James Holland

An account of the daring May 1943 mission to destroy three heavily defended German dams documents the ten-week race to create the necessary weapons and orchestrate a bombing raid that nearly cost the lives of its pilots.

"Acclaimed WWII historian James Holland both narrates and reframes the controversial first months of the Italian Campaign and sets a new standard in the chronicling of war. Following victory in Sicily, while the central command planned the spring 1944 invasion of France, Allied troops crossed into southern Italy in September 1943, expecting to drive Axis forces north and liberate Rome by Christmas. Italy quickly surrendered but German divisions fiercely...

"James Holland's The Rise of Germany, the first volume in his War in the West trilogy, was widely praised for Holland's impeccable research and narrative skills. With a wealth of characters from across the western theatre of WWII, Holland told a captivating story and used new research to challenge our assumptions and reframe our understanding of this momentous conflict. As The Rise of Germany ended, the Nazi war machine looked to be unstoppable. Germany...

"D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the seventy-six days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed the Allied landing, have become the defining episode of World War II in the west--the object of books, films, television series, and documentaries. Yet as familiar as it is, as James Holland makes clear in his definitive history, many parts of the OVERLORD campaign, as it was known, are still shrouded in myth and assumed knowledge. Drawing freshly on widespread...

" In The Rise of Germany, the first of a major new three-part history of World War II in the West, he weaves together the experiences of dozens of individuals, from civilians and infantrymen, to line officers, military strategists, diplomats, and heads of state, as well as war strategy, tactics, and the economic, political, and social aspects of the war to create a captivating book that redefines and enhances our understanding of one of the most significant...

"Celebrated historian of World War II James Holland chronicles the astonishing Allied victory at the Battle of the Admin Box in Burma (now Myanmar), a turning point of the war in the Far East. In February 1944, in one of the most astonishing battles of World War II, a ragtag collection of British clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews, managed to defeat a much...