The Terror Raids of 1942

The Terror Raids of 1942 PDF Author: Jan Gore
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526745143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Meticulous research provides the fullest insight yet into the impact of this bombing campaign on Britain’s home front during the Second World War. “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide,” the German Foreign Office announced in April 1942 as the Luftwaffe attacked Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. Over a thousand people died. These raids were direct retaliation for RAF raids on equally historic German cities. Hitler had ordered that “Preference is to be given . . . where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life,” and in this narrow aim—as Jan Gore shows in the first full history of the raids to be published for over twenty years—they certainly succeeded. She explains the Luftwaffe’s tactics, the types of bombs that were used—high explosive, parachute mines and incendiaries—and records the devastating damage they caused. Her main focus is on the effect of the bombing on the ground. In graphic detail she describes the air raid precautions, the role of the various civil defense organizations and the direct experience of the civilians. Their recollections—many of which have not been published before—as well as newspaper articles and official reports give us a vivid impression of the raids themselves and their immediate aftermath. “One can never understand what either side hoped to achieve by destroying historic cities and killing and maiming their citizens during a conflict such as the second world war. Jan Gore attempts to explain the thinking behind it, and the awful consequences . . . A terrific account.” —Books Monthly

The Terror Raids of 1942

The Terror Raids of 1942 PDF Author: Jan Gore
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526745143
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Meticulous research provides the fullest insight yet into the impact of this bombing campaign on Britain’s home front during the Second World War. “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide,” the German Foreign Office announced in April 1942 as the Luftwaffe attacked Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. Over a thousand people died. These raids were direct retaliation for RAF raids on equally historic German cities. Hitler had ordered that “Preference is to be given . . . where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life,” and in this narrow aim—as Jan Gore shows in the first full history of the raids to be published for over twenty years—they certainly succeeded. She explains the Luftwaffe’s tactics, the types of bombs that were used—high explosive, parachute mines and incendiaries—and records the devastating damage they caused. Her main focus is on the effect of the bombing on the ground. In graphic detail she describes the air raid precautions, the role of the various civil defense organizations and the direct experience of the civilians. Their recollections—many of which have not been published before—as well as newspaper articles and official reports give us a vivid impression of the raids themselves and their immediate aftermath. “One can never understand what either side hoped to achieve by destroying historic cities and killing and maiming their citizens during a conflict such as the second world war. Jan Gore attempts to explain the thinking behind it, and the awful consequences . . . A terrific account.” —Books Monthly

Fire and Fury

Fire and Fury PDF Author: Randall Hansen
Publisher: Anchor Canada
ISBN: 0307372383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
National Bestseller An enlightening and utterly convincing re-examination of the allied aerial bombing campaign and of civilian German suffering during World War II–an essential addition to our understanding of world history. During the Second World War, Allied air forces dropped nearly two million tons of bombs on Germany, destroying some 60 cities, killing more than half a million German citizens, and leaving 80,000 pilots dead. Much of the bombing was carried out against the expressed demands of the Allied military leadership. Hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. Focusing on the crucial period from 1942 to 1945, and using a compelling narrative approach, Fire and Fury tells the story of the American and British bombing campaign through the eyes of those involved: military and civilian command in America, Britain, and Germany, aircrew in the sky, and civilians on the ground. Acclaimed historian Randall Hansen shows that the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris, was wedded to an outdated strategy whose success had never been proven; how area bombing not only failed to win the war, it probably prolonged it; and that the US campaign, which was driven by a particularly American fusion of optimism and morality, played an important and largely unrecognized role in delivering Allied victory.

Fortress Rabaul

Fortress Rabaul PDF Author: Bruce Gamble
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 0760345597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
For most of World War II, the mention of Japan's island stronghold sent shudders through thousands of Allied airmen. Some called it “Fortress Rabaul,” an apt name for the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific. Author Bruce Gamble chronicles Rabaul’s crucial role in Japanese operations in the Southwest Pacific. Millions of square feet of housing and storage facilities supported a hundred thousand soldiers and naval personnel. Simpson Harbor and the airfields were the focus of hundreds of missions by American air forces. Winner of the "Gold Medal" (Military Writers Society of America) and "Editor's Choice Award" (Stone & Stone Second World War Books), Fortress Rabaul details a critical and, until now, little understood chapter in the history of World War II.

Last Mission to Tokyo

Last Mission to Tokyo PDF Author: Michel Paradis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150110473X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
A narrative account of the Doolittle Raids of World War II traces the daring Raiders attack on mainland Japan, the fate of the crews who survived the mission, and the international war crimes trials that defined Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.

The Three-star Blitz

The Three-star Blitz PDF Author: Charles Whiting
Publisher: Leo Cooper Books
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description


The Blitz

The Blitz PDF Author: Juliet Gardiner
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007386611
Category : London (England)
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months long, the Blitz was the form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, that everyone had expected since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war with Germany. The ferocity of the Luftwaffe attacks, combined with images of the City of London burning are widely considered to be iconic snapshots of Second World War history. Though compared with other great moments of that war -- D-Day, Dunkirk, V E Day -- the Blitz remains curiously unexamined. Apart from fragmentary accounts and local records, there is little in the way of a comprehensive account of the Blitz experience that so many British civilians went through -- as well as the social, political and cultural implications of the bombardment. Designed to break the morale of the British population, the nightly bombings certainly did devastate. But, as Juliet Gardiner shows in this hugely important book, they also served to galvanise the nation; from those eight months of terrifying Nazi onslaught, a new determination amongst people and politicians steadily emerged. Revealing, original and beautifully written, THE BLITZ is a much-needed exploration of one of the most important moments in Second World War history.

Under the Bombs

Under the Bombs PDF Author: Earl R. Beck
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813143705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
“A tribute to human resilience under extreme stress, both in response to the terror from the sky and to the sacrifices the Nazis imposed on their people.” —History Under the Bombs tells the story of the civilian population of German cities devastated by Allied bombing in World War II. These people went to work, tried to keep a home (though in many cases it was just a pile of rubble where a house once stood), and attempted to live life as normally as possible amid the chaos of war. Earl Beck also looks at the food and fuel rationing the German people endured and the problems of trying to make a public complaint while living in a totalitarian state. “An easily accessible ‘impressionistic description’ of life in Germany under Allied aerial bombardment . . . this evocative study captures the horror of war for a trapped population.” —Library Journal “The most vivid account available of what it was actually like to live under the bombings.” —Historian “Challenges the contention of Allied commanders that airpower was the ultimate key to victory and that it could have defeated the enemy by itself.” —America “A powerful study.” —American Historical Review “An enlightening, highly readable account of life in the war-ravaged Third Reich.” —Pineville Sun “A description of what it was like to live, work, suffer, and die in wartime Germany.” —The Historian

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.

The Bomber Command War Diaries

The Bomber Command War Diaries PDF Author: Martin Middlebrook
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473834880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 941

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Book Description
The essential WWII historical reference detailing RAF Bomber Command’s extensive campaign of strategic bombings across occupied Europe. The Royal Air Force Bomber Command's strategic bombing campaign started on the first day of the Second World War and ended five and a half years later with the final victory in Europe. It was a campaign of such enormous scale that historians have only recently begun to piece together the finer details of the individual raids. Aviation historian Martin Middlebrook and his research colleague, Chris Everitt, were the first to compile a complete review of all the raids and their background stories. The Bomber Command War Diaries not only documents every Bomber Command operation but also details their effects on the ground, drawing on local archives from Germany, Italy, and the occupied countries. It is a groundbreaking work on historical research, bringing together the two sides of Bomber Command’s war. This edition includes retrospective observations and a new appendix.

Germany and the Second World War

Germany and the Second World War PDF Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198228899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 931

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Book Description
Volume VII of the 'Germany and the Second World War' series looks at Germany and her Japanese ally on the defensive after the tide of war turned in 1943. An exhaustive study of the air war over the Reich and the Luftwaffe's growing impotence is followed by an account of the invasion of occupied France and the Allies' advance to Germany's borders. A final section examines Japan's defeat and capitulation, and the creation of a new order in the Far East.