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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence
The first political history of the Second World War, of building the Grand Alliance to defeat Hitler, by the Sunday Times-bestselling author of Appeasing Hitler.
After the fall of France in June 1940, only Britain stood between Hitler and total victory. Desperate for allies, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the conflict, drive the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany apart and persuade neutral countries to resist German domination.
By 1942, after the German invasion of Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the British-Soviet-American alliance was in place. Yet it was an improbable and incongruous coalition, divided by ideology and politics and riven with mistrust and deceit. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were partners in the fight to defeat Hitler, yet they were also rivals who disagreed on strategy, imperialism and the future of liberated Europe. Only by looking at their points of conflict, as well as of co-operation, are we able to understand the course of the war and world that developed in its aftermath.
Allies at War is a fast-paced, narrative history, based on material drawn from over a hundred archives. Using vivid, first-hand accounts and unpublished diaries, we enter the rooms where the critical decisions were made while going beyond the confines of the Grand Alliance to examine, among other themes, the doomed Anglo-French alliance, fractious relations with General de Gaulle and the Free French, and interactions with Poland, Greece and Nationalist China.
Ambitious and compelling, revealing the political drama behind the military events, Allies at War offers a fresh perspective on the Second World War and the origins of the Cold War.
At nineteen, Gwen Arnold left her office job to volunteer for the
WAAF. She was trained in the operation of top secret Radio
Direction Finding (RDF) equipment, later known as "Radar." Posted
to Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk, she and her fellow WAAF RDF operators
were responsible for tracking the movements of aircraft and
shipping across the North Sea. Despite long working hours, often in
uncomfortable conditions, they carried out their orders with
dedication and enthusiasm. The highs and lows of wartime life and
love are recalled with great affection in this honest and
entertaining memoir.
To describe the complexity of this ever-changing and multi-layered
terrain, Kremer creates aesthetic, orderly and beautiful
compositions that parallel the defense mechanisms developed to
protect Israelis from the painful reality of the current political
situation. Rather than confronting the Israeli occupation in the
way that it has been absorbed by the world's media, Kremer adopts a
more subtle approach. For him, the media's aggressive
representation of reality numbs people's sensibilities making them
callous to the suffering of others.Instead of shock, Kremer seeks
to challenge the viewer, using the landscape as a focus to
understand the overwhelming impact of the situation at the deepest
of levels. Four decades ago the historian and philosopher,
Yeshayahu Leibovich, forewarned that the Israeli occupation was a
cancerous disease in the heart of the nation. As Kremer himself
says, 'my goal is to reveal how every piece of land has become
infected with loaded sediments of the ongoing conflict'.
If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win numerous
battles without a single loss. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War Written in
the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is still used as a
book of military strategy today. Napoleon, Mae Zedong and Douglas
MacArthur all claimed to have drawn inspiration from it. And beyond
the world of war, modern-era business and management gurus have
also applied Sun Tzu's ideas to politics and corporate strategy.
This illustrated dual-language edition not only presents the
original Chinese characters with James Trapp's translation on the
facing page, it also tests Sun Tzu's ideas against history. Each of
the 13 chapters includes a new commentary giving examples of how
Sun Tzu's wisdom has been borne out on the world's battlefields.
When, for example, has information provided by spies changed the
course of a battle? How has history shown Sun Tzu's ideas on the
importance of terrain in conflict to be true? And where can we best
find examples of strategic warfare being waged? From the ancient
world to the 20th century, the battles featured will be illustrated
with colour battle maps, paintings and artworks. Of immense
influence to leaders across millennia, The Art of War Illustrated
is a classic text richly deserving this illustrated and expanded
dual-language edition.
Brig.genl. Willem (Kaas) van der Waals kyk terugskouend na sy loopbaan
wat gekenmerk is deur veelsydigheid — valskermsoldaat en instrukteur,
operasionele diens in SWA, Angola en Rhodesië, militêre diplomaat en
SAW se hoof van buitelandse betrekkinge.
Hy was ook dosent in strategiese studies, hoof van sielkundige
oorlogvoering, inligtingsoffisier en strategiese beplanner by die
sekretariaat van die Staatsveiligheidsraad. Daarna is hy die eerste
veiligheidshoof van die stad Pretoria.
Dis juis díé veelsydigheid wat hom enersyds met gesagsfigure in die
weermag laat bots het en andersyds wyd aanwendbaar gemaak het.
"Battle: A History of Combat and Culture" spans the globe and the
centuries to explore the way ideas shape the conduct of warfare.
Drawing its examples from Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East
Asia, and America, John A. Lynn challenges the belief that
technology has been the dominant influence on combat from ancient
times to the present day. In battle, ideas can be more far more
important than bullets or bombs. Carl von Clausewitz proclaimed
that war is politics, but even more basically, war is culture. The
hard reality of armed conflict is formed by - and, in turn, forms -
a culture's values, assumptions, and expectations about fighting.
The author examines the relationship between the real and the
ideal, arguing that feedback between the two follows certain
discernable paths. Battle rejects the currently fashionable notion
of a "Western way of warfare" and replaces it with more nuanced
concepts of varied and evolving cultural patterns of combat. After
considering history, Lynn finally asks how the knowledge gained
might illuminate our understanding of the war on terrorism.
For much of the Civil War, Virginia civilians struggled to keep
their homes intact as they faced the threat of Union soldiers on
their doorsteps. In this revised and expanded second-edition
compilation of stories passed down by word-of-mouth from the
generation that experienced that divisive war, Larry Chowning shows
his talent for capturing the flavor of an era and the essence of
its people. The stories of everyday life in a war zone show not
just the fear but the courage, defiance, and ingenuity displayed by
the people in Virginia's Tidewater region. While these chronicles
are Southern, the same sort of narrative could have come from
people in Pennsylvania, where Southern troops roamed.
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