Author: Graham Clews
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682472809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Get Book Here
Book Description
Given the dearth of scholarship on the Phoney War, this book examines the early months of World War II when Winston Churchill’s ability to lead Britain in the fight against the Nazis was being tested. Graham T. Clews explores how Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed to fight this new world war, with particular attention given to his attempts to impel the Royal Navy, the British War Cabinet, and the French, toward a more aggressive prosecution of the conflict. This is no mere retelling of events but a deep analysis of the decision-making process and Churchill’s unique involvement in it. This book shares extensive new insights into well-trodden territory and original analysis of the unexplored, with each chapter offering material which challenges conventional wisdom. Clews reassesses several important issues of the Phoney War period including: Churchill’s involvement in the anti-U-boat campaign; his responsibility for the failures of the Norwegian Campaign; his attitude to Britain’s aerial bombing campaign and the notion of his unfettered “bulldog” spirit; his relationship with Neville Chamberlain; and his succession to the premiership. A man of considerable strengths and many shortcomings, the Churchill that emerges in Clews’ portrayal is dynamic and complicated. Churchill’s Phoney War adds a well-balanced and much-needed history of the Phoney War while scrupulously examining Churchill’s successes and failures.
Author: Stevan Eldred-Grigg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780947522230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. It questions the war as a story of good against bad. All readers know that the Axis powers behaved ruthlessly, but how many are aware of the brutality of the Allied powers in bombing and starving enemy towns and cities? New Zealand colluded in and even carried out such brutal aggressions. Were we, in going to war, really on the side of the angels? Contrary to the propaganda of the time -- and subsequent memory -- going to war did not unite New Zealanders: it divided them, often bitterly. People disagreed over whether or not we should fight, what we were fighting for and why, who was fighting, who was paying, and who was dying. In this provocative and moving book, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humour, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.
Author: Christopher F. Shores
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Complete Account of Air War over Western Europe and Scandinavia, September 1939-August 1940
Author: Maude Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138232747
Category : Military morale
Languages : en
Pages : 157
Get Book Here
Book Description
The collapse of the French army in 1940 is a well-researched topic in Second World War Studies but a surprising gap in the historiography emerges when it comes to the study of the French military prior to the German offensive of May 1940. Using various public and private sources in different languages, this book aims to address this gap by studying morale on the frontline and its management by the French Government, the Grand Quartier Général, at the scale of the regiment and on a personal level. This research also investigates German and British propaganda in French and aimed at the French sector of the frontline in order to offer the first comprehensive comparative study of French army morale in any language.
Author: François Fonvieille-Alquier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: T. Ryle Dwyer
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan
ISBN: 9780717146505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Get Book Here
Book Description
Behind the Green Curtain goes beyond any previous book in examining the myth of Irish wartime neutrality.
Author: Angus Calder
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144810310X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Second World War was, for Britain, a 'total war'; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy. In this comprehensive and engrossing narrative Angus Calder presents not only the great events and leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life on the Home Front, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all this revisionist and important work reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic. Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1970, The People’s War draws on oral testimony and a mass of neglected social documentation to question the popularised image of national unity in the fight for victory.
Author: Joe Bastardi
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
ISBN: 1662903669
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 87
Get Book Here
Book Description
What if climate change is naturally occurring and cyclical? What if trillions of dollars will be spent to accomplish nothing? What if the real agenda is not about science, climate and weather, but simply uses this as a tool to disrupt and destroy the foundational concepts of one nation, under God, that have led to the greatest quality of life and liberty the world has ever known? At 65, Joe Bastardi is one of the most experienced meteorologists in the world today. His knowledge of past major events puts into perspective the extreme weather events seen today, that are nothing new, and in fact, not as severe as before. In this book, Bastardi goes in-depth to document naturally occurring climate and weather events to question those whose agenda it is to weaponize each weather event for the pursuit of a political and social aim. Of course, the climate is changing, and with the many natural influencers constantly in play, it always will. Thanks to an ever-fluctuating level of activity in the large natural drivers that have always controlled it, such as our Sun, the oceans, stochastic events and the very design of the system itself, climate change is natural. “A single attribution to man as the climate control knob in the face of this is questionable, if not a stretch. The reader should at least look at the ideas presented here,” said Bastardi. Joe understands the fear today, given what has been nothing short of public indoctrination. His new book offers an environmentally friendly and inexpensive solution to alleviate those fears, that will not destroy the economic lifeline of this nation as the Green New Deal surely will. It begins with removing the fear that has been pushed to create what is becoming irrational panic, especially with our young. So, is this book important on multiple levels? You decide.
Author: Peter Hitchens
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441197168
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Get Book Here
Book Description
Again and again British politicians, commentators and celebrities intone that 'The War on Drugs has failed'. They then say that this is an argument for abandoning all attempts to reduce drug use through the criminal law. Peter Hitchens shows that in Britain there has been no serious 'war on drugs' since 1971, when a Tory government adopted a Labour plan to implement the revolutionary Wootton report. This gave cannabis, the most widely used illegal substance, a special legal status as a supposedly 'soft' drug (in fact, Hitchens argues, it is at least as dangerous as heroin and cocaine because of the threat it poses to mental health). It began a progressive reduction of penalties for possession, and effectively disarmed the police. This process still continues, behind a screen of falsely 'tough' rhetoric from politicians. Far from there being a 'war on drugs', there has been a covert surrender to drugs, concealed behind an official obeisance to international treaty obligations. To all intents and purposes, cannabis is legal in Britain, and other major drugs are not far behind. In The War We Never Fought, Hitchens uncovers the secret history of the government's true attitude, and the increasing recruitment of the police and courts to covert decriminalisation initiatives, and contrasts it with the rhetoric. Whatever and whoever is to blame for the undoubted mess of Britain's drug policy, it is not 'prohibition' or a 'war on drugs', for neither exists.
Author: Nick Smart
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
The so-called Phony War from September 1939 to May 1940 occupies a peculiar yet distinct place in popular memory. All the sensations of war, except the fighting, were present; yet, instead of massed air attacks and great land battles, very little happened. The British government was said to be complacent, and the people downright bored. Then, France fell to German attack, and the small British army was evacuated (minus its equipment) from Dunkirk. Reaction to this major strategic catastrophe was naturally to blame the men deemed guilty for bringing the nation to the verge of humiliating defeat. In sharp contrast to previous studies, Smart argues that there was more to the phony war than governmental complacency, that the period was more than a foolish or frivolous ante-chamber to a later more heroic phase. The extent to which the guilty men verdict on the first nine months of Britain's Second World War has stuck remains surprising. The notion that the phony war was a necessary, indeed over-determined, prelude to catastrophe has become cemented over time. Examining the workings of the Anglo-French leadership during this period, Smart picks this thesis apart and argues that disaster was not necessarily, still less inevitably, just around the corner. He concludes that Anglo-French decision-making during this time was basically sound, that the soldiers were well equipped and in good-heart, and that there was no malaise eating away at the entente. This study offers a challenging reappraisal of the phony war from a British perspective.
