Cabinet S Finest Hour

Author : David Owen
Publisher : Haus Publishing
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781910376591

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Cabinet's Finest Hour by David Owen Pdf

In May 1940, the British War Cabinet debated over the course of nine meetings a simple question: Should Britain fight on in the face of overwhelming odds, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives, or seek a negotiated peace? Using Cabinet papers from the United Kingdom’s National Archives, David Owen illuminates in fascinating detail this little-known, yet pivotal, chapter in the history of World War II. Eight months into the war, defeat seemed to many a certainty. With the United States still a year and half away from entering, Britain found itself in a perilous position, and foreign secretary Lord Halifax pushed prime minister Winston Churchill to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace with Hitler, using Mussolini as a conduit. Speaking for England is the story of Churchill’s triumph in the face of this pressure, but it is also about how collective debate and discussion won the day—had Churchill been alone, Owen argues, he would almost certainly have lost to Halifax, changing the course of history. Instead, the Cabinet system, all too often disparaged as messy and cumbersome, worked in Britain’s interests and ensured that a democracy on the brink of defeat had the courage to fight on.

Author : Martin Gilbert
Publisher : Rosetta Books
Page : 1031 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2015-04-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780795344633

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Winston S. Churchill: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 by Martin Gilbert Pdf

The sixth volume in the official biography: “A milestone, a monument, a magisterial achievement” (Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War). Starting with the outbreak of war in September 1939 and ending with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, this volume in the epic biography of Winston S. Churchill draws on remarkably diverse material: from the War Cabinet and other government records to Churchill’s own archive and diaries and letters of his private secretariat to the recollections of those who worked most closely with him. On the day Hitler invaded Poland, Churchill, aged sixty-four, had been out of office for ten years. Two days later, he became First Lord of the Admiralty, in charge of British naval policy and at the center of war direction. In May 1940 he became prime minister, leading his nation during a time of grave danger and setbacks. His first year and a half as prime minister included the Dunkirk evacuation, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the Battle of the Atlantic, the struggle in the Western Desert, and Hitler’s invasion of Russia. By the end of 1940, Britain under Churchill’s leadership had survived the onslaught and was making plans to continue the war against an enemy of unlimited ambition and ferocious will. One of Churchill’s inner circle said: “We who worked with Churchill every day of the war still saw at most a quarter of his daily tasks and worries.” Martin Gilbert has pieced together the whole, setting in context much hitherto scattered and secret evidence, in order to give an intimate and fascinating account of the architect of Britain’s “finest hour.” “The most scholarly study of Churchill in war and peace ever written.” —Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times

Author : Winston S. Churchill
Publisher : RosettaBooks
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2010-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780795311468

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Their Finest Hour by Winston S. Churchill Pdf

The second volume in the WWII history “written with simplicity, lucidity, and gusto” by the legendary leader and Nobel Prize winner (The New York Times). In Their Finest Hour, Winston Churchill describes the invasion of France and a growing sense of dismay in Britain. Should Britain meet France’s desperate pleas for reinforcements or conserve their resources in preparation for the inevitable German assault? In the book’s second half, entitled simply “Alone,” Churchill discusses Great Britain’s position as the last stronghold against German conquest: the battle for control of the skies over Britain, diplomatic efforts to draw the United States into the war, and the spreading global conflict. Their Finest Hour is part of the epic six-volume account of World War II told from the viewpoint of a man who led in the fight against tyranny, and enriched with extensive primary sources including memos, letters, orders, speeches, and telegrams, day-by-day accounts of reactions as the drama intensifies. Throughout these volumes, we listen as strategies and counterstrategies unfold in response to Hitler’s conquest of Europe, planned invasion of England, and assault on Russia, in a mesmerizing account of the crucial decisions made as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Author : Winston Churchill
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Page : 724 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 1948
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0395410568

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Their Finest Hour by Winston Churchill Pdf

Covers the problems confronted by Churchill as he becomes Prime Minister, the Battle of France, the story of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, and the rebuilding of England's Army.

Author : Steven Fielding,Bill Schwarz,Richard Toye
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2020-08-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780192599001

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The Churchill Myths by Steven Fielding,Bill Schwarz,Richard Toye Pdf

This is not a book about Winston Churchill. It is not principally about his politics, nor his rhetorical imagination, nor even about the man himself. Instead, it addresses the varied afterlives of the man and the persistent, deeply located compulsion to bring him back from the dead, capturing and explaining the significance of the various Churchill myths to Britain's history and current politics. The authors look at Churchill's portrayal in social memory. They demonstrate the ways in which politicians have often used the idea of Churchill as a means of self-validation - using him to show themselves as tough and honest players. They show the man dramatized in film and television - an onscreen persona that is often the product of a gratuitous mixing of fact and fantasy, one deliberately shaped to meet the preferences of the presumed audience. They discuss his legacy in light of the Brexit debate - showing how public figures on both sides of the Leave/Remain debate were able to use elements of Churchill's words and character to argue for their own point-of-view.

Author : Tim Clayton,Philip R. Craig
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2002-02-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9780684869315

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Finest Hour by Tim Clayton,Philip R. Craig Pdf

This book recreates the tensions and uncertainties of the events of 1940.

Author : Winston Churchill
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 716 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1948
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : UOM:39015003489880

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The Second World War: Their finest hour by Winston Churchill Pdf

Author : Winston Churchill
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 716 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1948
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : UCSD:31822005644075

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The Second World War: Their finest hour (1949) by Winston Churchill Pdf

Author : Martin Gilbert
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 1356 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Great Britain
ISBN : NWU:35556019504216

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Finest Hour by Martin Gilbert Pdf

Author : John T. LaSaine, Jr.
Publisher : University Press of New England
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2018-05-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781611689389

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Air Officer Commanding by John T. LaSaine, Jr. Pdf

Hugh Dowding may be described as the prime architect of British victory in the battle of Britain, and thus as one of a handful of officers and men most responsible for ensuring that Hitler's planned invasion of England never occurred. Dowding was born in 1882 at the apex of British imperial power and had an early career as a gunner on the fabled North-West Frontier of the British Indian Empire. During the first year of World War I, he served with distinction as a combat pilot in France, but his real test would come in 1936, when he was assigned the critical task of reorganizing the Air Defense of Great Britain as the first air officer commanding-in-chief of the new RAF Fighter Command. In that capacity he stood up to senior staff--and Winston Churchill--by preventing the dismantling of British air defenses during the Battle of France in the spring of 1940, defying pressure from the British Army, Britain's French allies, and His Majesty's Government to send the bulk of the RAF's front-line fighters to the Continent in what Dowding predicted would be a futile effort to stem the German onslaught. While holding back as many of his best fighter aircraft as he could, in June Dowding deployed 11 Group under his hand-picked lieutenant, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, to repulse the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, covering the evacuation of some 338,000 British and French troops from the Continent. During the three months of fighting known as the Battle of Britain, the integrated air defense system organized and trained by Dowding fought the vaunted Luftwaffe to a standstill in daylight air-to-air combat. In October, the Germans abandoned their attempt to win a decisive battle for air superiority over England, turning instead to the protracted campaign of attrition by nighttime area bombing known as the Blitz. In building, defending, and overseeing the operations of Fighter Command, Dowding was thus not only one of the master builders of air power, but also the only airman to have been the winning commander in one of history's decisive battles.

Author : Dr. Christopher C. Harmon
Publisher : Pickle Partners Publishing
Page : 40 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2014-08-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781782897293

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'Are We Beasts' Churchill And The Moral Question Of World War II 'Area Bombing' by Dr. Christopher C. Harmon Pdf

This historical reassessment of the World War II British bombing campaign notes that though in 1940 Churchill declared that he was waging “a military and not a civilian war” to destroy “military objectives” and not “women and children,” within eighteen months both types of targets would be struck by Bomber Command. The author searches for the reasons in “three contiguous realms” of strategic influence: moral (and legal), political, and military. The study concludes that although for much of the war “area bombing” of cities was a “tragic necessity” meeting the ‘reasonable man’s’ standard of what was decently allowable given the blunt weapons the Allies had” and the evils they faced, nonetheless Allied leaders could have and should have abandoned indiscriminate bombing in the last phases of the conflict, when more precise means were at hand and “Nazi power had been overmatched.”

Author : Richard M. Langworth
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781476628783

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality by Richard M. Langworth Pdf

Winston Churchill, indispensable when liberty was in peril, died in 1965. Yet he is still accused of numerous sins, from alcoholism and racism to misogyny and warmongering. On the Internet, he simmers in a stew of imagined misdeeds--using poison gas, firebombing Dresden, causing the Bengal famine, and so on. Drawing on the author's fifty years of research and writing on Churchill, this book uncovers scores of myths surrounding him--the popular and the obscure--to reveal what he really said and did about many issues. Churchill had two personas--one that thought deeply about the nature of humanity, and one that helped solve seemingly intractable problems. In his many decades in public life, he made mistakes, but his faults were well eclipsed by his virtues.

Author : Robin Prior
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 839 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300233407

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Conquer We Must by Robin Prior Pdf

A major new account of Britain's military strategy between 1914-1945, including the two world wars and everything between The First and Second World Wars were separated by a mere two decades, making the period 1914-1945 an unprecedentedly intense and violent era of history. But how did Britain develop its complex military strategy during these wars, and how were decisions made by those at the top? Robin Prior examines the influence politicians had on military operations, in the first history to assess both world wars together. Drawing uniquely on both military and political archives and previously unexamined sources Prior explores the fraught relationships between civilian and military leaders: from Lloyd George's remarkably interventionist stance on military tactics during the First World War to Churchill's near-constant arguments with American leaders during the Second. Conquer We Must tells the complex story of this military decision-making, revealing how politicians attempted to control strategy--but had little influence on how the army, navy, and air force actually fought.

Author : Paul Addison
Publisher : Faber & Faber
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-01-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780571296408

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Churchill on the Home Front, 1900–1955 by Paul Addison Pdf

'The best one-volume study of Churchill yet available.' David Cannadine, Observer 'Magisterial.' Vernon Bogdanor, New Statesman 'A tour de force... A masterly chronicle of Churchill as a domestic figure rather than as the bulldog wartime leader, and one of the most subtle portraits of him as a politician. Addison revises the view of Churchill as uninterested and out of his depth in domestic affairs, painting instead a nuanced picture of a canny parliamentarian. Churchill changed parties twice but managed to accomplish the change, writes Addison, 'with exceptional dexterity', making it appear as if he were maintaining his principles while the parties changed theirs... Addison's most interesting assertion is that the rise of Hitler saved Churchill from drifting into right-wing irrelevance. Most impressively, Addison doesn't settle for easy classifications, admitting that 'Churchill... is a man of whom almost everything that can be said is true in part.'' Kirkus Review

Author : Lewis E. Lehrman
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780811765473

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Churchill, Roosevelt & Company by Lewis E. Lehrman Pdf

During World War II the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain cemented the alliance that won the war. But the ultimate victory of that partnership has obscured many of the conflicts behind Franklin Roosevelt’s grins and Winston Churchill’s victory signs, the clashes of principles and especially personalities between and within the two nations. Synthesizing an impressive variety of sources from memoirs and letters to histories and biographies, Lewis Lehrman explains how the Anglo-American alliance worked--and occasionally did not work--by presenting portraits and case studies of the men who worked the back channels and back rooms, the secretaries and under secretaries, ambassadors and ministers, responsible for carrying out Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s agendas while also pursuing their own and thwarting others’. This was the domain of Joseph Kennedy, American ambassador to England often at odds with his boss; spymasters William Donovan and William Stephenson; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, whom FDR frequently bypassed in favor of Under Secretary Sumner Welles; British ambassadors Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax; and, above them all, Roosevelt and Churchill, who had the difficult task, not always well performed, of managing their subordinates and who frequently chose to conduct foreign policy directly between themselves. Scrupulous in its research and fair in its judgments, Lehrman’s book reveals the personal diplomacy at the core of the Anglo-American alliance.