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The Battle of Normandy organised by the Allies depended on a massive, fast landing which would destabilise the German High Commandby its boldness. In a few hours on 6 June 1944, 150 000 Allied soldiers had set foot on Norman soil. Facing them, an equivalent number of German soldiers, but of whom only a third were operational on this front. The German High Command had been expecting the landings to take place in the Pas-de-Calais, the narrowest part of the channel. It took several days for the Germans to admit that the landings in Normandy were not a deceptive lure. The first hours of the landings were to prove decisive. For the Allied coalition, what was most important was to break through the German defences quickly and broaden the front, and finally to resist enemy counter-offensives. The first weeks of June 1944 were marked by terrible confrontations without any real decisive advantage being obtained. Then powerful conquest and encircling movements were made, which ended up with the Falaise Pocket. This d¿uement took place on 21 August near Chambois, a place now known as the ¿Corridor of death¿. The Battle of Normandy ended on 12 September 1944, with the liberation of Le Havre, 99 days after the 6 June 1944.

To the northeast of Brittany, in the marches, three towns still have their old medieval aspect and reveal their exceptional heritage. These three medieval cities are presented together in a magnificent colour 80-page bound book. The reworked texts and the illustrations were published in the Magazine ¿Moyen Age¿ (Middles Ages) and are given here in a practical manner and, with this volume, will find their place in any Middles Ages history or architecture amateur¿s library.

On 16 December 1944, there started the most powerful artillery barrage that the forces of the Third Reich in its death throes were ever to launch on the Western Front after the Normandy landings six months earlier. It smothered the American lines holding the thinned-out front in the Ardennes. The most powerful armoured force ever assembled by the Germans for an offensive on this front was then to have struck out in the direction of Antwerp. All this was under low cloud cover, sheltering the 6th and 5th Armoured Armies¿ precious panzers from the all-powerful Allied air forces. Low ceiling. However, the dog fights which were to take place over the Ardennes or perhaps because of the land battle that was taking place far below, did not surpass the land engagement in superlatives: strategic and tactical support, jet bombers or fighters, dropping men, supplies or ammunition, successfully or not, or just impossible, on both sides. The Ardennes skies saw what was a major part of the History of air warfare and we propose to describe it in the following pages.

A few days before Christmas, on 21 December 1793, Jean- Antoine de Beauvalet, the Lord of Dur¿, was found dead in a bedroom at Valognes where he had sought refuge after being locked up in the Fort de la Hougue by the Revolutionaries. Thus passed away the last male scion of the noble line of the Beauvalets, ennobled in 1702 by Louis XIV, and who in 1686 founded a the little domain at Dur¿, which did not at the time bear that name. For three generations, the Beauvalets struggled using their wealth to hang on to this so dearly acquired nobility. The Lord of Dur¿'s grand-daughter, Caroline Avice de Sortosville, inherited the Dur¿ domain, and during the Terreur, married a young Republican officer, Fran¿s Cl¿nt Boyer de Choisy, who came from a typically old noble family, since it had always been devoted to serving in the army. The Boyer de Choisys fortified the Saint-Marcouf Islands then improved their domain, but they also took an active part in public life, the first as Mayor of Saint-Vaast during the Empire and the Restoration, and the second, his nephew who inherited the domain, as Mayor during the Second Empire. Finally in 1918, Augustin Vallette, an entrepreneur from a very old Saint-Vaast family of merchants and chandlers, acquired this very beautiful property. After three years' research in the National, Civil and Military, Departmental (departments 50, 57, and 76), Municipal and Family archives, Edmond Thin here brings to life a true family saga spread over four centuries, based on the totally unpublished story of the Dur¿ domain; the story of three families, country gentlemen or simple citizens, not forgetting their spouses ¿ women who were often remarkable and just as involved in the social fabric of their times.

Thanks to albums belonging to one of the sailors aboard U-30 and then U-110, the author has been able to reconstruct the path taken by Kapitanleutnant Fritz Lemp and his crew, including the sailor Willi Brohm, and the fate of these submarines, with texts and also pictures.

Panem et circenses, ¿bread and circuses¿. Juvenal¿s expression denouncing the Roman plebs whose only ambitions were the distribution of free wheat and a passion for games gives a rather good idea of Roman society¿s rather special character in the days of the first emperors. But you mustn¿t be taken in: the picture of the Circus Maximus holding gladiator fights is sheer fiction. Except for chariot races and athletics competitions, the only fights held there involved men in arms equipped with helmets and swords (bestiarii)and hunters with spears (venatores) against ferocious beasts in the context of the venationes. The Forum was the circus during the Republic. This public space ¿ reorganised for the occasion ¿ was used as the showcase for the first gladiator fights well before the amphitheatre in Pompeii was created. Later, the amphitheatre was to become the inescapable symbol of town urbanism, like the Coliseum in Rome. This book offers the reader almost 800 years of history, from the ¿proto¿ ethnic gladiators (4th Century B.C.) to the imperial gladiator fights organised under Augustus, from hunting in the circus (mid 3rd Century B.C.) to the various arena shows, from the gladiator emperors to the Christian authors denouncing the amphitheatre¿s sacrileges. Based on archaeological documentation (terra sigillata, baked earthen lamps, painted coatings, graffiti, glasswork, lapidary elements, etc.) and on solid literary sources, this study provides the most recent historical research on the subject so as to offer a more original study of this prodigious social phenomenon.

Operation Dynamo is here narrated in detail with numerous period photos. This military operation and human adventure without precedent breathes again, 77 years later thanks to the film director Christopher Nolan which, with Dunkirk, has become an international blockbuster, to which a chapter of this book is devoted.

"The Guard charges" Napoleon gave special attention to this splendid unit - the Imperial Guard - and it became a sort of little army within the "Grande Armee". This study of its organisation is here at its most erudite.

This book is just as much for amateurs of good cooking as it is for enthusiasts of the Middle Ages. Each recipe is adapted to today's tastes; it is placed in its historical context and details are provided in the insets for it to be reproduced.

This book offers a meticulous study of the fighting at Fontenay-le-Pesnel and at Rauray to the west of Caen, between 25 and 29 June 1944.

This book tells a very beautiful and magnificent adventure, that of a young Frenchman humiliated by the 1940 defeat who fled aboard a Breton crayfish boat to carry on the fight for freedom.

Marcel Migeo wrote ten or so books most of which were devoted to flying. Almost a hundred years later, his writings on Syria have a pertinent and astonishingly contemporary flavour since the country is being torn apart by a six-year-old civil war which has taken on an international dimension.

More than seventy-five years after wards, "Chariot" is still thought of as the most daring and most spectacular commando operation of the whole of WWII.

Using various veterans' testimonies and memoirs, the reader plunges into the daily life of a unit, the SS-Panzer Regiment 3 "Totenkopf", which only fought on the Eastern Front.

French Text: On the 5th of June 1940, the Germans launched their second great offensive of the western campaign against a much-enfeebled French army. Despite intense fighting around the Somme and the Aisne the numerical superiority of the enemy began to tell forcing the French troupes to gradually retreat. On June 13th Weygand sent out the order to retreat and save itself at which point it would appear that the campaign was over. However, fierce fighting continued around the areas of the Loire, Verdun, the Sarre and the Rhine. Over twelve days a struggle raged between those who wanted to continue the fight lead by Reynaud and de Gaulle and those who favored and armistice led by Weygand and Petain. The fall of the Reynaud government on the 16th June sealed the end of the French campaign.

French Text: The action of John Howard is without doubt one the most spectacular commando action of D-Day and WWII. Ten minutes after midnight on June 6th 1944, after an audacious glider landing, airborne troops of the 6th Airborne Division arrived at the bridge at Bénouville which became known as Pegasus Bridge and entered the annals of history. Six kilometers from there, towards the coast, at Melville was installed a German artillery battery which was in turn attacked by British paras a few hours later .

This book is the fruit of 40 years research and analysis of eye-witnesses accounts, both military and civilian, thousands of photographs, researched and analysed, concerning the Invasion and Battle of Normandy. With over 470 photos, and 73 maps, this publication provides a day by day account of these events from June 6th to August 30th 1944.

Apr¿le succ¿du volume 1 sur la perc¿du bocage dans le secteur du XXX Corps britannique du 30 juillet au 15 ao¿t 1944, ce second volume pr¿nte, pour la premi¿ fois de mani¿ aussi d¿ill¿ les op¿tions du VIII Corps britannique, sur la m¿ p¿ode, qui permettra aux Anglais de percer le front allemand dans le bocage. Le 28 juillet, Monty ordonne le transfert rapide des divisions du VIII Corps et du XXX Corps dans le secteur de Caumont pour lancer une attaque simultan¿des deux corps. L¿op¿tion est baptis¿¿ Bluecoat ¿. Caumont l¿Event¿Sept Vents, Saint Martin des Besaces, le B¿ Bocage, Saint Charles de Percy, Le Tourneur, Montchamps, Ch¿doll¿Estry, Vire, Vassy autant de noms qui symbolisent l¿¿et¿es combats livr¿par les unit¿du VIII Corps britannique pour percer le bocage au cours des quinze premiers jours du mois d¿ao¿t 1944. Les pertes britanniques durant cette p¿ode sont tr¿¿v¿ face aux Tigres et Jagdpanther des unit¿d¿¿te allemandes b¿ficiant de l¿avantage du terrain. La zone d¿op¿tion est beaucoup plus vallonn¿et bois¿que la t¿ de pont. Les principaux objectifs sont une s¿e de collines entre Le B¿ Bocage et Aunay-sur-Odon en direction de Vire puis de la route Vire-Vassy. En s¿appuyant sur de nombreuses photos, cartes et t¿ignages pour l¿essentiel in¿ts ainsi que sur les journaux de marche des unit¿ l¿auteur, responsable du Mus¿de la bataille de Tilly sur Seulles, pr¿nte heure apr¿heure, ces combats dans le bocage. English blurb:Following the success of Volume one covering the breakout from the bocage by the British XXX Corps between July 30th and August 15th 1944, this second volume covers for the first time in similar detail, the operations of British VIII Corps during the same period which resulted in the British breakthrough of the German lines. On July 28th Monty ordered the rapid transfer of both VIII and XXX Corps to the Caumont sector to launch a joint attack in the operation codenamed ¿Bluecoat¿. Caumont l¿Evente, Sept Vents, Saint Martin des Besaces, le B¿ Bocage, Saint Charles de Percy, Le Tourneur, Montchamps, Ch¿doll¿Estry, Vire, Vassy¿ are names which symbolise the ferocious fighting unleashed by the units of VIII Corps to pierce the bocage during the first fifteen days of August 1944. The British losses were very high against the elite tank units of the German Tiger and Jagdpanther who benefited from the terrain, the area of operations being much more undulating and overgrown than that of the bridgehead. The main objectives were a range of hills situated between Le B¿ Bocage and Aunay-sur-Odon in the direction of Vire then on to the Vire-Vassy road. Using numerous and mostly previously unpublished photos, maps and unedited accounts taken from unit journals, the author, the curator of the Mus¿de la bataille de Tilly sur Seulles, gives a blow-by-blow account of the fighting in the bocage.

The decisive phase of the landing of June 6 to 14, 1944 told by headgear. From 6 to 14 June 1944, Normandy, the fate of the world will play out. The first decisive phase of the landing beaches of the Allies lead to the stagnation to Caen. The allies succeeded their incredible gamble: Establish a beachhead in Normandy to defeat Nazi Germany. The soldiers left on the battlefield and the headgear, and person devices tell us a story. Each helmet has a story; each helmet is attached to a place and time of landing. It is also the story of these men, these anonymous soldiers, their encounter with the great moments of landing. Thanks to special insignia and markings that were painted for D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, we can situate these objects in their place and their historical context. These items, abandoned during the fighting will make you relive the decisive hours of landing. Discover the moving stories and great pictures.- More than 80 headgear illustrated by 300 detailed photos- Exceptional items, moving historical evidence- The radio messages 'Radio Normandy - Castle Square Bayeux' during battle, unreleased- The symbolic insignia of soldiers- This history of the landing beaches to the gates of Caen>Experience the landing through extraordinary items forgotten!

Field guide to the landing Beaches - full of photographs.

On the night of 5 to 6 June 1944, some 15,000 American paratroopers were dropped into Normandy to outflank the German troops. Among them were the men of the 3rd Battalion of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, commanded by Lt. Col. Robert Wolverton.

Before the war, the French Air Ministry chose Carpiquet to create, far from the future front, an aerodrome focused on aerial bombardment, for training and observation.

During World War II, thousands of Native Americans took part in the crusade for the defence of freedom and democracy in all theatres of operation: from Normandy to the Pacific via Africa and North Italy, the soldiers from these tribes demonstrated huge patriotism and courage.

French Language