The Second World War

by David Horner, Robin Havers, Alastair Finlan, Mark J Grove, Philip D. Grove

Overview

Bringing together the work of nine leading historians, and superbly illustrated with contemporary photography and colour maps, The Second World War gives readers a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of history's greatest conflict.

The period from 1939 to 1945 saw some of the most devastating and remarkable events in living memory. Labouring beneath a daily burden of fear, sacrifice, deprivation and uncertainty, soldiers and civilians of all nationalities were driven to extremes of selfless loyalty, dogged determination or bitter cruelty by the demands of a world at war.

This book tells the stories of the men and women who lived and died during the Second World War, from politicians to factory workers, and from High Command to the conscripted men on the front lines. The experience of war is brought to life through a wealth of contemporary documentation, private writings and historical research, whilst the political, military and historical significance of the war is assessed and examined.

From Europe's Western and Eastern Fronts to the war at sea, and from the Pacific to the Mediterranean and North Africa, every fighting front of the Second World War is covered in this truly comprehensive volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472833921
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/20/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	166 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Foreword by Sir Max Hastings and text written by nine eminent historians: Paul Collier, Dr Alastair Finlan, Mark J Grove, Philip D Grove, Dr Russell A. Hart, Dr Stephen A. Hart, Dr Robin Havers, David Horner and Geoffrey Jukes.
David Horner is an emeritus professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian University, Canberra, where he was previously professor of Australian defence history. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, who served as an infantry platoon commander in South Vietnam, Colonel Horner is the author of over thirty books on military history and defence, including High Command (1982) and Blamey: The Commander-in-Chief (1998).
Dr Robin Havers is currently President of the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. Prior to that he served as Director of National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri and as Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He holds degrees from Queen Mary College, University of London, LSE and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He has published a number of articles, and his book, The Changi Prisoner of War Camp: From Myth to History, was published by Curzon Press in 2002. A former Fulbright Visiting Professor at Westminster College, Missouri, he is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society for the Arts.
Alastair Finlan is a Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. He is the author of numerous books on military culture, Special Forces and modern warfare, including Contemporary Military Strategy and the Global War on Terror: US and UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq 2001-2012 (Bloomsbury, 2014).
Mark J Grove has degrees in history from the universities of Cardiff and Aberystwyth, and is now Senior Lecturer in the Department of Strategic Studies and International Affairs, Britannia Royal Naval College, and lectures part time in the Department of Politics, University of Plymouth. He has a particular interest in amphibious warfare and contributed a chapter to Till, Farrell and Grove (eds.) Amphibious Operation (Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, Camberley, 11997). He is currently completing an article on amphibious operations during the Russo-Japanese War, and has started work on a PhD project concerned with Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.
Philip D. Grove BSc(Econ), MSc(Econ), FHEA has taught Strategic Studies at Britannia Royal Naval College since January 1993, becoming Head of Department in March 2004. Upon the academic faculty's transfer to the University of Plymouth in 2008 he became Subject Matter Expert in Strategic Studies. In 2014 he was appointed Head of Maritime Aviation Studies in the new Dartmouth Security&Seapower Centre.

Alongside teaching at BRNC he has taught at various Royal Navy establishments, ships and Fleet Air Arm squadrons. From 1996–2013 he also taught at Plymouth University on modules including Contemporary History, International Relations, Foreign Policy and Maritime Power.

Besides delivering numerous conference and seminar papers he has also published widely on naval matters including the forthcoming From Actium to the Falklands: How Navies Win Wars (Amberley Publishing, 2018); the chapters 'Post Cold War Naval Operations' and 'Naval Manning in the Post Cold War World' in Navies in the 21st Century (Seaforth Publishing, 2016); The Royal Navy: A History Since 1900 with Duncan Redford (I B Tauris, 2014); Turning the Tide: The Battles of Coral Sea and Midway (University of Plymouth,2013); 'The Lofoton and Vaagso Raids', inTristan Lovering ed., A Collected History of Amphibious Operations (Seaforth 2007); 'Falklands Conflict 1982 – The AirWar a New Appraisal', in Stephen Badsey et al., The Falklands Conflict Twenty Years On: Lessons for the Future (Frank Cass, 2005); and The Battle of Midway (Brassey's, 2004).
Paul Collier has lived and worked extensively in England and Australia, where he completed his first degree at Adelaide University. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford. He passed away in 2010.
After leaving Oxford in 1953 Geoffrey Jukes spent 14 years in the UK Ministry of Defence and Foreign and Colonial Office, specializing in Russian/Soviet military history, strategy and arms control. From 1967 to 1993 he was also on the staff of the Australian National University, and until his death in 2010 he was an Associate of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies.
Dr Russell A. Hart is Professor of History and Director of the Diplomacy and Military Studies Program at Hawai'i Pacific University, Honolulu, Hawai'i. He is the author of Clash of Arms (2001) and Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Mythmaker? (2006). He has co-authored nine additional books, including three Osprey titles: The Second World War, Part Six: Northwest Europe, 1944-1945 (2002); The Second World War: A World in Flames (2004) and The Second World War (2018). He lives in Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii.
Dr Stephen A Hart is senior lecturer in the War Studies department, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Prior to this he lectured in the International Studies Department at the University of Surrey, and in the War Studies Department, King's College London. He is the author of Montgomery and the 'Colossal Cracks': The 21st Army Group in Northwest Europe 1944-45 (Praeger, 2000), and has co-authored – with Russell Hart – several popular histories of aspects of the German Army in World War II.
Sir Max Hastings

Military historian and Fleet Street editor (ret'd).

After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London EveningStandard. Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has published twenty-six books and his latest is The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas
1939–1945 (2015). He has received awards both for his books and journalism, the most recent being the Chicago Pritzker Military Library's Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement. He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. He now writes regularly for the Daily Mail and reviews for the Sunday Times and New York Review of Books.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction
Europe: the source of war
War at sea
The Mediterranean Theater
The Pacific War
The Eastern Front
Northwest Europe, 1944–1945

Chronology

Chapter 1: Northwest Europe, 1939–1943
Warring sides
Outbreak: “a solution by force”
The fighting
Portrait of a soldier
The war economy
Occupation, division, and resistance

Chapter 2: War at Sea
Warring sides
Outbreak: the European naval war, 1939–1940
Northern waters, 1940–1944
The Mediterranean Sea
The Indian Ocean
Portrait of a sailor
Shipbuilding
From Operation Neptune to Berlin

Chapter 3: The Mediterranean Theater
Warring sides
Outbreak: a parallel war
The fighting: from the Desert to the Po
Portrait of a soldier

Chapter 4: The Pacific War
Warring sides
Outbreak: Japan's opening moves, 1941
The fighting, January 1942–August 1945
Prisoners of war
A new weapon of war

Chapter 5: The Eastern Front
Warring sides
Outbreak: Barbarossa, June–December 1941
The fighting, 1942–1945

Chapter 6: Northwest Europe, 1944–1945
Warring sides
Outbreak: Overlord, 6 June–30 August 1944
The fighting: from Market-Garden to VE-Day
Portrait of a soldier

Aftermath
A shattered Germany
The new superpowers
Counting the cost
A catalyst for change

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

...a worthy edition for history novices.” —Cybermodeler Online

From the Publisher