Booktopia Comments: An awesome gift for anyone with an interest in World War II. Quite a thick and well put together hardcover book that will be well received by any one interested in World History. There are a few pages with photos. Highly recommended and absolutely great value at this price.
The series of events that marked the opening of the Second World War left most of the world in a state of shock. Suddenly it seemed almost anythiing was possible. For the agressors there was no limit to what they could do; for their victims a new Dark Age seemed to beckon.
Within this hurricane of events, small groups of individuals were faced with a huge range of decisions on which triumph or extinction could turn.
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.
Copious notes, bibliography and fully indexed.
London, Spring 1940
Berlin, Summer and Autumn 1940
Tokyo, Summer and Autumn 1940
Rome, Summer and Autumn 1940
Washington, DC, Summer 1940 - Spring 1941
Moscow, Spring - Summer 1941
Washington, DC, Summer 1940 - Autumn 1941
Tokyo, Autumn 1941
Berlin, Autumn 1941
Berlin/East Prussia, Summer - Autumn 1941
ISBN: 9780713997125
ISBN-10: 0713997125
Number Of Pages: 624
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Format:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Dimensions (cm): 23.000 x 15.200
Audience:
General
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