Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941

Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941 PDF Author: Daniel Todman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019062180X
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
"First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane"--Title page verso.

Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941

Britain's War: Into Battle, 1937-1941 PDF Author: Daniel Todman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019062180X
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 849

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Book Description
"First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane"--Title page verso.

BRITAIN'S WAR

BRITAIN'S WAR PDF Author: Daniel Todman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190658487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
The most terrible emergency in Britain's history, the Second World War required an unprecedented national effort. An exhausted country had to fight an unexpectedly long war and found itself much diminished amongst the victors. Yet the outcome of the war was nonetheless a triumph, not least for a political system that proved well adapted to the demands of a total conflict and for a population who had to make many sacrifices but who were spared most of the horrors experienced in the rest of Europe. Britain's War is a narrative of these epic events, an analysis of the myriad factors that shaped military success and failure, and an explanation of what the war tells us about the history of modern Britain. As compelling on the major military events as he is on the experience of ordinary people living through exceptional times, Todman suffuses his extraordinary book with a vivid sense of a struggle which left nobody unchanged - and explores why, despite terror, separation and deprivation, Britons were overwhelmingly willing to pay the price of victory.

Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947

Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 PDF Author: Daniel Todman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190658495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 864

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Book Description
The second volume of Daniel Todman's account of Great Britain and World War II The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947, begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history: the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese. As in the first volume of Todman's epic account of British involvement in World War II ("Total history at its best," according to Jay Winter), he highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing on its inhabitants, its defenders, and its wartime leadership. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the full impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its ascendant stewardship of the war. Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world.

Britain at Bay

Britain at Bay PDF Author: Alan Allport
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101974699
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
From statesmen and military commanders to ordinary Britons, a bold, sweeping history of Britain's entrance into World War II—and its efforts to survive it—illuminating the ways in which the war permanently transformed a nation and its people “Might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written.” —The Wall Street Journal Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict’s first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles pressing questions such as whether the war could have been avoided, how it could have been lost, how well the British lived up to their own values, and ultimately, what difference the war made to the fate of the nation. In answering these questions, he reexamines our assumptions and paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which the Second World War transformed British culture and society. This bracing account draws on a lively cast of characters—from the political and military leaders who made the decisions, to the ordinary citizens who lived through them—in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. A sweeping and groundbreaking epic, Britain at Bay gives us a fresh look at the opening years of the war, and illuminates the integral moments that, for better or for worse, made Britain what it is today.

Britain's War Machine

Britain's War Machine PDF Author: David Edgerton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199911509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. David Edgerton's bold, compelling new history shows the conflict in a new light, with Britain as a very wealthy country, formidable in arms, ruthless in pursuit of its interests, and in command of a global production system. Rather than belittled by a Nazi behemoth, Britain arguably had the world's most advanced mechanized forces. It had not only a great empire, but allies large and small. Edgerton shows that Britain fought on many fronts and its many home fronts kept it exceptionally well supplied with weapons, food and oil, allowing it to mobilize to an extraordinary extent. It created and deployed a vast empire of machines, from the humble tramp steamer to the battleship, from the rifle to the tank, made in colossal factories the world over. Scientists and engineers invented new weapons, encouraged by a government and prime minister enthusiastic about the latest technologies. The British, indeed Churchillian, vision of war and modernity was challenged by repeated defeat at the hands of less well-equipped enemies. Yet the end result was a vindication of this vision. Like the United States, a powerful Britain won a cheap victory, while others paid a great price. Putting resources, machines and experts at the heart of a global rather than merely imperial story, Britain's War Machine demolishes timeworn myths about wartime Britain and gives us a groundbreaking and often unsettling picture of a great power in action.

Churchill's Phoney War

Churchill's Phoney War PDF Author: Graham Clews
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682472809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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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.

Luftwaffe Bombers in the Battle of Britain

Luftwaffe Bombers in the Battle of Britain PDF Author: Andy Saunders
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1783030240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Luftwaffe Bombers in the Battle of Britain contains some 140-150 images of German bomber aircraft during the summer of 1940. The images will cover the entirety of the battle and will depict losses across Britain during this period. Each picture will tell its own story, and will be fully captioned with historical detail.??Each section will have a short introduction and the images will include those of shot down aircraft, including relatively intact machines, badly damaged/destroyed wreckages, photographs of pilots and other related illustrations. All images are from the author's unique collection of wartime photographs of Luftwaffe losses, collected from a variety of sources across some thirty-five years of research.

Prague Winter

Prague Winter PDF Author: Madeleine Albright
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062030361
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
“A riveting tale of her family’s experience in Europe during World War II [and] a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority. . . . More than a memoir, this is a book of facts and action, a chronicle of a war in progress from a partisan faithful to the idea of Czechoslovakian democracy.” -- Los Angeles Times Drawn from her own memory, her parents’ written reflections, and interviews with contemporaries, the former US Secretary of State and New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Albright's tale that is by turns harrowing and inspiring Before she turned twelve, Madeleine Albright’s life was shaken by some of the most cataclysmic events of the 20th century: the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, the Battle of Britain, the attempted genocide of European Jewry, the allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. In Prague Winter, Albright reflects on her discovery of her family’s Jewish heritage many decades after the war, on her Czech homeland’s tangled history, and on the stark moral choices faced by her parents and their generation. Often relying on eyewitness descriptions, she tells the story of how millions of ordinary citizens were ripped from familiar surroundings and forced into new roles as exile leaders and freedom fighters, resistance organizers and collaborators, victims and killers. These events of enormous complexity are shaped by concepts familiar to any growing child: fear, trust, adaptation, the search for identity, the pressure to conform, the quest for independence, and the difference between right and wrong. Prague Winter is an exploration of the past with timeless dilemmas in mind, a journey with universal lessons that is simultaneously a deeply personal memoir and an incisive work of history. It serves as a guide to the future through the lessons of the past, as seen through the eyes of one of the international community’s most respected and fascinating figures in history. Albright and her family’s experiences provide an intensely human lens through which to view the most political and tumultuous years in modern history.

December 1941

December 1941 PDF Author: Evan Mawdsley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300154461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
An account of the dramatic turning point in World War II that marked “the dawn of American might and the struggle for supremacy in Southeast Asia” (Times Higher Education). In far-flung locations around the globe, an unparalleled sequence of international events took place between December 1 and December 12, 1941. In this riveting book, historian Evan Mawdsley explores how the story unfolded . . . On Monday, December 1, 1941, the Japanese government made its final decision to attack Britain and America. In the following days, the Red Army launched a counterthrust in Moscow while the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and invaded Malaya. By December 12, Hitler had declared war on the United States, the collapse of British forces in Malaya had begun, and Hitler had secretly laid out his policy of genocide. Churchill was leaving London to meet Roosevelt as Anthony Eden arrived in Russia to discuss the postwar world with Stalin. Combined, these occurrences brought about a “new war,” as Churchill put it, with Japan and America deeply involved and Russia resurgent. This book, a truly international history, examines the momentous happenings of December 1941 from a variety of perspectives. It shows that their significance is clearly understood only when they are viewed together. “Marks the change from a continental war into a global war in an original and interesting way.”—The Sunday Telegraph Seven (Books of the Year) “Suspenseful . . . Mawdsley embarks on the action from the first day and never lets up in this crisp, chronological study . . . A rigorous, sharp survey of this decisive moment in the war.”—Kirkus Reviews

The Unrelenting Struggle

The Unrelenting Struggle PDF Author: Winston S. Churchill
Publisher: Rosetta Books
ISBN: 0795331665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This stunning second volume of wartime speeches and broadcasts from the Nobel Prize–winning prime minister captures the troubled early days of WWII. Legendary politician and military strategist Winston S. Churchill was a master not only of the battlefield, but of the page and the podium. Over the course of forty books and countless speeches, broadcasts, news items, and more, he addressed a country at war and at peace, thrilling with victory but uneasy with its shifting role on the world stage. In 1953, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” During his lifetime, he enthralled readers and brought crowds roaring to their feet; in the years since his death, his skilled writing has inspired generations of eager history buffs. This second volume in the series of the great orator’s wartime speeches, broadcasts, public messages, and other communications take readers through the difficult years of 1940 to 1941. Faced with a challenging moment for the military as well as a groundswell of criticism from his government and his people, Churchill used his extraordinary command of language to inspire Britain to stand strong against Hitler and the growing Nazi threat. No fan of WWII military history should be without this extraordinary collection of seventy-two broadcasts, speeches, and messages to Parliament.