Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II

by LENDEIGHTON (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1995

  $3.25

  By 1942, the civilised world had been brought to the brink of ruin. It had taken the Axis powers less than three years to command the high seas in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, to lay waste most of Europe and enslave millions in Asia, to drive deep into Stalin's Soviet empire and come within an ace of controlling the oilfields in the Middle East. At the height of their power the European dictators and the Japanese military autocracy ruled ruthlessly almost half the world. Standing alone, the British were bankrupt and the United States only driven from isolation by the humiliation at Pearl Harbour. Before the tide fully turned in 1943, millions had been put to death, the machinery of the holocaust was in place and nuclear devastation well on the way to become a reality. Yet, Deighton warns, fifty years on the lessons of the Second World War continue to reverberate unheeded. Racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, recession, trade wars and the widening gap between the world's rich and poor promise economic migration on a frightening scale. The dangers of today are seen all too clearly in this account of a recent time when humanity was consumed by violence and destruction.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $10.53

  By 1942 the civilised world had been brought to the brink of ruin. It had taken the Axis powers less than three years to command the high seas in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, to lay waste most of Europe and enslave millions in Asia, to drive deep into Stalin's Soviet empire and come within an ace of controlling the oilfields in the Middle East. At the height of their power the European dictators and the Japanese military autocracy ruled ruthlessly almost half the world. Standing alone, the British were bankrupt and the United States only driven from isolation by the humiliation at Pearl Harbour. Before the tide fully turned in 1943, millions had been put to death, the machinery of the holocaust was in place and nuclear devastation well on the way to become a reality. Yet, Deighton warns, fifty years on the lessons of the Second World War continue to reverberate unheeded. Racial hatred, ethnic cleansing, recession, trade wars and the widening gap between the world's rich and poor promise economic migration on a frightening scale. The dangers of today are seen all too clearly in this account of a recent time when humanity was consumed by violence and destruction.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.25

  This study sets the drama of war on a world stage, and examines why, 50 years on, the lessons of World War II - when humanity was consumed by violence and destruction - still reverberate unheeded. Beginning with the political and industrial roots in the Great War of 1914-1918, Deighton unfolds the advance of the Axis powers from the Battle of the Atlantic to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. By 1942, the civilized world was brought to the brink of ruin. Yet now again racial hatred rears its head, turmoil continues over Middle-Eastern oil, Britain neglects education and its industrial base, and recession threatens new trade wars and economic migration on a fightening scale. Len Deighton is the author of Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain , The Battle of Britain and Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk . He is also the author of the spy novels, The Ipcress File and Game, Set and Match .