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Author: Paddy Ashdown Publisher: Aurum ISBN: 1781310831 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
The complete story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux Harbour – by the man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. In 1942, before El Alamein turned the tide of war, the German merchant fleet was re-supplying its war machine with impunity. So Operation Frankton, a daring and secret raid, was launched by Mountbatten’s Combined Operations and led by the enigmatic ‘Blondie’ Hasler – to paddle ‘Cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour and sink the ships at anchor. It was a desperately hazardous mission from the start – dropped by submarine to canoe some hundred miles up the Gironde into the heart of Vichy France, surviving terrifying tidal races, only to face the biggest challenge of all: escaping across the Pyrenees. Fewer than half the men made it to Bordeaux; only four laid their mines; just two got back alive. But the most damage was done to the Germans’ sense of impregnability. Paddy Ashdown, himself a member of the Royal Marines’ elite Special Boat Squadron formed as a consequence of Frankton, has always been fascinated by this classic story of bravery and ingenuity - as a young man even meeting his hero Hasler once. Now, after researching previously unseen archives and tracing surviving witnesses, he has written the definitive account of the raid. The real truth, he discovers – a deplorable tale of Whitehall rivalry and breakdowns in communication – serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell’ heroes all the more heroic.
Author: Paddy Ashdown Publisher: Aurum ISBN: 1781310831 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
The complete story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux Harbour – by the man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. In 1942, before El Alamein turned the tide of war, the German merchant fleet was re-supplying its war machine with impunity. So Operation Frankton, a daring and secret raid, was launched by Mountbatten’s Combined Operations and led by the enigmatic ‘Blondie’ Hasler – to paddle ‘Cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour and sink the ships at anchor. It was a desperately hazardous mission from the start – dropped by submarine to canoe some hundred miles up the Gironde into the heart of Vichy France, surviving terrifying tidal races, only to face the biggest challenge of all: escaping across the Pyrenees. Fewer than half the men made it to Bordeaux; only four laid their mines; just two got back alive. But the most damage was done to the Germans’ sense of impregnability. Paddy Ashdown, himself a member of the Royal Marines’ elite Special Boat Squadron formed as a consequence of Frankton, has always been fascinated by this classic story of bravery and ingenuity - as a young man even meeting his hero Hasler once. Now, after researching previously unseen archives and tracing surviving witnesses, he has written the definitive account of the raid. The real truth, he discovers – a deplorable tale of Whitehall rivalry and breakdowns in communication – serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell’ heroes all the more heroic.
Author: Paddy Ashdown Publisher: William Collins ISBN: 9780008140847 Category : Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
A riveting three-way spy story set in occupied France. 'Game of Spies' tells the story of a lethal spy triangle between 1942 and 1944 in Bordeaux - and of France's greatest betrayal by aristocratic and right-wing Resistance leader Andre Grandclement. The story centres on three men: one British, one French and one German and the duel they fought out in an atmosphere of collaboration, betrayal and assassination, in which comrades sold fellow comrades, Allied agents and downed pilots to the Germans, as casually as they would a bottle of wine. It is a story of SOE, treachery, bed-hopping and executions in the city labelled 'la plus collaboratrice' in the whole of France.
Author: Halik Kochanski Publisher: Liveright Publishing ISBN: 1324091665 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 900
Book Description
New Yorker • Best Books of 2022 “This is the most comprehensive and best account of resistance I have read. It addresses the story with scholarly objectivity and an absolute lack of sentimentality. So much romantic twaddle is still published . . . it is marvelous to read a study of such breadth and depth, which reaches balanced judgments.” —Max Hastings, The Sunday Times (UK) Resistance is the first book of its kind: a monumental history that finally integrates the many resistance movements against Nazi hegemony in Europe into a single, sweeping narrative of defiance. “To resist, therefore. But how, when and where? There were no laws, no guidelines, no precedents to show the way . . .” —Dutch resister Herman Friedhoff In every country that fell to the Third Reich during the Second World War, from France in the west to parts of the Soviet Union in the east, a resistance movement against Nazi domination emerged. And every country that endured occupation created its own fiercely nationalist account of the role of homegrown resistance in its eventual liberation. Halik Kochanski’s panoramic, prodigiously researched work is a monumental achievement: the first book to strip these disparate national histories of myth and nostalgia and to integrate them into a definitive chronicle of the underground war against the Nazis. Bringing to light many powerful and often little-known stories, Resistance shows how small bands of individuals took actions that could lead not merely to their own deaths, but to the liquidation of their families and their entire communities. As Kochanski demonstrates, most who joined up were not supermen and superwomen, but ordinary people drawn from all walks of life who would not have been expected—least of all by themselves—to become heroes of any kind. Kochanski also covers the sheer variety of resistance activities, from the clandestine press, assistance to Allied servicemen evading capture, and the provision of intelligence to the Allies to the more violent manifestations of resistance through sabotage and armed insurrection. For many people, resistance was not an occupation or an identity, but an activity: a person would deliver a cache of stolen documents to armed partisans and then seamlessly return to their normal life. For Jews under Nazi rule, meanwhile, the stakes at every point were life and death; resistance was less about national restoration than about mere survival. Why resist at all? Who is the real enemy? What kind of future are we risking our lives for? These and other questions animated those who resisted. With penetrating insight, Kochanski reveals that the single quality that defined resistance across borders was resilience: despite the constant arrests and executions, resistance movements rebuilt themselves time and time again. A landmark history that will endure for decades to come, Resistance forces every reader to ask themselves yet another question, this distinct to our own times: “What would I have done?”
Author: Robert Lyman Publisher: Quercus ISBN: 1623652626 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
During the Second World War, it is hard to imagine a situation where the British High Command could think that one of the only ways they could attack Hitler was to send ten canoeists with limpet mines to paddle one hundred miles up the Gironde estuary, in the middle of winter, in an attempt to sink German blockade ships in Bordeaux harbor. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1942. The man who gave the go-ahead for the audacious commando raid--Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations--fully anticipated that all ten men would die in the attempt. Mountbatten wasn't far wrong--two ripped their collapsible canoes as they were manhandling them out of the submarine; two drowned when their canoes capsized entering the Gironde estuary; and a further six were captured by the Germans and later executed. By complete chance, the two canoeists who managed to escape--Major "Blondie" Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks--stumbled into the arms of the French resistance. Once in their care, Hasler and Sparks made their way across France and into Spain, crossing the Pyrenees in the company (though they did not know it) of a Gestapo agent intent on bringing down the resistance network. Operation Suicide is the first account of this enthralling raid for over fifty years. In utilizing primary source material, including detailed German records captured by the British in 1944 (which remained censored until 1976), Robert Lyman brings to life one of the most courageous and dramatic events to take place in the darkest days of the Second World War.
Author: Max Hastings Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062953621 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 415
Book Description
Best Nonfiction of 2020 -- Kirkus Reviews One of the most lauded historians of our time returns to the Second World War in this magnificent retelling of the awe-inspiring raid on German dams conducted by the Royal Army Force’s 617 Squadron. The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story—and the later wartime experience of the 617 Squadron—has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know. The RAF had identified the Ruhr dams as strategic objectives as far back as 1938; in those five years Wing Commander Guy Gibson formed and trained the 617 Squadron. Hastings observes that while the dropping of Wallis’s mines provided the dramatic climax, only two of the eight aircraft lost came down over the dams—the rest were shot down on the flight to, or back from, the mission. And while the 617 Squadron’s valor is indisputable, the ultimate industrial damage caused by the dam raid was actually rather modest. In 1943, these brave men caught the imagination of the world and uplifted the weary spirits of the British people. Their achievement unnerved the Nazi high command, and caused them to expend large resources on dam defenses—making the mission a success. An example of Churchill’s “military theatre” at its best, what 617 Squadron did was an extraordinary and heroic achievement, and a triumph of British ingenuity and technology—a story to be told for generations to come. Operation Chastise includes three 8-page black-and-white photo inserts and 6 maps.
Author: Robert Lyman Publisher: Quercus ISBN: 1623652626 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
During the Second World War, it is hard to imagine a situation where the British High Command could think that one of the only ways they could attack Hitler was to send ten canoeists with limpet mines to paddle one hundred miles up the Gironde estuary, in the middle of winter, in an attempt to sink German blockade ships in Bordeaux harbor. Yet this is precisely what happened in 1942. The man who gave the go-ahead for the audacious commando raid--Lord Louis Mountbatten, head of Combined Operations--fully anticipated that all ten men would die in the attempt. Mountbatten wasn't far wrong--two ripped their collapsible canoes as they were manhandling them out of the submarine; two drowned when their canoes capsized entering the Gironde estuary; and a further six were captured by the Germans and later executed. By complete chance, the two canoeists who managed to escape--Major "Blondie" Hasler and Marine Bill Sparks--stumbled into the arms of the French resistance. Once in their care, Hasler and Sparks made their way across France and into Spain, crossing the Pyrenees in the company (though they did not know it) of a Gestapo agent intent on bringing down the resistance network. Operation Suicide is the first account of this enthralling raid for over fifty years. In utilizing primary source material, including detailed German records captured by the British in 1944 (which remained censored until 1976), Robert Lyman brings to life one of the most courageous and dramatic events to take place in the darkest days of the Second World War.
Author: Tom Keene Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 0752483757 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
The Special Operations Executive (SOE), also known as 'Churchill's Secret Army' or the 'Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare', was born from Churchill's vision 'to set Europe ablaze'. It was formed to conduct espionage and sabotage in enemy-occupied territory as well as aid local resistance groups in their own irregular warfare. After D-Day, it played a crucial role in the liberation of Europe. However, Tom Keene's book reveals for the first time how close it came to never existing at all. Many saw SOE as a threat to the existence of MI5 and other intelligence agencies, and some in the armed forces refused to work with the new agency, fearing its broad remit and lack of experienced operatives... SOE, in turn, became ever more secretive, hiding detail's of their operations from anyone outside the agency. This backstabbing climate of rivalry, confusion and secrecy within the higher echelons of government not only nearly destroyed SOE, but also had tragic repercussions for the daring Commandos who took part in the legendary 'Cockleshell Raid'. Cloak of Enemies exposes the secret war in the shadows and backrooms of Whitehall during the Second World War and its far-reaching consequences.
Author: Peter Hore Publisher: The History Press ISBN: 0750969458 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Already a decorated heroine of the First World War, British-born Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville, was one of the most colourful and courageous agents of the Second World War, yet her story has almost been forgotten.Evoking the spirit of Edith Cavell, and taking the German occupation of Paris in 1940 as a personal affront, she led an escape line for patriotic Frenchmen and British soldiers. After imprisonment, escape to England, a secret return to France and another arrest, she began to witness the horrors of German-run prisons and concentration camps.In April 1945, a score of British and American women emerged from the Women’s Hell – Ravensbrück concentration camp – who had been kept alive by the willpower and the strength of one woman, Mary Lindell. She combined a passion for adventure with blunt speech and persistently displayed the greatest personal bravery in the face of great adversity. To counter German claims that they had no British or American prisoners, Mary smuggled out a plea for rescue and produced her list from her pinafore pocket, compiled in secret from the camp records. This vital list contained the names of captured women, many of whom were agents of British Military Intelligence, the Special Operations Executive or the French Resistance.Poignantly supported by first-hand testimony, Lindell’s List tells the moving story of Mary Lindell’s heroic leadership and the endurance of a group of women who defied the Nazis in the Second World War.
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Author: 
Author: Paddy Ashdown
Author: Halik Kochanski
Author: Robert Lyman
Author: Max Hastings
Author: Robert Lyman
Author: Tom Keene
Author: Peter Hore