Sandakan

The brilliantly told but harrowing story of the Borneo Death Marches of 1944/5

The most comprehensive account written about the worst single atrocity committed against Allied prisoners of war by the Japanese. Ham has written of these events with great power and assiduous research. Surely this is now the definitive account of the Sandakan death marches

Paul Ham is the author of twelve books, including The Soul: A History of the Human Mind, Hiroshima Nagasaki, Passchendaele: The Bloody Battle that Nearly Lost the Allies the War, 1914: The Year the World Ended, Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches, Vietnam: The Australian War and Kokoda. 
Hiroshima Nagasaki is being made into a six-part radio drama by Goldhawk and Thoroughbred Studios, due out in 2026. 
All Paul's books have won or been shortlisted for major literary prizes in Australia. Vietnam and Kokoda were made into ABC documentaries, which he co-wrote and presented. 
A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master’s degree from the London School of 
Economics, Paul now lives in Paris and devotes his time to writing history and (when possible) teaching a course in Narrative History at Sciences Po, France’s preeminent tertiary school for the humanities.

After the fall of Singapore in 1942, the conquering Japanese Army transferred some 2500 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp on the north-eastern coast of Borneo: Sandakan. 
 
There they were beaten, broken, worked to death, thrown into bamboo cages on the slightest pretext and subjected to tortures so ingenious and hideous that the victims were driven to the brink of madness. But this was only the beginning. 
 
 In late 1944, Allied aircraft began bombing the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jesselton, and the Japanese resolved to abandon the prison camp and move the prisoners 250 miles inland. The journey there became known as the Sandakan Death marches. More than a thousand prisoners set out on the epic marches. Only six survived. 
 
This is the story of the survivors and the fallen.

The Making of the Fuhrer

Young Hitler

Where did it all start? This is the story of how Hitler became the Fuhrer.

A concise study of one of the most fascinating and evil men in history . . . Essential for anyone interested in military history

'A concise study of one of the most fascinating and evil men in history... Essential for anyone interested in military history' - Soldier 
 
Millions of words have been spent and misspent on Adolf Hitler. But there remains one aspect as yet insufficiently explored: the impact of the First World War on the man who would go on to indelibly shape the Second. 
 
Hitler fought at First Ypres and he saw something on the battlefields that eluded his fellow soldiers, something that would become the cornerstone of his later life. He saw this war as heroic, noble and natural – the last act of the fittest in the great drama of the human race. 
 
Where did it all start? This is the story of how Hitler became the Fuhrer.

1914 The Year The World Ended

A searing indictment of the rationale behind the First World War and a shocking portrayal of what might have been.

In this searing indictment of the rationale behind the First World War, Paul Ham argues that European leaders did not ‘sleepwalk’ into war, but that they fully accepted and understood the consequences of the decisions they were making. 
 
In August 1914, the European powers plunged the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems and set the world on course for the bloodiest century in human history. 
 
On the eve of the 100th anniversary of that terrible year, Ham takes the reader on a journey into the labyrinth, to reveal the complexity, the layered motives, the flawed and disturbed minds that drove the world to war. What emerges is a clear sense of what happened and why. 'To understand the past,' Ham concludes, 'and share that understanding, is the chief role of the historian. To understand the past is to liberate ourselves from its awful shadow and steel ourselves against it happening again.'

Hiroshima Nagasaki

The first narrative history of the nuclear attack told from both the Japanese and American viewpoints.

[A] vivid, comprehensive and quietly furious account...Paul Ham brings new tools to the job, unearthing fresh evidence of a deeply disturbing sort. He has a magpie eye for the telling detail

We are in Paul Ham's debt for showing that it is unjustifiable to consider ever again dropping an atomic bomb...Comprehensive and horrifying

Provocative and challenging, Paul Ham's book strips away the cosy myth that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the Second World War...A voice that is both vigorous and passionate

Controversial...Gives an eye-witness picture that leaves Dante's Inferno looking pale...Well documented and stringently argued

With more detail than the average text book yet written in a way that pulls you in ... this is essential for anyone remotely interested in our history

THE epic sweep of this book belies its title. Paul Ham's history of the A-bomb combines extensive research with a sure sense of drama. He uses narrative focus to brilliant effect, giving equal clarity to the machinations of the Big Three at Yalta as to a child's lunch box at Hiroshima. Ham humanises the wrangling and power plays of the war's final year, casting personality and strategy as equals.

Japan 1945. In one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, more than 100,000 people were killed instantly by two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by US Air Force B29s. Hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. 
 
Hiroshima Nagasaki tells the story of the tragedy through the eyes of the survivors, from the twelve-year-olds forced to work in war factories to the wives and children who faced it alone. Through their harrowing personal testimonies, we are reminded that these were ordinary people, given no warning and no chance to escape the horror. 
 
American leaders claimed that the bombings were 'our least abhorrent choice' and fell strictly on 'military targets'. Even today, most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. Hiroshima Nagasaki challenges this deep-set perception, revealing that the atomic bombings were the final crippling blow to the Japanese in a stratgic air war waged primarily against civilians.

Paul Ham

Outstanding . . . thought-provoking, readable and informative

In this centenary study, Australian military historian Paul Ham gives the strategic and political background to the battle. Which he sees as the defining tragedy in the greater disaster of the First World War

The Bloody Battle That Nearly Lost The Allies The War

'Outstanding . . . thought-provoking, readable and informative' Soldier 
 
One hundred years on... 
 
On 18 July 1917, a heavy artillery barrage was unleashed by the Allied forces against an entrenched German army outside the town of Ypres. it was to be the opening salvo of one of the most ferociously fought and debilitating encounters of the First World War. 
 
Few battles would encapsulate the utter futility of the war better that what became known as the Battle of Passchendaele. By the time the British and Canadian forces finally captured Passchendaele village on 6 November, the Allies had suffered over 271,000 casualties and the German army over 217,000. 
 
Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately felled. Here, Paul Ham tells the story of an army caught in the grip of an extraordinary power struggle – both global and national. As Prime Minister Lloyd George and Commander Haig’s relationship deteriorated beyond repair, so a terrible battle of attrition was needlessly and painfully prolonged. 
 
Ham lays down a powerful challenge to the ways in which we have previously seen this monumental battle. Through an examination of the culpability of governments and military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation, Paul Ham argues that Passchendaele, far from being a breakthrough moment, was the battle that nearly lost the Allies the war. 
 
‘Paul Ham brings new tools to the job, unearthing fresh evidence of a deeply disturbing sort. He has a magpie eye for the telling detail.’ Ben Macintyre, The Times

Paul Ham

Praise for Passchendaele

Excellent

Outstanding . . . thought-provoking, readable and informative

In this centenary study, Australian military historian Paul Ham gives the strategic and political background to the battle. Which he sees as the defining tragedy in the greater disaster of the First World War

Excellent

Outstanding . . . thought-provoking, readable and informative

In this centenary study, Australian military historian Paul Ham gives the strategic and political background to the battle. Which he sees as the defining tragedy in the greater disaster of the First World War

Excellent

Outstanding . . . thought-provoking, readable and informative

In this centenary study, Australian military historian Paul Ham gives the strategic and political background to the battle. Which he sees as the defining tragedy in the greater disaster of the First World War

Books by Paul Ham

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter