World War II Archives

Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945

In every country that fell to the Third Reich during the Second World War, from France in the west to parts of the Soviet Union in the east, a resistance movement against Nazi domination emerged. And every country that endured occupation created its own fiercely nationalist account of the role of homegrown resistance in its eventual liberation. Halik Kochanski’s panoramic, prodigiously researched work is a monumental achievement: the first book to strip these disparate national histories of myth and nostalgia and to integrate them into a definitive chronicle of the underground war against the Nazis. […Learn More]

To the End of the Earth: The US Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945

The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus, winner of the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History, concludes his magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” with this brilliant final volume. […Learn More]

Birds of Prey: Hitler’s Luftwaffe, Ordinary Soldiers, and the Holocaust in Poland

Birds of Prey is a microhistory of the Nazi occupation of Białowieźa Forest, Poland’s national park. The narrative stretches from Göring’s palatial lifestyle to the common soldier on the ground killing Jews, partisans, and civilians. […Learn More]

Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943

“Out here, mention is seldom seen of the achievements of the Army ground troops,” wrote one officer in the fall of 1943, “whereas the Marines are blown up to the skies.” Even today, the Marines are celebrated as the victors of the Pacific, a reflection of a well-deserved reputation for valor. Yet the majority of fighting and dying in the war against Japan was done not by Marines but by unsung Army soldiers […Learn More]

Operation Columba–The Secret Pigeon Service: The Untold Story of World War II Resistance in Europe

The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. […Learn More]

Spying on the Reich: The Cold War Against Hitler

Exactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gathering momentum. His name was Adolf Hitler. […Learn More]

The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II

Ian Buruma’s spellbinding account of three near-mythic figures—a Dutch fixer, a Manchu princess, and Himmler’s masseur—who may have been con artists and collaborators under Japanese and German rule, or true heroes, or something in between. […Learn More]

Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects on matters ranging from women’s rights to world peace reached a crescendo. Yet in the same breath, an undercurrent of reaction was growing, one that would surge ahead with the outbreak of war and its aftermath. […Learn More]

Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom

A dramatic true story about Sigmund Freud’s last-minute escape to London following the German annexation of Austria and the group of friends who made it possible. […Learn More]

1941: The Year Germany Lost the War

Bestselling historian Andrew Nagorski “brings keen psychological insights into the world leaders involved” (Booklist) during 1941, the critical year in World War II when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany. […Learn More]