Peter Jacobs

‘Deeply regret to inform you that 2/Lt C F B Hodgins 2/Wiltshire Regt is reported killed Sept 25/26. Lord Kitchener desires to express his sympathy. Secretary War Office.’ – Telegram from the War Office dated 29 September 1915 This is the true and previously untold story of one man’s war on the Western Front during the First World War. As a young man, still in his teens, Charles Francis Burgoyne Hodgins, known as Charlie, answered the call to ‘do his bit’ for King and Country. Like so many others, he was never to return. He was killed on 25 September 1915, on the opening day of the Battle of Loos, and is one of many thousands who now lie in cemeteries near the former battlefields of northern France. According to an officer in his battalion, he died 'leading his men with great gallantry, and even when wounded, tried to rise and take them on'. Drawing on the many letters, photographs and telegrams Charlie sent home, along with newspaper articles, war archives and other personal accounts, historian Peter Jacobs has pieced together the final moments of Charlie’s short life. This is a compelling and poignant tale of personal courage and one family’s loss. But it also tells of the tragedy and suffering experienced by a generation of men during the First World War.

Bomber Commands night offensive against Nazi Germany, which lasted for nearly six years, was one of Britains major contributions to the Allied effort during the Second World War. But the decision to conduct its main operations at night only came about following heavy losses by day, when its pre-war medium bombers had been found lacking in modern air warfare. The Luftwaffe, too, had its early problems. Initially without a dedicated night fighter, it was ill-equipped to defend the Reich, and so the stage was set for what would become one of the most critical strategic encounters of the war. Things had to change on both sides. Soon there came new and more capable aircraft, in ever-increasing numbers, coupled with new tactics and technology, as each side strove to gain the upper hand. It became a fascinating encounter between the crews of Bomber Command and the Luftwaffes night fighter force, the Nachtjagd, with no shortage of courage and heavy losses on both sides. Amongst the epic encounters were Bomber Commands Thousand Bomber raids, the attack on the German V-weapons research establishment at Peenemnde, the campaigns against the industrial Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin, and the disastrous raid on Nuremberg. This new publication consolidates accounts from both sides and from all ranks of service in an effort to provide a comprehensive account of some of the most ferocious nocturnal engagements of the Second World War.

To carry out one clandestine mission required courage, but to do it four times required courage on a quite extraordinary scale. Yet, that is exactly what Peter Churchill did. Peter Morland Churchill was born in Amsterdam in 1909 to British diplomat William Churchill and his wife Violet. A particularly gifted linguist, upon graduating from university, Churchill followed in his father’s footsteps and entered into the British diplomatic service before eventually joining the Home Office Advisory Committee. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Churchill’s professional exploits and linguistic prowess led him to the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – a secret British organisation formed in 1940 to carry out subversive warfare against the enemy in Nazi-occupied Europe. Churchill was among the early volunteers for the SOE, and joined as an Intelligence Officer in the French Section in 1941\. Throughout his time in the organisation, Churchill made it into France on four separate missions. Each of these assignments were hazardous, requiring courage, resourcefulness and tireless hard work. Churchill was successful in his first three missions, but these hazards caught up with him and he was captured at the beginning of his fourth deployment to France. He endured torture, solitary confinement and the everyday horrors of the concentration camps as a result. He eventually made it back home at the end of the war and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his outstanding courage. The story of Peter Churchill and his time in the SOE is an incredible one. This remarkable history truly does justice to these experiences and will captivate any reader interested in the SOE or in the Second World War in general.

December 1941. After setting up one of the first resistance organisations in Vichy France and escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain, brothers Henry and Alfred Newton received devastating news. SS Avoceta, carrying their parents, wives and children to the safety of Britain, had been torpedoed by a German U-boat. All of their family were dead. From that moment on, the Newton brothers were consumed by revenge. Recruited by SOE, and known to everyone simply as the Twins, they returned to France and waged their own personal war against the Nazis. For nine months they lived on the edge before they were betrayed, and the net finally closed. They were caught by the Gestapo and tortured at the hands of the Butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie, before being taken to the dreaded Buchenwald concentration camp. In The SOE’s Brothers of Vengeance, acclaimed historian Peter Jacobs reveals the full story of Henry and Alfred Newton. Drawing on personal archives and new research, theirs is a dramatic tale of courage steeped in vengeance – and of the bonds of brotherhood in the face of hell on earth.

This gripping history details the remarkable exploits of a Commando and Special Operations Executive operative during the Second World War. It is a story of extreme courage and a revealing portrait of a man who ultimately gave his life for the liberation of France. This is the first time his story has been told in full. Colin Ogden-Smith was among the first to volunteer for the newly created Commandos. In 1942 he transferred to the SOE and joined the elite Small Scale Raiding Force to carry out raids across the Channel. He participated in Operation _Branford_, a raid to the island of Burhou, just north of Alderney, on 7 September 1942, and then,later in the year, Operation _Basalt_, a Commando attack on Sark With the approach of the D-Day landings, Ogden-Smith volunteered for a new, clandestine group known as the Jedburghs - which represented the first real co-operation in Europe between SOE and the Special Operations branch of OSS. The Jedburghs were small teams of personnel from British, American, French, Dutch and Belgian forces that were inserted into Occupied Europe from June 1944 onwards to link up with the local Resistance groups and conduct sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the Germans. In July 1944, under the cover of his code-name Dorset, Major Colin Ogden-Smith parachuted deep behind enemy lines as the leader of Team _Francis_. Three weeks later he was dead, killed in action fighting German troops alongside his French comrades so that others could make their escape. Seventy years on, the French community still remembers the gallant Major Anglais.

It was in the closing year of the First World War, on 1 April 1918, that the Royal Air Force was born from the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service. Since then, the RAF has helped lead the world in the development of aviation and air warfare. From the fighters and bombers of the Second World War, through the early jet age and into modern remotely piloted air systems, the last hundred years’ development has been astronomical, and the human story no less impressive. Here Peter Jacobs gathers the most poignant objects of the RAF’s proud history and displays them together, in full splendid colour, for the first time. Aircraft, memorials, uniforms, equipment, and some items you would never expect – it’s all here, ready to be explored.

From the opening day of the Second World War, RAF Bomber Command took the offensive to the enemy and played a leading role in the liberation of Europe. Many of its squadrons were based in Lincolnshire, where the flat terrain and open fields made the county ideal for the development of new airfields. All of Bomber Command's major efforts involved the Lincolnshire-based squadrons. The Battles of the Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin, during the hardest years of 1943/44, were just some of those when night after night hundreds of bombers took off from the county, many never to return. It was also from Lincolnshire that precision raids were mounted against targets such as the diesel engine factory at Augsburg, the notorious Dortmund-Ems Canal, the mighty German battleship Tirpitz, and, of course, the Ruhr Dams. Most of Lincolnshire's wartime bomber airfields have long gone, with many having reverted to their pre-war agricultural use. Only Coningsby, Scampton and Waddington remain in service with the RAF today, while others - such as Binbrook, Blyton, Spilsby, Strubby, Swinderby and Woodhall Spa - have long fallen victim to Defence cuts. Other airfields have survived and maintain the link with their flying past. All are included here, some well-known, others less so. From these airfields came countless acts of personal courage and self-sacrifice, with eight Victoria Crosses, the highest award for gallantry, being awarded to men flying from bomber airfields in Lincolnshire. All are included, as are stories of other personalities who brought these airfields to life. In all, the stories of the county's twenty-nine wartime airfields of Bomber Command are told, with a brief history of each accompanied by details of how to find them and what remains there today. Whatever your interest, be it aviation history or something more local, there is something to discover. Lincolnshire has truly earned its name of Bomber County.

Victor Klemperer - Die Biographie. "Klemperers Leben war eine Odyssee durchs Jahrhundert." Der Spiegel Er wurde der leidenschaftlicheChronistdieses Jahrhunderts durch vier deutsche Geschichtsepochen: die Wilhelminische Kaiserzeit, die Weimarer Republik, den Nationalsozialismus und die Nachkriegszeit. Die spannend erzählte Lebensreportage nach Tausenden von Tagebuchseiten Victor Klemperers zeigt den roten Faden seines bewegten Lebens auf.