The author of the book flew 997 confirmed night missions in an open cockpit of a Po-2. Flying at low altitudes, often too low to safely parachute out of a damaged aircraft, the pilots of these machines often flew nighttime low level bombing raids or reconaissance missions.

This book is the first in military history literature to compile information on ALL major amphibious operations of the Great Patriotic War, both airborne and naval, Soviet and German, that were of strategic importance and aimed at solving tactical problems. Some of them, such as the Kerch-Feodosia and Vyazma operations, were generally successful and allowed the Soviets to disrupt enemy plans,...

The book presents a diverse and extensive panorama of the confrontation between the German air force and the Soviet navy in the Baltic Sea, as well as on Lake Peipus and Lake Ladoga, during 1941-1945.

This book is about real men – the pilots and navigators of the famous Po-2 (U-2) ‘crop duster’ aircraft. Operating this plane didn't require exceptional skills or abilities during initial flight training; after all, it wasn't a fighter or a long-range bomber. However, the tasks the crews had to perform demanded immense personal courage and complete dedication. As one veteran recalled: ‘The U-2...

This book by historian and writer S.E. Mikheenkov is a unique collection of soldiers' stories about the war, which the author worked on for more than thirty years. The most striking episodes, thematically arranged, form a coherent, captivating narrative about the war from the perspective of the Russian soldier. This, in the words of the poet, ‘hard-won, harsh truth of the soldiers’ will astound...

The Great Patriotic War was not only a grandiose confrontation between the armies of the USSR and the Third Reich. It was also a duel of weapons designers – creators of armored vehicles, aircraft, ships, artillery systems, and small arms. The young and imperfect industry of the Soviet Union faced the most powerful and modern enterprises of virtually all of continental Europe, equipped with the...

'War - it is a living , human gait - to meet the enemy , toward death , toward eternity. It is human blood on the snow ... It abandoned corpses of soldiers until the spring ... It's a constant hunger when to soldier comes to the company instead of salty food thicker than water , involved on a handful of flour in the form of pale gruel . this cold in the cold and snow in the stone cellars , when...

In 1960, Adolf Eichmann took to the defendant’s box in Jerusalem and insisted that he was no ‘manager of the Holocaust,’ as his accusers claimed, just a smalltime bureaucrat following orders. Like countless others, Hannah Arendt—covering the trials for The New Yorker—believed him. Eichmann Before Jerusalem challenges this history for the first time, completely reassessing Eichmann’s story and...

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose tells the gripping true story of five Munich university students who set up an underground resistance movement in World War II. The thrilling story of their courage and defiance, brought to life in the Oscar-nominated film Sophie Scholl - The Final Days, is beautifully told in this special 80th anniversary edition of Annette Dumbach & Jud Newborn's...

Written in 1939 and unpublished until 2000, Sebastian Haffner's memoir of the rise of Nazism in Germany offers a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary German citizens between the wars. Covering 1907 to 1933, his eyewitness account provides a portrait of a country in constant flux: from the rise of the First Corps, the right-wing voluntary military force set up in 1918 to suppress Communism...