors; the Support Squadron Eastern Flank (SSEF) with 25 specialized Landing Craft with guns and rockets; 350 Army guns south of the Scheldt, most of them heavier than 25-pounders; and the Typhoon and Spitfire fighter bombers of 84 Group RAF. In fighting described by one survivor as 'worse than Dieppe and D-Day put together' the Army and Royal Marines forced their way ashore, supported by specialized armour and tracked vehicles, and over the next eight days cleared the positions of their German defenders in bitter street fighting. The first Liberty ships unloaded at Antwerp on December 1, just over a fortnight before the Ardennes offensive began. If Walcheren had not fallen when it did, opening Antwerp just in time, the Allies would have been hard pressed to withstand the German attack, or replace the fuel stocks lost in its opening days, let alone cross the Rhine in the following spring, and meet the Russians on the Elbe. The Walcheren campaign was not merely a dramatic combined operation pulled off against the odds; it helped determine the course of the war and the shape of the post-war world.
Author: John Grehan Publisher: Frontline Books ISBN: 1399084259 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
Incredible as it may seem today, detailed plans were drawn up to recapture the Channel Islands, the most heavily fortified of all the German-occupied territories, regardless of the potentially ‘severe’ loss of life and the widespread destruction to the property of the British citizens. Under the codenames Constellation, Condor, Concertina, and Coverlet, the islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney were to be attacked in 1943. The operation against Alderney would be preceded by a bombardment by between 500 and 600 medium/light bombers and an astonishing forty to fifty squadrons of fighters. The official papers which have now become available state that: ‘The islands cannot be taken without causing some civilian casualties. In the case of Alderney, it is thought that the air bombardment will have to be on such a scale that all personnel on the island will have to become casualties.’ A similar number of aircraft would attack Guernsey while, for the assault upon Jersey, thirty-one squadrons of heavy bombers and strike aircraft would bombard the island’s east and west coasts. This would be followed, on D-Day, by parachute and infantry landings and then a commando assault in the south-west. On Day 2 of the operation the first of the tanks were to land, with more armor and infantry to follow on subsequent days. As the German garrison of the Channel Islands was some 40,000 strong, the islands would be turned into an enormous battlefield, and a vast killing ground. The consequences for the Islanders were almost too horrendous to imagine and the political fallout beyond calculation if the operations failed in their objectives after the devastation and loss of British lives that the fighting had caused. Despite all this, it was thought that such operations would become the ‘second front’ so persistently demanded by Stalin to draw German troops from the Eastern Front and might also help the Allied forces which were about to invade Italy – Operation Husky – from North Africa. Equally, the Channel Islands would be the ideal base for the D-Day invasion of France scheduled for 1944. There was much then in favor of mounting the operations against the Channel Islands regardless of the fact that it meant the death of untold British citizens at the hands of British troops and the Allied air forces. The Allied Assault Upon Hitler's Channel Island Fortress is, therefore, the first detailed analysis of what would have been the most controversial operation ever undertaken by the British and American armed forces.
Author: Jim Ring Publisher: Faber & Faber ISBN: 0571282407 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
From the Fall of France in June 1940 to Hitler's suicide in April 1945, the swastika flew from the peaks of the High Savoy in the western Alps to the passes above Ljubljana in the east. The Alps as much as Berlin were the heart of the Third Reich.'Yes,' Hitler declared of his headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, 'I have a close link to this mountain. Much was done there, came about and ended there; those were the best times of my life . . . My great plans were forged there.'With great authority and verve, Jim Ring tells the story of how the war was conceived and directed from the Fuhrer's mountain retreat, how all the Alps bar Switzerland fell to Fascism, and how Switzerland herself became the Nazi's banker and Europe's spy centre. How the Alps in France, Italy and Yugoslavia became cradles of resistance, how the range proved both a sanctuary and a death-trap for Europe's Jews - and how the whole war culminated in the Allies' descent on what was rumoured to be Hitler's Alpine Redoubt, a Bavarian mountain fortress.
Author: James Lucas Publisher: Canelo ISBN: 1800329849 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 418
Book Description
Unstoppable and deadly, this is the gripping story of some of the most feared soldiers in the war The daring, courage and skill of the highly-trained men who spearheaded German assaults in the blitzkrieg of 1940, dropping from the air to seize and overwhelm key invasion points, showed to an alarmed world that a new dimension had been added to the science of warfare. One spectacular success was the invasion and capture of Crete in May 1941, all be it achieved at a terrible price. The German paratroopers were an elite, justifying again and again their great reputation for courage and hard fighting in Russia, North Africa and Italy. Bestselling military historian James Lucas has researched deeply in Allied and German archives and interviewed many of the leading members of the Fallschirmjaegar who survived the war. This is an unmissable and dramatic account of the Second World War’s most frightening elite, perfect for readers of James Holland and Max Hastings.
Author: Wayne Vansant Publisher: Zenith Press ISBN: 0760343926 Category : Comics & Graphic Novels Languages : en Pages : 106
Book Description
Normandy depicts the planning and execution of Operation Overlord in 96 full-color pages. The initial paratrooper assault is shown, as well as the storming of the five D-Day beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. But the story does not end there. Once the Allies got ashore, they had to stay ashore. The Germans made every effort to push them back into the sea. This book depicts the such key events in the Allied liberation of Europe as: 1. Construction of the Mulberry Harbors, two giant artificial harbors built in England and floated across the English Channel so that troops, vehicles, and supplies could be offloaded across the invasion beaches.2. The Capture of Cherbourg, the nearest French port, against a labyrinth of Gennan pillboxes.3. The American fight through the heavy bocage (hedgerow country) to take the vital town of Saint-Lô.4. The British-Canadian struggle for the city of Caen against the “Hitler Youth Division,” made up of 23,000 seventeen- and eighteen-year-old Nazi fanatics.5. The breakout of General Patton’s Third Army and the desperate US 30th Division’s defense of Mortaine.6. The Falaise Pocket, known as the “Killing Ground, ” where the remnants of two German armies were trapped and bombed and shelled into submission. The slaughter was so great that 5,000 Germans were buried in one mass grave. 7. The Liberation of Paris, led by the 2nd Free French Armored Division, which had been fighting for four long years with this goal in mind.
Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1472847415 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
'What a brilliant book this is... a terrific narrative of Hitler's Ardennes offensive of December 1944 – superb storytelling that achieves a skilful balance between drama and detail.' - James Holland The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive in the West. Launched in the depths of winter to neutralize the overwhelming Allied air superiority, three German armies attacked through the Ardennes, the weakest part of the American lines, with the aim of splitting the Allied armies and seizing the vital port of Antwerp within a week. It was a tall order, as the Panzers had to get across the Our, Amblève, Ourthe and Meuse rivers, and the desperate battle became a race against time and the elements, which the Germans would eventually lose. But Hitler's dramatic counterattack did succeed in catching the Allies off guard in what became the largest and bloodiest battle fought by US forces during the war. In this book, Anthony Tucker-Jones tells the story of the battle from the German point of view, from the experiences of the infantrymen and panzer crewmen fighting on the ground in the Ardennes to the operational decisions of senior commanders such as SS-Oberstgruppenführer Josef 'Sepp' Dietrich and General Hasso von Manteuffel that did so much to decide the fate of the offensive. Drawing on new research, Hitler's Winter provides a fresh perspective on one of the most famous battles of World War II.
Author: William Stevenson Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 162914360X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 652
Book Description
A New York Times Best Seller! The classic real-life story of the superspy whose vast intelligence network helped defeat the Nazis in World War II. A Man Called Intrepid is the account of the world’s first integrated intelligence operation and of its master, William Stephenson. Codenamed INTREPID by Winston Churchill, Stephenson was charged with establishing—and running—a vast, worldwide intelligence network to challenge the terrifying force of Nazi Germany. Nothing less than the fate of Britain and the free world hung in the balance as INTREPID covertly set about stalling the Nazis by any means necessary. First published in 1976, A Man Called Intrepid was an immediate bestseller. With over thirty black-and-white photographs and countless World War II secrets, this book revealed startling information that had remained buried for decades. Detailing the infamous “Camp X” training center in Ontario, Canada; the miraculous breaking of the Ultra Code used by the Enigma Machine; and dozens of other stories of clandestine missions, A Man Called Intrepid is an undisputed modern classic. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Author: G H Bennett Publisher: Seaforth Publishing ISBN: 1399077937 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
The War for England's Shores examines the Kriegsmarine's S-Boat offensive along the English Channel and the North Sea from 1940 to 1945, together with British and, later, Allied responses to nullify that threat. Very fast, and armed with torpedoes and mines, S-Boats posed a serious threat to the convoys that were forced to run close along the British coast on a daily basis. Despite the significance of this campaign and the real threat to the whole British war economy, it has been, until now, strangely overlooked by historians. Indeed, the book highlights issues around the maritime identity of those states and navies that see themselves in oceanic terms, at the expense of engagement with, and operations in, coastal waters. Using an array of archival materials from Britain, Germany and the USA, The War for England’s Shores examines why the Germans failed to make the most of this opportunity to disrupt British trade. G H Bennett analyzes how the British slowly countered the threat by embracing new technologies and developing a system of sea control that gradually forced the German S-Boat arm from the offensive against Britain's coastal convoys, and on to the defensive in the months leading up to the invasion of France. The author also looks at the S-Boat campaign along these convoy routes in the context of present-day interest in littoral warfare, so that the work has a vital and current appeal and offers significant and surprising insights. The book offers an unparalleled exploration of a key moment in the development of coastal warfare, and will appeal to historians and enthusiasts as well as defense analysts and naval personnel.
Author: Simon Hamon
Author: Simon Hamon
Author: Simon Hamon
Author: Richard Brooks
Author: John Grehan
Author: Jim Ring
Author: James Lucas
Author: Wayne Vansant
Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones
Author: William Stevenson
Author: G H Bennett