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This book was recently released and has picked up some pretty good reviews; "The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II" by Adam LeBor.
The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II by Adam LeBorDescription:
In 1945, Budapest, once one of the cultured twin capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire, became the site of the last great, brutal city siege of WWII--now brilliantly recreated in this new history.
Although Hungary was a German ally in 1941, two years into World War II, it was still possible for Allied prisoners of war, French and Polish refugees, spies of every kind, and the city’s large Jewish population to live freely and openly, enjoying the cafes and boulevards that made Budapest one of the great European capitals. While the other multicultural centers of Europe had fallen to the almost all-consuming conflict, Budapest remained intact, a shining reminder of what middle European high culture could be.
In September 1944, three months after D-Day, life in the city seemed idyllic. But under the guise of peace existed an undercurrent of tension and anxiety: British and American troops advanced from the west and Soviet troops from the east. Who would reach the capital first? By mid-October 1944, Budapest had collapsed into anarchy: death squads roamed the streets, the city’s remaining Jews were funneled into ghettos, Russian shells destroyed city blocks, and everyone struggled to find food and survive the winter.
Using newly uncovered diaries and archives, Adam Lebor brilliantly recreates the increasingly desperate efforts of Hungary’s leaders to avoid being drawn into the cataclysm of war, the moral and tactical ambiguity they deployed in the attempt, and the ultimate tragedy that befell Hungary and, in particular, its Jewish population. Told through the lives of a glamorous aristocrats, SS Officers, a rebellious teenage Jewish school student, Hungary's most popular singer and actress, and a housewife trying desperately to keep her family alive, the story of how Budapest is threatened from all sides as the war tightens its noose is highly dramatic and utterly compelling.
An October release:
by Tim SaundersDescription:
With the German reinforcement of Normandy in April 1944, the chance of I Corps capturing Caen on D Day or shortly thereafter had become increasingly unlikely. And so it was, during D+1, the 21st Panzer Division were joined by the Hitlerjugend Panzer Division in a defensive wall around the north and west of the city, while the Allied main effort was transferred west to XXX Corps. This left 3rd British and 3rd Canadian divisions on the Caen front in a period of ‘active defence’, with patrolling and a series of remarkably bloody actions, in the shadow of other operations such as EPSOM, that were fought to nibble away at the German positions.
In July, with the Second Army’s build up complete and rising criticism of General Montgomery’s conduct of the campaign in Normandy, attention returned to Caen with the Canadians taking part in Operation WINDSOR: the attack on the heavily defended Carpiquet Airfield. This was a necessary precursor to I Corps’ Operation CHARNWOOD. The final battle for Caen opened on the evening of 7 July 1944 with the controversial bombing of the northern part of the city, and at dawn the established British and Canadian divisions attacked having been joined by the newly arrived 59th Staffordshire Division in their first battle. By the following evening the Lutwaffefeldt Division had collapsed, and the Hitlerjugend were withdrawing to the south of the River Orne.
Looks like there's a preceding volume coming out this month:
by Tim SaundersDescription:
The COSSAC planners in 1943 outlined a strategy to capture the city of Caen, some 10 miles in-land from the coastline with an airborne division. On assumption of command of 21st Army Group, General Montgomery up-scaled the invasion and inserting SWORD Beach, gave the task of capturing the city to the 3rd Division on D Day or shortly afterwards. The Germans, however, seeing the number of Allied divisions, many fictional, multiplying on their situation maps, believed that a secondary landing would be made in Normandy. In April 1944, they therefore made significant reinforcements including moving the 21st Panzer Division to the important transport node of Caen that, if held, barred the way onto the more open country south to Falaise.
Though aware of the German reinforcement thanks to ULTRA, the Allied aspiration remained to capture Caen and fix the Germans against the British Second Army on the eastern flank of the lodgement. In doing so, it became obvious that the city would not be captured as quickly or cleanly as originally envisaged.
On D Day, the 3rd Division faced not just the coastal crust of defences, but German formations deployed in depth, including the 21st Panzer Division barring the way to Caen. Beset with difficulties resulting from Eisenhower’s decision to ‘go’ in less-than-ideal conditions, the landing was slow and the division could not develop the necessary momentum to carry them to the city.
Helion Company is publishing a new edition of their 2013 book The German Fallschirmtruppe (1936-1941).I read the original German version, which I think is fabulous.
According to Rick's review the 2013 English language edition suffered severe translation errors/problems.
Since both versions are "revised editions" I hope someone took the trouble to revise the old revision :-)
New edition:
Karl-Heinz Golla the old edition:
German edition (2006):
Grub Street is publishing vol. six of their terrific series on the Mediterranean Air War
Christopher ShoresFrom the publisher:
This volume focuses of the early months of the hugely significant Pointblank Directive air campaign which saw Allied forces conduct daylight bombing offensives against strategic targets in southern Germany and south-eastern Europe. It also notes action against Axis allies such as Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, that were being encountered for the first time by Western Allies. With minute and original detail and accompanied by hundreds of unpublished photographs, this is essential reading for scholars of the Second World War Allied air campaigns.
A September release (August according to Anthony Tucker-Jones at P&S)
The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France by Kevin PassmoreAn authoritative and original history of the Maginot Line that reshapes our understanding of interwar France and the events of 1940
The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. Kilometres of underground galleries led to casements hidden in the terrain, and turrets that rose from the ground to fire upon the enemy. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare.
Despite this extensive preparation, France fell to Germany in a little under six weeks. Eight decades on, the Maginot Line is still remembered as an expensively misguided response to obvious danger.
In this groundbreaking account, Kevin Passmore reevaluates the Maginot Line. He traces the controversies surrounding construction, the lives of the men who manned the forts, the impact on German-speaking inhabitants of the frontier, and the fight against espionage from within. Far from a backward step, the Maginot Line was an ambitious project of modernisation--one that was let down by strategic error and growing dissatisfaction with fortification.
Some good books there. I am interested in the new book on the Maginot Line!André - I really hope they have fixed the errors in the revised edition of the Fallschirmtruppe book. I also hope that a second volume is coming out one day soon!
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "André - I also hope that a second volume is coming out one day soon ..."Rick, I'm just guessing here but it might simply be a rights issue. The first one (which appeared last in Germany) was written by Karl-Heinz Golla whereas the other two were written by Hans-Martin Stimpel. H-M Stimpel also wrote an additional volume discussing the mentality and indoctrination, training and leadership of the Fallschirmtruppe.
Dimitri wrote: "Jerome does it again :-) the year isn't half out and hello 2026 shelf"Jerome is simply awesome for doing that. Thanks, Jerome!
A March 2026 release:
by Bill WhitesideDescription:
The Associated Press called the Royal Navy’s July 1940 attack on the French fleet "the strangest of all naval actions in the world’s history." The bombardment at Mers-el-Kébir, a small Algerian port, shocked the world and claimed the lives of 1,257 French seamen. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech to Parliament recounting the operation resonated “like no other ever heard in its ancient halls.”
The stakes were dire. France had signed an armistice with Germany just weeks earlier, and Churchill feared Hitler would seize the French fleet and turn it against Britain. The British demanded that France move its warships to Allied ports. When France didn’t comply, Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to neutralize the threat.
The fallout extended beyond Mers-el-Kébir. In Alexandria, Egypt, British and French admirals negotiated a fragile truce to avoid further bloodshed. But trust between the two navies was shattered.
The attack weighed heavily on the Royal Navy. Most officers resented being ordered to fire on former comrades—men they had served alongside only weeks earlier. Even Churchill, who adored France, found the decision agonizing.
This dramatic story unfolds through a compelling cast of statesmen and commanders. French admiral Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan, of whom Churchill once said, "If Darlan had chosen to fight in June 1940 he would have been a de Gaulle raised to the tenth power," played a pivotal role. So did Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville, who overcame illness to lead key operations at Dunkirk and Mers-el-Kébir. Their choices under pressure shaped the course of the war—and defined their legacies.
Churchill’s decision to strike a recent ally remains one of the most controversial of his wartime leadership.
Congrats to author
for the publication today of
.Set in the Netherlands in WW2, this is a story of a young Austrian girl separated from her family as the winds of war are spreading. Any book by Sowards is a real treat. This one includes battle description from Arnhem. You can read my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Bev wrote: "Congrats to author for the publication today of .Set in the Netherlands in WW2, this is a story of a young Austrian gi..."
Thanks for the link to your review, sounds like an excellent novel!
A January 2026 release:
by Vojin MajstorovićDescription:
This ground-breaking history traces the Red Army's advances across Central Europe and the Balkans in 1944-1945. It focuses on the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts, which occupied Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria. Utilizing material from archives across Russia, Ukraine and Serbia, alongside diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Vojin Majstorivić examines the official policies and troops' behaviour in each country and uncovers a litany of military violations, from deserting and looting to widespread sexual violence. His findings show that the Red Army was an ill-disciplined force, but that military personnel committed fewer crimes against civilians in 'neutral Bulgaria' and 'friendly' Yugoslavia than in “enemy” Romania, Hungary, and Austria. To explain the variation in troops' conduct, he stresses the interaction of several continuously evolving factors: Kremlin's policies, the severity of the fighting, the command's policies towards criminals, the official propaganda, and troops' martial masculinity, identity, and views of the local populations.
A March 2026 release:
by Matti FriedmanDescription:
The story of the Jewish parachutists who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe to Palestine, only to return on a British-sponsored mission near the end of World War II, is one that Matti Friedman had heard of but had never understood. Their names were legendary in the early years of the State of Israel, especially Hannah Szenes, best known for her poem "Eli, Eli," who at the age of 23 was tortured and executed in Budapest, the city of her birth. And yet what exactly was the mission, and what had it actually accomplished? What had these parachutists done to become heroes?
Out of the Sky follows four of the parachutists from the spring of 1944 to the operation's dramatic end that winter. The mission was run by British officers and Zionist leaders in Palestine who, faced with the Nazi threat, suspended their mutual distaste but not their mutual suspicion. The British needed multilingual agents behind enemy lines, while the Jewish leaders wanted to somehow fight back against their Nazi murderers. Of the thirty parachutists who jumped, seven were killed, while others performed acts of extraordinary bravery and ingenuity merely to escape back to Palestine. Not a single Nazi was harmed; not a single Jew was saved. Nothing of practical value was gained. And yet the myth of these brave young men and women willing to sacrifice themselves for a larger cause has eclipsed their actual deeds.
In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman tells the gripping tale of this forgotten moment of history and shows us how story itself can have a power even greater than warfare. And in exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and futility, and how history remembers what it chooses to remember, he creates an argument that has deep resonance and meaning in our own time.
A May 2026 release:
by Prit ButtarDescription:
This sweeping saga takes us from the banks of the River Oder as the Red Army begins it relentless drive towards the still beating heart of the Third Berlin. Only the Seelow Heights stood between the Soviet forces and the capital. Over the course of three days in May 1945 almost one million Soviet troops would attack these final entrenched positions. Once these defences were breached it was guaranteed that a bitter street-by-street battle would take place in the city itself between a vengeful Red Army and desperate, fanatical Nazis until final capitulation. Using vivid first-hand accounts, Prit Buttar reveals the brutal combat that defined the final death throes of the Third Reich.
Not only was the outcome of the war at stake. As the Red Army rolled into Berlin this was already a foregone conclusion even if it would take its toll in blood. Already battle lines for the forthcoming Cold War were being drawn. Stalin, fearful that the Western Powers would not honour their agreements, was determined to have boots on the ground to ensure his control of what would become the Soviet occupation zone.
Berlin: Endgame 1945 is the brilliant account of the ferocious climax to World War II and a chilling prologue to the Cold War.
Jerome wrote: "A May 2026 release: by Prit ButtarDescription:
This sweeping saga takes us from the banks of the River Oder as the Red Army begins it r..."
Another good book on my list!
A November release:
by Patrick G. ErikssonDescription:
The title of this book, 'Eagle Days', relates to the chosen time period of 8 August to 13 August 1940. This period is after the early convoy battles and attacks on coastal targets which dominated July and the first few days of August. On 8 August, another convoy attack was made but with a difference; a single convoy was repeatedly attacked as it sailed westwards down the Channel, a determined effort to destroy this one convoy and shut the Channel. Hitler’s Führer Directive No. 17 of 1 August 1940 had loosened the reins off the Luftwaffe in its attacks against the United Kingdom; Adlertag was to open the great offensive after the warm-up of July.
This widespread set of attacks also included for the first time, raids on inland Fighter Command sector stations as targets, which would continue for much of the rest of the month. Having recently overwhelmed Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France, having sent the British Army back across the Channel from Dunkirk, and having beaten all their opposing air forces other than the RAF, the Germans and the Luftwaffe in particular were dangerously over-confident.
The strategic vision and the subtle and functional integrated aerial defence system set up under Air Chief Marshal Dowding’s leadership, and tactically mastered by the 11 Group commander, Air Vice Marshal Park, his 10 Group colleague Air Vice Marshal Sir Quintin Brand and their sector commanders, stands in very stark contrast to the bombast of Reichsmarshall Göring of the Luftwaffe.
This week also marks a strangely specialised yet intense struggle involving only part of the forces available to a single Fliegerkorps in Kesselring’s Luftflotte 2 (but all his fighters); Sperrle, his Luftflotte 3 counterpart, along the Channel coast, almost immediately wasted his best bombers in his Ju 88 units in the firm belief that a few days of combat would suffice. He was wrong.
Jerome wrote: "A November release: by Patrick G. ErikssonDescription:
The title of this book, 'Eagle Day..."
Should be a good one to keep an eye-out for!
Jerome wrote: "A November release: by Patrick G. ErikssonDescription:
The title of this book, 'Eagle Day..."
Looks good, Jerome!
A May 2026 release:
by Lawrence PatersonDescription:
As Germany and Italy overran Yugoslavia and Greece in early 1941, the Kriegsmarine established a new theatre command, tasked with establishing German control over the eastern Mediterranean and coordinating actions with the Italian, Romanian and Bulgarian navies. With the invasion of the USSR that summer, the Black Sea would also become a battleground, and Naval Group South would be established.
For the first time, Kriegsmarine historian Lawrence Paterson outlines the dizzying array of Kriegsmarine combat units that fought under Naval Group South – S-boats and U-boats, flotillas of escort ships, landing ships, artillery vessels, patrol boats, submarine hunters and minesweepers – and how they operated, including their organization, their complex logistics, and vital intelligence and communications. Combat was frequently fast and furious, ranging from pitched battles with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and operations supporting Operation Barbarossa to combat against naval units of Tito’s Partisans off the Croatian coast.
Superbly illustrated with rare photos, artwork of dramatic actions, 3D diagrams and maps, this explores the little-known naval war fought by Germany’s smaller craft, at the farthest reach of German naval power in Europe.
Another:
by Adam MakosDescription:
It’s July 1943, and every available American B-24 bomber has been gathered in the Libyan desert for a secret a raid against Ploesti, home to the Romanian oil refineries that supply Hitler’s war machine with the lifeblood of war. But smashing “Hitler’s gas station” will require the most daring mission of the war, a raid of heavy bombers attacking volatile refineries at treetop level.
That task falls to Lieutenant Ernie Paulson and the rookie bomber crews of the 389th Bomb Group. A twenty-two-year-old copilot, Ernie, a farm kid from humble origins in Utah, is now embarking on the first adventure of his life. But when Ernie and his crew are shot down during the adrenaline-fueled attack, they crash-land in the last place they ever on the estate of Romanian princess Catherine Caradja.
After rescuing them from the clutches of the Nazis that occupy Romania, Princess Catherine adopts the American POWs as “her boys” and vows to get them home. Along the way, she brings the young men into a circle of unlikely allies, including Romania's twenty-one-year-old monarch, who's searching for a way to extract his nation from the Axis powers, and her cousin, a dashing Romanian ace reluctantly flying for the wrong side.
As the war turns against Germany, the American prisoners and their Romanian captors come to an understanding—their survival depends on joining forces. When Romania’s young king stages a coup against the Nazis, Ernie and the POWs are drawn into their most perilous mission a great escape that will require the aid of their unlikely Romanian allies, forging a bond of friendship that will shape the rest of their lives.
From a long-overlooked front of World War II, Adam Makos delivers a gripping true story destined to join the ranks of military history’s finest.
A sure-fire addition to my shelves. Looks like a great untold story. Reading his Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives In World War II and he makes the stories come alive.
A July 2026 release:
by Charles MelsonDescription:
An examination of irregular warfare from the perspectives of the Germans and their coalition in the Balkans of Southeast Europe in World War II.
This book traces the evolution of German irregular warfare doctrine from Clausewitz to the Third Reich, examining how theory was applied--and often distorted--through the brutal reality of counterinsurgency in the Balkans during World War II and beyond. Focusing on the 7. SS-Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen" as a case study, it reveals how moral, legal, and operational imperatives clashed in a campaign waged in the so-called "gray zone" of modern warfare.
Drawing on a mix of German primary sources, oral testimony, and critical historiography, the book challenges familiar narratives by engaging with recent debates on Wehrmacht complicity, military ethics, and the reinterpretation of unit histories. It offers a conceptual and operational analysis that moves beyond traditional timelines, instead using a dialectical approach to examine "what" happened and "why" these actions were shaped by the doctrinal ideas of the time.
More than a unit history, this is a philosophical and doctrinal inquiry into how counterinsurgency was understood, practiced, and justified--then and now. It interrogates the space between necessity and atrocity, between tactical effectiveness and moral failure. Essential reading for scholars of military history, ethics, and the long shadow cast by 20th-century counterinsurgency practices.
Sounds like a book to keep an eye-out for! Thanks for providing those details Jerome.
Jerome wrote: "A May 2026 release: by Lawrence PatersonDescription:
As Germany and Ita..."
That looks good, Jerome.
A March 2026 release:
by Antonio J. MuñozDescription:
The world had never seen anything like the Eastern Front in World War II. In the so-called bloodlands between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - from the Baltic in the north to the Balkans, the Crimea, and the Caucasus in the south - the two sides clashed in a series of titanic campaigns that involved millions of soldiers and entangled many more civilians. During the war's last year, the Eastern Front descended into cataclysm as the Red Army forced the Germans into retreat and collapse. The Bitter End chronicles this chaotic final stage of World War II, distilling a sprawling conflict into a concise and highly readable narrative.
In concert with the American and British invasion of Normandy in the West, the Soviets launched the war's endgame with Operation Bagration in June 1944 and crushed the German center. It was Barbarossa in reverse as the Red Army killed or captured German forces by the hundreds of thousands. From there, Soviet offensives spread all along the Eastern Front - Finland, the Baltics, the Balkans, Romania - and inflicted defeat after defeat on Germany and its Axis allies. In early 1945, Soviet forces took Warsaw and drove the Germans westward out of Poland, along the way liberating concentration camps including Auschwitz. Shattered German forces attempted to regroup for a desperate showdown in Berlin, but the weight of the Red Army was too great, and after two weeks of street fighting, the Reich capital fell. A week later Germany surrendered.
From Bagration to Berlin, from the Vistula to the Oder, from the Kremlin to Hitler's bunker, The Bitter End reconstructs the final battles on the Eastern Front in a narrative covering war-defining operations but never losing sight of the human cost paid by soldiers in the tanks and foxholes and by innocent civilians in the villages, towns, and cities of Eastern Europe.
A February 2026 release:
by Joseph T. Molyson Jr. Description:
By June 1944, Allied air forces were ready to unleash hell on the Germans in occupied France. Massive numbers of bombers and fighters had been assembled in the United Kingdom, as well as more than one million troops poised to invade the continent. Thunder over Normandy tells the story of the air campaign that began on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and culminated in the liberation of France—one of the largest, most complex, and most successful aerial operations in history.
In April 1944, Allied air forces in Europe—including the vaunted U.S. Eighth Air Force and RAF Bomber Command—were placed under Dwight Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and given a twofold mission to lay the groundwork for D-Day: destroy the Luftwaffe’s battle strength and isolate Normandy from reinforcements. American and British heavy bombers completed these tasks with devastating effectiveness.
D-Day began with the midnight launching of 1,200 transports to drop American and British paratroopers and gliders behind enemy lines in Normandy. In a monumental effort, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions landed behind Utah Beach and fought for towns like Carentan; the British 6th Airborne seized Pegasus Bridge and other crossings near Caen. Toward dawn, 1,000 bombers hammered German positions along the coast, just ahead of the troops who stormed the beaches.
As the fighting moved inland during the next two months, Allied fighters and fighter-bombers swarmed in to provide close support for the ground forces slogging through the hedgerows of Normandy. The bombers continued to strike German industry, but priority was now given to destroying V-1 and V-2 rocket sites as part of Operation Crossbow. Bombers were also used tactically in conjunction with ground operations, including the heavy bombardment that preceded the breakout from Normandy in late July.
By the time Paris was liberated in August 1944, air power—thousands of sorties, hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs—had contributed mightily to Allied victory. Thunder over Normandy details the air operations that made this happen, from thundering bomb runs and low-level strafing attacks to paratrooper drops, glider flights, and wheeling dogfights with the Luftwaffe. During the summer of 1944, as this stirring account vividly shows, the Allies were truly masters of the air.
An April 2026 release:
by Krzysztof JanowiczDescription:
Known as the Mighty Eighth and more recently as Masters of the Air, the U.S. Eighth Air Force was the most famous American air unit of World War II. From its activation in early 1942 as the VIII Bomber Command through the end of the war, the Eighth was a formidable fighting force, with a peak strength of more than 200,000 men and a devastating arsenal of bombers and fighters. An impressively detailed account based on primary sources, Mighty and Victorious follows the men and planes of the Eighth Air Force into the skies over Europe, where its missions played a pivotal role in winning victory in World War II.
On August 17, 1942, the Eighth launched its first mission of the war as a dozen B-17 Flying Fortresses took off from an airfield in England to attack a German-controlled railyard in northern France. The pace and scale of operations accelerated over the next year, and the Eighth's bombers flew missions against various targets across western Europe: primarily U-boat bases on France's west coast, but also attacks on cities and towns like Rotterdam and support for the Dieppe raid. In mid-1943, the Allies began the Combined Bomber Offensive, a strategic operation targeting German industry, and the Eighth formed a critical component of those missions. On July 25, 1943, more than 300 bombers attacked Germany, with one third striking the industrial port of Hamburg.
With meticulous attention to detail, Mighty and Victorious reconstructs the missions of the Eighth Air Force from take-off to landing, describing combat action, strategy and tactics, weather, targets, and damage, as well as Luftwaffe counterattacks and ground-based antiaircraft operations. Never losing sight of the human dimension, the book includes numerous eyewitness accounts from the Eighth's pilots, aircrews, and ground crews who flew the planes into flak and fire, repaired the damage and kept the bombers in the sky, and risked their lives on every mission. Mighty and Victorious ranks among the most comprehensive treatments of an air unit ever assembled.
Jerome wrote: "An April 2026 release: by Krzysztof JanowiczDescription:
K..."
That could be a future purchase for my library!
Jerome wrote: "A February 2026 release: by Joseph T. Molyson Jr. Descripti..."
If this one is as poor as his other book on the air war over Europe, I'm definitely going to skip it.
A June 2026 release:
by Andrew FaltumDescription:
This captivating narrative history begins with the destroyers’ actions during the attack on Pearl Harbor and follows their involvement in major battles, including the Solomons campaign and later efforts against kamikaze attacks and Japanese submarines. It explores how these ships operated in restricted waters, developed new tactics, and adapted to the unique challenges of the Pacific War.
Engagingly written and rich with operational detail, Greyhounds of the Pacific uses photographs, maps, and technical specifications to provide a comprehensive understanding of these ships and their impact. Maps illustrate key operational areas, including Pearl Harbor, the Solomons, Okinawa, and Japan.
Unlike many books that focus on specific ships or battles, Greyhounds of the Pacific provides a broader history of destroyer operations, emphasizing their evolution and contributions to victory in the Pacific. This theater was entirely different from what they faced protecting convoys in the North Atlantic, and it brought the Tin Can Sailors against a wholly distinct adversary in the Japanese, who were fighting to hold island territory. All readers of World War II naval combat and Pacific warfare will gain a clear perspective on the destroyers’ role in shaping the war’s outcome.
Another:
by Richard HargreavesDescription:
Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian and English, 1942: Hitler's Gamble describes the spring and summer campaigns in the Soviet Union and Africa which crowned the Axis forces with fresh laurels. Impressive victories were won at Kharkov, Sevastopol and Tobruk. Axis powers were then on the cusp of victory in Egypt, the Caucasus and Stalingrad until the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut was brought to a halt in the autumn of 1942.
Based upon 15 years of research in archives, museums and libraries across Europe, this is a unique account of this critical year in World War II. No other history has looked at the Eastern and North African theatres in conjunction, masterfully illustrating how the crushing gains on both fronts would be lost by the end of the year.
Richard Hargreaves shines a light on the little studied areas of the war such as the aftermath of Tobruk and challenges traditional German-centric accounts of the Caucasus campaign. Strategy and the hubris of Hitler and his generals is brilliantly illustrated but so too are the lives and deaths of ordinary soldiers caught up in these extraordinary events.
Jerome wrote: "Another: by Richard HargreavesDescription:
Drawing upon sources in German, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian and Englis..."
His book on Operation Barbarossa was a very good read so this one will be on my 'to buy' list for 2026!
Jerome, Aussie Rick, I also added the book to my TBR list. I want to see how the author manages to squeeze the descriptions of two fronts into one book
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "This book was recently released and has picked up some pretty good reviews; "The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II" by Adam LeBor.[bookc..."
I read this one. It is a very good book.
An August 2026 release:
by James M. ScottDescription:
Over three days in August 1945, a nation once morally opposed to the bombing of civilians killed 120,000 men, women, and children; doomed tens of thousands more to agonizing death in the weeks and months ahead; and annihilated two cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Empire of Ashes explores the final brutal months of the war in the Pacific, featuring the voices of never–before–heard victims of the atomic bombs. Through interviews with survivors and accounts gleaned from Japanese sources, New York Times best–selling author James M. Scott combines the attacks’ heart–wrenching details with their causes and consequences, from debates within the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, Oakridge, and Hanford to the fallout that would alter decades of life in Japan. From “an exceptional writer with a keen eye for dazzling detail and gripping, suspenseful storytelling” (Henry Richard Marr II, Journal of Military History), Empire of Ashes illuminates the moral dilemma at the center of America’s decision to inflict total war upon Japan with startling immediacy.
Jerome wrote: "An August 2026 release: by James M. ScottDescription:
Over three days in August 1945, a nat..."
I'm a big fan of this author so this will be a future purchase!
THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP
Books mentioned in this topic
Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War (other topics)Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War (other topics)
1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory (other topics)
1942: Hitler's Gamble for Victory (other topics)
Greyhounds of the Pacific: U.S. Destroyers in the War Against Japan (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
James M. Scott (other topics)James M. Scott (other topics)
Richard Hargreaves (other topics)
Richard Hargreaves (other topics)
Andrew Faltum (other topics)
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Description:
The military general who became ..."
Should be an interesting book!