Chronicle of the Second World War

4.7/5 ( ratings)

Some of Britain's most senior military chiefs have combined with other renowned war experts and award-winning journalists to produce the most lively and definitive popular history of the Second World War. The book is not confined to the news as it was reported at the time, with the inevitable distortions caused by censorship and official secrecy: it draws upon all the information now available about the war - the code-breaking, espionage, commando raids, top-level military and political wrangling, developments in weaponry and the horrors of the Holocaust - which often remained classified as top secret for years after the war. All the great, world-shattering events are here: the Blitzkrieg through Poland and later into France, Churchill's "finest hour", the Battle of Britain, El Alamein, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, D-Day, the fall of Berlin and Hiroshima. But Chronicle of the Second World War never forgets what life was like for ordinary people, whether in the battle zones or on the home front. From the miseries of ration queues and austerity clothing to the delights of ITMA and Glenn Miller, Chronicle aims not just to report the events of the war but to enable readers to feel what it was like to live through those years. As with all Chronicle books, the events are reported as though they had just happened, recapturing all the drama and immediacy of the war. Lavishly illustrated with photographs throughout plus some 175 specially-commissioned maps and diagrams, Chronicle of the Second World War makes the headlines of the past as vivid as today's newspapers or the nightly television news. It includes material about the German home front previously published only in Germany, with contributions also from Chronicle writers in Australia, France and North America to provide truly global coverage. Special features of this book include personal memoirs of the war from personalities as diverse as Roald Dahl and Spike Milligan, Denis Healey and Vera Lynn, Ludovic Kennedy an