{"title":"Saul David","description":"Saul David is a military historian and broadcaster. He is the author of The Indian Mutiny, which was shortlisted for the Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature, Military Blunders, Zulu: the Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (a Waterstone's Military History Book of the Year),  Victoria's Wars, and Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History, an Amazon History Book of the Year. He lives outside of Bath, England, where he is a professor of military history at the University of Buckingham.","products":[{"product_id":"force-the-legendary-special-ops-unit-and-wwiis-mission-impossible-hardcover","title":"Force: The Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII's Mission Impossible - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHailed as \"masterly\" (\u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e) and a \"monumental achievement\" (Douglas Brinkley), this book tells the riveting, true story of the group of elite US and Canadian soldiers who sacrificed everything to accomplish a crucial but nearly impossible WWII mission.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn December of 1943, as Nazi forces sprawled around the world and the future of civilization hung in the balance, a group of highly trained U.S. and Canadian soldiers from humble backgrounds was asked to do the impossible: capture a crucial Nazi stronghold perched atop stunningly steep cliffs. The men were a rough-and-ready group, assembled from towns nested in North America's most unforgiving terrain, where many of them had struggled through the Great Depression relying on canny survival skills and the fearlessness of youth. Brought together by the promise to take part in the military's most elite missions, they formed a unique brotherhood tested first by the crucible of state-of-the-art training--including skiing, rock climbing, and parachuting--and then tragically by the vicious fighting they would face. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe early battle in the Italian theatre for the strategic fort cost the heroic U.S.-Canadian commando unit--their first special forces unit ever assembled--enormous casualties. Yet the victory put them in position to continue their drive into Italy, setting the stage for the Allies' resurgence toward victory in WWII. The unit, with its vast range of capabilities and mission-specific exercises, became a model for the \"Green Berets\" and other special forces groups that would go on to accomplish America's most challenging undertakings behind enemy lines. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eKnitting first-hand accounts seamlessly into the narrative-drawing on interviews with surviving members and their families; the memoirs, letters, and diaries of Forcemen; and declassified documents in the American, Canadian, British, and German archives--\u003ci\u003eThe Force\u003c\/i\u003e tells a story that is as deeply personal as it is inspiring.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51365901959391,"sku":"9780316414531","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/z9W21MaAtB9780316414531.webp?v=1789073691"},{"product_id":"crucible-of-hell-the-heroism-and-tragedy-of-okinawa-1945-paperback","title":"Crucible of Hell: The Heroism and Tragedy of Okinawa, 1945 - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the award-winning historian, Saul David, the riveting narrative of the heroic US troops, bonded by the brotherhood and sacrifice of war, who overcame enormous casualties to pull off the toughest invasion of WWII's Pacific Theater -- and the Japanese forces who fought with tragic desperation to stop them.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWith Allied forces sweeping across Europe and into Germany in the spring of 1945, one enormous challenge threatened to derail America's audacious drive to win the world back from the Nazis: Japan, the empire that had extended its reach southward across the Pacific and was renowned for the fanaticism and brutality of its fighters, who refused to surrender, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Taking down Japan would require an unrelenting attack to break its national spirit, and launching such an attack on the island empire meant building an operations base just off its shores on the island of Okinawa. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe amphibious operation to capture Okinawa was the largest of the Pacific War and the greatest air-land-sea battle in history, mobilizing 183,000 troops from Seattle, Leyte in the Philippines, and ports around the world. The campaign lasted for 83 blood-soaked days, as the fighting plumbed depths of savagery. One veteran, struggling to make sense of what he had witnessed, referred to the fighting as the \"crucible of Hell.\" Okinawan civilians died in the tens of thousands: some were mistaken for soldiers by American troops; but as the US Marines spearheading the invasion drove further onto the island and Japanese defeat seemed inevitable, many more civilians took their own lives, some even murdering their own families. In just under three months, the world had changed irrevocably: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died; the war in Europe ended; America's appetite for an invasion of Japan had waned, spurring President Truman to use other means -- ultimately atomic bombs -- to end the war; and more than 250,000 servicemen and civilians on or near the island of Okinawa had lost their lives. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on archival research in the US, Japan, and the UK, and the original accounts of those who survived, \u003ci\u003eCrucible of Hell \u003c\/i\u003etells the vivid, heart-rending story of the battle that changed not just the course of WWII, but the course of war, forever.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51367981351135,"sku":"9780316534680","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/Zh5BmOrjv9780316534680.webp?v=1789117008"},{"product_id":"tunisgrad-victory-in-africa-hardcover","title":"Tunisgrad: Victory in Africa - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eA BBC History Magazine and Aspects of History Book of the Year 2025\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e'Terrific - full of drama ... it has profoundly altered my understanding of the Second World War' \u003c\/strong\u003ePATRICK BISHOP\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eFROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SBS COMES AN EPIC HISTORY OF THE ALLIED VICTORY IN NORTH AFRICA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn 8 November 1942, British and American troops invaded French North Africa as part of Operation Torch, the largest amphibious operation of the war to date. The Germans responded by flooding troops into Tunisia and the stage was set for one of the most decisive clashes of the war.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor months the outcome hung in the balance. The Allies failed to capture Tunis before Christmas, and early in the New Year the legendary German commander Erwin Rommel ( the ' Desert Fox ') inflicted a series of crushing defeats on inexperienced American troops in the mountain passes of central Tunisia. But once the two Allied armies - the First and the Eighth - had joined hands in southern Tunisia in early April, the defeat of Axis forces was inevitable. The end came on 13 May when the remnants of the First Italian Army surrendered to British troops in northern Tunisia, leaving the Allies ' masters of the North African shores '.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was, with Guadalcanal in the Pacific and Stalingrad in Russia, one of three Axis defeats in early 1943 that changed the course of the war. Historians have recognized the significance of the others, but not Tunisia which they have either ignored or characterized ( as the Americans did at the time ) as a sideshow. Yet it ended Axis sea power in the Mediterranean, destroyed more than 2,400 Axis aircraft ( 40 per cent of the Luftwaffe 's strength ), and resulted in the surrender of over 250,000 German and Italian troops, more than were captured at Stalingrad. Such was the scale of their defeat that the German public wryly dubbed it ' Tunisgrad '.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was the first campaign fought by the Anglo-American alliance, and would determine how and where the Allies would fight for the rest of the war. It was where America first brought to bear the full weight of its industrial strength, and where the Allies learned, after early setbacks, how to defeat the Germans with a combination of air, land and sea power. It featured many of the great commanders of the Second World War, including ' Ike ' Eisenhower, George S. Patton Jr, Omar N. Bradley, Harold Alexander, Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. But the campaign 's chief significance is that it extinguished any lingering hopes in Italy that the war could be won and led, inexorably, to the dissolution of the Axis in Europe. By destroying the Axis it marked, for Hitler, the beginning of the end.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eTunisgrad \u003c\/em\u003eis the first comprehensive 360-degree history, told from the perspective of all the combatants, and ranging in focus from politicians and senior commanders to ordinary servicemen fighting in and over the mountains of Tunisia, and across the Mediterranean. Using a variety of first-hand sources, it restores the campaign to its rightful place as a defining moment of the war\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368964260063,"sku":"9780008653811","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/th-M2aHRji9780008653811.webp?v=1789135961"},{"product_id":"devil-dogs-king-company-third-battalion-5th-marines-from-guadalcanal-to-the-shores-of-japan-paperback","title":"Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines: From Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward-winning historian Saul David reveals the searing experience of the Devil Dogs of World War II and does for the U.S. Marines what \u003ci\u003eBand of Brothers\u003c\/i\u003e did for the 101st Airborne.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe \"Devil Dogs\" of King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines--part of the legendary 1st Marine Division--were among the first American soldiers to take the offensive in World World II--and also the last. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThey landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942--the first US ground offensive of the war--and were present when Okinawa, Japan's most southerly prefecture, finally fell to American troops after a bitter struggle in June 1945. In between they fought in the \"Green Hell\" of Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain, and across the coral wasteland of Peleliu in the Palau Islands, a campaign described by one King Company veteran as \"thirty days of the meanest, around-the-clock slaughter that desperate men can inflict on each other.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOrdinary men from very different backgrounds, and drawn from cities, towns, and settlements across America, the Devil Dogs were asked to do something extraordinary: take on the victorious Imperial Japanese Army, composed of some of the most effective, \"utterly ruthless and treacherous\" soldiers in world history--and defeat it. This is the story of how they did just that and, in the process, forged bonds of brotherhood that still survive today. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRemarkably, the company contained an unusually high number of talented writers, whose first-hand accounts and memoirs provide the color, emotion, and context for this extraordinary story. In \u003ci\u003eDevil Dogs, \u003c\/i\u003eaward-winning historian Saul David sets the searing experience of the Devil Dogs into the broader context of the brutal war in the Pacific and does for the U.S. Marines what \u003ci\u003eBand of Brothers\u003c\/i\u003e did for the 101st Airborne.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369759473887,"sku":"9781639365760","price":23.71,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/enIxBYXsAI9781639365760.webp?v=1789146110"},{"product_id":"operation-thunderbolt-paperback","title":"Operation Thunderbolt - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe definitive account of one of the greatest Special Forces missions ever, the Raid of Entebbe, by acclaimed military historian Saul David.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists who demanded the release of 53 terrorists. The plane was forced to divert to Entebbe, in Uganda -- ruled by the murderous despot Idi Amin, who had no interest in intervening. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Days later, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers assaulted the airport terminal, killed all the terrorists, and rescued all the hostages but three who were killed in the crossfire. The assault force suffered just one fatality: its commander, Yoni Netanyahu (brother of Israel's Prime Minister.) Three of the country's greatest leaders -- Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin -- planned and pulled off one of the most astonishing military operations in history.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51397101256927,"sku":"9780316245395","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/zIqsOXlDPC9780316245395.webp?v=1789463529"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/saul-david.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}