A powerful, detailed and warming story of the Second World War - told through the previously unheard voices of those (such as Nella Last) who described the home front for the Mass Observation project. Jerry is certainly not getting any change out of us'. For six years the people of Britain endured bombs and the threat of invasion, and more than 140,000 civilians were killed or seriously wounded. Men and women were called to serve in the armed forces in record numbers, and everyone experienced air raids and rationing. In these terrible times, volunteers of almost every age, class and occupation wrote diaries for the "Mass Observation" project, which was set up in the 1930s to collect the voices of ordinary men and women. Using many diaries that have never been published before, this book tells the story of the war - the military conflict, and, mainly, life on the home front - through these voices. Through it all, people carry on living their lives, falling in love, longing for a good meal, complaining about office colleagues or mourning allotment potatoes destroyed by a bomb.

In the last days of July 1943, British and American planes dropped 9,000 tons of bombs on Hamburg with the intention of erasing the German city from the map. The resultant firestorm burned for a month and left 40,000 civilians dead. Inferno is a searing account of terrifying destruction: of how and why the Allies dropped a hail of high-explosive and incendiary bombs; of blizzards of sparks, hurricane-force winds and 800-degree temperatures; of survivors cowering in basements or struggling along melting streets; of a city and its people near annihilated from above.

Compiled by one of the worlds leading experts on the subject of the air war over the Eastern Front, Christer Bergström, Kursk: The Air Battle, is the third in a series of books covering the major phases of the air war in this theatre of operations. It will be required reading for all historians of the Luftwaffe during World War 2 and those with a specific interest in the Eastern Front in particular. The German Kursk offensive, Operation Zitadelle, was launched on 4 July 1943. Strong Soviet defence ensured that the Germans failed to make their planned breakthrough and, after three weeks, defence was turned to attack by the Soviets, as two counter-attacks saw the Red Army seize the initiative and ultimately force the Germans to retreat. During the month of August, Soviet forces recaptured strategic cities such as Oryol, Belgorod and Kharkov. This book provides a detailed history of the air battles where were a part of this operation. To date, no single study has been written in English on the air aspects of the battle in which, literally, thousands of aircraft were pitted against each other. The strength of the authors writing lies in its detail, his ability to tell the story from the viewpoints of both sides and from both strategic and tactical contexts. There is also much unique eye-witness material and the text will be accompanied by a large number of rate and previously unpublished photographs, biography boxes, plus data tables, technical assessments and appendices.

This is the second book in a series of ten titles using the successful and visually appealing format of the Classic Colours series to examine the German Panzer force from its origins in the immediate post- World War One years through to the end of World War Two. This book describes the continuing Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1940 with the German invasions of Norway and Denmark and the later attack on the Low Countries and France. The narrative text, written by Mark Healy, an authority on German armoured warfare in World War Two, addresses the events of the year 1940.This witnessed the greatest triumph of the German tank arm in the campaign that saw France and the Low Countries vanquished in just six weeks. This was also the year which saw the overwhelming vindication of the armoured warfare tactics advocated by Guderian and his supporters throughout the 1930s. Following the French surrender, and certain in the conviction that he now had to hand a war-winning weapon, Hitler ordered the doubling of the strength of the Panzerwaffe in preparation for its greatest challenge in the summer of 1941. This volume covers all the following areas: Light divisions to Panzer Divisions the Panzerwaffe in the aftermath of the Polish campaign; Panzer operations in Denmark and Norway; the influx of new equipment - Panzerjäger, Sturmgeschütz, Schützenpanzerwagen and the first self-propelled artillery prior to the assualt on the west; the evolution of Case Yellow the attack in the West from October 1939 through to the launch and execution of the devastating armoured assault of May 1940; preparing the panzers for Sealion - the invasion of Britain; the doubling of the size of the Panzerwaffe.