Bringing History to Life Collections

Bringing History to Life Collector’s Edition’ is a 180 page must read special issue packed with in depth WW2 historical information narrated as a story and illustrated with informative graphs and timelines. Readers interested in WW2 will not be disappointed.

» Allied terror hits Germany

PRELUDE TO D-DAY 1942-1944 • In January 1944, two soaked men clambered up the shoreline on the coast of France and stuck a drill in the ground to take a sample of the sand. They were spies investigating the beach where the Normandy landings were to take place. The bloodshed on the Eastern Front had led the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, to demand a new front in the west. As a result, in 1943, the plans for Operation Overlord began to take shape. As history’s largest single military operation, D-Day required a huge planning effort. In the training camps, at the army’s card tables and on reconnaissance missions, everyone worked hard before the battle could begin.

HITLER’S ARMY LOSES IT ALL AT STALINGRAD • At the beginning of January 1943, Soviet forces initiated a major offensive at Stalingrad. The goal was to crush the remains of Hitler’s besieged 6th Army. For the next 20 days, German soldiers fought a futile battle against a vengeful enemy.

FRANCE REBELS 1940-1944 • When the Allies invaded Normandy, Germans soldiers waited for help that never came. All over France, telephone lines were dead, and Hitler’s troops were stranded aboard trains on a immobilised network of broken tracks. The sabotage of France’s telephone exchanges and railway lines was the result of French Resistance action ahead of D-Day. Throughout the war, the Resistance had put their lives on the line as they fought against the occupying force. They knew that if they fell into Nazi hands, interrogation and torture were the best that they could hope for.

THE NIGHT BEFORE 1944 • Darkness had fallen by the time the paratroopers assembled on a runway in southern England to synchronise their watches. It was just before 23.00 on 5th June, 1944. In a few hours’ time, the highly trained elite soldiers would jump into the night over German-occupied Normandy with 20,000 other Allied paratroopers as the invasion's vanguard. Their mission was to attack and disrupt the German war machine so that tomorrow’s attack on the beaches could proceed according to plan. Everything was at stake. In front of them lay the most dangerous night of their lives.

NORMANDY LANDINGS 1944 • At 06.30 on 6th June, the seasick men in the flat-bottomed boats off the French coast finally receive the signal to attack. The largest military invasion in history has begun. By the end of the day the Allies will have landed up to 150,000 soldiers on the Normandy beaches, smashing a huge hole in the Atlantic Wall and establishing a solid beachhead for the decisive offensive against Hitler’s Germany. Despite careful preparation, however, things go wrong in several places and one of the five invasion beaches quickly turns into a bloodbath.

YOUTH UNDER FIRE 1944-1945 • Shells rained down, and Allied troops poured ashore. But Hitler slept on, Field Marshal Rommel was on holiday, and General Gerd von Rundstedt was left powerless to act. Despite months of preparations, D-Day came as a complete to believe rumours of invasion were serious. However, the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitlerjugend”, consisting of very young soldiers, a birthday present for Hitler, were sent to stop the Allies as they poured onto the Normandy beaches. The Panzer Division’s main task was to hold the city of Caen.

GERMAN DEFEAT IN EAST 1944 • On 22nd June, 1944, Soviet troops swarm into the forest and marshlands at the front in Belarus. Stalin has launched Operation Bagration, a massive summer offensive designed to break the neck of Hitler’s strong Army Group Centre. The army group is the Germans’ last powerful force on the...