eBooks de II Guerra Mundial y guerra fría, página 3 de 47

«Una investigación excepcional, fascinante.» TheWall Street Journal«Vibra de orgullo y rabia.» TheNew York Times Book Review«Conmovedor, inquietante y magníficamente contado.» The EconomistVarsovia,

Vasili Grossman quiso dejar constancia de todo lo que había vivido durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, la muerte de su madre y de su hijastro y su experiencia como corresponsal de guerra, en un ambicioso ciclo novelistico en dos partes. La primera, iniciada en 1943 y publicada en 1952 con el titulo Por una causa justa, se tenia que titular Stalingrado. La segunda, escrita a partir de 1949, con los mismos protagonistas, seria Vida y destino. De las dos, Vida y destino es un clasico leido por miles de lectores en todo el mundo. La primera, en cambio, ha sido considerada como una novela de menor rango. Es mas, Efim Etkind y Simon Markish, dos de las personas que mas hicieron por salvar el manuscrito de Vida y destino, publicandolo por primera vez en Occidente en 1980, en el prologo a dicha edicion, afirmaban que Por una causa justa "pudo haber ganado un merecido Premio Stalin, porque rebosaba amor por el regimen socialista...". ¿Pudo Grossman escribir dos novelas tan desiguales a pesar de concebirlas como un todo y redactarlas una tras otra? La presente edicion responde a esta pregunta. Aparte de devolver a la novela el titulo que para ella queria Grossman, Stalingrado, por primera vez la reconstruye con los mas de cien fragmentos, algunos de un par de frases, otros de parrafos y paginas enteras, que la censura sovietica obligo a suprimir. Con ello, la novela se enriquece y se llena de matices, hasta convertirse en una obra distinta de la que se habia podido leer. Ahora, como afirma The Economist, "igual que Vida y destino, la nueva Stalingrado es una obra maestra".

Nunca en la historia de la humanidad un régimen político se ensañó tanto con la inteligencia y la creación artística como el totalitarismo soviético. Fueron miles los escritores, artistas, científicos, investigadores, profesores universitarios, represaliados por el regimen, silenciados o asesinados. Y millones, las personas castigadas sin crimen. Este libro se centra en ocho de los mejores escritores rusos del siglo xx, victimas del estalinismo. Su autor, Vitali Shentalinski, fue uno de los pocos investigadores que tuvo acceso a los archivos hasta entonces secretos de la KGB y la Oficina de la Fiscalia de la URSS, durante los años en que permanecieron abiertos a la consulta publica. Hoy vuelven a estar inaccesibles por decision gubernamental. A traves de los documentos policiales, interrogatorios, cartas y manuscritos, el presente volumen reconstruye el intento de destruccion de la persona y la obra de Babel, Mandelstam, Bulgakov, Tsvietaieva, Platonov, Ajmatova, Gorki y Pasternak, convirtiendose asi en un documento imprescindible y valiosisimo para comprender lo que ocurrio y preservar la memoria de un terror de Estado que todavia no ha sido declarado como crimen contra la humanidad.

Keith Lowe estudió en su aclamado libro Continente salvaje la Europa de los cinco años posteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En este nuevo trabajo, explora cómo la Segunda Guerra Mundial modificó radicalmente el mundo que emergio de sus cenizas a partir de 1950. Cubre de manera ineludible los grandes acontecimientos geopoliticos: la emergencia de las superpotencias, el inicio de la Guerra Fria, el largo y lento desmoronamiento del colonialismo europeo, etc. Tambien aborda las formidables consecuencias socioeconomicas de la guerra: la transformacion de nuestro entorno fisico; los enormes cambios en los niveles de vida, en la demografia planetaria y en el comercio mundial; el auge y la caida de los controles al libre mercado, y el advenimiento de la era nuclear. Pero, lo que es aun mas importante, pretende proyectar la vista mas alla de esos acontecimientos y esas tendencias y analizar los efectos mitologicos, filosoficos y psicologicos de la guerra. ¿Como afecto el recuerdo de aquel derramamiento de sangre a nuestras relaciones reciprocas y con el mundo? ¿Como cambio nuestra perspectiva de lo que son capaces de hacer los seres humanos? ¿Como influyo en nuestro temor a la violencia y al poder, en nuestro deseo de libertad y pertenencia, y en nuestros sueños de igualdad, justicia y ecuanimidad? Keith Lowe demuestra que seguimos viviendo a la sombra de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y nos da nuevas claves para comprender el mundo de hoy.

The Comet Escape Line tells the story of the most successful escape line of the Second World War. Inspired by the English nurse Edith Cavell, who helped Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium in the First World War, Andree de Jongh and a group of young Belgian friends conceived an audacious plan to smuggle downed Allied airmen and other evaders from Belgium, through France and over to neutral Spain.Many incredible escapes followed from safe houses in Brussels, making hazardous train journeys through France, or navigating goat paths through the Pyrenees, evading German and Spanish border patrols. By 1945, the line had aided hundreds of evaders and was a vital part of the escape and evasion picture of the Second World War.In The Comet Escape Line, Alexander Stilwell reveals the personalities and motives of the Comet line founders and the British intelligence organisation that supported it, investigates the Gestapo campaign to destroy it and explores the actions of the Nazi collaborators who infiltrated it. Above all, this is the story of the incredibly brave civilians who risked everything to help the Allied cause.

One of the most famous and spectacular events of the Second World War was the destruction of two dams in the Ruhr by Avro Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron, known ever since as the Dambusters Raid. The bombs that the Lancasters dropped were designed by the most prolific inventor of armaments of the period. His Tallboy and Grand Slam earthquake bombs helped destroy the battleship Tirpitz as well as numerous other high-profile targets, and were only eclipsed in destructive power by the atom bombs dropped on Japan.The inventor was Barnes Wallis and A Hell of a Bomb is the story of the development of his bombs, their destructive uses and how they helped win the war for the Allies.

No auge do Holocausto, 25 jovens prisioneiras do campo de concentração de Auschwitz-Birkenau desenharam, cortaram e coseram elegantes peças de vestuário para as mulheres da elite Nazi. Um trabalho qu

Operation Market Garden, often depicted as one of the most decisive military actions of the Allied campaign, offered an opportunity to conclude hostilities with Hitlers Germany before 1945 but its disastrous failure left the Allies facing another seven months of difficult and costly fighting. In this revised new paperback edition of Arnhem: Myth and Reality, Sebastian Ritchie demonstrates that the operation can only be properly understood if it is considered alongside earlier airborne ventures and reassesses the role of the Allied air forces and the widely held view that they bore a particular responsibility for Market Gardens failure. By placing Market Garden in its correct historical setting and by reassessing Allied air plans and their execution, this groundbreaking book provides a radically different view of the events of September 1944, challenging much of the current orthodoxy in the process.

Laurence Rees passou 25 anos entrevistando os sobreviventes do Holocausto e os responsáveis pelo Terceiro Reich e seus horrores. Nesta história arrebatadora, ele combina esses testemunhos com as pesquisas academicas mais recentes para investigar o que tornou possivel o maior crime da historia. Rees argumenta que, apesar de o odio aos judeus estar no epicentro do pensamento nazista, no podemos entender o Holocausto por completo sem considerar seus planos de matarem tambem milhes de no judeus. Ele tambem revela que no houve um roteiro especifico para o Holocausto. Em vez disso, os acontecimentos foram se agravando um apos o outro, ate culminar no horror completo. Apesar de Hitler ser o principal responsavel pelo que aconteceu, a culpa e coletiva, Rees nos lembra, e os efeitos permanecem.O Holocausto: Uma nova historia e um relato acessivel, mas rigoroso desse crime extremo. Com uma narrativa cronologica e intensa, esta e uma exposiço categorica do momento mais sombrio da humanidade.

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of the Second World War, raging from 1939 to 1945. It saw the might of the Royal Navy pitted against the Kriegsmarine. Germanys secret weapon was their fleet of U-boats. They had the largest fleet of submarines in the world and this enabled them to play cat and mouse with the Allied forces to devastating effect. Hunting in wolf-packs they would prey on merchant shipping and naval vessels. In this startling new book, Jak P. Mallmann Showell tells the story of this battle as viewed through the conning towers of these U-boats. Using surviving logs, written as the action unfolded. You taste the salt, smell the nauseating stench of the U-boats and hear orders being whispered quietly while diving back in time to the horrendous inhumanity of the Battle of the Atlantic.

During the Second World War, the Germans considered the Royal Artillery to be the most professional arm of the British Army: British gunners were accurate, effective and efficient, and provided fire support for their armoured and infantry colleagues that was better than that in any other army.However, the Royal Artillery delivered much more than field and medium artillery battlefield support. Gunner regiments manned antitank guns on the front line and light anti-aircraft guns in divisional regiments to defend against air attack at home and abroad. The Royal Artillery also helped to protect convoys that brought essential supplies to Britain, and AA gunners had their finest hour when they destroyed the majority of the V-1 flying bombs launched against Britain from June 1944.Richard Doherty delves into the wide-ranging role of the Royal Artillery, examining its state of preparedness in 1939, the many developments that were introduced during the war including aerial observation and self-propelled artillery the growth of the regiment and its effectiveness in its many roles. Royal Artillery in the Second World War is a comprehensive account of a British Army regiment that played a vital role in the ensuing Allied victory.

In August 1942, British launched Operation Pedestal in an attempt to deliver supplies to the stricken island of Malta, an Allied base which had been under Axis blockade for months. From 915 August a convoy of some 50 ships ran the gauntlet of Axis bombers, submarines, E-boats and minefields. Of the original fourteen merchant vessels, only five reached Malta Grand Harbour. In The Spitfire Pilot and the Sea Captain, Angus Mansfield relates the experiences of two men involved in Pedestal, Captain David Macfarlane of MV Melbourne Star and his nephew David Mejor, one of the Spitfire pilots who fought to protect the convoy. Told using their log books, letters and papers, this is the story of one familys contribution to a relief operation that cost over 400 Allied lives, but which has gone down in history as one of the most important British strategic victories of the Second World War.

The Nazis dream of a world dominated by legions of Aryan supermen, forged in battle and absolutely loyal to Hitler, was epitomised by the Waffen-SS. Created as a supreme military élite, it grew to become Nazi Germanys second army, an immense force totalling almost one million men by the end of the War. An astonishing fact about the SS is that thousands of its members were not German. Men stepped forward from almost every nation in Europe for many, sometimes complex reasons that included hatred of Bolshevism and nationalist sentiment or even straightforward anti-Semitism. Foremost amongst them were Scandinavians from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Thousands were recruited from 1940 onwards and fought with distinction on the Russian Front.They served at first in national legions but were then brought together in the Wiking Panzer Division and the Nordland Panzer-grenadier Division. In Hitlers Vikings, Jonathan Trigg details the battles these men fought and what inspired them to join the Waffen-SS, based wherever possible on interviews with surviving veterans. Many of the photographs reproduced here have never before been published. Hitlers Vikings were amongst the last men still fighting in the ruins of Berlin in 1945 their story is truly remarkable.

For most prisoners of war in the Second World War, life behind bars was nothing like the films. The tales of brave escape attempts told in accounts such as the iconic film The Great Escape are exciting enough, but how much of the detail is true? In Great Escapes ex-RAF officer and researcher for the RAF Escaping Society Terry Treadwell tells the incredible tales of some of the lesser known attempts to escape POW camps. All the amazing details are from real-life escape attempts, but as this book reveals, fact is often more extraordinary than fiction. Using personal accounts, authentic reports from German guards and debrief documents in the National Archives, Terry Treadwell traces the astounding stories of these heroic escapees. Some were successful, others not, but in each case the inspired methods devised and executed by the prisoners show bravery and ingenuity on a greater scale than any film. With incredible stories such as the Wooden Horse, the French Tunnel and the Colditz Ghost, this ground-breaking new book tells the stories of some of the bravest, and most reckless, men in history.

In March 1941, the Royal Navy scored one of the greatest one-sided victories against the Italian Fleet the Regia Marina at Matapan. It brought to an end six months of remarkable success for the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. When France fell and Italy declared war on Britain, Admiral Dudley Pound had wanted to evacuate the Mediterranean altogether and concentrate on home defence. Churchill overruled him, regarding such a move as the death knell of the British Empire. His decision made the Mediterranean theatre the focus of British land operations for four years, reliant on the Navy. In Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Churchill had a fleet commander in the Mediterranean who would miss no chance of hounding the enemy. Affectionately known as A.B.C. by his men, Cunningham was salty in his language, intolerant of fools and a master of tactics. In "The Battle of Matapan 1941: The Trafalgar of the Mediterranean", Mark Simmons explores the remarkable victories of Taranto and Matapan, as seen through the eyes of the men who manned the ships and flew the aircraft of the Mediterranean Fleet.

The ArabIsraeli conflict goes far beyond the wars waged on Middle Eastern battlefields. There is also a war of narratives revolving around the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba. One side is charged with Holocaust denial, the other with exploiting a tragedy while denying the tragedies of others.In this path-breaking book, eminent political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores these conflicting narratives and considers their role in todays Middle East dispute. He analyses the various Arab responses to the Holocaust, from the earliest intimations of the genocide, through the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestine, and up to our own time, critically assessing the political and historical context for these responses.Achcar offers a unique ideological mapping of the Arab world, in the process defusing and international propaganda war that has become a major stumbling block in the path of ArabWestern understanding.

On 16 May 1943, nineteen Lancaster aircraft from the RAFs 617 Squadron set off to attack the great dams in the industrial heart of Germany. Flying at a height of 60ft, they dropped a series of bombs which bounced across the water and destroyed two of their targets, thereby creating a legend. The one-off operation combined an audacious method of attack, technically brilliant flying and visually spectacular results. But while the story of Operation Chastise is well known, most of the 133 Dambusters who took part in the Dams Raid have until now been just names on a list. They came from all parts of the UK and the Commonwealth and beyond, and each of them was someones son or brother, someones husband or father. This is the first book to present their individual stories and celebrate their skill, heroism and, for many, sacrifice.

For almost sixty years after their deaths, three men, whose brave actions shortened the Second World War by as much as two years, remained virtually unknown and uncelebrated. Two lost their lives retrieving vital German codebooks from a sinking U-boat. The third survived the war, only to die in a house fire soon afterwards. But it was the precious documents they seized in October 1942 that enabled Bletchley Parks code-breakers to crack Enigma and so win the Battle of the Atlantic. Now recognised as a pivotal moment in world history, three British servicemen made it possible to finally beat the U-boats, but at the time not even their families could be told of the importance of their deeds. Shrouded in secrecy for decades, then recast as fictional Americans by the Hollywood film U-571, this book sets the record straight. It is written in celebration of Colin Grazier GC, Tony Fasson GC, and Tommy Brown GM - the REAL Enigma heroes.

Known affectionately as Dads Army, the Home Guard was Britains very serious attempt to protect our shores from invasion by Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In the Spitfire summer of 1940, all that the 1 million unpaid, untrained part-timers of the Local Defence Volunteers (as the organisation was originally called) wanted was a service rifle for each man, but even that was too much for a country threatened by defeat to provide.Britains Final Defence is the first book to explore the efforts made to arm the home defence force between 1940 and 1944 and describe the full range of weaponry available for Britains last stand against invading Axis forces.

At the outbreak of war in 1939 British tank crews were ill-equipped, under trained and badly led. As a consequence the lives of hundreds of crewmen were wasted unnecessarily. This was due not only to the poor design and construction of British tanks, but also to the lack of thought and planning on the part of successive pre-war governments and the War Office. Death by Design explores how and why Britain went from leading the world in tank design at the end of the First World War to lagging far behind the design quality of Russian and German tanks in the Second World War. This book is a much-needed warning to governments and military planners: a nation must always be prepared to defend itself and ensure that its soldiers are equipped with the tools to do so.