War in Europe

For six years, Britain and Nazi Germany fought a bitter battle for control of the Atlantic. Allied offensives against Hitler's armies on the continent were conditioned by their bases on the British Isles, which made air strikes and landings possible. But during 1939, the Germans began to 'starve' the British into surrender by cutting off vital supplies of food and equipment from the Allies. This was done with the help of U-boats that tried to sink more cargo ships than the shipyards could produce - even when these actions were suicidal. Over 100,000 soldiers and sailors lost their lives in these battles. In this book, we meet the soldiers at the front and hear civilians talk about everyday life in a world where even the most seaworthy ship can suddenly be hit by a German torpedo.

As World War II raged across the Russian steppes, in Africa and especially in the skies over Europe, elite German and Soviet forces fought a bitter battle in an isolated northern corner of Europe. Here, the battle was for control of the ice-free port of Murmansk, where the Soviet Union received convoy after convoy loaded with British and American tanks, guns, fuel, small arms, food and aircraft. Supplies from the Allied convoys kept the Soviet Union alive at a critical time during the early stages of the war, and Hitler therefore tried every means to stop the convoys. At the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union, he hoped to capture Murmansk and thus weaken his archenemy. Later, when he realised that fighting in the barren, mountainous terrain of the north was unwinnable, he set his sights on destroying the convoys. The Luftwaffe and U-boats attacked the Allied sailors throughout the perpetual daylight of polar summer while crushing ice and raging storms threatened during the dark winter months. The men aboard the Arctic convoys dreaded the voyages, and it was with good reason that the crews dubbed them "suicide convoys". If they fell overboard in a storm, a quick death awaited them in the icy sea, and if the ships' holds, filled with fuel and ammunition, were hit by a torpedo or a bomb, everything exploded in a sea of flames. The Arctic convoy trips and the fighting on the Northern Front challenged some of the war's toughest men. Read their stories here.

Britain's finest hour In the summer of 1940, darkness was falling over Europe. The Soviet Union had formed an unholy alliance with Nazi Germany. Norway was all but occupied. And France would soon be overrun by Germans. In July, only Great Britain remained as the last defence against Europe under the swastika's brutal arms. But Britain was no longer the invincible empire that had subjugated more than a fifth of the Earth's landmass over the previous 400 years, and the Battle of Britain would prove to be the British Empire's last moment of glory. Led by Winston Churchill, the British rediscovered the virtues that had made a humble people the rulers of the world. Ingenuity, resourcefulness and – above all – indomitable courage enabled the Royal Air Force to take on the Luftwaffe and hold off the Germans. In June 1940, Winston Churchill called the battle Britain's "finest hour", and he was right. The British Empire would not survive for long after World War II, but the Battle of Britain was its magnificent swansong, and the thousands of British lives lost saved Europe from Nazi tyranny.

Six attempts were made by German officers to kill Hitler in autumn 1943 and summer 1944. Explosives in personal gifts, assassins armed with hand grenades and pistols, and even suicide bombers with pockets full of explosives hunted the Führer, who undoubtedly recognised the danger. The security arrangements around the leader of the Nazi regime were therefore enormous when, in July 1944, Officer Claus von Stauffenberg travelled to Hitler's Führerbunker in East Prussia to kill first Adolf Hitler and then the entire Third Reich. Claus von Stauffenberg was not alone. He was just a pawn in a group of noble officers' plan to overthrow the Nazis and then make gentle peace with the British, Russians and Americans before Germany was destroyed by its enemies. How close was the group to succeeding?

By 1943, Adolf Hitler had realised that the German Army was no longer capable of fighting an offensive war. The army was short of men, guns and tanks, and the Luftwaffe could not afford to lose more aircraft. Consequently, when Hitler flew to his forward headquarters in Ukraine in February 1943, he brought with him a clear message: the German Army would no longer go on the offensive. For the next year, it would instead defend its positions and let the Red Army exhaust itself in futile attacks. As we know, that's not how history turned out. At the meeting in Ukraine, Hitler's generals identified a vulnerable spot on the front line where hundreds of thousands of enemies could be captured and the Soviets weakened before they launched their summer offensive. After weeks of deliberation, the Führer was persuaded to make a fateful decision: All forces were to be deployed to the front line salient where they would trap the Red Army near the city of Kursk, 500 kilometres southwest of Moscow. For the next few months, both the German Army and the Red Army staked everything on winning the coming Battle of Kursk. Soviets in their thousands built impenetrable defensive lines, while German units transported newly developed Tiger tanks and Wespe (Wasp) guns by the hundreds to the front line. Finally, on 5th July 1943, Soviet artillery shattered the silence of the balmy Russian summer night. The Battle of Kursk was underway, and the winner of World War II would be decided during the following week's engagements.