1939: Countdown to War

by RichardOvery (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $12.31

  Richard Overy's 1939: Countdown to War re-creates hour-by-hour the last desperate attempts to salvage peace before the outbreak of World War Two. 24 August 1939: The fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Hitler has ambitions to invade Poland and hopes Stalin will now help him. The West must try to stop him. Nothing was predictable or inevitable. The West hoped that Hitler would see sense if they stood firm. Hitler was convinced the West would back down. And both sides acted knowing that they risked being plunged into a war that might spell the end the end of European civilization. A gripping analysis of the final days of peace...indispensable . (M. R. D. Foot, The Times ). Nail-biting...with rare narrative verve, he documents the ultimatums, emissaries, letters and increasingly desperate proposals that shuttled across Europe in the countdown to war . (Ian Thomson, Independent ). Even those who think they know it all about how war broke out will learn something from Richard Overy's book . (Simon Heffer, Literary Review ). One of the great historians of this conflict . (Simon Garfield, Observer ). A brilliantly executed extended essay that reads like a tense political thriller . ( Sunday Telegraph ). Richard Overy has spent much of his distinguished career studying the intellectual, social and military ideas that shaped the cataclysm of the Second World War, particularly in his books 1939 - Countdown to War , Why the Allies Won , Russia's War and The Morbid Age . Overy's The Dictators: Hitler's Germany , Stalin's Russia won the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hessell Tiltman Prize.

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.28

• New

  Paperback
  2005

  $45.36

  Originally published in 1980 and still the best one-volume aerial history of World War II, Richard Overy's classic work remains profound and highly origi-nal. Far from just an account of the various air battles, Professor Overy treats the air war as a complex and fascinating historical web, woven out of grand strategy, economic mobilization, the recruitment of science, and the nature of leadership and training. Analyzing the achievements and failures of the aerial component of the war, he places it in perspective by explaining the role aviation played in the overall conflict. He points out that while the Axis powers tended to limit their use of air power to one major role, such as support of ground forces, the Allies exploited all aspects of aerial doctrine: air defense, strategic bombardment, air-naval cooperation, and ground support. He also demonstrates how aircraft ensured that the Second World War became a people's war and how success in the air war was, in a very real sense, a test of a nation's modernity. The air war was won and lost not only in the skies but also in the factories and the research institutes. Finally, the author dispels many popular myths and in particular reveals that although air power in the form of strategic bombing by itself did not deter-mine the war's final outcome, its use dramatically illustrated the complexities of managing modern war. Richard Overy's The Air War thus deepens our under-standing not only of World War II but of military history in general.