Road To Victory

This “important contribution to WWII history” reveals the trucking convoy, manned by unsung black soldiers, who helped defeat the Nazis (Publishers Weekly). After the D-Day landings in Normandy, Allied forces faced a golden opportunity—and a critical challenge. They had broken across enemy lines, but there was no infrastructure to supply troops as they pushed into Germany. The US Army improvised a perilous solution: a convoy of trucks marked with red balls that would carry desperately needed ammunition, rations, and fuel deep into occupied Europe. The so-called Red Ball Express lasted eighty-one days and, at its height, numbered nearly six thousand trucks. The mission risked attacks by the Luftwaffe and German ground forces, making it one of the GIs’ most daring gambits. Without the soldiers who successfully executed this operation, World War II would have dragged on in Europe at a terrible cost of Allied lives. Yet the service of these brave drivers, most of whom were African American, has been largely overlooked by history. The first book-length study of the subject, The Road to Victory chronicles the exploits of these soldiers in vivid detail. It’s a story of a fight not only against the Nazis, but against an enemy closer to home: racism.

The seventh volume of the acclaimed, official biography: “An engrossing history of Churchill’s crucial role in the grand alliance of World War II” (Los Angeles Times). This seventh volume in the epic, multivolume biography of Winston S. Churchill takes up the story of “Churchill’s War” with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and carries it on to the triumph of V-E Day, May 8, 1945, the end of the war in Europe. Acclaimed historian Martin Gilbert charts Churchill’s course through the storms of Anglo-American and Anglo-Soviet rivalry, and between the conflicting ambitions of other forces embattled against the common enemy: between General de Gaulle, his compatriots in France, and the French Empire; between Tito and other Yugoslav leaders; between the Greek Communists and monarchists; between the Polish government exiled in London and the Soviet-controlled “Lublin” Poles. Amid all these volatile concerns, Churchill had to find the path of prudence, of British national interest, and, above all, of the earliest possible victory over Nazism. In doing so he was guided by the most secret sources of British Intelligence: the daily interception of the messages of the German High Command. These pages reveal, as never before, the links between this secret information and the resulting moves and successes achieved by the Allies. “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement . . . rightly regarded as the most comprehensive life ever written of any age.” —Andrew Roberts, historian and author of The Storm of War “The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

Overturning the myth of the Mediterranean Theatre as a sideshow to the massive land war in Europe, a history of World War II explores the important military movements within this region that made it the pivotal struggle in the war.

Revised and with a new foreword from leading reform advocate COL (ret) Douglas MacGregor, PhD, Don Vandergriff revisits his 2002 manifesto for the evolution of the U.S. Army. From the foreword: "Few books in the history of the U.S. Army have made a more convincing argument for change than Don Vandergriff's Path to Victory: America's Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs. It is therefore a great privilege to offer some thoughts on the re-release of this important work. When Don's book appeared for the first time in 2002 it was not simply detailed account of the Army's personnel management system, its promotion policies and unit manning practices. It was also a critical examination of the Army as an institution and its extraordinary resistance to change in the way it identifies, develops and employs human talent. Most important, the book stipulated recommended changes informed by the ageless understanding that really great military success can be achieved only when leadership, technology and organization work hand in hand. If leadership were truly recognized inside and outside of the American military as a vital component of national military power, most of Don's Vandergriff's recommendations would have been embraced and implemented long ago".

By August 1918 fortune was on the side of the Allies: America was increasing its contribution of troops and equipment substantially; the morale of the German Army was sinking as it failed to deliver the desired ‘knock out blow’; and Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig found a new confidence, firmly believing that the Allies could at last push the Germans out of France and Belgium.This volume of the best-selling VCs of the First World War series covers the fifty days of the Allied advance from 8 August to 26 September 1918. Arranged chronologically, it tells the story of the sixty-four VC winners during this period. The recipients came from many countries, including Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; some never lived to know that they had been awarded for their extraordinary bravery, while others returned home to face an uncertain future. This is their story.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies embarked upon the most dramatic military action of all time: Operation Overlord launched the largest amphibious invasion ever, involving 175,000 military personnel supported by nearly 7,000 vessels in the landing on Normandy. Road to Victory presents a detailed pictorial history of the last 14 months of the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific in spectacular photographs drawn from the archive of The Daly Mail.