Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944 by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

The Sunday Times #1 Bestseller The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad 'Our greatest chronicler of the Second World War . . . his fans will love it' - Robert Fox, Evening Standard 'The eye for telling detail whi ch we have come to expect from Antony Beevor. . . this time, though, he turns his brilliance as a military historian to a subject not just of defeat, but dunderhead stupidity' Daily Mail On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aeroplane engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the air armada of Dakotas and gliders carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions. He gazed up in envy at this massive demonstration of paratroop power. Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But could it ever have worked? The cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch, who risked everything to help. German reprisals were pitiless and cruel, and lasted until the end of the war. The British fascination with heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths. Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of the fighting, which General Student himself called 'The Last German Victory'. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single, dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war. 'In Beevor's hands, Arnhem becomes a study of national character' - Ben Macintyre, The Times 'Superb book, tirelessly researched and beautifully written' - Saul David, Daily Telegraph 'Complete mastery of both the story and the sources' - Keith Lowe, Literary Review 'Another masterwork from the most feted military historian of our time' - Jay Elwes, Prospect Magazine 'The analysis he has produced of the disaster is forensic' - Giles Milton, Sunday Times 'He is a master of his craft . . . we have here a definitive account' - Piers Paul Read, The Tablet ...Show more

D-Day New Guinea by Phillip Bradley

$32.99 AUD

Category: Military

The most complete telling of one of the most significant campaigns of the Pacific War and Australia's role in it.

Our Great Hearted Men by Peter Brune

$50.00 AUD

Category: Military

The AIF and the Hundred Days Battlefields such as Gallipoli, Fromelles, Pozières, Bullecourt and Passchendaele are burnt into the Australian Great War psyche. Unfortunately the sheer guts, fortitude and sacrifice of the diggers in those battles had often been wasted by poor leadership and plannin g. From an Australian perspective, such sacrifice engendered bitterness and frustration, which resulted in an emergent sense of Australian nationalism. The AIF now sought a unification of its five divisions to fight under its own command and administration. By mid-1918, after the calamitous German March offensive in which 1200 square miles of hard-won territory had been lost, the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) had begun to learn its lessons. In just 100 action-packed days Germany was brought to its knees. And Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash and his Australian Corps played a critical role in that stunning victory. In this authoritative account of the 100 days, Peter Brune traces the painstaking BEF acquisition of its tactical doctrine with regard to its artillery, tanks and its air force. And the consequence of this knowledge was a sophisticated inter-locking all arms approach to war: incorporating coordinated firepower rather than the futile expenditure of manpower. However, it is Brune's use of participants' diaries that brings an immediacy to his story. The reader will be taken to the bloody interface of battle, hear the voices of some of the Australians involved, and gain a sense of the cost of ultimate victory. ...Show more

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

The classic international bestseller recounting the epic turning point of the second world war In October 1942, a Panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town... Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'. The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline. An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery and the nature of war itself, which changed how history is written, Stalingrad is a testament to the vital role of the Soviet war effort.   'A superb re-telling. Beevor combines a soldier's understanding of war's realities with the narrative techniques of a novelist . . . This is a book that lets the reader look into the face of battle' Orlando Figes, Sunday Telegraph 'A brilliantly researched tour de force of military history' Sarah Bradford, The Times Antony Beevor is the renowned author of Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and Berlin, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees' Award. His books have sold nearly four million copies. ...Show more

The Second World War (PB) by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert. Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor's THE SECOND WORLD WAR never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in this, the most terrible war in history. ...Show more

Crete: The Battle and the Resistance by Antony Beevor

$19.99 AUD

Category: Military

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Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy: 1945-1975 by Max Hastings

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'His masterpiece' Antony Beevor, Spectator'A masterful performance' Sunday Times'By far the best book on the Vietnam War' Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the Year Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record. ...Show more

Ardennes 1944 by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

From the bestselling author of Stalingrad, Berlin and D-Day, Antony Beevor's Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble tells the story of the German's ill-fated final stand. On 16 December, 1944, Hitler launched his 'last gamble' in the snow-covered forests and gorges of the Ardennes. He believed he could spl it the Allies by driving all the way to Antwerp, then force the Canadians and the British out of the war. Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back. The Ardennes offensive, with more than a million men involved, became the greatest battle of the war in western Europe. American troops, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians fled, justifiably afraid of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While many American soldiers fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed the German advance. The harsh winter conditions and the savagery of the battle became comparable to the eastern front. And after massacres by the Waffen-SS, even American generals approved when their men shot down surrendering Germans. The Ardennes was the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht. ...Show more

The Lost Battalions - A Battle That Could Not Be Won an Island That Could Not Be Defended. an Ally That Could Not Be Trusted by Tom Gilling

$32.99 AUD

Category: Military

They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'. Until n ow, the story of the 2000 diggers marooned on Java in February 1942 has been a footnote to the fall of Singapore and the bloody campaign in New Guinea. Led by an Adelaide lawyer, Brigadier Arthur Blackburn VC, and fighting with scrounged weapons, two Australian battalions - plus an assortment of cooks, laundrymen and deserters from Singapore - held up the might of the Imperial Japanese Army until ordered by their Dutch allies to surrender. Drawing on personal diaries, official records and interviews with two of the last living survivors, this book tells the extraordinary story of the 'lads from Java', who laid down their weapons, but refused to give in. ...Show more

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Antony Beevor

$24.99 AUD

Category: Military

The Red Army had much to avenge when it finally reached the frontiers of the Reich in January 1945. Political instructors rammed home the message of Wehrmacht and SS brutality. The result was the most terrifying example of fire and sword ever known, with tanks crushing refugee columns under their tracks , mass rape, pillage and destruction. Hundreds of thousands of women and children froze to death or were massacred because Nazi Party chiefs, refusing to face defeat, had forbidden the evacuation of civilians. Over seven million fled westwards from the terror of the Red Army. Antony Beevor reconstructs the experiences of those millions caught up in the nightmare of the Third Reich's final collapse, telling a terrible story of pride, stupidity, fanatacism, revenge and savagery, but also one of astonishing endurance, self-sacrifice and survival against all odds. ...Show more

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor

$22.99 AUD

Category: Military

"Glorious, horrifying... D-DAY is a vibrant work of history that honors the sacrifice of tens of thousands of men and women."--Time Renowned historian Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad and The Battle of Arnhem, and the man who "single-handedly transformed the reputation of military history" (The Guard ian) presents the first major account in more than twenty years of the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Paris. This is the first book to describe not only the experiences of the American, British, Canadian, and German soldiers, but also the terrible suffering of the French caught up in the fighting. Beevor draws upon his research in more than thirty archives in six countries, going back to original accounts and interviews conducted by combat historians just after the action. D-Day is the consummate account of the invasion and the ferocious offensive that led to Paris's liberation. ...Show more

The Stolen Maps by TREVOR TUCKER

$29.95 AUD

Category: Military