Following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the ruined nation was home to millions of homeless concentration camp survivors, POWs, slave labourers, political prisoners and Nazi collaborators in hiding. British and US forces gathered these malnourished and desperate refugees together and a huge repatriation exercise was begun. But, even after these exhaustive efforts, there remained a million displaced persons in Germany - Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans - who had no home to go to. The Last Million would spend the next three to five years in displaced persons camps set up by nationality, with their own police, churches and synagogues, schools, hospitals and newspapers. The International Refugee Organisation, set up in 1946, arranged for many to be resettled in countries suffering from post-war labour shortages, but no nations were willing to accept the 250,000 Jewish men, women and children who remained trapped in Germany. Even when the US belatedly agreed to accept refugees, they had to demonstrate that they were reliably anti-Communist, which meant visas for plenty of Nazi collaborators and war criminals, but only 10% of the Jewish applicants, as they were suspected of being Communist sympathisers and the majority were from Russian-influenced Poland. It was not until the partition of Palestine and the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 that the remaining Jewish survivors of the war finally began to leave Germany. Acclaimed and multi-award-winning historian David Nasaw's masterwork tells the gripping and, until now, largely hidden story of post-war displacement and statelessness. People from a shattered past with an unknowable future spread all over the world carrying their wounds, fears, hopes and secrets, from innocent children to sadistic war criminals. Nasaw here illuminates their incredible history and with a profound contemporary resonance shows us that it is our history too. 654pp.

The popular Manchester-based writer presents a new volume of missives about combat by Alexander Hamilton, General Sherman, Evelyn Waugh, Kurt Vonnegut to offer a more nuanced and moving look at the act of war. A black corporal beseeches President Lincoln to ensure that his regiment receive proper payment for performing their duties. Evelyn Waugh relates the hijinks that ensued when his brigade tried to blow up an old tree stump for a local nobleman. Defeated Cossacks taunt the pompous sultan of the Ottoman Empire and a suicide bomber in Iraq explains his simple motivation to his family. Gandhi implores Adolf Hitler to turn back the tides of World War Two. After learning about her son's last months in combat, a Gold Star mother leaves a heartbroken letter by his name on the Vietnam Veterans? Memorial Wall. Each of these 30 remarkable letters sheds light on what it means for us to take up arms against one another and each records a piece of that terrible deed. They encapsulate the full experience of battle from feats of courage and sacrifice to the grief that follows acts of violence. A poignant collection, 132 pages with roughcut deckle edges denoting quality in the USA. Softback 13 x 18cm approx.

Sub-titled 'The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front', on July 17th 1939, Eileen Alexander, a bright young woman recently graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, begins a correspondence with fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen that lasts five years and spans many hundreds of letters. As the relationship flourished from friendship and admiration into passion and love, the tensions between Germany, Russia and the rest of Europe reached a crescendo. When war is declared, Gershon heads for Cairo and Eileen forgoes her studies to work in the Air Ministry. As the Luftwaffe begins its bombardment of England, Eileen, like her fellow Britons, carries on while her loved ones are called up to fight. Gossipy, amusingly observant, 'blue stocking' Eileen's love letters run the gamut of sometimes catty and chatty, to ruminative, plaintive and frank, and all bookworms will appreciate her breadth of literary knowledge and unique style of expression. 'Darling, I've watched this relationship from the beginning and although Robert is a man of immense charm and intellect I think he is more selfish than anyone I have ever known. He mixes in a set of people who have no standards and above all, no sense of emotional responsibility... But Joan is not like that - she needs her friends and her family and he wants to uproot her...' 474pp, remainder mark, well illustrated with archive and family photos.

Sub-titled 'My Story of Finding Hope In Hitler's Death Camps To Inspire A New Generation', this Nazi concentration camp survivor has gone on to be the founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial. It is a wise and intimate memoir about finding strength in the face of despair. On October 29th 1939, Szmulek Rosental's life changed forever when the Nazis marched into his home town of Lodz, Poland, destroyed the synagogues, urinated on the Torah, and burned the beards of the rabbis. Two people were killed that first day in the pillaging of the Jewish enclave, but much worse was to come. Szmulek's family escaped that night, but soon all of the family would perish except the eight year old Szmulek who managed to survive against all the odds. Through his resourcefulness, determination and most importantly the help of his fellow prisoners, Szmulek lived through some of the most horrific death camps of the Holocaust including Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, and seven others. He endured acts of violence and hate, but never before talked about it in its literature. He was repeatedly raped by Nazi guards and watched his family and friends die, but those experiences only hardened the resolve to survive the genocide and use the experience and insights into morality and human nature to inspire people to stand up to hate and fight for freedom and justice. On the day he was scheduled to be executed, he was liberated by American soldiers and eventually travelled to Boston Massachusetts where, with all of his friends and family dead, he made a new life for himself, taking the name Steve Ross. He can now look back on a career of 40 years as a psychologist working in the Boston City Schools helping to forge a more compassionate world. 266pp in fairly large print with eight pages of photographs including the Nazi propaganda image he was selected for.

The incredible inside story of a Kurdish sniper in the battle against ISIS. As Syria imploded in civil war in 2011, Kurdish volunteers in the north rose up to free their homeland from centuries of repression and create a progressive sanctuary of tolerance and democracy that they named Rojava. To the medievalists of ISIS, this was an afront, so they amassed 10,000 men, heavy artillery, tanks, mortars and ranks of suicide bombers to crush the uprising. Against them stood 2,500 volunteer fighters armed with 40 year old rifles, and they would have to kill the invaders one by one. A decade earlier, as a 19 year old Iranian army conscript, Azad had been forced to fight his own people. Instead he deserted and sought asylum in Britain. Now, as he returned to his homeland to help build a new Kurdistan, he found he would have to pick up a gun once more. In September 2014, Azad became one of 17 snipers deployed when ISIS besieged the norther city of Kobani. His book tells the inside story of how a group of activists and intellectuals built their own army and team of snipers, and then fought off a ferocious assault in nine months of bitter and bloody street battles. By turns searing, stirring, inspiring and poetic, this is an unique account of modern war and how, against all odds, a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive. Defending Kobani was the turning point against ISIS and this book provides a graphic account of its defence and eventual defeat of the terror group, directly supported by Turkey. 254 page large paperback with fairly large print and colour photos and maps.

Roger Mortimer was born in 1909 and educated at Eton and RMC Sandhurst. In 1930 he was commissioned into the Cold Stream Guards and saw action in Palestine eight years later. He fought with the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium in 1940 and was taken as a POW for the remainder of the war. He left the army in 1947 and became, among other things, Racing Correspondent for the Sunday Times for almost 30 years. He died in 1991. 'I think prison has done me very little harm and some good. I am now far better read, far less smug and conceited, far more tolerant and considerably more capable of looking after myself.' 21 year old Roger Mortimer spent eight years stationed at Chelsea Barracks and lived a leisurely existence, with his parents' house in Cadogan Square a stone's throw away, and pleasant afternoons were whiled away at the race course or a members' club. As a captain in 1938 in Palestine he found himself amid the action in the Arab Revolt. In May 1940, while fighting the Germans in the Battle of Belgium, Roger was knocked unconscious by an exploding shell. When he came round, he was less than delighted to find that he was a prisoner of war. Thus began a period of incarceration that would last five years, and which for Roger there seemed no conceivable end in sight. Here he is at his witty and irreverent best, exuding charm and good humour which captured the nation's hearts in Dear Lupin and Dear Lumpy. Optimistic and captivating, these letters written to his good friend Peggy Dunne from May 1940 to late 1944 paint a vivid portrait of life as a POW. Here are the toadstools and damp cellars, opinions on Peggy's husband being mean, and of 'exhibitions': 'The proprietor of this place is a retired trollop called Madame Koko who built up a snug little business by catering for the carnal needs of German GHQ during the last war'. Lots of 'good general gossip with an occasional twinge of vulgarity', insanity and frank descriptions of his fellow prisoners and surroundings. 182pp.

Merseyside was hammered during the war, being a major port and distribution centre, and this fascinating book uses a technique of blending old photos from the blitz with modern ones from the same angle showing the streets and locations in a then-and-now depiction of how things have changed. It was not until mid-1940 that bombs began to fall with regularity on Merseyside, by which time many of the children who had been evacuated had returned home again. Starting in early July the Luftwaffe pounded the area, and in September there was a raid somewhere on Merseyside for 26 out of 30 nights. On 28 November 250 people lost their lives in Liverpool alone. The pictorial records are arranged chronologically, though some are difficult to date, starting with a photo of Liverpool's famous Town Hall with sandbags piled high across the frontage. Children and adults are pictured congregating round a blown-out window in Wallasey, probably because at the time it was a novel sight. Dockland suffered particularly, and incendiary bombs one October night hit a railway siding at Speke, a match factory at Garston and two warehouses. On 25 April 1941 the Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid a visit to Birkenhead, Wallasey and Liverpool, captured on newsreel footage. In August 1941 the country's many fire brigades were nationalised, leading to a more co-ordinated response, and emergency water supplies were widely established. The final chapter of the book features signs of the blitz that can still be seen nowadays, including a faint Emergency Water Supply notice below a fascinating modern advertisement for "Reptile live foods at only £1.50 a tub". 175pp, softback, glossary, colour photos on every page.

Sub-titled 'The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Secret Agents in Nazi-Occupied France.' Here for the first time is the astounding story of the greatest clandestine organisation and of two heroic brothers whose ordeals during and after the war challenged accepted myths of wartime resistance in occupied France. As far as the public knew, SOE did not exist, but in July 1940 during the darkest days, Prime Minister Winston Churchill created a top-secret operation to 'set Europe ablaze.' Special Operations Executive would not only change the course of the war but the nature of combat itself. Parachuting behind enemy lines and hiding in plain sight, the agents infiltrated Nazi-occupied territory to recruit and arm local French résistants. The Starr brothers stood out to become legendary figures to the guerrillas, assassins and saboteurs they led. Both brothers were sent across the channel to organise resistance to the Nazis. George commanded networks of resistance fighters in Southwest France, cutting German communications and delaying the arrival of Nazi tanks to Normandy after D-day by 17 days. Younger brother John laid the groundwork for the Resistance in Burgundy until he was captured, tortured and imprisoned by the Nazis. Feats of boldness and bravado were many, but appalling scandals including George's supposed torture and execution of prisoners, and John's alleged collaboration with his German captors, overshadowed them all. At the end of the war Britain, France and the US awarded the Starr brothers medals for heroism, yet their battle honours did little to allay post-war allegations against them. On their return to Britain, military authorities accused one brother of heinous war crimes and the other of treason. The book is written with complete access to only recently declassified documents alongside interviews with surviving wartime Resistance fighters. It is a dramatic tale of spies, sabotage and daring with list of characters and their codenames, men and women infiltrating, arriving by parachute, submarine, sailboat and Westland Lysander light aircraft that landed on occupied soil at great risk. The typical SOE team consisted of an organiser, a radio operator (W/T for wireless telegrapher), and a courier. Wireless telegraphers tapped out letters in Morse code to maintain links with London, while couriers carried messages on bicycles, buses, trains and cars from organisers to field agents. Couriers were often women, whom the Germans scrutinised less than military-age men. The Starr brothers could rely on only a handful of men and women whose patriotism and stubbornness made them risk savage torture, execution, or slow, humiliating and anonymous death in concentration camps. The occupation set Frenchman against Frenchman. British agents like the Starr brothers learned how to kill; training skills could not teach them whom to trust. 322pp, 16 pages of photos.

Images include mules and donkeys, one of whom survived a 14oz time fuse which was pulled from his head, and Ragtime, a grey Arab horse displaying his service medals on his brow band. A Canadian staff officer bids farewell to his horse after being demobbed, soldiers risk their lives to free horses or winch them via a sling on the Italian front in the Alps, July 1915, and a poster for Our Dumb Friends League encourages kindness to animals. A regiment of healing horses at Elstree were responsible for the supply of tetanus serum and horses were rehabilitated by listening to gramophone records and trained to wear gasmasks. A kangaroo used as a mascot for Australian troops; the strength and power of the British Empire symbolised by a pride of lions in a recruitment poster of 1915; a ferocious cat used in a recruitment poster for the US Tanks Corps 1917 and the real life-saving cat Pitoutchi who became the mascot of a big-gun crew on the Western Front. Used as symbols and propaganda as political animals, here are daring rescues of canaries in France, a pet thrush, a tame blackbird, and of course dogs who went into the trenches with their masters and afterwards accompanied battalions when it went into billets behind the line. Rin-Tin-Tin was the rescued wartime pup turned world-famous dog film star and also pictured is the Red Baron with his crew and beloved dog Moritz. Here is Lassie at Crufts framed with a life belt and pictured with the sailor whom she miraculously revived. Dogs of the French Canine Corps wore special harnesses for transporting ammunition or were used for pulling the wheelchairs of wounded soldiers. See a rare picture of a terraced colony of dug-outs for French ambulance dogs and famous mascots like Peggy the bulldog on HMS Iron Duke. Dogs have helped substantially in the winning of the war as mascots, sentinels, despatch carriers, and Red Cross dogs have played their parts bravely to the finish. There was a British War Dog School at Shoeburyness in Essex which used gentle ways and encouragement rather than punishment for undesirable behaviour and the dogs were trained to overcome obstacles such as fences and streams and to dash fearlessly through a line of attacking infantry or clouds of smoke and gas. Through unrivalled access to rarely seen illustrated wartime magazines, books and postcards including the Illustrated London News Archive. 160pp in large softback, over 100 illus. reproduced to the best possible quality given their age, plus artworks.

Sub-titled 'A History of Those Who Rose to the Occasion and Those Who Didn't' written by a former officer in the Irish Guards. The book includes familiar battlefield heroes like Audie Murphy or 'H' Jones together with less well-known characters like Corporal Graham 'the bravest man at Waterloo', and the young Erwin Rommel decades before he became famous as the 'Desert Fox.' Those bucking the odds have to include Douglas Bader, Britain's flamboyant aircraft ace flying with his artificial legs, George Washington daringly crossing the Delaware, and John Paul Jones challenging the might of the Royal Navy. Joan of Arc was certainly one of those who had the courage of their convictions, while Sergeant York had to overcome his pacifist views in World War One France. There have been few better examples of the constant thread of valour than Joshua Chamberlain, the saviour of the Union position at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, Michael Wittmann, the ultimate tank ace, or Albert Jacka, the Australian who many feel deserved not just one but three Victoria Crosses. O'Brien also pays homage to the brilliant codebreakers Alan Turing and Captain Reginald Hall RN, photographic experts such as Constance Babington Smith, and medical pioneers like Napoleon's great surgeon Baron Larrey or 'Weary' Dunlop, Australia's hero of the Kwai railway. All had an influence on warfare as great as any warrior. And those who didn't rise to the occasion? Many were too confident by half like Saddam Hussein who was to lead his country to ruin, the corpulent and boastful Hermann Goering, wrecking the plans of others at Dunkirk and Stalingrad, or even the inexperienced Jack Kennedy during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Other simply display fatal inattention like France's Constable Charles D'Albret at Agincourt, or General Ledlie at the Battle of the Crater. Flaws and obsessions can wreck the reputations of otherwise great men - Douglas MacArthur in Korea, Napoleon in Russia, Montgomery and Patton, due to their jealous feuding, and even Mark Antony who risked everything for such a non-military notion as love. Worst of all in warfare must be treachery and rank disobedience - Mark Clark vaingloriously capturing Rome instead of trapping the Germans, Lord Sackville refusing to charge at Minden, Mountbatten persisting with his disastrous raid at Dieppe, and Benedict Arnold changing sides to try to hand over West Point, becoming America's symbol of the ultimate traitor. And finally a streak of cruelty with unfeeling generals at the Easter Rising, Amritsar and My Lai. The ultimate judgement for those who received lavish praise or quite the opposite must be left to the reader. 288pp, well illustrated.