The Mist Procession
Author: Robert Gilbert Vansittart Baron Vansittart
Publisher:
Published: 1958
Total Pages: 578
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPosts
The Foreign Office and British Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century
Author: Gaynor Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 1136872035
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the evolution of the Foreign Office in the 20th century and the way in which it has responded to Britain's changing role in international affairs. The last century was one of unprecedented change in the way foreign policy and diplomacy were conducted. The work of 'The Office' expanded enormously in the 20th century, and oversaw the transition from Empire to Commonwealth, with the merger of the Foreign and Colonial Offices taking place in the 1960s. The book focuses on the challenges posed by waging world war and the process of peacemaking, as well as the diplomatic gridlock of the Cold War. Contributions also discusses ways in which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continues to modernise to meet the challenges of diplomacy in the 21st century. This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Contemporary British History.
1939
Author: Michael Jabara Carley
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
Published: 2009-02-16
Total Pages: 352
ISBN-13: 146169938X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAt a crucial point in the twentieth century, as Nazi Germany prepared for war, negotiations between Britain, France, and the Soviet Union became the last chance to halt Hitler’s aggression. Incredibly, the French and British governments dallied, talks failed, and in August 1939 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany. Michael Carley’s gripping account of these negotiations is not a pretty story. It is about the failures of appeasement and collective security in Europe. It is about moral depravity and blindness, about villains and cowards, and about heroes who stood against the intellectual and popular tides of their time. Some died for their beliefs, others labored in obscurity and have been nearly forgotten. In 1939 they sought to make the Grand Alliance that never was between France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. This story of their efforts is background to the wartime alliance created in 1941 without France but with the United States in order to defeat a demonic enemy. 1939 is based upon Mr. Carley’s longtime research on the period, including work in French, British, and newly opened Soviet archives. He challenges prevailing interpretations of the origins of World War II by situating 1939 at the end of the early cold war between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain, and by showing how anti-communism was the major cause of the failure to form an alliance against Hitler. 1939 was published on September 1, the sixtieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of the war.
Alternative to Appeasement
Author: Michael Roi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 1997-11-30
Total Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 0313388229
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe years from 1934 to 1937 were a time during which the British Empire was confronted with the emergence of the triple threat of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. The goal of British policy was easily defined: the protection and promotion of Britain's vast interests. While Neville Chamberlain and Sir Robert Vansittart agreed on the goal, they disagreed on the means to achieve it. Their disagreement stemmed partly from their different understandings of the nature of the Third Reich; Vansittart understood better than Chamberlain the implications of Hitler's Weltanschauung. But their different strategies also reflected the fact that Chamberlain did not share Vansittart's belief in the necessity of pursuing alliance diplomacy to protect the world-wide security and interests of the British Empire. While the prime minister realized that Britain's problems were global in scope, he thought Britain could solve each problem on a bilateral basis. In other words, Britain should approach Germany, Japan, and Italy directly to settle outstanding disputes. Vansittart did not believe, however, that Britain's problems could be solved on a bilateral basis, for the interdependence of events in every region of the globe militated against bilateral solutions.
The avoidable war
Author: J. Kenneth Brody
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published:
Total Pages: 424
ISBN-13: 9781412817769
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs historian Gordon Craig has observed, "Americans are deeply ambivalent about history, choosing instead to follow the imperative of moral absolutes; they are uncomfortable with the idea of national interest as a guiding principle of policy, preferring motivations that are nobler." What does the national interest require? What does morality command? These issues bedevil us in Bosnia and Rwanda today as they did yesterday in the Persian Gulf and in Somalia. Such questions were fully played out in the era that led up to the dominant event of our century, the Second World War. The Avoidable War details how the war, its destruction, and its consequences could have been avoided. This original interpretation of history also provides insights into ways of preserving peace that can guide contemporary diplomacy. J. Kenneth Brody describes an incomparable galley of characters: a chief villain, Hitler; a thoughtful, conflicted, and human Mussolini; a fatuous Ramsey MacDonald; an uncharacteristically silent William Churchill; a smaller than life Stanley Baldwin. Above all, he rescues from undeserved obscurity the noble and inspiring figure of Lord Robert Cecil providing a thorough, controversial reappraisal and sympathetic portrait of Pierre Laval, his policy, and his character. Brody is the first to tell the story of the Peace Ballot, the first modern public opinion poll, created by Cecil in 1935. In this privately organized referendum on issues of war and peace, the British voted overwhelmingly in support of disarmament and morality rather than the national interest. Unfortunately its results helped bring on the war they worked so hard to avoid as, instructed by the Peace Ballot, the British met brute force with arms limitations proposals, the love of peace, and exalted ideals. Under cover of those ideals they betrayed a trusting ally, France. In doing so, they reaped a whirlwind of wartime consequences. The first of a two-volume series sheds new and original light on the origins of the Second World War. It is a study of both modern British history and a period of French history usually consigned to darkness. It also explores the role of morality in policymaking. This is a very human story of the passionate devotion to peace and justice of the proponents of the Peace Ballot and their supporters, and of the paradoxical and perverse result they achieved.
Intelligence and Strategy
Author: John Ferris
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-05-07
Total Pages: 409
ISBN-13: 1134233353
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJohn Ferris is a major figure in the intelligence studies field, both through his pioneering work in British intelligence and in his studies of British strategic history. This superb volume selects his best essays of the past fifteen years.
The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 9
Author: T. S. Eliot
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-08-31
Total Pages: 1040
ISBN-13: 0571362826
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume covers the production of Eliot's play The Family Reunion; the publication of The Idea of a Christian Society; and the joyous versifying of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. After exhausting himself through nights of fire-watching in the London wartime blackout, he travels the country, attends meetings of The Moot, delivers talks, and advises a fresh generation of writers including Cyril Connolly, Keith Douglas, Kathleen Raine and Vernon Watkins. Major correspondents include W. H. Auden, George Barker, William Empson, Geoffrey Faber, John Hayward, James Laughlin, Hope Mirrlees, Mervyn Peake, Ezra Pound, Michael Roberts, Stephen Spender, Tambimuttu, Allen Tate, Michael Tippett, Charles Williams and Virginia Woolf. Four Quartets, Eliot's culminating masterpiece, is discussed in detail.
Misdefending the Realm
Author: Antony Percy
Publisher: Legend Press Ltd
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 619
ISBN-13: 1908684968
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is the story of how the Soviet Union successfully infiltrated the UK government in the years leading up to WW2, and specifically when the USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany (August 1939 - June 1941). Historians have previously argued that this success was due to the existence of a Communist 'super-mole' within MI5, and that in the fight against Fascism, multiple indulgences towards communists were an unavoidable strategy. The reality was very different. When a key Soviet defector warned of the deep insertion of agents within the corridors of power, the Comintern were obliged by the Hitler-Stalin pact to launch an aggressive counteroffensive in 1940. Britain's Security Service was persuaded that the threat from communist subversion was minimal. When this most damaging espionage was detected, MI5's officers engaged in an extensive cover-up to conceal their deficiencies. Exploiting recently declassified material and a broad range of historical and biographical sources, Antony Percy here reveals how the Soviet Union caught up so swiftly with Western expertise and weaponry, and so removed a key Western advantage over its Communist adversary as the Cold War ensued.
The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919-1926
Author: Ephraim Maisel
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Published: 2013-11-01
Total Pages: 306
ISBN-13: 1836242220
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTells of the administrative changes of the post-war period and of the senior permanent officials, their personalities and cast of mind, who advised the foreign secretary and carried out his policies.
The End is Nigh
Author: Robert Crowcroft
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-05-23
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0192556851
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFew decades have given rise to such potent mythologies as the 1930s. Popular impressions of those years prior to the Second World War were shaped by the single outstanding personality of that conflict, Winston Spencer Churchill. Churchill depicted himself as a political prophet, exiled into the wilderness prior to 1939 by those who did not want to hear of the growing threats to peace in Europe. Although it is a familiar story, it is one we need to unlearn as the truth is somewhat murkier. The End is Nigh is a tale of relentless intrigue, burning ambition, and the bitter rivalry in British politics during the years preceding the Second World War. Journeying from the corridors of Whitehall to the smoking rooms of Parliament, and from aircraft factories to summit meetings with Hitler, the book offers a fresh and provocative interpretation of one of the most crucial moments of British history. It assembles a cast of iconic characters—Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin, Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, Ernest Bevin, and more—to explore the dangerous interaction between high politics at Westminster and the formulation of national strategy in a world primed to explode. In the twenty-first century we are accustomed to being cynical about politicians, mistrusting what they say and wondering about their real motives, but Robert Crowcroft argues that this was always the character of democratic politics. In The End is Nigh he challenges some of the most resilient public myths of recent decades—myths that, even now, remain an important component of Britain's self-image.
