Download or read book The Battle of France written by Philip Warner and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provocative look at the battle for France in May and June 1940 Explains how the French were caught off guard, how the Germans swept into the country, and how the British battled the blitzkrieg Recounts the evacuation at Dunkirk Shows how the fall of France changed the course of World War II

Download or read book Strange Victory written by Ernest R. May and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernest R. May's Strange Victory presents a dramatic narrative-and reinterpretation-of Germany's six-week campaign that swept the Wehrmacht to Paris in spring 1940. Before the Nazis killed him for his work in the French Resistance, the great historian Marc Bloch wrote a famous short book, Strange Defeat, about the treatment of his nation at the hands of an enemy the French had believed they could easily dispose of. In Strange Victory, the distinguished American historian Ernest R. May asks the opposite question: How was it that Hitler and his generals managed this swift conquest, considering that France and its allies were superior in every measurable dimension and considering the Germans' own skepticism about their chances? Strange Victory is a riveting narrative of those six crucial weeks in the spring of 1940, weaving together the decisions made by the high commands with the welter of confused responses from exhausted and ill-informed, or ill-advised, officers in the field. Why did Hitler want to turn against France at just this moment, and why were his poor judgment and inadequate intelligence about the Allies nonetheless correct? Why didn't France take the offensive when it might have led to victory? What explains France's failure to detect and respond to Germany's attack plan? It is May's contention that in the future, nations might suffer strange defeats of their own if they do not learn from their predecessors' mistakes in judgment.

Download or read book France 1940 written by Gilbert Alan Shepperd and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2004 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German victory of 1940 stunned the world. France, thought to be a major European power with one of the world's largest armies, collapsed in less than seven weeks. The secret of the Wehrmacht's success lay in its revolutionary new tactics of blitzkrieg: lightning war. Fast-moving tank divisions supported by armored, mobile infantry swept over opposition, helped by both conventional bombers and deadly Stuka dive-bombers. Alan Shepperd's highly detailed text examines the tactics, organization, and equipment of the Allied and German forces, and provides a daily account of the most crucial period of the battle. The German victory of 1940 stunned the world. France, thought to be a major European power with one of the world's largest armies, collapsed in less than seven weeks. The secret of the Wehrmacht's success lay in its revolutionary new tactics of blitzkrieg: lightning war. Fast-moving tank divisions supported by armored, mobile infantry swept over opposition, helped by both conventional bombers and deadly Stuka dive-bombers. Alan Shepperd's highly detailed text examines the tactics, organization, and equipment of the Allied and German forces, and provides a daily account of the most crucial period of the battle. The tank marks as great a revolution in land warfare as an armored steamship would have marked had it appeared amongst the toilsome triremes of Actium. So said General Heinz Guderian, architect of the stunning German victory over France in 1940. Alan Shepperd examines tactics and the German's application of them to their 1940 French campaign, as he looks at the differing organization and equipment of both Allied and German forces. He gives a daily account of the most crucial period of the battle, that of May 10-17, and also examines the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 337,000 troops, mostly British, were taken out of the Germans' clutches at the last moment by the Royal Navy supported by a vast armada of privately owned vessels. Not only are German strengths looked at but Allied weaknesses are also examined: their ineffective use of tanks, the obsolete French defensive strategy, and, possibly most importantly, the political splits within France that demoralized her army and combined with the German's speedy advance to bring collapse about so quickly.

Download or read book To Lose a Battle written by Alistair Horne and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 1243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1940, the German army fought and won an extraordinary battle with France in six weeks of lightning warfare. With the subtlety and compulsion of a novel, Horne’s narrative shifts from minor battlefield incidents to high military and political decisions, stepping far beyond the confines of military history to form a major contribution to our understanding of the crises of the Franco-German rivalry. To Lose a Battle is the third part of the trilogy beginning with The Fall of Paris and continuing with The Price of Glory (already available in Penguin).

Download or read book When Britain Saved the West written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the comfortable distance of seven decades, it is quite easy to view the victory of the Allies over Hitler’s Germany as inevitable. But in 1940 Great Britain’s defeat loomed perilously close, and no other nation stepped up to confront the Nazi threat. In this cogently argued book, Robin Prior delves into the documents of the time—war diaries, combat reports, Home Security’s daily files, and much more—to uncover how Britain endured a year of menacing crises. The book reassesses key events of 1940—crises that were recognized as such at the time and others not fully appreciated. Prior examines Neville Chamberlain’s government, Churchill’s opponents, the collapse of France, the Battle of Britain, and the Blitz. He looks critically at the position of the United States before Pearl Harbor, and at Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. Prior concludes that the nation was saved through a combination of political leadership, British Expeditionary Force determination and skill, Royal Air Force and Navy efforts to return soldiers to the homeland, and the determination of the people to fight on “in spite of all terror.” As eloquent as it is controversial, this book exposes the full import of events in 1940, when Britain fought alone and Western civilization hung in the balance.

Download or read book The Battle of France 1940 written by Philip Warner and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 1990 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important study of a significant campaign Both authoritative and highly readable

Download or read book Useless Mouths written by Peter Whelan and published by . This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The supply services of the BEF of 1939 were wholly unprepared for modern warfare and paid the price by their defeat, mitigated only by the bloody-mindedness of the men.

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 Hitler s African Victims written by Raffael Scheck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Lightning War written by Ronald E. Powaski and published by Castle Books. This book was released on 2008-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the dramatic story of the German defeat of the Allies in northern France and the Low Countries in 1940. Covering the campaign as a whole, it examines the issues from all sides, including those of the French, British, German and other involved nations.

Download or read book The Blitzkrieg Legend written by Karl-Heinz Frieser and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, for the first time in English, is an illuminating German perspective on the decisive blitzkrieg campaign. The account, written by the German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser and edited by American historian John T. Greenwood, provides the definitive explanation for Germany’s startling success and the equally surprising military collapse of France and Britain on the European continent in 1940. In a little over a month, Germany defeated the Allies in battle, a task that had not been achieved in four years of brutal fighting during World War I. First published in 1995 as the official German history of the 1940 campaign, this book goes beyond standard explanations to show that the German victory was not inevitable and that French defeat was not preordained. Contrary to most accounts of the campaign, Frieser’s illustrates that the military systems of both Germany and France were solid and that their campaign plans were sound. The key to victory or defeat, Frieser argues, was the execution of operational plans—both preplanned and ad hoc—amid the eternal Clausewitzian combat factors of friction and the fog of war. He shows why, on the eve of the campaign, the British and French leaders had good cause to be confident and why many German generals were understandably concerned that disaster was looming for them. This study explodes many of the myths concerning German blitzkrieg warfare and the planning for the 1940 campaign. Frieser’s groundbreaking interpretation of the topic has been the subject of discussion since the German edition first appeared. This English translation is published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army.

Download or read book Arming Against Hitler written by Eugenia C. Kiesling and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Busting the Bocage written by Michael Dale Doubler and published by Fort Leavenworth, Kan. : U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. This book was released on 1988 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Case Red written by Robert Forczyk and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even after the legendary evacuation from Dunkirk in June 1940 there were still large British formations fighting the Germans alongside their French allies. After mounting a vigorous counterattack at Abbeville and then conducting a tough defence along the Somme, the British were forced to conduct a second evacuation from the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, Brest and St Nazaire. While France was in its death throes, politicians and soldiers debated what to do – flee to England or North Africa, or seek an armistice. Case Red captures the drama of the final three weeks of military operations in France in June 1940, and explains the great impact it had on the course of relations between Britain and France during the remainder of the war. It also addresses the military, political and human drama of France's collapse in June 1940, and how the windfall of captured military equipment, fuel and industrial resources enhanced the Third Reich's ability to attack its next foe – the Soviet Union.

Download or read book Tuberculosis and War written by J.F. Murray and published by Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuberculosis (TB) remains the largest cause of adult deaths from any single infectious disease, and ranks among the top 10 causes of death worldwide. When TB and war occur simultaneously, the inevitable consequences are disease, human misery, suffering, and heightened mortality. TB is, therefore, one of the most frequent and deadly diseases to complicate the special circumstances of warfare. Written by internationally acclaimed experts, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the status of TB before, during and after WWII in the 25 belligerent countries that were chiefly involved. It summarizes the history of TB up to the present day. A special chapter on “Nazi Medicine, Tuberculosis and Genocide” examines the horrendous, inhuman Nazi ideology, which during WWII used TB as a justification for murder, and targeted the disease by eradicating millions who were afflicted by it. The final chapter summarizes the lessons learned from WWII and more recent wars and recommends anti-TB measures for future conflicts. This publication is not only of interest to TB specialists and pulmonologists but also to those interested in public health, infectious diseases, war-related issues and the history of medicine. It should also appeal to nonmedical readers like journalists and politicians.

Download or read book Strange Defeat written by Marc Bloch and published by Rare Treasure Editions. This book was released on 2021-11-09T16:36:00Z with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned historian and Resistance fighter - later executed by the Nazis - analyzes at first hand why France fell in 1940. Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat during the three months following the fall of France, after he returned home from military service. In the midst of his anguish, he nevertheless "brought to his study of the crisis all the critical faculty and all the penetrating analysis of a first-rate historian" (Christian Science Monitor). Bloch takes a close look at the military failures he witnessed, examining why France was unable to respond to attack quickly and effectively. He gives a personal account of the battle of France, followed by a biting analysis of the generation between the wars. His harsh conclusion is that the immediate cause of the disaster was the utter incompetence of the High Command, but his analysis ranges broadly, appraising all the factors, social as well as military, which since 1870 had undermined French national solidarity. "Much has been, and will be, written in explanation of the defeat of France in 1940, but it seems unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be more accurately and more vividly presented than in this statement of evidence." - New York Times Book Review. "The most wisdom-packed commentary on the problem set [before] all intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen by the events of 1940." - Spectator.

Download or read book Vichy Air Force at War written by Jonathan Sutherland and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At the beginning of World War II the French faced the German invasion with 4,360 modern combat aircraft and 790 new machines currently arriving from French and American factories each month. When the phony war finally ended, some 119 of 210 squadrons were ready for action on the north-eastern front. The others were reequipping or stationed in the French colonies. Of the 119 squadrons France could bring into action only one-fourth of the aircraft were battle-ready.With France overrun by June 1940, what remained of the French air force was either concentrated in the unoccupied zone or had been hastily redeployed to the colonies. Nonetheless, in retaliation for the British attack on the French fleet in Oran, French bombers, based in French Morocco, carried out retaliatory air raids over Gibraltar. The Armee de l'Air de Vichy was born and would fight to the best of its ability against the Free French's allies in theatres as distant as north-west Africa, Syria, Lebanon, Madagascar and the Far East. Not only would they take to the skies against the British and later the Americans, they would also willingly take part in aerial duels against Free French pilots.Only a handful of books have been written on French aircraft, but never has there been a complete history of the operations of the Vichy Air Force and its fratricidal war. This title literally spans the globe, examining forgotten air combats. It is also important to note that many of the Vichy pilots that survived the air combats later volunteered to join the Free French and would fight with great courage and distinction alongside the very pilots that they had been trying to kill.rnrnThis book describes all major theatres of combat, examines the aircraft flown and lengthy appendices cover operational units, victory credits and the Aeronautique Navale"--Dust jacket.