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A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia

A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025

'A short but quietly devastating book, in which Overy adds new perspectives to a subject that has often been approached from a narrowly American angle... Overy's book is a sombre reminder that the border between civilisation and savagery is wafer-thin.' - Philip Snow, Literary Review

In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war.

Richard Overy's remarkable new book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombing. This book explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians followed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began. But it also engages with the new scholarship that shows how complex the effort to end the war was in Japan, where 'surrender' was entirely foreign to Japanese culture.

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By 1942, horrifying reports began to spread about industrialised killing centres in Poland and a chilling campaign to exterminate Europe's entire Jewish population. When it became clear that the Allies were unwilling to spare any forces from the war effort to save civilians, the Jewish community in Palestine came up with a daring plan.

Working with British Military Intelligence, an elite unit of young Jewish paratroopers volunteered to return to eastern Europe. Once behind enemy lines, they would use their expertise in the local languages and terrain to rescue thousands of downed Allied pilots and escaped POWs. At the same time, these volunteer commandos would help Jewish civilians escape deportation to death camps or take up arms in resistance against the Nazis. Hannah Senesh was one of only three female paratroopers who risked everything to infiltrate occupied Europe.

In 1939, at just eighteen years old, Hannah emigrated from Hungary to British Mandatory Palestine, where she dreamed of being a poet and a schoolteacher. Instead, she became a poet and a paratrooper. Five years after fleeing Europe, Hannah parachuted back into occupied territory as a freedom fighter with the most crucial role in her team- the wireless operator tasked with sending and deciphering top secret British radio codes. Though captured after crossing the border into Hungary, she refused to give up her radio codes or any information about her mission, despite enduring months of torture. Her final act of defiance - choosing to die before a firing squad rather than beg for clemency - cemented her legendary status as the 'Jewish Joan of Arc', and her posthumously published poems, translated into more than twenty languages, continue to inspire new generations of readers.

More than just a gripping historical account of Hannah's life and afterlife, Crash of the Heavens offers a powerful reminder of the human spirit's ability to shine, even in the darkest of times.

'Hannah Senesh isn't just a hero. She's a reminder of what happens when Jews stop running and start fighting. Crash of the Heavens captures the essence of that moment - when young volunteers, men and women, parachuted into the heart of Nazi Europe not as victims but as warriors.'
-Aaron Cohen, author of Brotherhood of Warriors

'What a story! This book is a magnificent masterwork, and you won't be able to put it down.'
-Colonel Jack Jacobs, US Army (retired), Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, author of If Not Now, When?

'Impeccably researched, powerfully told, Crash of the Heavens is a testament to courage, determination and resilience. A story for our times.'
-Esther Gilbert, founder and editor of Holocaust Memoir Digest",{"_793":809,"_795":987,"_772":988},{"_793":809,"_795":821,"_772":1175},"Scribe Publications",{"_793":809,"_795":800,"_772":1177},"UK-Trade Paper",{"_793":809,"_795":826,"_772":994},{"_793":809,"_795":829,"_772":1180},"2025-11-18",{"_793":809,"_795":1001,"_772":1182},"432",{"_793":832,"_795":344,"_772":833},{"_793":832,"_795":724,"_772":833},{"_793":832,"_795":835,"_772":838},{"_793":832,"_795":1008,"_772":838},{"_793":832,"_795":837,"_772":838},{"_793":832,"_795":840,"_772":1189},"28/01/2026",{"_793":832,"_795":1011,"_772":1191},"10/02/2026",{"_793":832,"_795":843,"_772":1193},"45.0",{"_793":832,"_795":1014,"_772":1193},{"_793":832,"_795":845,"_772":1196},"4",{"_793":832,"_795":1017,"_772":1198},"1",{"_793":848,"_795":849,"_772":850},{"_793":848,"_795":344,"_772":850},{"_793":848,"_795":724,"_772":1021},{"_793":848,"_795":853,"_772":740},{"_793":848,"_795":855,"_772":740},{"_793":848,"_795":1025,"_772":1026},{"_793":848,"_795":857,"_772":858},{"_793":848,"_795":860,"_772":858},{"_793":848,"_795":1029,"_772":1030},{"_793":848,"_795":862,"_772":863},{"_793":848,"_795":865,"_772":863},{"_793":848,"_795":1033,"_772":1034},{"_793":848,"_795":867,"_772":868},{"_793":848,"_795":1037,"_772":1038},{"_793":848,"_795":870,"_772":871},{"_793":848,"_795":873,"_772":871},{"_793":848,"_795":1041,"_772":871},{"_757":1217},[1218],{"_760":109,"_761":-5,"_123":1219,"_203":1220,"_763":1224,"_769":1225,"_17":1227,"_773":1228,"_775":1229},"gid://shopify/ProductVariant/45619948126405",{"_1047":1221,"_1049":1050,"_123":1222,"_965":1153,"_1052":1223},"Crash of the Heavens Cover Image","gid://shopify/ProductImage/40747488477381",1338,{"_765":766,"_767":1193},[1226],{"_744":745,"_772":1227},"Crash of the Heavens: The Untold Story of the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe's Jews During World War II","9781761380877",{"_777":1230},[1231,1234],{"_780":1232},{"_782":109,"_126":1233},{"_744":341},{"_780":1235},{"_782":109,"_126":1236},{"_744":722},{"_123":1238,"_17":1239,"_735":1240,"_754":1241,"_790":1243,"_755":1288},"gid://shopify/Product/8560321134789","Unwomanly Face of War","unwomanly-face-of-war",{"_965":1242},"https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0625/6679/3413/files/978-0-14-198353-0.jpg?v=1768263029",[1244,1245,1247,1248,-5,1249,1250,1251,-5,1253,1255,1257,1258,1260,1261,-5,-5,1262,1265,1267,-5,-5,1269,-5,1270,1271,-5,1272,-5,1273,-5,1275,1276,-5,1277,1278,-5,1279,1280,-5,1281,1282,-5,1283,1284,-5,1285,1286,-5,1287],{"_793":794,"_795":17,"_772":1239},{"_793":794,"_795":797,"_772":1246},"ALEXIEVICH SVETLANA",{"_793":794,"_795":800,"_772":801},{"_793":794,"_795":803,"_772":973},{"_793":794,"_795":975,"_772":976},{"_793":809,"_795":810,"_772":811},{"_793":809,"_795":17,"_772":1252},"The Unwomanly Face of War",{"_793":809,"_795":797,"_772":1254},"Svetlana Alexievich; Richard Pevear (Translator); Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)",{"_793":809,"_795":819,"_772":1256},"\\\"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women's history.\\\"

In the late 1970s, Svetlana Alexievich set out to write her first book, The Unwomanly Face of War, when she realized that she grew up surrounded by women who had fought in the Second World War but whose stories were absent from official narratives. Travelling thousands of miles, she spent years interviewing hundreds of Soviet women - captains, tank drivers, snipers, pilots, nurses and doctors - who had experienced the war on the front lines, on the home front and in occupied territories.

With the dawn of Perestroika, a heavily censored edition came out in 1985 and it became a huge bestseller in the Soviet Union - the first in five books that have established her as the conscience of the twentieth century.",{"_793":809,"_795":987,"_772":988},{"_793":809,"_795":821,"_772":1259},"Penguin Canada",{"_793":809,"_795":800,"_772":992},{"_793":809,"_795":826,"_772":994},{"_793":809,"_795":1263,"_772":1264},"bic_subject","20TH CENTURY HISTORY: c 1900 to c 2000_c 1939 to c 1945 (INCLUDING WW2); SECOND WORLD WAR_EASTERN EUROPE
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Ian Flemings War

The Inspiration for 007

by Mark Simmons