National Bestseller An enlightening and utterly convincing re-examination of the allied aerial bombing campaign and of civilian German suffering during World War II–an essential addition to our understanding of world history. During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. Much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942 to 1945, and using a compelling narrative approach, Fire and Fury tells the story of the American and British bombing campaign through the eyes of those involved: military and civilian command in America, Britain, and Germany, aircrew in the sky, and civilians on the ground. Acclaimed historian Randall Hansen shows that the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, was wedded to an outdated strategy whose success had never been proven; how area bombing not only failed to win the war, it probably prolonged it; and that the US campaign, which was driven by a particularly American fusion of optimism and morality, played an important and largely unrecognized role in delivering Allied victory.

"This is an interesting, informative, and important work. Overall, the quality of the essays is very high, and the focus of the book is on a topic of great importance." Stephen Nathanson, Northeastern University. --

DIVIn Bombing Nazi Germany, renowned graphic novel author and artist Wayne Vansant profiles the dramatic joint American-British Allied air war against Nazi Germany throughout Europe during World War II. Meticulously researched, illustrated, and written with the same unmatched quality of Vansant’s Normandy and Gettysburg (also from Zenith Press), Bombing Nazi Germany tells the story of the first and second generations of airmen, soldiers, and politicians from both sides who sought to bomb the enemy into submission. Vansant traces the development of the wildly controversial Strategic Bombing doctrine in the 1920s and 1930s, the early stages of WWII and the dominance of the German Luftwaffe, and the eventual 1942 involvement of the United States’ 8th Air Force and its vast fleet of B-17 and B-24 bombers. Beautifully detailed with maps, schematics, and charts, Bombing Nazi Germany also explores how industry and science aided the Allied air forces in these violent fights, as both the Americans and British made crucial advancements in air detection and evasion methods. Finally, Vansant illustrates the lesser-known perspective of the brave German pilots five miles above the earth who fought not to protect Hitler’s Reich, but their homes and families. As entertaining as it is educational, Bombing Nazi Germany continues Wayne Vansant’s tradition of brilliant nonfiction graphic history./div

Describes how an average citizen of Munich secretly assembled and detonated a bomb intended to kill Adolf Hitler during a 1939 speech and the would-be assassin's attempted escape to Switzerland before ending his life in a concentration camp.

In the final phase of the World War II, the Allies launched a bombing campaign that inflicted unprecedented destruction on Germany. This work attempts to document life under the Allied bombing, and renders the annihilation of cities such as Dresden.

“An essential part of the literature of World War II.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post From acclaimed World War II historian Richard Overy comes this startling new history of the controversial Allied bombing war against Germany and German-occupied Europe. In the fullest account yet of the campaign and its consequences, Overy assesses not just the bombing strategies and pattern of operations, but also how the bombed communities coped with the devastation. This book presents a unique history of the bombing offensive from below as well as from above, and engages with moral questions that still resonate today.

The plans that Nazi Germany had to raid - and bomb - New York and the eastern seabord are revealed in this book. They were were based on the use of transoceanic aircraft planes, such as the six-engined Ju 390, Me 264 or Ta 400, but the Third Reich was unable to produce such machines in sufficient numbers. If the Soviet Union had been conquered, however, these plans would have become a reality. With the seizure of vital resources from the Soviet Union the Wehrmacht would have had enough fuel and material to mass-produce giant bomber aircraft: it was a near run thing. The collapse of the Wehrmacht infrastructure and the end of the Thousand-Year Reich ensured that plans for long-range remote-controlled missiles never got off the drawing board and were never manufactured. Manfried Griehl makes it clear that until the collapse, numerous secret research laboratories seemed to have worked in parallel seeking nuclear power and explosives. Only classified material held within British, French and American archives can prove whether these groups were close to perfecting small atomic explosives. But, without a shadow of doubt, Germany was far more technologically advanced by the end of 1944 that has been previously suspected.