8 juin 1944. La division Das Reich, forte de 15 000 hommes, quitte Montauban en direction de la Normandie. Elle mettra quinze jours - au lieu des trois initialement prévus - pour arriver sur les lieux du Débarquement. Le temps pour la 2 e division SS de se livrer à des exactions barbares et d'acquérir une réputation sinistre. Commandée par le général Heinz Lammerding, pur produit du système nazi, la division Das Reich voit sa progression entravée par la Résistance, par des opérations de commando et par les bombardements de l'aviation alliée. Mais cette légendaire action de guérilla restera marquée par deux représailles sanglantes: les pendaisonsde Tulle et le massacred'Oradour-sur-Glane.

On 6 June 1944 when the allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years.

Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit summer England to face within hours a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire. They witnessed scenes, above all of sudden death, such as no exercise had prepared them for.
In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade, Montgomery''s 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single British beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the apparently interminable years training and preparing in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond. Here are the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery, the battles on the shoreline and against the German strongpoints inland, narrated and explained with all the insights that Hastings'' decades of study, veterans'' interviews and new archive research enable him to deploy. The book offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June, as Montgomery had promised Churchill that they would - and the story of the brigadier who was sacked for that failure. There is also a host of personal portraits of key figures from commando leader Lord Lovat, famously brave but supremely arrogant, to tank colonel Jim Eadie, whose tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry repulsed a panzer division in the last hours of 6 June, and some of the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened.
This is D-Day as you have never read the story told before, with the blend of narrative, analysis and human insight that made Max Hastings'' last book Operation Biting, like many of his earlier works, a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller. Lire la suite Fermer

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ''His masterpiece'' Antony Beevor, Spectator ''A masterful performance'' Sunday Times ''By far the best book on the Vietnam War'' Gerald Degroot, The Times , Book of the Year Vietnam became the Western world''s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh''s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners'' victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings'' readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
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From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings ''the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis'' Daily Telegraph ''A story that grabs from the get-go - the moments in which the world teetered on the brink of total annihilation come alive as they would if this were the very best fiction'' Justin Webb, Mail on Sunday ''The most gripping narrative of the crisis... frightening but hopelessly addictive'' Gerald DeGroot, Times The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.

Max Hastings''s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro''s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev''s Russia and Kennedy''s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.
Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.
To contend with today''s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet. Lire la suite Fermer

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A masterly history of the Dambusters raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings. Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths that have often been left out of the legend. ''Brings it to life as never before ... Hour by nerve-jangling hour'' Daily Mail ''Superb ... The heroes shine, but their achievement haunts'' Times ''A virtuoso performance from a veteran military historian. It is a white-knuckle narrative that brings clarity and insight to a much-loved tale, as well as offering a vital corrective to the drum-thumping conclusions of earlier books'' Sunday Times
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- #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR, WRITING ON THE AREA HE KNOWS AND HANDLES BEST: THE THICKEST ACTION AND BIGGEST HUMAN STORIES OF WW2, WITH A BRITISH SKEW - THIS IS A STORY NEVER BEFORE COVERED BY COMMERCIAL HISTORY - RETURNING TO THE SUCCESS OF HIS MOST RECENT WW2 NARRATIVES: CHASTISE (50K HBs, 40K PBs) AND OPERATION PEDESTAL (41K HBs, 31K PBs) - HUGE SALES RECORD:
All Hell Let Loose - 142k HB, 150k PB Catastrophe - 111k HB, 105k PB Vietnam - 102k HB, 87k PB The Secret War - 84k HB, 84k PB Competition: SAS;Break Point;The Crew;Barbarossa;The Western Front;Enemy at the Gates;Grey Goose of Arnhem;Normandy 44;First Light;The Volunteer;The Second World War;Anglo-Saxons. Antony Beevor;James Holland;Saul David;John Nichol;Ben Macintyre;Ian Kershaw;Laurence Rees;David Price;Jonathan Dimbleby;Marc Morris Lire la suite Fermer

Section - i: List of Illustrations Section - ii: Foreward Section - iii: Prologue: London and France, 5/6 June 1944 Chapter - 1: 2nd SS Panzer Division: Montauben, Tarn-et-Garonne, May 1944 Chapter - 2: SOE: Baker Street Chapter - 3: SOE: Southern France Chapter - 4: The Road Chapter - 5: Tulle: The ''Liberation'' Chapter - 6: Tulle: The Price Chapter - 7: The Jeds Chapter - 8: ''Panzer divisions are too good for this...'' Chapter - 9: ''...a rapid and lasting clean up...'': Oradour Chapter - 10: Excess of Zeal Chapter - 11: The SAS: Bulbasket Chapter - 12: Normandy Chapter - 13: Afterwards Section - iv: Appendix A: 2nd Panzer Division''s memorandum on anti-guerilla operations, issued on 9 June 1944 Section - v: Appendix B: Principal Weapons of the maquis and the 2nd Panzer Division Section - vi: Bibliography and a Note on Sources Acknowledgements - vii: Acknowledgements Section - viii: Glossary Section - ix: Notes and References Index - x: Index > Lire la suite Fermer

''A gripping new collection from Max Hastings that puts you at the heart of the battle ... Compelling'' Daily Mail
''An unmissable read'' Sunday Times
Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting bestselling historian Max Hastings''s lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here you will meet Jewish heroes of the Bible, Rome''s captain of the gate, Queen Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Wellington, Napoleon''s marshals, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton and the modern SAS. There are tales of great writers who served in uniform including Cobbett and Tolstoy, Edward Gibbon and Siegfried Sassoon, Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser. Here are also stories of the female ''abosi'' fighters of Dahomey and heroic ambulance drivers of World War I, together with the new-age women soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories reflect a change of mood towards warfare through the ages: though nations and movements continue to inflict terrible violence upon each other, most of humankind has retreated from the old notion of war as a sport or pastime, to acknowledge it as the supreme tragedy.
This is a book to inspire in turn fascination, excitement, horror, amazement, occasionally laughter. Max Hastings mingles respect for the courage of those who fight with compassion for those who become their victims, above all civilians, and especially in the twenty-first century, which some are already calling ''the Post-Heroic Age''. Lire la suite Fermer

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER


''Reads like a thriller... I couldn''t put Max Hastings''s new book down'' DAILY MAIL


''Hastings is a master of drama, a writer intimately familiar with the mind of the soldier'' THE TIMES

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Wurzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations. A company of the newly-formed Airborne Forces was committed to the operation, which took place on the night of 27/28 February. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth.
Max Hastings recounts this cliffhanging tale in a wealth of previously unchronicled detail. He portrays its remarkable personalities: the ''boffin'' RV Jones; the peacock Mountbatten; the troubled husband of Daphne Du Maurier, Gen. ''Boy'' Browning, who commanded the Airborne Division; ''Colonel Remy'', the French secret agent whose men reconnoitered Bruneval at mortal risk; Major John Frost, who led the paras into action; Charlie Cox, the little RAF technician who stripped the Wurzburg and became an unexpected hero; Wing-Commander Charles Pickard, a legendary bomber pilot who led the drop squadron. Seldom have so many fascinating personalities been brought together to fulfil a mission that became a front-page triumph in a season of British defeats.
Recounted in Hastings'' familiar best-selling blend of top-down and bottom-up action detail, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history. Lire la suite Fermer

8 juin 1944... La division "Das Reich", forte de quinze mille hommes, deux cent neuf chars et pièces d'artillerie, s'ébranle à Montauban en direction de la Normandie.
Entravée dans sa progression par la Résistance, par des opérations de commando et les bombardements de l'aviation alliée, elle va sur son trajet acquérir bientôt une terrible notoriété, en se livrant à Tulle et à Oradour-sur-Glane à deux ignominieuses actions de représailles dont le souvenir tragique ne s'est jamais effacé de la mémoire des Français.
Ces odieuses exactions perpétrées lors d'une phase critique des hostilités, allaient cependant avoir indirectement d'importantes conséquences au niveau stratégique. En effet, si la division "Das Reich" était arrivée à temps sur les lieux du débarquement, elle aurait, selon toute vraisemblance, sinon permis aux forces allemandes de rejeter les alliés à la mer, du moins contribué à différer l'issue de la bataille, retardant du même coup la libération rapide de la France.
Quel rôle la Résistance joua-t-elle dans le déroulement de ces événements ? Dans quelle mesure sa participation héroïque freina-t-elle la marche de la division ? Dans quel contexte s'inscrivirent les lâches assassinats et le martyre de populations innocentes ?
Se défendant de vouloir ranimer de manière stérile d'inutiles controverses ou de minimiser des responsabilités parfois bien difficiles à évaluer, Max Hastings répond à ces questions ; d'un oeil objectif et impartial, avec le recul nécessaire de près de quarante années. Désirant avant tout comprendre les véritables motivations des protagonistes du drame, il a pendant de longs mois traqué la vérité en fouillant toutes les archives des pays concernés. Il a surtout interrogé des témoins et les survivants tant du côté français que du côté allemand ou allié.
Au lecteur d'aujourd'hui d'apprécier la valeur de leur témoignage et de découvrir, à la faveur d'un éclairage nouveau, l'une des pages les plus douloureuses et les plus extraordinaires de la guerre secrète, dont certains épisodes n'avaient encore jamais été racontés.
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Within days of the D-Day landings, the Das Reich 2nd SS Panzer Division marched north through France to reinforce the front-line defenders of Hitler's Fortress Europe. Veterans of the bloodiest fighting of the Russian Front, 15,000 men with their tanks and artillery, they were hounded for every mile of their march by saboteurs of the Resistance and agents of the Allied Special Forces. Along their route they took reprisals so savage they will live for ever in the chronicles of the most appalling atrocities of war. Max Hastings' Das Reich is a powerful account of their progress and a true military classic.

Paris et ses curiosités ; ou nouveau guide du voyageur à Paris . Contenant l'indication de tout ce qui concerne le gouvernement.-Objets relatifs au commerce.-Bibliothèques.-Monumens des sciences et arts.-Théâtres.-Jardins publics, etc, etc. ; augmenté d'une description des châteaux et maisons de plaisance des environs de Paris ; suivi d'une liste nominative des fonctionnaires publics, des banquiers, agens de change, etc.
Date de l'édition originale : 1802 Appartient à l'ensemble documentaire : IledeFr1 Ce livre est la reproduction fidèle d'une oeuvre publiée avant 1920 et fait partie d'une collection de livres réimprimés à la demande éditée par Hachette Livre, dans le cadre d'un partenariat avec la Bibliothèque nationale de France, offrant l'opportunité d'accéder à des ouvrages anciens et souvent rares issus des fonds patrimoniaux de la BnF.
Les oeuvres faisant partie de cette collection ont été numérisées par la BnF et sont présentes sur Gallica, sa bibliothèque numérique.

En entreprenant de redonner vie à ces ouvrages au travers d'une collection de livres réimprimés à la demande, nous leur donnons la possibilité de rencontrer un public élargi et participons à la transmission de connaissances et de savoirs parfois difficilement accessibles.
Nous avons cherché à concilier la reproduction fidèle d'un livre ancien à partir de sa version numérisée avec le souci d'un confort de lecture optimal. Nous espérons que les ouvrages de cette nouvelle collection vous apporteront entière satisfaction.

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The Battle for the Falklands is a thoughtful and informed analysis of an astonishing chapter in modern British history from journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings and political editor Simon Jenkins. Ten weeks. 28,000 soldiers. 8,000 miles from home. The Falklands War in 1982 was one of the strangest in British history. At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity - thousands of men sent overseas for a tiny relic of empire - but the British victory over the Argentinians not only confirmed the quality of British arms but also boosted the political fortunes of Thatcher''s Conservative government. However, it left a chequered aftermath and was later overshadowed by the two Gulf wars. Max Hastings'' and Simon Jenkins'' account of the conflict is a modern classic of war reportage and the definitive book on the conflict. Lire la suite Fermer

''A fascinating collection of military stories ... The sort of book that can be picked up at intervals ... [but] once tasted, is hard to put down'' Washington Post From bestselling author Max Hastings, a collection of the most extraordinary stories of war, courage, tragedy, strategy and survival.

Men at War is a collection of the very best stories about soldiers, brought together by the award-winning, bestselling historian Max Hastings. In his almost sixty years of military study and his work in the midst of modern conflicts as a foreign correspondent, these are the stories that left a mark.
In these pages you will find heroes and cowards; triumphs, tragedies and comedies. It illustrates, mostly through people''s own words, what it''s been like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to today''s Iraq and Afghanistan.
The characters include the Black Prince and Cromwell, Wellington at Waterloo, Siegfried Sassoon at the Somme, George Orwell in the Spanish Civil War and Evelyn Waugh as a commando. But there are also Americans, Frenchmen, Israelis, Russians, not to mention the women warriors of Dahomey, Queen Boudicca and the women who serve today in the US Marines.There are more than 300 stories in all,and an astounding variety of soldiers'' experiences through the ages.Many have been responsible for wonderful achievements but a few, also, for dreadful crimes.Some relate horrors, while others tell terrific jokes.
This is a book that might make you feel as grateful that whatever the troubles of our own times, we are spared the mud and blood and anguish, if also the moments of glory, that the soldiers in these pages bring so vividly to life.
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The Sunday Times bestseller ''One of the most dramatic forgotten chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max Hastings'' DAILY MAIL In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no longer be fed. Churchill made a personal decision that at all costs, the ''island fortress'' must be saved. This was not merely a matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain''s fortunes and morale had fallen to their lowest ebb.
The largest fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand of miles of sea defended by six hundred German and Italian aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo craft. The Mediterranean battles that ensued between 11 and 15 August were the most brutal of Britain''s war at sea, embracing four aircraft-carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, scores of destroyers and smaller craft. The losses were appalling: defeat seemed to beckon.
This is the saga Max Hastings unfolds in his first full length narrative of the Royal Navy, which he believes was the most successful of Britain''s wartime services. As always, he blends the ''big picture'' of statesmen and admirals with human stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews, Hurricane pilots, destroyer and merchant-ship captains, ordinary but extraordinary seamen.
Operation Pedestal describes catastrophic ship sinkings, including that of the aircraft-carrier Eagle, together with struggles to rescue survivors and salvage stricken ships. Most moving of all is the story of the tanker Ohio, indispensable to Malta''s survival, victim of countless Axis attacks. In the last days of the battle, the ravaged hulk was kept under way only by two destroyers, lashed to her sides. Max Hastings describes this as one of the most extraordinary tales he has ever recounted. Until the very last hours, no participant on either side could tell what would be the outcome of an epic of wartime suspense and courage. Lire la suite Fermer

An epic, intimate new account of one of the greatest naval dramas of World War II, from number one bestselling historian Max Hastings. Operation Pedestal was a crucial relief mission that became an epic, bloody naval battle and a pivotal moment in the Second World War. In 1942, the Luftwaffe had a stranglehold on Malta. In the months of April and May, they dropped more bombs on the island than on London in the entire Blitz. British attempts to bring in supplies and reinforcements were failing with heavy losses, and the people on Malta were closing in on starvation as the Axis attempted to force their surrender. Operation Pedestal saw an armada of fifty British ships, painstakingly loaded with food and medical supplies, ammunition and fuel, attempt to fight its way in convoy to the island. The ensuing battle was brutal on both sides, Italian submarines and German planes dealing serious damage alongside the naval skirmishing. Over the course of a few fierce days, Britain scraped a victory and ensured Malta''s survival - though at the loss of a horrifying number of ships and lives. It was an emblematic moment when, in the cruel accountancy of war, the price was worth paying. In his signature brilliant style, Max Hastings gives a thrilling narrative of this little-known but crucial naval battle, retelling the intense action which perfectly encapsulates the spirit and power of the Royal Navy, surely the fiercest and most iconic fighting force of WW2.
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Dans un cortège de morts et de destructions la division Das Reich, bourreau d'Oradour et de Tulle, connaît une progression sanglante, semée d'embûches par la résistance déterminée à empêcher les Allemands d'atteindre la Normandie à temps pour s'opposer au Débarquement. Mais quelle fut la véritable histoire de la division Das Reich pendant ce mois de juin 44 ? Partie de Montauban pour rejoindre la Normandie, la division Das Reich, forte de 15 000 hommes, subit bombardements alliés et opérations de commandos de la résistance. Elle mettra 15 jours au lieu de 3 pour parcourir les 725 kilomètres qui devaient la mener sur les plages de Normandie. Après les pendaisons de Tulle et le massacre d'Oradour-sur-Glane, la division déjà ralentie et fatiguée ne parviendra pas à rejoindre à temps la Normandie pour s'opposer au Débarquement. Dans quelle mesure la Résistance parvint-elle à freiner la progression de la division ? Quel rôle joua-t-elle réellement dans le déroulement de ces événements ?
A partir des témoignages alliés, des résistants, des hommes de Vichy et des Allemands, le livre suit pas à pas la progression de la division Das Reich et analyse tous les événements qui la ponctuent.
Il fait la part des responsabilités, de la cruauté et de l'héroïsme des deux camps. Cette analyse du contexte des événements décrit une réalité - dramatique - dans une phase critique des hostilités et tente de rétablir les rôles de cette épopée sanglante.
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