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Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations. A company of the newly-formed Airborne Forces was committed to the operation, which took place on the night of 27/28 February. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth.
Max Hastings recounts this cliffhanging tale in a wealth of previously unchronicled detail. He portrays its remarkable personalities: the ‘boffin’ RV Jones; the peacock Mountbatten; the troubled husband of Daphne Du Maurier, Gen. ’Boy’ Browning, who commanded the Airborne Division; ‘Colonel Remy’, the French secret agent whose men reconnoitered Bruneval at mortal risk; Major John Frost, who led the paras into action; Charlie Cox, the little RAF technician who stripped the Würzburg and became an unexpected hero; Wing-Commander Charles Pickard, a legendary bomber pilot who led the drop squadron. Seldom have so many fascinating personalities been brought together to fulfil a mission that became a front-page triumph in a season of British defeats.
Recounted in Hastings’ familiar best-selling blend of top-down and bottom-up action detail, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history.
The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.
Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.
Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the current attack of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.
To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.
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Operation Biting
Max Hastings
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R534
Discovery Miles 5 340
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'His masterpiece' Antony Beevor,
Spectator 'A masterful performance' Sunday Times 'By far the best
book on the Vietnam War' Gerald Degroot, The Times, Book of the
Year Vietnam became the Western world's most divisive modern
conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in
1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max
Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of
participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of
American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic
narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of
Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and
less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US
Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary
recollections of Ho Chi Minh's warriors. Here are the vivid
realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million
people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings
sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom
forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were
matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world
has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it
forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out
by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter
price for the Northerners' victory in privation and oppression.
Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers,
Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen
from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from
Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military
narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal
experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings' readers know so
well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this
struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse
of military might to confront intractable political and cultural
challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants,
statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
The Sunday Times bestseller 'One of the most dramatic forgotten
chapters of the war, as told in a new book by the incomparable Max
Hastings' DAILY MAIL In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within
weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no
longer be fed. Churchill made a personal decision that at all
costs, the 'island fortress' must be saved. This was not merely a
matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain's
fortunes and morale had fallen to their lowest ebb. The largest
fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war
was assembled to escort fourteen fast merchantmen across a thousand
of miles of sea defended by six hundred German and Italian
aircraft, together with packs of U-boats and torpedo craft. The
Mediterranean battles that ensued between 11 and 15 August were the
most brutal of Britain's war at sea, embracing four
aircraft-carriers, two battleships, seven cruisers, scores of
destroyers and smaller craft. The losses were appalling: defeat
seemed to beckon. This is the saga Max Hastings unfolds in his
first full length narrative of the Royal Navy, which he believes
was the most successful of Britain's wartime services. As always,
he blends the 'big picture' of statesmen and admirals with human
stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews,
Hurricane pilots, destroyer and merchant-ship captains, ordinary
but extraordinary seamen. Operation Pedestal describes catastrophic
ship sinkings, including that of the aircraft-carrier Eagle,
together with struggles to rescue survivors and salvage stricken
ships. Most moving of all is the story of the tanker Ohio,
indispensable to Malta's survival, victim of countless Axis
attacks. In the last days of the battle, the ravaged hulk was kept
under way only by two destroyers, lashed to her sides. Max Hastings
describes this as one of the most extraordinary tales he has ever
recounted. Until the very last hours, no participant on either side
could tell what would be the outcome of an epic of wartime suspense
and courage.
A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling
historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile
crisis' Daily Telegraph The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most
perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear
collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those
weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.
Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the
viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants,
American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his
accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and
diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to
paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's
Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to
describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon
beckoned. Hastings began researching this book believing that he
was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as
shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that
the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable
twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a
new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers. To contend with
today's threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is
critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its
last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues,
can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.
A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in
history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War.
A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of
people around the world- soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives,
farm workers and children.. Reflecting Max Hastings's thirty-five
years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the
course of events, but focuses chiefly upon human experience, which
varied immensely from campaign to campaign, continent to continent.
The author emphasises the Russian front, where more than 90% of all
German soldiers who perished met their fate. He argues that, while
Hitler's army often fought its battles brilliantly well, the Nazis
conducted their war effort with 'stunning incompetence'. He
suggests that the Royal Navy and US Navy were their countries'
outstanding fighting services, while the industrial contribution of
the United States was much more important to allied victory than
that of the US Army. The book ranges across a vast canvas, from the
agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion, to the 1943
Bengal famine, in which at least a million people died under
British rule- and British neglect. Among many vignettes, there are
the RAF's legendary raid on the Ruhr dams, the horrors of Arctic
convoys, desert tank combat, jungle clashes. Some of Hastings's
insights and judgements will surprise students of the conflict,
while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies and triumphs of
a host of ordinary people, in uniform and out of it. 'The cliche is
profoundly true', he says. 'The world between 1939 and 1945 saw
some human beings plumb the depths of baseness, while others scaled
the heights of courage and nobility'. This is 'everyman's story',
an attempt to answer the question: 'What was the Second World War
like ?', and also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings
employs the technique which has made many of his previous books
best-sellers, combining top-down analysis and bottom-up testimony
to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its
participants and for posterity.
The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle
of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted
from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war.
In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th century's first terrible act
of self-immolation - what was then called The Great War. On the eve
of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the
conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women
during the first months of strife. He finds the evidence
overwhelming, that Austria and Germany must accept principal blame
for the outbreak. While what followed was a vast tragedy, he argues
passionately against the 'poets' view', that the war was not worth
winning. It was vital to the freedom of Europe, he says, that the
Kaiser's Germany should be defeated. His narrative of the early
battles will astonish those whose images of the war are simply of
mud, wire, trenches and steel helmets. Hastings describes how the
French Army marched into action amid virgin rural landscapes, in
uniforms of red and blue, led by mounted officers, with flags
flying and bands playing. The bloodiest day of the entire Western
war fell on 22 August 1914, when the French lost 27,000 dead. Four
days later, at Le Cateau the British fought an extraordinary action
against the oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in
history. In October, at terrible cost they held the allied line
against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres.The
author also describes the brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia
and Galicia, where by Christmas the Germans, Austrians, Russians
and Serbs had inflicted on each other three million casualties.
This book offers answers to the huge and fascinating question 'what
happened to Europe in 1914?', through Max Hastings's accustomed
blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts from a multitude of
statesmen and generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers
of seven nations. His narrative pricks myths and offers some
striking and controversial judgements. For a host of readers
gripped by the author's last international best-seller 'All Hell
Let Loose', this will seem a worthy successor.
A companion volume to his bestselling 'Armageddon', Max Hastings'
account of the battle for Japan is a masterful military history.
Featuring the most remarkable cast of commanders the world has ever
seen, the dramatic battle for Japan of 1944-45 was acted out across
the vast stage of Asia: Imphal and Kohima, Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima,
Okinawa and the Soviet assault on Manchuria. In this gripping
narrative, Max Hastings weaves together the complex strands of an
epic war, exploring the military tactics behind some of the most
triumphant and most horrific scenes of the twentieth century. The
result is a masterpiece that balances the story of command
decisions, rivalries and follies with the experiences of soldiers,
sailors and airmen of all sides as only Max Hastings can.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A masterly history of the Dambusters
raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings.
Operation Chastise was one of the most extraordinary episodes of
the Second World War, yet it has also become one of the most
misunderstood. Max Hastings tells the gripping story of the
Dambusters raid, from the invention of the bouncing bomb to the
moonlit cockpits of young pilots flying at treetop height through
lethal enemy fire. But Hastings also challenges what we think we
know about the Dambusters, bringing to light the difficult truths
that have often been left out of the legend. 'Brings it to life as
never before ... Hour by nerve-jangling hour' Daily Mail 'Superb
... The heroes shine, but their achievement haunts' Times 'A
virtuoso performance from a veteran military historian. It is a
white-knuckle narrative that brings clarity and insight to a
much-loved tale, as well as offering a vital corrective to the
drum-thumping conclusions of earlier books' Sunday Times
The Battle for the Falklands is a thoughtful and informed analysis
of an astonishing chapter in modern British history from journalist
and military historian Sir Max Hastings and political editor Simon
Jenkins. Ten weeks. 28,000 soldiers. 8,000 miles from home. The
Falklands War in 1982 was one of the strangest in British history.
At the time, many Britons saw it as a tragic absurdity - thousands
of men sent overseas for a tiny relic of empire - but the British
victory over the Argentinians not only confirmed the quality of
British arms but also boosted the political fortunes of Thatcher's
Conservative government. However, it left a chequered aftermath and
was later overshadowed by the two Gulf wars. Max Hastings' and
Simon Jenkins' account of the conflict is a modern classic of war
reportage and the definitive book on the conflict.
'As gripping as any spy thriller, Hastings's achievement is
especially impressive, for he has produced the best single volume
yet written on the subject' Sunday Times 'Authoritative, exciting
and notably well written' Daily Telegraph 'A serious work of
rigourous and comprehensive history ... royally entertaining and
readable' Mail on Sunday In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a
worldwide cast of characters and extraordinary sagas of
intelligence and Resistance to create a new perspective on the
greatest conflict in history. The book links tales of high courage
ashore, at sea and in the air to the work of the brilliant
'boffins' battling the enemy's technology. Here are not only the
unheralded codebreaking geniuses of Bletchley Park, but also their
German counterparts who achieved their own triumphs and the
fabulous espionage networks created, and so often spurned, by the
Soviet Union. With its stories of high policy and human drama, the
book has been acclaimed as the best history of the secret war ever
written.
'I would choose this account over and above the rest. It is a
fabulous book: full of perceptive insight that conveys all the
tragedy, triumph, humour and intense drama of Churchill's time as
wartime leader; and it is incredibly moving as a result' James
Holland, Literary Review In this vivid biography, #1 bestselling
historian Max Hastings tells the story of how Churchill led a
nation through its darkest hour. A moving, dramatic narrative of
crisis and fortitude, Hastings offers one of the finest biographies
of one of Britain's finest men. When Churchill took power as Prime
Minister in 1940, it was with the unprecedented support of the
nation. People rallied behind their new commander in extraordinary
fashion, but thereafter, as Hastings argues, there came a deep
divide. Churchill was a hero, a dogged worker dedicated to steering
the country through the war. He expected more from the British
people than they were perhaps able to deliver. Taking us on an
intimate, stirring journey through the war years, Hastings tells a
story of triumphs and tragedies. In Churchill, who was to become a
paragon of leadership in tough times, he finds both folly and
nobility. In the British nation as it faced its greatest challenge,
he takes us through moments of both weakness and tremendous
strength. 'One of the best books ever written about Churchill ...
He has drawn on copious original sources and consulted experts
familiar with them, enabling him to cast fresh light on familiar
episodes ... A magnificent performance' Sunday Times 'The book's
portrait of Churchill is scrupulously fair and often deeply moving
... In fact Hastings excels with all his character portraits,
especially with Roosevelt and Stalin. Hastings is truly a master of
strategy and high command' Antony Beevor, Mail on Sunday
Bomber Command is journalist and military historian Sir Max Hastings'
compelling account of one of the most controversial struggles of the
Second World War.
RAF Bomber Command’s offensive against the cities of Germany was one of
the epic campaigns of the Second World War. More than 56,000 British
and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the
RAF’s attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle began in 1939
with a few primitive Whitleys, Hampdens and Wellingtons, and ended six
years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes and Mosquitoes razing
whole cities in a single night.
Max Hastings traced the developments of area bombing using a wealth of
documents, letters, diaries and interviews with key surviving
witnesses. Bomber Command is, in turn, a fascinating,
meticulously-researched, and vivid assessment of the RAF's integral
role in the Second World War.
An exhilarating and uplifting account of the lives of sixteen
'warriors' from the last three centuries, hand-picked for their
bravery or extraordinary military experience by the eminent
military historian, author and ex-editor of the Daily Telegraph,
Sir Max Hastings. Over the course of forty years of writing about
war, Max Hastings has grown fascinated by outstanding deeds of
derring-do on the battlefield (land, sea or air) - and by their
practitioners. He takes as his examples sixteen people from
different nationalities in modern history - including Napoleon's
'blessed fool' Baron Marcellin de Marbot (the model for Conan
Doyle's Brigadier Gerard); Sir Harry Smith, whose Spanish wife
Juana became his military companion on many a campaign in the early
19th-century; Lieutenant John Chard, an unassuming engineer who
became the hero of Rorke's Drift in the Zulu wars; and Squadron
Leader Guy Gibson, the 'dam buster' whose heroism in the skies of
World War II earned him the nation's admiration, but few friends.
Every army, in order to prevail on the battlefield, needs a certain
number of people capable of courage beyond the norm. In this book
Max Hastings investigates what this norm might be - and how it has
changed over the centuries. While celebrating feats of outstanding
valour, he also throws a beady eye over the awarding of medals for
gallantry - and why it is that so often the most successful
warriors rarely make the grade as leaders of men.
The book John Kelly reads every time he gets a promotion to remind
him of 'the perils of hubris, the pitfalls of patriotism and duty
unaccompanied by critical thinking' The most vivid, moving - and
devastating - word-portrait of a World War One British commander
ever written, here re-introduced by Max Hastings. C.S. Forester's
1936 masterpiece follows Lt General Herbert Curzon, who fumbled a
fortuitous early step on the path to glory in the Boer War. 1914
finds him an honourable, decent, brave and wholly unimaginative
colonel. Survival through the early slaughters in which so many
fellow-officers perished then brings him rapid promotion. By 1916,
he is a general in command of 100,000 British soldiers, whom he
leads through the horrors of the Somme and Passchendaele, a
position for which he is entirely unsuited and intellectually
unprepared. Wonderfully human with Forester's droll relish for
human folly on full display, this is the story of a man of his time
who is anything but wicked, yet presides over appalling sacrifice
and tragedy. In his awkwardness and his marriage to a Duke's
unlovely, unhappy daughter, Curzon embodies Forester's full powers
as a storyteller. His half-hero is patriotic, diligent, even
courageous, driven by his sense of duty and refusal to yield to
difficulties. But also powerfully damned is the same spirit which
caused a hundred real-life British generals to serve as high
priests at the bloodiest human sacrifice in the nation's history. A
masterful and insightful study about the perils of hubris and
unquestioning duty in leadership, The General is a fable for our
times.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A masterly history of the Dambusters
raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings.
Operation Chastise, the overnight destruction of the Moehne and
Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAF's 617 Squadron, was an
epic that has passed into Britain's national legend. Max Hastings
grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory
of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who won the VC
leading the raid. In the 21st Century, however, Hastings urges that
we should review the Dambusters in much more complex shades. The
aircrew's heroism was wholly authentic, as was the brilliance of
Barnes Wallis, who invented the 'bouncing bombs'. But commanders
who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war
fantasised wildly. What Germans call the Moehnekatastrophe imposed
on the Nazi war machine temporary disruption, rather than a
crippling blow. Hastings vividly describes the evolution of Wallis'
bomb, and of the squadron which broke the dams at the cost of
devastating losses. But he also portrays in harrowing detail those
swept away by the torrents. Some 1,400 civilians perished in the
biblical floods that swept through the Moehne valley, more than
half of them Russian and Polish women, slave labourers under
Hitler. Ironically, Air Marshal Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris gained
much of the credit, though he opposed Chastise as a distraction
from his city-burning blitz. He also made what the author describes
as the operation's biggest mistake - the failure to launch a
conventional attack on the Nazis' huge post-raid repair operation,
which could have transformed the impact of the dam breaches upon
Ruhr industry. Chastise offers a fascinating retake on legend by a
master of the art. Hastings sets the dams raid in the big picture
of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving
portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes
Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with
superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary
episodes in British history.
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