Download or read book The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters The Downing Street years 1934 1940 written by Neville Chamberlain and published by Ashgate Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a primary source of historical evidence and insight, it is difficult to overstate the value and importance of Neville Chamberlain's diary letters to his sisters. They represent the most complete and illuminating 'insider' record of British politics between the wars yet to be published. From 1915 Chamberlain wrote detailed weekly epistles to his sisters until his death in 1940; a confidential account of events covering the quarter of a century during which he stood at the very centre of Conservative and national politics. Beyond the fascination of the historical record of people and events, these letters are extremely valuable for the remarkable light they throw upon the personality and character of the private man lurking behind the austerely forbidding public persona.Volume four covers the years 1934 to 1940, which witnessed Chamberlain's rise within Government, leading to his replacement of Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party in 1937. As well as Chamberlain's reaction to the Civil War in Spain, the momentous events of 1938 and 1939 are covered in detail. Chamberlain's visits to Germany in September 1939 and his views on war, appeasement, Britain's military position and Hitler's intentions all receive much analysis, as does the run up to the declaration of war in September 1939. The book concludes with the events of 1940, including the Dunkirk evacuations, Chamberlain's resignation as Prime Minister, and the final months before his death in October.
Download or read book The Chamberlains written by Roger Ward and published by Fonthill Media. This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Neville Chamberlain written by Walter Reid and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neville Chamberlain is remembered today as Hitler's credulous dupe, the man who proclaimed in September 1938 that the Munich agreement guaranteed 'peace in our time'. This is a magisterial reappraisal of Chamberlain and his legacy. It reveals the nuances of a complex and sensitive man who was a true radical and a man of passion, especially in all that concerned the welfare of his fellow citizens. As Minister of Health, Chancellor and Prime Minister, he presided over a fundamental modernisation of Britain, shuttingthe door on the Victorian age, ending free trade, improving living conditions and abolishing the Poor Law and the workhouse. Munich was much more than the traditional narrative suggests. Scarred by the death of his cousin in the First World War, Chamberlain was determined to ensure that a new generation was spared the tragic waste that had consumed their elders. Even so, he prepared for war while he worked for peace. The aircraft that won the Battle of Britain were built on his watch. He didn't win the Second World War, but it was he who ensured it wasn't lost in 1940.
Download or read book Global Great Depression and the Coming of World War II written by John E. Moser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Global Great Depression and the Coming of World War II demonstrates the ways in which the economic crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s helped to cause and shape the course of the Second World War. Historian John E. Moser points to the essential uniformity in the way in which the world s industrialized and industrializing nations responded to the challenge of the Depression. Among these nations, there was a move away from legislative deliberation and toward executive authority; away from free trade and toward the creation of regional trading blocs; away from the international gold standard and toward managed national currencies; away from chaotic individual liberty and toward rational regimentation; in other words, away from classical liberalism and toward some combination of corporatism, nationalism, and militarism.For all the similarities, however, there was still a great divide between two different general approaches to the economic crisis. Those countries that enjoyed easy, unchallenged access to resources and markets the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France tended to turn inward, erecting tariff walls and promoting domestic recovery at the expense of the international order. On the other hand, those nations that lacked such access Germany and Japan sought to take the necessary resources and markets by force. The interplay of these powers, then, constituted the dynamic of international relations of the 1930s: have-nots attempting to achieve self-sufficiency through aggressive means, challenging haves that were too distrustful of one another, and too preoccupied with their own domestic affairs, to work cooperatively in an effort to stop them.
Download or read book The Tory World written by Jeremy Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political decisions are never taken in a vacuum but are shaped both by current events and historical context. In other words, long-term developments and patterns in which the accumulated memory of what came earlier, can greatly (and sometimes subconsciously) influence subsequent policy choices. Working forward from the later seventeenth century, this book explores the ’deep history’ of the changing and competing understandings within the Tory party of the role Britain has aspired to play on a world stage. Conservatism has long been one of the major British political tendencies, committed to the defence of established institutions, with a strong sense of the ’national interest’, and embracing both ’liberal’ and ’authoritarian’ views of empire. The Tory party has, moreover, at several times been deeply divided, if not convulsed, by different perspectives on Britain’s international orientation and different positions on foreign and imperial policy. Underlying Tory beliefs upon which views of Britain’s global role were built were often not stated but assumed. As a result they tend to be obscured from historical view. This book seeks to recover and reconsider those beliefs, and to understand how the Tory party has sought to navigate its way through the difficult pathways of foreign and imperial politics, and why this determination outlasted Britain’s rapid decolonisation and was apparently remarkably little affected by it. With a supporting cast from Pitt to Disraeli, Churchill to Thatcher, the book provides a fascinating insight into the influence of history over politics. Moreover it argues that there has been an inherent politicisation of the concept of national interests, such that strategic culture and foreign policy cannot be understood other than in terms of a historically distorted political debate.
Download or read book The Leadership Direction and Legitimacy of the RAF Bomber Offensive from Inception to 1945 written by Peter Gray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a fresh approach to the debate on the RAF's bomber offensive by using modern strategic leadership theory as an analytical tool to examine the campaign. In particular, it looks at the legality and legitimacy of the offensive and explores the key interfaces between the military leaders, the politicians and allies. It also looks at the major controversies in the aims and objectives of the campaign and the personalities involved. Modern literature from the leadership field is used to consider the challenges facing those charged with the formulation and execution of the offensive. Aspects of the senior leadership disputes are also dealt with in the context of the leadership literature and in the wider context of the strategic challenges then facing Churchill, Sinclair and Portal. A multi-disciplinary bent to the book enables the reader to move beyond the narrow confines of military considerations to the thorough investigation of the legality, legitimacy and morality of the offensive.
Download or read book What about the workers written by Andrew Taylor and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between the Conservative Party and the organised working class is fundamental to the making of modern British politics. The organised working class, though always a minority, was perceived by Conservatives as a challenge and many union members dismissed the Conservatives as the bosses’ party. Why, throughout its history, was the Conservative Party seemingly accommodating towards the organised working class that it ideology would seem to permit? And why, in the space of a relatively few years in the 1970s and 1980s, did it abandon this heritage? For much of its history party leaders calculated they had more to gain from inclusion but during the 1980s Conservative governments marginalised the organised working class to a degree that not so very long ago would have been thought inconceivable.
Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy 4 Volume Set written by Gordon Martel and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 2173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy is a complete and authoritative 4-volume compendium of the most important events, people and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations from ancient times to the present, from a global perspective. An invaluable resource for anyone interested in diplomacy, its history and the relations between states Includes newer areas of scholarship such as the role of non-state organizations, including the UN and Médecins Sans Frontières, and the exercise of soft power, as well as issues of globalization and climate change Provides clear, concise information on the most important events, people, and terms associated with diplomacy and international relations in an A-Z format All entries are rigorously peer reviewed to ensure the highest quality of scholarship Provides a platform to introduce unfamiliar terms and concepts to students engaging with the literature of the field for the first time
Download or read book Britannia s Zealots Volume I written by N.C. Fleming and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britannia's Zealots, Volume I opens the first longitudinal study to examine the Conservative Right from the late-19th century to the present day. British Conservatism has always contained a significant section fundamentally opposed to progressive reform. A permanent minority in Parliament, dissident right-wing Conservatives nevertheless had allies in the press and sympathy among grassroots party members enabling them to create crises in the media and at party meetings. N.C. Fleming charts the evolution of reactionary politics from its preoccupation with the Protestant constitution to its fixation with the prestige and strength of Britain's global empire. He examines the overlooked ways in which Conservative Right parliamentarians shaped their party's policies and propaganda, in and out of office, and their relationships with the press and ordinary activists. He seeks to demonstrate that this influence could be circumscribing, and on occasion highly disruptive, with consequences which remain relevant for today's Conservative party. Britannia's Zealots, Volume I will be of great interest to academics and students of British history, right-wing politics, imperialism, and 20th-century history.
Download or read book Frenemies written by Mark L. Haas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Frenemies Mark L. Haas addresses policy-guiding puzzles such as: Why do international ideological enemies sometimes overcome their differences and ally against shared threats? Why, just as often, do such alliances fail? Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe, or "frenemy" alliances, are unlike coalitions among ideologically-similar states facing comparable threats. Members of frenemy alliances are perpetually torn by two powerful opposing forces. Haas shows that shared material threats push these states together while ideological differences pull them apart. Each of these competing forces has dominated the other at critical times. This difference has resulted in stable alliances among ideological enemies in some cases but the delay, dissolution, or failure of these alliances in others. Haas examines how states' susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes and the nature of the ideological differences among countries provide the key to alliance formation or failure. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of critical historical and contemporary cases, from the failure of British and French leaders to ally with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s to the likely evolution of the United States' alliance system against a rising China in the early 21st century. In Frenemies, Haas develops a groundbreaking argument that explains the origins and durability of alliances among ideological enemies and offers policy-guiding perspectives on a subject at the core of international relations.
Download or read book Appeasement written by Tim Bouverie and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER • A gripping new history of the British appeasement of Hitler on the eve of World War II “An eye-opening narrative that makes for exciting but at times uncomfortable reading as one reflects on possible lessons for the present.”—Antonia Fraser, author of Mary Queen of Scots On a wet afternoon in September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane and announced that his visit to Hitler had averted the greatest crisis in recent memory. It was, he later assured the crowd in Downing Street, "peace for our time." Less than a year later, Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. Appeasement is a groundbreaking history of the disastrous years of indecision, failed diplomacy and parliamentary infighting that enabled Hitler's domination of Europe. Drawing on deep archival research and sources not previously seen by historians, Tim Bouverie has created an unforgettable portrait of the ministers, aristocrats, and amateur diplomats who, through their actions and inaction, shaped their country's policy and determined the fate of Europe. Beginning with the advent of Hitler in 1933, we embark on a fascinating journey from the early days of the Third Reich to the beaches of Dunkirk. Bouverie takes us not only into the backrooms of Parliament and 10 Downing Street but also into the drawing rooms and dining clubs of fading imperial Britain, where Hitler enjoyed surprising support among the ruling class and even some members of the royal family. Both sweeping and intimate, Appeasement is not only an eye-opening history but a timeless lesson on the challenges of standing up to aggression and authoritarianism--and the calamity that results from failing to do so.
Download or read book Britain and Danubian Europe in the Era of World War II 1933 1941 written by Andras Becker and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of British official attitudes towards the Danubian countries (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia) from Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 to the year 1941, a period that marked serious but fruitless British political and economic efforts to unite this unruly part of Europe against Nazi ascendancy. Set against an international backdrop of regional revanchist, revisionist and irredentist tendencies, particularly in Hungary and Bulgaria, the book explores how these movements affected international relations in the region as they aimed to overturn the territorial order set down in Versailles following the Great War to restore the status quo of a more glorious national past. Offering fresh insights into the British-East Central and South East European relationship, the book charts the shifts in British official policy towards Danubian Europe, amidst competing regional nationalisms and the sudden and abrupt shifts in British global priorities during the early part of World War II.
Download or read book Churchill s Citadel written by Katherine Carter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of Churchill in the 1930s, showing how his meetings at Chartwell, his country home, strengthened his fight against the Nazis In the 1930s, amidst an impending crisis in Europe, Winston Churchill found himself out of government and with little power. In these years, Chartwell, his country home in Kent, became the headquarters of his campaign against Nazi Germany. He invited trusted advisors and informants, including Albert Einstein and T. E. Lawrence, who could strengthen his hand as he worked tirelessly to sound the alarm at the prospect of war. Katherine Carter tells the extraordinary story of the remarkable but little known meetings that took place behind closed doors at Chartwell. From household names to political leaders, diplomats to spies, Carter reveals a fascinating cast of characters, each of whom made their mark on Churchill’s thinking and political strategy. With Chartwell as his base, Churchill gathered intelligence about Germany’s preparations for war—and, in doing so, put himself in a position to change the course of history.
Download or read book Guilty Women Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter War Britain written by Julie V. Gottlieb and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British women were deeply invested in foreign policy between the wars. This study casts new light on the turn to international affairs in feminist politics, the gendered representation and experience of the Munich Crisis, and the profound impression made by female public opinion on PM Neville Chamberlain in his negotiations with the dictators.
Download or read book Mussolini Mustard Gas and the Fascist Way of War written by Charles Stephenson and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-03-30 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early October 1935 and without any declaration of war some two hundred thousand men, comprising soldiers and airmen of the Italian armed forces, Fascist ‘Blackshirt’ Militia, Eritrean ascari and Somali dubats, invaded the independent state of Ethiopia (Abyssinia). It was an operation entirely of choice, the chooser being Il Duce: Benito Mussolini. The resultant conflict is often described as a colonial war. while it was certainly launched with the intent of turning Ethiopia into an Italian possession, it was in fact a war of aggression against an independent, sovereign, state with membership of the League of Nations. A state that had, according to one of its nineteenth-century rulers, been ‘for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans’. The swiftness of the Italian victory resulted from their possession and ruthless use of technology; most particularly aircraft, mustard gas, and motorisation/mechanisation. Since they were fighting an enemy who possessed none of these things, then they were able to wage, indeed inaugurate, what the prominent military theorist JFC Fuller dubbed ‘totalitarian warfare’ or, as it became known a few years later, total war. This, he opined, was the Fascist, the scientific, way of making war. In his considered view, the Fascist Army that waged it was ‘a scientific military instrument.’ This book examines that campaign in military and political terms.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History 1800 2000 written by David Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes - from the development of democracy, the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation - have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also presented challenges to the historians who have researched and written about Britain's past politics. This Handbook shows the ways in which political historians have responded to these challenges, providing a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain's political past and a thought-provoking 'long view' for those interested in current political challenges.
Download or read book Wealth of an Empire written by Robert Switky and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wealth of an Empire tells the dramatic true story of a top-secret mission that changed the course of World War II: Great BritainÆs shipment of virtually its entire treasury across the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic to safety in the United States and Canada. Had the Germans captured or sunk the treasure-laden ships, the war could have been lost more than eighteen months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The British government authorized this immensely risky and long-running operation not only because of the obvious danger that GermanyÆs rising militancy posed but also becaus.
