Download or read book Five Days in London May 1940 written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-09-10 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “gripping [and] splendidly readable” portrait of the battle within the British War Cabinet—and Churchill’s eventual victory—as Hitler’s shadow loomed (The Boston Globe). From May 24 to May 28, 1940, members of Britain’s War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue what became known as the Second World War. In this magisterial work, John Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical events at 10 Downing Street, where Winston Churchill and his cabinet painfully considered their responsibilities. With the unfolding of the disaster at Dunkirk, and Churchill being in office for just two weeks and treated with derision by many, he did not have an easy time making his case—but the people of Britain were increasingly on his side, and he would prevail. This compelling narrative, a Washington Post bestseller, is the first to convey the drama and world-changing importance of those days. “[A] fascinating work of historical reconstruction.”—The Wall Street Journal “Eminent historian Lukacs delivers the crown jewel to his long and distinguished career.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A must for every World War II buff.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Superb…can be compared to such classics as Hugh Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler and Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August.”—Harper’s Magazine

Download or read book Churchill written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Each chapter of this book provides an essential portrait of Churchill at the height of his powers. In addition to vividly depicting his relationships with Stalin, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and other world leaders, Lukacs reflects on Churchill's ability to foresee the coming of World War II and the Cold War; he weighs Churchill's stature as a historian looking backward at the conflicts of which he was so much a part; and he examines the often contradictory ways Churchill has been perceived by critics and admirers alike. The last chapter is a powerful and deeply moving evocation of the three days Lukacs spent in London attending Churchill's funeral in 1965, and it offers a final assessment of Churchill's place in history through the prism of the varied individuals who came to honor him after his death. In Churchill: Visionary. Statesman. Historian., Luckacs sets forth the essence of this towering figure with consummate mastery."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Five Days In Philadelphia written by Charles Peters and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2005-07-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There were four strong contenders when the Republican party met in June of 1940 in Philadelphia to nominate its candidate for president: the crusading young attorney and rising Republican star Tom Dewey, solid members of the Republican establishment Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, and dark horse Wendell Willkie, utilities executive, favorite of the literati and only very recently even a Republican. The leading Republican candidates campaigned as isolationists. The charismatic Willkie, newcomer and upstager, was a liberal interventionist, just as anti-Hitler as FDR. After five days of floor rallies, telegrams from across the country, multiple ballots, rousing speeches, backroom deals, terrifying international news, and, most of all, the relentless chanting of "We Want Willkie" from the gallery, Willkie walked away with the nomination. The story of how this happened — and of how essential his nomination would prove in allowing FDR to save Britain and prepare this country for entry into World War II — is all told in Charles Peters' Five Days in Philadelphia. As Peters shows, these five action-packed days and their improbable outcome were as important as the Battle of Britain in defeating the Nazis.

Download or read book Duty Calls Dunkirk written by James Holland and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-06-02 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'YOU WANTED TO SEE SOME ACTION - WELL YOU'RE GOING TO GET IT NOW. YOU'RE GOING TO GET IT NOW ALL RIGHT.' Friday 24th May, 1940 Private Johnny Hawke, aged sixteen, awakens to artillery fire. Hours later, Stukas scream down from the sky. Messerschmit fighters roar towards his regiment. Trucks burst into flames. Now men and mules lay dead and dying, severed limbs twisted grotesquely as blood soaks the cobbled streets. Young Private Hawke just wants to do his duty and serve his country. But as he - and his fellow soldiers - prepare to stop the German advance, there's only one question on everyone's lips. HOW WILL THEY SURVIVE?

Download or read book The Battle of Britain written by James Holland and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press"--T.p. verso.

Download or read book How Churchill Waged War written by Allen Packwood and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.

Download or read book Dunkirk written by Julian Thompson and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the events surrounding the Battle of Dunkirk and the rescue of British troops from the beaches of Dunkirk during World War II.

Download or read book Six Minutes in May written by Nicholas Shakespeare and published by Harvill Secker. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London, early May 1940: Britain is on the brink of war and Neville Chamberlain's government is about to fall. It is hard for us to imagine the Second World War without Winston Churchill taking over at the helm, but in SIX MINUTES IN MAY Nicholas Shakespeare shows how easily events could have gone in a different direction. The first land battle of the war was fought in the far north, in Norway. It went disastrously for the Allies and many blamed Churchill. Yet weeks later he would rise to the most powerful post in the country, overtaking Chamberlain and the favourite to succeed him, Lord Halifax. It took just six minutes for MPs to cast the votes that brought down Chamberlain. Shakespeare shows us both the dramatic action on the battlefield in Norway and the machinations and personal relationships in Westminster that led up to this crucial point. Uncovering fascinating new research and delving deep into the backgrounds of the key players, he has given us a new perspective on this critical moment in our history.

Download or read book Churchill Hitler and The Unnecessary War written by Patrick J. Buchanan and published by Forum Books. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

Download or read book Blood Toil Tears and Sweat written by John Lukacs and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Churchill's first speech as Prime Minister"--Jkt.

Download or read book Never Surrender written by John Kelly and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the War Cabinet papers, other government documents, private diaries, newspaper accounts, and memoirs,Never Surrender tells the story of summer of 1940, the summer of the 'Supreme Question' of whether or not the British were to surrender to the impending threat of Hitler's invasion. The events, individuals, and institutions that influenced the War Cabinet's deliberations offer a panoramic view of the summer of 1940. Impressive in scope but attentive to detail, Kelly takes readers from the battlefield to Parliament, to the government ministries, to the British high command, to the desperate Anglo-French conference in Paris and London, to the American embassy in London, and to life with the ordinary Britons. Bringing vividly to life one of the most heroic moments of the twentieth century and intimately portraying some of its largest players - Churchill, Lord Halifax, FDR, Joe Kennedy, Hitler, Stalin and others - Never Surrenderis a character-driven narrative of a crucial period in World War II history and the men and women who shaped it.

Download or read book Jun 41 written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful account culminating in the fateful days before Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, "June 1941" offers penetrating insights and a new portrait of Hitler and Stalin.

Download or read book Darkest Hour written by Anthony McCarten and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “McCarten's pulse-pounding narrative transports the reader to those springtime weeks in 1940 when the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of Winston Churchill. A true story thrillingly told. Thoroughly researched and compulsively readable.”—Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director of the International Churchill Society From the acclaimed novelist and screenwriter of The Theory of Everything comes a revelatory look at the period immediately following Winston Churchill’s ascendancy to Prime Minister “He was speaking to the nation, the world, and indeed to history....” May, 1940. Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away. Just days after becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror—as well as a skeptical King, a party plotting against him, and an unprepared public. Pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, how could he change the mood and shore up the will of a nervous people? In this gripping day-by-day, often hour-by-hour account of how an often uncertain Churchill turned Britain around, the celebrated Bafta-winning writer Anthony McCarten exposes sides of the great man never seen before. He reveals how he practiced and re-wrote his key speeches, from ‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’ to ‘We shall fight on the beaches’; his consideration of a peace treaty with Nazi Germany, and his underappreciated role in the Dunkirk evacuation; and, above all, how 25 days helped make one man an icon. Using new archive material, McCarten reveals the crucial behind-the-scenes moments that changed the course of history. It’s a scarier—and more human—story than has ever been told.

Download or read book The Splendid and the Vile written by Erik Larson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Download or read book The Last European War written by John Lukacs and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This absorbing study of the first phase of World War II tells not only how events happened but why. Eminent historian Lukacs presents an extraordinary narrative of these two years, followed by a detailed sequential analysis of the political, military, and intellectual relations and events.

Download or read book Invasion written by Kenneth Macksey and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The WWII historian’s bracingly accurate analysis of what might have happened if Hitler ordered Operation Sea Lion to breech the shores of England. In June 1940, German troops gathered just across the English Channel, poised for the invasion of Britain. With France defeated and Britain cowed, Hitler seemed ready for his greatest gamble. In this compelling alternative history, the Germans launch the invasion that, in reality, was never more than a plan. Landing between Dover and Hythe, German troops push inland supported by the Luftwaffe and the impregnable panzers, and strike out towards London. The British, desperate to defeat the invaders, rally and prepare for a crucial confrontation at Maidstone. Realistic, carefully researched and superbly written, Invasion is a classic of alternate history and a thought-provoking look at how Britain’s war might have been. “Macksey’s blend of what actually happened and what might have been makes for a piece of writing comparable to Frederick Forsyth at his best.” —Jack Higgins “Convincingly described and excellently illustrated.” —The Daily Telegraph, UK

Download or read book Cabinet s Finest Hour written by David Owen and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 1940, the British War Cabinet debated over the course of nine meetings a simple question: Should Britain fight on in the face of overwhelming odds, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives, or seek a negotiated peace? Using Cabinet papers from the United Kingdom’s National Archives, David Owen illuminates in fascinating detail this little-known, yet pivotal, chapter in the history of World War II. Eight months into the war, defeat seemed to many a certainty. With the United States still a year and half away from entering, Britain found itself in a perilous position, and foreign secretary Lord Halifax pushed prime minister Winston Churchill to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace with Hitler, using Mussolini as a conduit. Speaking for England is the story of Churchill’s triumph in the face of this pressure, but it is also about how collective debate and discussion won the day—had Churchill been alone, Owen argues, he would almost certainly have lost to Halifax, changing the course of history. Instead, the Cabinet system, all too often disparaged as messy and cumbersome, worked in Britain’s interests and ensured that a democracy on the brink of defeat had the courage to fight on.