Download or read book London War Notes 1939 1945 written by Mollie Panter-Downes and published by . This book was released on 1972-01-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book London at War 1939 1945 written by Philip Ziegler and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, this book tells the story of London's experiences of war from 1939 to 1945. It describes the Phoney War, the blackouts, the first evacuations and the horrors of the Blitz, followed in the last days of the war by the terror of the doodlebugs, and recalls the spirit of defiance that united all sections of society against Hitler's Luftwaffe.
Download or read book Europe at War 1939 1945 written by Norman Davies and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known: after six years of brutal fighting on land, sea and in the air, the Allied Powers prevailed and the Nazi regime was defeated. But as in so many things, the truth is somewhat different. Bringing a fresh eye to bear on a story we think we know, Norman Davies.Davies forces us to look again at those six years and to discard the usual narrative of Allied good versus Nazi evil, reminding us that the war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters - Hitler and Stalin - whose fight for supremacy consumed the best people in Germany and in the USSR . The outcome of the war was at best ambiguous, the victory of the West was only partial, its moral reputation severely tarnished and, for the greater part of the continent of Europe, ‘liberation’ was only the beginning of more than fifty years of totalitarian oppression. ‘Davies writes with real knowledge and passion.’ Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard ‘Punchy and compelling' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph
Download or read book London 1945 written by Maureen Waller and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London at the outset of World War II in 1939 was the greatest city in the world, the heart of the British Empire. By 1945, it was a drab and exhausted city, beginning the long haul back to recovery. The defiant capital of England had always been Hitler's prime target. The last months of the Second World War saw the final phase of the battle of London as the enemy unleashed its new vengeance weapons, the flying bombs and rockets. They were terrifying and brought destruction on a vast scale, but fortunately came too late to dent morale seriously. The people of London were showing the spirit, courage, and resilience that had earned them the admiration of the world during a long siege. In the harshest winter of fifty years, they were living in primitive conditions. Thousands were homeless, living in the Underground and deep shelters. Women lined up for horse meat and were lucky to obtain one egg a month. They besieged emergency coal dumps. Everyone longed for peace. The bright new world seemed elusive. As the victory celebrations passed into memory, there were severe hardships and all the problems of post-war adjustment. Women lost the independence the war had lent them, husbands and wives had to learn to live together again, and children had a lot of catching up to do. Yet London's loss has often been its opportunity. Its people had eagerly embraced plans for a modern metropolis and an end to poverty. They voted overwhelmingly for a Labour government and the new, fairer social order that was their reward for all they had endured. The year of victory, 1945, represents an important chapter in London's---and Britain's---long history. Acclaimed historian Maureen Waller draws on a rich array of primary sources, letting the people tell their own story, to re-create that moment, bringing to it the social insight at which she excels.
Download or read book The New Yorker Book of War Pieces written by and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The People s War written by Angus Calder and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Inferno written by Max Hastings and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 1091 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. For thirty-five years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people—of soldiers, sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews—Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments—Hitler’s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalin’s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchill’s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Roosevelt’s steady hand before and after the United States entered the war—and puts them in real human context. Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war’s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin’s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru’s words, “the final epitaph of British rule” in India. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century.
Download or read book LONDON AT WAR 1939 1945 written by ALAN. JEFFREYS and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps written by Laurence Ward and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complete World War II bomb census maps—unique graphic representations of one of the pivotal events of the century The aerial bombardment of London during the Second World War is one of the most significant events in the city’s modern history. Between 1939 and 1945, London and its environs experienced destruction on a huge and deadly scale, with air raids and rocket attacks reducing entire buildings and streets to rubble. The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps—meticulously hand-colored to document the extent of the damage being wrought on the city and surrounding areas—represent a key record of the destruction wrought by the Blitz, the impact of which can still be seen in the capital’s urban and social landscapes. Featuring new, high-quality reproductions of the 110 maps, this publication marks the first occasion on which these truly remarkable documents have been made available to a general audience. An introduction by Laurence Ward, Principal Archivist at the London Metropolitan Archives, explores the maps in the context of the terrible events that made them necessary. Reproductions of the maps themselves are complemented by a series of photographs of the damage done to the City of London, taken with a sympathetic yet unflinching eye by police constables Arthur Cross and Fred Tibbs; additional archival photographs; and tables of statistics. This landmark publication represents an invaluable graphic representation of one of the most dramatic and affecting episodes in the history of London.
Download or read book The Blackout in Britain and Germany 1939 1945 written by Marc Wiggam and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first major study of the blackout in the Second World War. Developing a comparative history of this system of civil defense in Britain and Germany, it begins by exploring how the blackout was planned for in both countries, and how the threat of aerial bombing framed its development. It then examines how well the blackout was adhered to, paying particular regard to the tension between its military value and the difficulties it caused civilians. The book then moves on to discuss how the blackout undermined the perception of security on the home front, especially for women. The final chapter examines the impact of the blackout on industry and transport. Arguing that the blackout formed an integral part in mobilising and legitimating British and German wartime discourses of community, fairness and morality, the book explores its profound impact on both countries.
Download or read book No Simple Victory written by Norman Davies and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading historians re-examines World War II and its outcome A clear-eyed reappraisal of World War II that offers new insight by reevaluating well-established facts and pointing out lesser-known ones, No Simple Victory asks readers to reconsider what they know about the war, and how that knowledge might be biased or incorrect. Norman Davies poses simple questions that have unexpected answers: Can you name the five biggest battles of the war? What were the main political ideologies that were contending for supremacy? The answers to these questions will surprise even those who feel that they are experts on the subject. Davies has established himself as a preeminent scholar of World War II. No Simple Victory is an invaluable contribution to twentieth-century history and an illuminating portrait of a conflict that continues to provoke debate.
Download or read book Debs at War written by Anne de Courcy and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2012-12-20 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An extraordinary account - from firsthand sources - of upper class women and the active part they took in the War Pre-war debutantes were members of the most protected, not to say isolated, stratum of 20th-century society: the young (17-20) unmarried daughters of the British upper classes. For most of them, the war changed all that for ever. It meant independence and the shock of the new, and daily exposure to customs and attitudes that must have seemed completely alien to them. For many, the almost military regime of an upper class childhood meant they were well suited for the no-nonsense approach needed in wartime. This book records the extraordinary diversity of challenges, shocks and responsibilities they faced - as chauffeurs, couriers, ambulance-drivers, nurses, pilots, spies, decoders, factory workers, farmers, land girls, as well as in the Women's Services. How much did class barriers really come down? Did they stick with their own sort? And what about fun and love in wartime - did love cross the class barriers?
Download or read book London War Notes written by Mollie Panter-Downes and published by . This book was released on 2015-04 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a firsthand account of the British civilian experience of World War II, written as it was happening. The entries are spaced about every two weeks, from September 3rd, 1939 until May 12th, 1945.
Download or read book Browned Off and Bloody Minded written by Alan Allport and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport’s rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.
Download or read book The Blast of War 1939 1945 written by Harold Macmillan and published by Carroll & Graf Publishers. This book was released on 1968 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal account of how World War II was fought and won on the political front by a prime minister and statesman in the making.
Download or read book Britain at War 1939 to 1945 written by James Lingard and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-05-14 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book has excellent reviews from UCL People (University College London) and the Historical Association, a British charity for teachers. It gives a short insight into the horrors of the home front told from the perspective of someone who actually experienced them, a fascinating look at the harsh realities of life in Britain, life full of drama and the danger of impending death. How did a family with a small child caught up in such a war survive? There follows an overview of the major campaigns in World War II, giving an insight into the big picture, enlivened by personal experiences and quotations from Churchill. A Canadian reviewer has said, This book was a relatively quick read that would be of interest to those who might not have much background in the events of the war or those who know the broad details but want the day to day understanding of how lives were affected by things like bombing raids. James Lingard has meticulously researched and presented the timeline of events for the war, but where this book really shines as far as I am concerned is in the sharing of his own familys experiences as they were personally impacted. Though only a young boy when the war began, his life was affected in multiple ways and his family was at one point thought killed as their air raid shelter was destroyed. In actual fact they had gone out to the woods for an outing, which ultimately saved their lives! Another enjoyable part of the book was the quotes Lingard used at the beginning of each chapter. Many of these quotes were taken from speeches by Churchill or other prominent men of the time and they add to the general picture and emotions of the period.
Download or read book The Test of War written by Robert Mackay and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-05-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While it lasted, the Second World War dominated the life of the nations that were involved and most of those that were not. Since Britain was in at both the start and the finish her people experienced the impact of total ar in full measure. The experience was a test of the most comprehensive kind: of the institutions, of the resources, and the very cohesion of the nation. The Test of War by Robert Mackay examines how the nation responded to this test. For a generation after the ending of the war this response was represented as largely unproblematical: faced with mortal threat to their survival the people rallied around their leaders, sank their differences and bore the burdens and sacrifices that were necessary to victory. More recently, demurring voices have challeged this cosy picture by emphasizing negative features of the war as official muddle, low industrial productivity and strikes, the black market, looting and the persistence of hostile class relations. Robert Mackay re-examines these debates, arguing that, for all its imperfections, British society under threat remained vital, cohesive and optimistically creative about its future.
