The Mediterranean And Middle East British Fortunes Reach Their Lowest Ebb Sept 1941 To Sept 1942

Author : Ian Stanley Ord Playfair,F.C. Flynn,C. J. C. Molony
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 686 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2004-09-01
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : 184574067X

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The Mediterranean and Middle East: British fortunes reach their lowest ebb (Sept. 1941 to Sept. 1942) by Ian Stanley Ord Playfair,F.C. Flynn,C. J. C. Molony Pdf

This, the third of eight volumes in the 18-volume official British History of the Second World War, dealing with the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres, describes the nadir of British fortunes in the region. Covering the year from September 1941 to September 1942, the book opens with the latest round in the ding-dong battle in North Africa with Operation Crusader , Britain s bid to relieve the besieged port of Tobruk and chase Rommel from the western desert. The authors emphasise how Britain was hampered by obsolescent equpiment such as the Crusader tank. Despite this, British, Australian and South African forces relieved Tobruk and entered Benghazi on Christmas Day 1941 - only to evacuate it after Rommel s swift recovery the following month. At sea, the Royal Navy suffered serious blows with the loss of Ark Royal and Barham and a daring Italian human torpedo attack on British ships in Alexandria harbour. Axis air attacks on Malta and convoys supplying it reached their peak in April, and the island was awarded the George Cross for its gallant defence. Rommel counter-attacked in the desert in May, defeating the Eighth Army at Gazala, and on June 21st Tobruk was lost. But the Axis attempt to take Cairo was stalled at the battle of Alam el Halfa, and after General Auchinleck was replaced by General Montgomery, the Allies prepared to go back on the offensive. With 11 appendices, 40 maps and diagrams and 40 photographs.

Author : Ian Stanley Ord Playfair,F. C. Flynn
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 482 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1960
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:186545904

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The Mediterranean and Middle East by Ian Stanley Ord Playfair,F. C. Flynn Pdf

Author : Ian Stanley Ord Playfair
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 584 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1960
Category : World War, 1939-1945
ISBN : PSU:000002323961

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The Mediterranean and Middle East: British fortunes reach their lowest (Sept. 1941 to Sept. 1941) by Ian Stanley Ord Playfair Pdf

Author : I S O Playfair,Sir James Butler (Ed Staff
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 686 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2006-10-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1847344283

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Mediterranean and Middle East by I S O Playfair,Sir James Butler (Ed Staff Pdf

Author : Taylor Downing
Publisher : Little, Brown Book Group
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2022-01-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9781408713693

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1942: Britain at the Brink by Taylor Downing Pdf

'Taylor Downing vividly brings to life a terrible year' Max Hastings Sunday Times Eighty years ago, Britain stood at the brink of defeat. In 1942, a string of military disasters engulfed Britain in rapid succession : the collapse in Malaya; the biggest surrender in British history at Singapore; the passing of three large German warships through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight; the longest ever retreat through Burma to the gates of India; serious losses to Rommel's forces in North Africa; the siege of Malta and the surrender at Tobruk. All of this occurred against the backdrop of catastrophic sinkings in the Atlantic and the Arctic convoys. People began to claim that Churchill was not up to the job and his leadership was failing badly. Public morale reached a new low. 1942 Britain At the Brink explores the story of frustration and despair in that year prompting the Prime Minister to demand of his army chief 'Have you not got a single general who can win battles?' Using new archival material, historian Taylor Downing shows just how unpopular Churchill became in 1942 with two votes attacking his leadership in the Commons and the emergence of a serious political rival. Most people think that Britain's worst moment of the war was in 1940 when the nation stood up against the threat of German invasion. In 1942 Britain at the Brink, Taylor Downing describes in nail-biting detail what was really Britain's darkest hour .

Author : Daniel Todman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 993 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190658502

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Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 by Daniel Todman Pdf

The second volume of Daniel Todman's account of Great Britain and World War II The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947, begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history: the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese. As in the first volume of Todman's epic account of British involvement in World War II ("Total history at its best," according to Jay Winter), he highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing on its inhabitants, its defenders, and its wartime leadership. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the full impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its ascendant stewardship of the war. Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world.

Author : Major-General I. S. O. Playfair
Publisher : Naval & Military Press
Page : 584 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-02-09
Category : History
ISBN : 1783318163

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MEDITERRANEAN AND MIDDLE EAST VOLUME III (September 1941 to September 1942) British Fortunes Reach Their Lowest Ebb. HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: by Major-General I. S. O. Playfair Pdf

This, the third of eight volumes in the 18-volume official British History of the Second World War, dealing with the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres, describes the nadir of British fortunes in the region. Covering the year from September 1941 to September 1942, the book opens with the latest round in the ding-dong battle in North Africa with 'Operation Crusader', Britain's bid to relieve the besieged port of Tobruk and chase Rommel from the western desert. The authors emphasise how Britain was hampered by obsolescent equipment such as the Crusader tank. Despite this, British, Australian and South African forces relieved Tobruk and entered Benghazi on Christmas Day 1941 - only to evacuate it after Rommel's swift recovery the following month. At sea, the Royal Navy suffered serious blows with the loss of 'Ark Royal' and 'Barham' and a daring Italian 'human torpedo' attack on British ships in Alexandria harbour. Axis air attacks on Malta and convoys supplying it reached their peak in April, and the island was awarded the George Cross for its gallant defence. Rommel counter-attacked in the desert in May, defeating the Eighth Army at Gazala, and on June 21st Tobruk was lost. But the Axis attempt to take Cairo was stalled at the battle of Alam el Halfa and, after General Auchinleck was replaced by General Montgomery, the Allies prepared to go back on the offensive. With 11 appendices, 40 maps and diagrams and 40 photographs.

Author : Vincent O'Hara
Publisher : Naval Institute Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2009-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781612514086

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Struggle for the Middle Sea by Vincent O'Hara Pdf

The Mediterranean is the maritime crossroads where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet. More major naval actions were fought there than in the Atlantic or Pacific yet remarkably little has been written about the subject. Th is fresh study of the Mediterranean’s naval war analyzes the actions and performances of the five major navies—British, Italian, French, German, and American—during the entire five-year campaign and examines the national imperatives that drove each nation’s maritime strategy. Struggle for the Middle Sea provides a history of the entire campaign from all perspectives and covers Germany’s largely unknown—and remarkably successful—struggle to employ sea power in the Mediterranean after the Italian armistice. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy (August 2009) has called it “a new and stunningly important view of World War II” and “a fabulously readable and important book.”

Author : Horst Boog
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 1352 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1990
Category : History
ISBN : 9780198228882

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Germany and the Second World War by Horst Boog Pdf

Unparalleled in scope and depth, Germany and the Second World War is a magisterial ten-volume history series that will prove indispensable to historians of the twentieth century. This volume examines the transformation of a European war into a global conflict during the period from 1941-1943. It focuses on the politics, strategy, and operations of the belligerent powers as Germany lost the initiative to the Allies, and it spans both the climax and turning points of the war. Its detailed analysis is supplemented by numerous maps, diagrams, and tables.

Author : Vincent P. O'Hara
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 404 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2012-11-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780253006059

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In Passage Perilous by Vincent P. O'Hara Pdf

An invaluable account of one of the most overlooked sea battles of World War II. By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria. Just two of seventeen merchant ships that set out for Malta reached their destination. In Passage Perilous presents a detailed description of the operations and assesses the actual impact Malta had on the fight to deny supplies to Rommel’s army in North Africa. The book’s discussion of the battle’s operational aspects highlights the complex relationships between air and naval power and the influence of geography on littoral operations. “An important and highly recommended addition to the literature on World War II in the Mediterranean.” —IPP Naval Maritime History

Author : Robert S. Ehlers, Jr.
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780700620753

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The Mediterranean Air War by Robert S. Ehlers, Jr. Pdf

Without what the Allies learned in the Mediterranean air war in 1942–1944, the Normandy landings—and so, perhaps, the Second World War II—would have ended differently. This is one of many lessons of The Mediterranean Air War, the first one-volume history of the vital role of airpower during the three-year struggle for control of the Mediterranean Basin in World War II—and of its significance for the Allied successes in the war's last two years. Airpower historian Robert S. Ehlers opens his account with an assessment of the pre-war Mediterranean theater, highlighting the ways in which the players' strategic choices, strengths, and shortcomings set the stage for and ultimately shaped the air campaigns over the Middle Sea. Beginning with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, Ehlers reprises the developing international crisis—initially between Britain and Italy, and finally encompassing France, Germany, the US, other members of the British Commonwealth, and the Balkan countries. He then explores the Mediterranean air war in detail, with close attention to turning points, joint and combined operations, and the campaign's contribution to the larger Allied effort. In particular, his analysis shows how and why the success of Allied airpower in the Mediterranean laid the groundwork for combined-arms victories in the Middle East, the Indian Ocean area, North Africa, and the Atlantic, northwest Europe. Of grand-strategic importance from the days of Ancient Rome to the Great-Power rivalries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Middle Sea was no less crucial to the Allied forces and their foes. Here, in the successful offensives in North Africa in 1942 and 1943, the US and the British learned to conduct a coalition air and combined-arms war. Here, in Sicily and Italy in 1943 and 1944, the Allies mastered the logistics of providing air support for huge naval landings and opened a vital second aerial front against the Third Reich, bombing critical oil and transportation targets with great effectiveness. The first full examination of the Mediterranean theater in these critical roles—as a strategic and tactical testing ground for the Allies and as a vital theater of operations in its own right—The Mediterranean Air War fills in a long-missing but vital dimension of the history of World War II.

Author : Michael Handel
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2013-09-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9781135179342

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Intelligence and Military Operations by Michael Handel Pdf

Traditionally the military community held the intelligence profession in low esteem, spying was seen as dirty work and information was all to often ignored if it conflicted with a commander's own view. Handel examines the ways in which this situation has improved and argues that co-operation between the intelligence adviser and the military decision maker is vital.

Author : Gershom Gorenberg
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 475 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2021-01-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9781610396288

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War of Shadows by Gershom Gorenberg Pdf

In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.

Author : Adrian Stewart
Publisher : Casemate Publishers
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2015-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781473873926

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February 1942 by Adrian Stewart Pdf

As the saying goes 'it is darkest before the dawn' and so it was for Churchill and the British people during the Second World War.During February 1942, bad news of disasters came in an unbroken and seemingly endless sequence from the Far East to the Home Front. Some such as the Fall of Singapore and the Royal Navy's humiliation over the escape of the Scharhnhorst and Gneisenau are well known but always worth re-telling. Others less written about such as the challenge to Churchill at home, heavily strained relations with Commonwealth allies, the Japanese raid on Darwin and Rommel's return in North Africa were equally serious and full of foreboding for the future outcome of the War.February 1942 was in retrospect, the month in which many long-established beliefs were destroyed for ever. It was the month that confirmed that Britain no longer ruled the waves; that saw British prestige so damaged that it could never be fully restored; that foreshadowed and ensured the end of Britain's Empire; that demonstrated the immense strain that could be put on Britain's relations with the Commonwealth's self-governing Dominions. In short it was the month that changed Britain's world.It was also the month at the end of which Britain seemed likely to lose the War. Happily, this did not prove the case so perhaps February 1942 further shows that a country can receive terrible blows but still survive and endure.

Author : Spencer C. Tucker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 4723 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2016-09-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9798216168836

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World War II [5 volumes] by Spencer C. Tucker Pdf

With more than 1,700 cross-referenced entries covering every aspect of World War II, the events and developments of the era, and myriad related subjects as well as a documents volume, this is the most comprehensive reference work available on the war. This encyclopedia represents a single source of authoritative information on World War II that provides accessible coverage of the causes, course, and consequences of the war. Its introductory overview essays and cross-referenced A–Z entries explain how various sources of friction culminated in a second worldwide conflict, document the events of the war and why individual battles were won and lost, and identify numerous ways the war has permanently changed the world. The coverage addresses the individuals, campaigns, battles, key weapons systems, strategic decisions, and technological developments of the conflict, as well as the diplomatic, economic, and cultural aspects of World War II. The five-volume set provides comprehensive information that gives readers insight into the reasons for the war's direction and outcome. Readers will understand the motivations behind Japan's decision to attack the United States, appreciate how the concentration of German military resources on the Eastern Front affected the war's outcome, understand the major strategic decisions of the war and the factors behind them, grasp how the Second Sino-Japanese War contributed to the start of World War II, and see the direct impact of new military technology on the outcomes of the battles during the conflict. The lengthy documents volume represents a valuable repository of additional information for student research.