Читать онлайн «Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II»

William Collins

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London SE1 9GF

First published by William Collins in 2014

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1993

Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2014

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Cover design: Antoni Deighton

Cover illustration: Gunther Prien’s U-47 (U-Boot Type VIIB built by Germaniaweft Krupp in 1938); cover photograph shows four WRNS with Webley revolvers practising at the pistol range © Imperial War Museum Archive

Source ISBN: 9780007531172

Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007549498

Version: 2017-03-15

To your children, and ours

‘Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valour our only shield.

Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, 8 October 1940

CONTENTS

Cover Designer’s Note

Illustrations

Introduction

PART ONE: The Battle of the Atlantic

1 Britannia Rules The Waves

2 Days of Wine and Roses

3 Exchanges of Secrets

4 Science Goes to Sea

5 War on the Cathode Tube

PART TWO: Hitler Conquers Europe

6 Germany: Unrecognized Power

7 Passchendaele and After

8 France in the Prewar Years

9 An Anti-Hitler Coalition?

10 German Arms Outstretched

11 Retreat

PART THREE: The Mediterranean War

12 The War Moves South

13 A Tactician’s Paradise

14 Double Defeat: Greece and Cyrenaica

15 Two Side-Shows

16 Quartermaster’s Nightmare

PART FOUR: The War in the Air

17 The Wars Before the War

18 Preparations

19 The Bullets Are Flying

20 Hours of Darkness

21 The Beginning of the End

PART FIVE: Barbarossa: The Attack on Russia

22 Fighting in Peacetime

23 The Longest Day of the Year

24 ‘A War of Annihilation’

25 The Last Chance

26 The War for Oil

PART SIX: Japan Goes to War