Antony Beevor

The British historian and author presents a single volume history of the world's largest conflict, from Manchuria in 1939 to the Soviet invasion of northern China six years later, describing the human drama of soldiers, civilians and political leaders.

The Second World War

The Fall of Berlin 1945

Traces the history of the war, describes its causes, and discusses the war's relationship to World War II.

The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

The Battle for Spain

Jacket subtitle: The Battle of the Bulge.

Hitler's Last Gamble

Ardennes 1944

the Battle for Normandy

D-day

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.

The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

Arnhem

Even Stalin was awed by D-Day. 'In the whole history of war,' he wrote to Churchill, 'there has never been such an undertaking.' Those who took part in the great cross-Channel invasion, whether soldier, sailor or airman, would never forget the sight. It was by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. Nor, of course, would the German defenders alerted at the last moment on the Normandy coasts. It was by far the largest invasion fleet ever known. The very scale of the undertaking and its meticulous planning were unprecedented, but although the beachheads were established as planned, it soon became clear that the next stage of the battle would be far more difficult than anyone had imagined. The thick hedgerows of Normandy were ideal for the defender, and the Germans, especially the Waffen-SS divisions, fought with cunning and a desperate ferocity. As they made their way inland, the British, Canadian and American forces became involved in battles whose savagery was often comparable to the Eastern Front. Casualties began to mount and so did the tension between the principal commanders on both sides. French civilians, caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing, endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation but the whole of the post-war world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe. Making use of overlooked and new material from over thirty archives in half a dozen countries, D-Day is the most vivid and well-researched account yet of the battle of Normandy. As with Stalingradand Berlin - The Downfall, Antony Beevor's gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war. D-Dayis Beevor again doing what he does best, making military history readable, not by writing military history but simply by writing well. Les Carlyon- The Australian Literary Review

The Battle for Normandy

D-Day

Diana Bishop

Woman in Berlin

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.

The Downfall 1945

Berlin

Second World War

The award-winning author of Stalingrad presents an account of the Normandy invasion that offers insight into the experiences of soldiers and French civilians, documenting the heavy casualties suffered on all fronts and the ways in which the war influenced relations between America and Europe.

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, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war effort.

Stalingrad

Artemis Cooper

A vibrant anecdotal chronicle of the social, political, and cultural rebirth that Paris experienced after World War II uses archives, diaries, journals and interviews to document the beginnings of Existentialism, the Theater of the Absurd, fashion's New Look, and more. Reprint.

Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949

A noted historian sheds new light on the life and career of Olda Chekhova, the beautiful niece of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who fled Russia for Berlin in 1920, achieved fame as an actress and a prominent position in Germany's Nazi party, and may have been a sleeper agent for the Soviet NKVD. Reprint.

The Mystery of Olga Chekhova

“Riveting . . . There is a wealth of new information here that adds considerable texture and nuance to his story and helps to set Russia apart from previous works.”—The Wall Street Journal An epic new account of the conflict that reshaped Eastern Europe and set the stage for the rest of the twentieth century. Between 1917 and 1921 a devastating struggle took place in Russia following the collapse of the Tsarist empire. The doomed White alliance of moderate socialists and reactionary monarchists stood little chance against Trotsky’s Red Army and the single-minded Communist dictatorship under Lenin. In the savage civil war that followed, terror begat terror, which in turn led to ever greater cruelty with man’s inhumanity to man, woman and child. The struggle became a world war by proxy as Churchill deployed weaponry and troops from the British empire, while contingents from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, and Czechoslovakia played rival parts. Using the most up to date scholarship and archival research, Antony Beevor assembles the complete picture in a gripping narrative that conveys the conflict through the eyes of everyone from the worker on the streets of Petrograd to the cavalry officer on the battlefield and the doctor in an improvised hospital.

Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921

Russia

Revised Edition

Paris After the Liberation 1944-1949

Dia D

The Battle and the Resistance (History and Warfare)

Crete

Gil Reyes

Um ato de desespero que quase deu certo Nas primeiras horas do dia 16 de dezembro de 1944, Hitler lançou sua última grande ofensiva contra os Aliados na região da floresta de Ardenas, na Bélgica. Era uma batalha crucial para os alemães que pretendiam dividir as tropas britânicas e americanas e forçar um acordo de paz com os aliados ocidentais. "Um ato de desespero do Führer", afirmou um de seus principais comandantes. Surpreendidos naquela manhã de muita neve e frio extremo, parte dos soldados se rendeu e outra, retrocedeu. O sucesso inicial dos alemães e o contra-ataque dos Aliados nas sete semanas seguintes são contados de forma magistral por Antony Beevor, um dos mais importantes historiadores contemporâneos. Envolvendo mais de um milhão de homens, praticamente metade de americanos, a batalha de Ardenas se tornou a mais importante do front ocidental da Segunda Guerra Mundial – e decisiva para a derrota final de Hitler.

Antony Beevor

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