Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941

by IanKershaw (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $4.20

  The history of the Second World War, with its horrible twists and turns, is so well known that the major events and their outcomes have taken on a sort of inevitability. It has become, in effect, a tragedy with each leader and each country playing an assigned part. Ian Kershaw's extraordinarily thought-provoking and gripping new book, Fateful Choices , demolishes any such sense of inevitability. He examines closely eleven episodes at the heart of the War where there was an immense range of options open to planners and decision-makers. From declarations of war down to operational priorities, choices were made that could have resulted in an almost unrecognisably different conflict. Other viewpoints were passionately and articulately argued by powerful, ruthless advocates. In no case was the decision that prevailed to any degree foreordained. Kershaw, not least through his immense work on the career of Adolf Hitler, has spent many years thinking about the contingent nature of history. Fateful Choices dramatizes brilliantly and distressingly events that between them could have resulted in disaster or victory - either for the Allies or for the Axis.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.26

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $17.04

  Ian Kershaw's Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-41 offers a penetrating insight into a series of momentous political decisions that shaped the course of the Second World War. The hurricane of events that marked the opening of the Second World War meant that anything could happen. For the aggressors there was no limit to their ambitions; for their victims a new Dark Age beckoned. Over the next few months their fates would be determined. In Fateful Choices Ian Kershaw re-creates the ten critical decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain chose not to surrender, and December 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe's Jews, showing how these choices would recast the entire course of history. Powerfully argued ...important ...this book actually alters our perspective of the Second World War . (Andrew Roberts). This fascinating, closely-argued book adds to our understanding of a terrible war . (Alan Massie). A compelling re-examination of the conflict...Kershaw displays here those same qualities of scholarly rigour, careful argument and sound judgement that he brought to bear so successfully in his life of Hitler . (Richard Overy). A splendidly lucid and impeccably argued exposition of the greatest political decisions of the Second World War . (Max Hastings). How fortunate that it is Ian Kershaw bringing his immense knowledge and clarity of thought to the task ...brilliantly explained ...an immensely wise book . (Anthony Beevor). Ian Kershaw (b. 1943) was Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield from 1989-2008, and is one of the world's leading authorities on Hitler. His books include The 'Hitler Myth' , his two volume biography Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis , and Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940-1941 . He was knighted in 2002.