BOOKS

Amazon Books and Printed Materials

  • Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    A Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016
    A Japan Times Best Book About Japan of 2016

    A fascinating look at the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—the warnings, clues and missteps—by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.

    In Washington, DC, in late November 1941, admirals compose the most ominous message in Navy history to warn Hawaii of possible danger, but they write it too vaguely. They think precautions are being taken, but never check to see if they are. A key intelligence officer wants more warnings sent, but he is on the losing end of a bureaucratic battle and can’t get the message out. American sleuths have pierced Japan’s most vital diplomatic code, and Washington believes it has a window on the enemy’s soul—but it does not.

    In a small office at Pearl Harbor, overlooking the battleships at the heart of America’s seafaring power, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet tries to figure out how much danger he really faces. His intelligence unit has lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, but assumes they are resting in a port far away. The admiral thinks Pearl is too shallow for torpedoes, so he never puts up a barrier. As he frets, a Japanese spy is counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo.

    There were false assumptions, and racist ones: The Japanese aren’t very good aviators and they don’t have the nerve or the skill to attempt a strike so far from their home. There were misunderstandings, conflicting desires, painful choices. And there was a naval officer who, on his very first mission as captain of his very first ship, did exactly the right thing. His warning could have averted disaster, but his superiors reacted too leisurely. Japanese planes arrived moments later.

    Twomey’s telescoping of the twelve days leading to the attack unravels the crucial characters and moments, and produces an edge-of-your seat drama with fascinating details about America at this moment in its history. By the end, the reader understands how assumption is the root of disaster, and how sometimes a gamble pays off.

  • Churchill, Roosevelt & Company: Studies in Character and Statecraft

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war in the West. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s charm and Winston Churchill’s victory signs—the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the leadership of the two nations.

    Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis E. Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked—and occasionally did not work—by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the generals and the admirals, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own. Such was the conduct of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with FDR; generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; the Soviet spy in the leadership cadre of the US Treasury, Harry Dexter White, and his struggle with Lord Keynes; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill. The President and the Prime Minister had the difficult task, not always well-performed, of managing their subordinates. Churchill and Roosevelt frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves, and with Stalin.

    Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy, the character and statecraft, at the core of the leadership of the Anglo-American alliance.

  • Hitler’s Interpreter

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    As the main interpreter for Adolf Hitler during the key prewar moments, such as the Munich Agreement, the British Declaration of War and the surrender of France, Paul-Otto Schmidt was well placed to record his impressions of events from 1935 up to 1945.

    He was an interpreter working in the German foreign ministry where he served from 1923 to 1945, and being fluent in English and French he gained respect and was Hitler’s usual first choice for the important meetings. During the war years he served as Hitler’s interpreter during his meetings with Marshal Philippe Pétain and Francisco Franco.

    After the 1942 Dieppe Raid resulted in thousands of Canadian soldiers captured, Schmidt was in charge of their interrogations. Schmidt’s book is helpful in gaining an insight into the minutiae of Third Reich thinking and planning―as much as planning went beyond Hitler’s will. One classic nugget is from the early morning of 3 September 1939 when Britain issued its ultimatum to Germany, for it was Schmidt who had to hand the translation to Hitler: ‘After an interval which seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing by the window. “What now?” asked Hitler with a savage look, as though implying that his Foreign Minister had misled him about England’s probable reaction.’

  • The Plots Against Hitler

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    A new and definitive account of the anti-Nazi underground in Germany and its numerous efforts to assassinate Adolf Hitler

    In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. A year later, all parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler’s dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely clutch of conspirators emerged – soldiers, schoolteachers, politicians, diplomats, theologians, even a carpenter – who would try repeatedly to end the Fuhrer’s genocidal reign. This dramatic and deeply researched book tells the full story of those noble, ingenious, and doomed efforts. This is history at its most suspenseful, as we witness secret midnight meetings, crises of conscience, fierce debates among old friends about whether and how to dismantle Nazism, and the various plots themselves being devised and executed.
     
    Orbach’s fresh research takes advantage of his singular skills as linguist and historian to offer profound insight into the conspirators’ methods, motivations, fears, and hopes. Though we know how this story ends, we’ve had no idea until now how close it came – several times – to ending very differently. The Plots Against Hitler fundamentally alters our view of World War II and sheds bright – even redemptive – light on its darkest days.

  • The 101st Airborne in Normandy: June 1944 (Casemate Illustrated)

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    101st Airborne Division was activated in August 1942 in Louisiana, and its first combat mission was Operation Overlord. On D-Day—June 6, 1944—101st and 82nd Airborne dropped onto the Cotentin peninsula hours before the landings, tasked with capturing bridges and positions, taking out German strongpoints and batteries, and securing the exits from Utah and Omaha Beaches. Things did not initially go smoothly for 101st Airborne, with cloud and antiaircraft fire disrupting the drops, resulting in some units landing scattered over a large area outside their designated drop zones and having to waste time assembling—stymied by lost or damaged radio equipment—or trying to achieve their objectives with severely reduced numbers.

    Casualties were high in some areas due to heavy pre-registered German fire. Nevertheless, the paratroopers fought on and they did manage to secure the crucial beach exits, even if they only achieved a tenuous hold on some other positions. A few days later, 101st Airborne were tasked with attacking the German-held city of Carentan as part of the consolidation of the US beachheads and establishment of a defensive line against the anticipated German counteroffensive. The 101st forced their way into Carentan on 10 and 11 June. The Germans withdrew the following day, and a counteroffensive was put down by elements of the 2nd Armored Division.

    This fully illustrated book details the planning of the airborne element of D-Day, and the execution of the plans until the troops were withdrawn to prepare for the next big airborne operation, Market Garden.

    Table of Contents

    Planning and Preparation
    Airborne Invasion
    “E” is for Easy
    The 101st in Carentan

  • Patton’s First Victory: How General George Patton Turned the Tide in North Africa and Defeated the Afrika Korps at El…

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    American troops invaded North Africa in November 1942, but did not face serious resistance until the following February, when they finally tangled with Rommel’s Afrika Korps—and the Germans gave the inexperienced Americans a nasty drubbing at Kasserine Pass. After this disaster, Gen. George Patton took command and reinvigorated U.S. troops with tough training and new tactics. In late March, at El Guettar in Tunisia, Patton’s men defeated the Germans. It was a morale-boosting victory—the first American success versus the Germans and the first of Patton’s storied World War II career—and proved to the enemy, the British, and the Americans themselves that the U.S. Army could fight and win.

  • The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    The never-before-told story of the scandalous courtroom drama that paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

    On the evening of November 8, 1923, the thirty-four-year-old Adolf Hitler stormed into a beer hall in Munich, fired his pistol in the air, and proclaimed a revolution. Seventeen hours later, all that remained of his bold move was a trail of destruction. Hitler was on the run from the police. His career seemed to be over.

    The Trial of Adolf Hitler tells the true story of the monumental criminal proceeding that followed when Hitler and nine other suspects were charged with high treason. Reporters from as far away as Argentina and Australia flocked to Munich for the sensational four-week spectacle. By its end, Hitler would transform the fiasco of the beer hall putsch into a stunning victory for the fledgling Nazi Party. It was this trial that thrust Hitler into the limelight, provided him with an unprecedented stage for his demagoguery, and set him on his improbable path to power.

    Based on trial transcripts, police files, and many other new sources, including some five hundred documents recently discovered from the Landsberg Prison record office, The Trial of Adolf Hitler is a gripping true story of crime and punishment―and a haunting failure of justice with catastrophic consequences.

    8 pages of illustrations

  • Their Backs against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    In the midst of the largest banzai attack of the war, US Army Lt. Col. William O’Brien, grievously wounded and out of ammunition, grabbed a sabre from a fallen Japanese soldier and flailed away at a small army of assailants, screaming to his men, “Don’t give them a damn inch!” When his body was recovered the next day, thirty dead enemies were piled around him.

    The Battle of Saipan lasted twenty-five hellish days in the summer of 1944, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher. If Japan lost possession of the island, all hope for victory would be lost. For the Americans, its capture would result in secure air bases for the new B-29s that would put them within striking distance of the Japanese homeland. The outcome of the war in the Pacific lay in the balance.

    In this gritty, vivid narrative, award-winning author Bill Sloan fuses fresh interviews, oral and unit histories, and unpublished accounts to describe one of the war’s bloodiest and most overlooked battles of the Pacific theater. Combining grunt’s-view grit with big picture panorama (and one of the ugliest inter-service controversies of the war), Their Backs against the Sea is the definitive dramatic story of this epic battle–and an inspiring chronicle of some of the greatest acts of valor in American military history.

  • Midnight in the Pacific: Guadalcanal-The World War II Battle That Turned the Tide of War

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    A sweeping narrative history–the first in over twenty years–of America’s first major offensive of World War II, the brutal, no-quarter-given campaign to take Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal

    From early August until mid-November of 1942, US Marines, sailors, and pilots struggled for dominance against an implacable enemy: Japanese soldiers, inculcated with the bushido tradition of death before dishonor, avatars of bayonet combat–close-up, personal, and gruesome. The glittering prize was Henderson Airfield. Japanese planners knew that if they neutralized the airfield, the battle was won. So did the Marines who stubbornly defended it.

    The outcome of the long slugfest remained in doubt under the pressure of repeated Japanese air, land, and sea operations. And losses were heavy. At sea, in a half-dozen fiery combats, the US Navy fought the Imperial Japanese Navy to a draw, but at a cost of more than 4,500 sailors. More American sailors died in these battles off Guadalcanal than in all previous US wars, and each side lost 24 warships. On land, more than 1,500 soldiers and Marines died, and the air war claimed more than 500 US planes. Japan’s losses on the island were equally devastating–starving Japanese soldiers called it “the island of death.”

    But when the attritional struggle ended, American Marines, sailors, and airmen had halted the Japanese juggernaut that for five years had whirled through Asia and the Pacific. Guadalcanal was America’s first major ground victory against Japan and, most importantly, the Pacific War’s turning point.

    Published on the 75th anniversary of the battle and utilizing vivid accounts written by the combatants at Guadalcanal, along with Marine Corps and Army archives and oral histories, Midnight in the Pacific is both a sweeping narrative and a compelling drama of individual Marines, soldiers, and sailors caught in the crosshairs of history.

  • Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945

    ByNorm Haskett Reading Time: 1 minute

    Sea of Thunder is a taut, fast-paced, suspenseful narrative of the Pacific War that culminates in the battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval battle ever fought.

    Told from both the American and Japanese sides, through the eyes of commanders and sailors of both navies, Thomas’s history adds an important new dimension to our understanding of World War II.

    Drawing on oral histories, diaries, correspondence, postwar testimony from both American and Japanese participants, and interviews with survivors, Thomas provides an account not only of the great sea battle and Pacific naval war, but of the contrasting cultures pitted against each other.