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1939: Countdown to War

1939: Countdown to War

by RichardOvery (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2009

    $3.42
Synopsis

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. And the West must try to stop him. If they don't, world war will result. In this dramatic account of the last days of peace in 1939, Richard Overy re-creates hour by hour the unfolding story in the capitals of Europe as politicians and the public braced themselves for a war that they feared might spell the end of European civilisation. There was nothing entirely predictable or inevitable about the outcome. The West hoped that Hitler would see sense if they stood firm. Hitler was convinced the West would back down. There were moments of hesitation and moments of confrontation; secret intelligence was used by both sides to support their hopes. The one constant feature was the determination of Poland, a country created only in 1919, to fight a war that seemed entirely irrational, against the armed might of Germany. "Countdown to War" brings to life a defining moment in the history of the violent twentieth century.

$3.42

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Quantity

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 176
 Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 27 Aug 2009
ISBN 10: 1846142644
ISBN 13: 9781846142642

Media Reviews
Overy is one of the great historians of the second world war -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *
This country's most distinguished historian of the Second World War ... Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into the death and destruction that were Hitler's element -- Michael Burleigh * Evening Standard *
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 RichardOvery's book -- Simon Heffer * Literary Review *
One of the great historians of this conflict -- Simon Garfield * Observer *
Author Bio
Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of more than twenty books on the era of the two World Wars, including Why the Allies Won, Russia's War and more recently The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, which won the Wolfson Prize in 2005. His latest book, The Morbid Age: Britain between the Wars, was published in 2009.