Alanbrooke

'Alanbrooke,' wrote General MacArthur, 'is undoubtedly the greatest soldier that England has produced since Wellington.' He fought with the artillery in the First World War, had a brilliant career as a peacetime soldier, and conducted his Corps with exemplary calm and courage in the retreat to Dunkirk. In November 1941 Churchill selected him as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and from that moment he became indispensable in Whitehall, the one man who could never be spared for the more spectacular feats of war on the battlefield which he longed to undertake. Alanbrooke was the master strategist of the British military effort. His partnership with Churchill - the statesman's imagination and inspired energy perfectly complementing the soldier's clarity of mind and unflinching realism - was often turbulent, yet endlessly fruitful. Under his chairmanship the Chiefs of Staff became the most efficient machine for the conduct of war which Britain, perhaps the world, had ever seen. His influence in the shaping of global strategy was immeasurable.

Engineering & Transportation

David Fraser

Engineering

HarperCollins, Publishers

Biographies & Memoirs

HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd

In any numbering of the great captains of history, the name of Erwin Rommel must stand in the first rank. He was the outstanding Axis field commander of the Second World War, and was respected, even admired, as well as feared by his opponents. Here was a supremely professional solder: chivalrous, decent, untainted by the crimes of the Nazi regime, carrying out his duty with often dazzling success.David Fraser's book--surely the definitive study--brings to Rommel's career not only the perceptions of an acclaimed biographer, but those of a distinguished soldier too: his insights into Rommel's mind and methods carry the authority of experience. He shows how inspiringly spontaneous and superficially haphazard Rommel's style of leadership could be. His hallmarks were boldness of manoeuvre, ferocity in attack, and tenacity in pursuit. These were the qualities he displayed in his great battles in the North African desert; they were evident from his earliest battles in the First World War to his last, defending Fortress Europe from the Allied invasion of 1944.This is, first and foremost, a biography of a soldier. But Rommel reached a position in which he almost inevitably became embroiled in politics. When he realized that the Allied invasion was going to succeed, he realized also that the only way to save Germany was somehow to negotiate a peace settlement. He tried to present Hitler--to whom he had always been devoted, and who had always shown him a particular respect and affection--with the military realities: he was branded a defeatist and ignored. But his opinions, and his apparent links with the Stauffenberg plotters of July 1944--one of them, under interrogation, mentioned Rommel as a possible head of post-Hitlerian Germany--condemned him in the eyes of the Führer he had served so loyally. He was offered the choice of trial by a People's Court--a sham of course--or suicide, a state funeral and protection for his family. He chose the latter.

Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

Leaders & Notable People

Harpercollins

The author brings to life every major campaign fought by the British Army in the Second World War: from the momentous defeats in France, Belgium and the Far East in the early stages of the war, through to the final victories against Germany and Japan in 1945. All aspects of the conflict are described, from grand strategy at the highest levels right down to the experience of infantry, gunners and tankers in the field as the British army battled its way through the war. The book shows how the seeds of World War II were sown at the end of the previous war, twenty-one years earlier, and how successive governments in the twenties and thirties failed to safeguard Britain from the building threat from Germany. It describes how by the beginning of the conflict Hitler's armies were superior in every respect. But as the catalogue of defeats mounted, the British army were learning hard lessons, and painfully acquiring the skills needed to turn the tables. It is therefore a story which moves from triumph to tragedy, and then upward again to triumph at the last.

And We Shall Shock Them : British Army in the Second World War

Cassell Military

An American radio correspondent, two working-class families from London's East End, an upper-class Chelsea family, and assorted others--including spies and profiteers--survive eleven days of nightmare during the Battle of Britain in 1940

Blitz

Literature & Fiction

Macmillan

Wales in History: The Invaders, to 1066 Bk. 1 (Welsh Edition)

University of Wales Press

From a military family, the author ran away from school to join up when the Second World War was declared. This is his account from the perspective of a young officer in the Grenadier Guards. He writes about the campaigns of 1944 and 1945, specifically Normandy and Operation Market Garden. Later, having also been involved in Suez, Cyprus and Malaya, he became Vice Chief of the General Staff.

Wars and Shadows: Memoirs of General Sir David Fraser

Allen Lane.

In the spring of 1942, Nazi forces occupying the Ukraine launched a wave of executions targeting the region’s remaining Jewish communities. These mass shootings were open, public, and intimate. Although the victims themselves could never testify against their killers, many eyewitnesses could and did identify the perpetrators. Among these communities, three local men from the villages of Serniki, Israylovka, and Gnivan were intimately implicated in such killing operations: Ivan Polyukhovich, a forester in the German-controlled administration; Heinrich Wagner, a Volksdeutscher liaison officer; and Mikolay Berezowsky, a member of the local police force. More than fifty years later, these three men were arrested and brought to trial in Australia for their alleged war crimes. Daviborshch’s Cart is more than an account of Holocaust perpetrators who found a safe haven in postwar Australia. It is also the story of the Holocaust in the Ukraine, the War Crimes Act, Nazi policies, and the ways in which future generations translate history into law, archives into proof, and law into justice. Based on a review of previously unexamined historical and legal documents and transcripts, Daviborshch’s Cart offers the first critical examination of Australian attempts to bring alleged Nazi criminals to justice.

Daviborshch's Cart: Narrating the Holocaust in Australian War Crimes Trials

History

University Of Nebraska Press

At the age of forty-seven Christian Watt began to write down recollections of her life; she continued until her death at the age of ninety in 1923. Her tale is a remarkable story, vividly told with a natural narrative gift. She was born into a Fraserburgh fishing family, and spent much of her life gutting and selling fish, and, for a time, working in domestic service, first to the Duchess of Leeds and subsequently travelling to New York to serve as tablemaid to Winston Churchill's grandmother. Hers was a life of constant toil and hardship. The sea brought her family a precarious living and often a violent death: four of her seven brothers, her husband and her favorite son all died at sea. Anxiety and grief eventually led to mental breakdown, and Christian spent the last forty years of her life as a patient in the Cornhill Infirmary. Her treatment there was enlightened and humane; she continued to work and travel and it was there that she wrote, drawing on her vivid memory. Her writings offer a vivid insight not only into the life of the north-east of Scotland during the middle and later part of the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth, but also on events of national and international interest. Christian was a woman of beauty, character and intelligence, and her writing is fuelled by her sense of family pride, her anger at social injustice, her hatred of war and her profound religious faith. Her courage and compassion are everywhere evident, as is her frankness, spontaneity and insight. Her papers have remained in her family, but thanks to David Fraser's careful and sensitive editing are now available to a wider public. He has arranged the papers in a coherent chronology and provided narrative and explanatory links, but for the most part leaves Christian to tell her story in her own words. Previously privately published, this book has not been widely available for many years.

The Christian Watt papers

Paul Harris Publishing

The Royal Exchange Theatre Company : An Illustrated Record

Royal Exchange Theatre Company

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Books by David Fraser