Churchill's Folly
Churchill's Folly

Author: Christopher Catherwood

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-01-14

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0465060978

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As Britain's colonial secretary in the 1920s, Winston Churchill made a mistake with calamitous consequences. Scholar and adviser to Tony Blair's government, Christopher Catherwood chronicles and analyzes how Churchill created the artificial monarchy of Iraq after World War I, thereby forcing together unfriendly peoples under a single ruler. The map of the Middle East that Churchill created led to the rise of Saddam Hussein and the wars in which American troops fought in 1991 and 2003. Defying a global wave of nationalistic sentiment, and the desire of subject peoples to rule themselves, Winston Churchill put together the broken pieces of the Ottoman Empire and created a Middle Eastern powder keg. Inducing Arabs under the rule of the Ottoman Turks to rebel against their oppressors, the British and French during World War I convinced the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. In fact, Britain had promised the territory to the French. To make amends, Churchill created the nation of Iraq and made the Hashemite leader, Feisel, king of a land to which he had no connections at all. Eight pages of photographs add to this fascinating history on Churchill's decision and the terrible legacy of the Ottoman Empire's collapse.

Churchill's Phoney War
Churchill's Phoney War

Author: Graham Clews

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1682472809

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Given the dearth of scholarship on the Phoney War, this book examines the early months of World War II when Winston Churchill’s ability to lead Britain in the fight against the Nazis was being tested. Graham T. Clews explores how Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed to fight this new world war, with particular attention given to his attempts to impel the Royal Navy, the British War Cabinet, and the French, toward a more aggressive prosecution of the conflict. This is no mere retelling of events but a deep analysis of the decision-making process and Churchill’s unique involvement in it. This book shares extensive new insights into well-trodden territory and original analysis of the unexplored, with each chapter offering material which challenges conventional wisdom. Clews reassesses several important issues of the Phoney War period including: Churchill’s involvement in the anti-U-boat campaign; his responsibility for the failures of the Norwegian Campaign; his attitude to Britain’s aerial bombing campaign and the notion of his unfettered “bulldog” spirit; his relationship with Neville Chamberlain; and his succession to the premiership. A man of considerable strengths and many shortcomings, the Churchill that emerges in Clews’ portrayal is dynamic and complicated. Churchill’s Phoney War adds a well-balanced and much-needed history of the Phoney War while scrupulously examining Churchill’s successes and failures.

Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 1940–45
Churchill, Whitehall and the Soviet Union, 1940–45

Author: M. Folly

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2000-04-19

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 023059722X

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World War II threw Britain and the Soviet Union together as unlikely allies. This book examines British policy-makers' attitudes to cooperation with the USSR and shows how views of internal developments in the USSR and of Stalin himself influenced Churchill, the War Cabinet and the Foreign Office to believe that long-term collaboration was a desirable and achievable goal. In particular, it was assumed that a shared concern to prevent future German aggression would be a lasting bond. Such attitudes significantly shaped Britain's wartime policy towards the USSR, and for many individuals, including Churchill, played a more important role than their long-standing anti-Communist attitudes.

Churchill's Folly
Churchill's Folly

Author: Anthony Rogers

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780304366552

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Today many of the Greek islands of the Dodecanese are popular tourist resorts. However in 1943 they were the scene of the last successful German invasion of the Second World War. The islands had been occupied by the Italians since 1912 but, Italian Armistice of September with the downfall of Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill seized the opportunity to open a new front in the eastern Mediterranean. Rejected by the Americans, it was a proposal fraught with difficulties and, ultimately, one that was doomed to failure. British garrison troops occupied territory with the assistance of naval forces, but with little or no air cover. They were opposed by some of Germany's finest, including units of the esteemed Division Brandenburg, with ample air and sea support. Three months of operations ended in a British defeat and with the Aegean under German occupation until the end of the war. The author has drawn on British, German and Italian sources and uses graphic eyewitness accounts to provide a detailed retelling of the struggle for possession of the Dodecanese, and the battles for Kos and Leros in particular.

His Finest Hour
His Finest Hour

Author: Christopher Catherwood

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1510720316

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Who was Winston Churchill? Even fifty years after his death, he is one of the most iconic figures in British history. As a young man he was a maverick journalist; his many positions in politics before 1940 marked him as a courageous but foolhardy man. Yet it is Churchill’s record in war, which has recently been questioned, that confirms his genius as a military commander and national leader—someone who understood the dangers of Nazi Germany before 1939 and someone uniquely capable to lead the empire through the turmoil of the Second World War. Christopher Catherwood argues that it was Churchill’s stand in 1940-41 that saved Britain and that only he was able to bring together the allies that eventually defeated Hitler in 1945. Catherwood has produced a challenging yet lively reassessment of the life and career of Winston Churchill, lion of British history and flawed hero.

Churchill and Stalin
Churchill and Stalin

Author: Martin H. Folly

Publisher: Pen & Sword Military

Published: 2019-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781781590492

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Based on documents from the Russian archives, this comprehensive study charts the tumultuous wartime relationship between Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It highlights the secret correspondence between the two leaders, records their meetings and conversations in Moscow and at the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam summits, and discloses the confidential communications of Stalin and his diplomats. Churchill and Stalin has been compiled and edited by three leading Russian and British historians of the Second World War. Their narrative brings together military and political history, documentary analysis and biography in an illuminating way. It reveals how Stalin and Churchill clashed and collaborated in order to achieve victory, and it demonstrates the deep personal relationship between these two great personalities as well as their profound political differences. Even when the Grand Alliance collapsed after the war, they retained their respect and affection for each other. Other important wartime personalities also feature in the documents -President Roosevelt, the British and Soviet foreign ministers, Anthony Eden and Vyacheslav Molotov, Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London and Averell Harriman, the American ambassador in Moscow. This fascinating documentary record is linked by a detailed narrative and commentary on the Stalin-Churchill relationship in the context of Anglo-Soviet relations during the war and the politics of the Grand Alliance. A landmark book - it will appeal to all those interested in Churchill and Stalin and in the politics and diplomacy of the Second World War.

Churchill's Folly
Churchill's Folly

Author: Anthony Rogers

Publisher: History Press

Published: 2017-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780750968355

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In autumn 1943 the Italian-held Dodecanese was the setting for the last decisive German invasion of the Second World War - and the last irreversible British defeat. After the Italian armistice that followed the downfall of Mussolini, Churchill seized the opportunity to open a new front in the eastern Mediterranean, thereby increasing the pressure against Germany and hoping to provide an incentive for Turkey to join the Allies. Rejected by the Americans, it was a strategy fraught with difficulties and doomed to fail. Spearheaded by the LRDG and SBS, British troops were dispatched to the Aegean with naval units, but little or no air cover. They were opposed by German assault troops with overwhelming air superiority. Within 3 months, German forces had seized nearly all of the Dodecanese, which was occupied until the end of the war.

Empire of Sand
Empire of Sand

Author: Walter Reid

Publisher: Birlinn

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 588

ISBN-13: 0857900803

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At the end of the First World War Britain and to a much lesser extent France created the modern Middle East. The possessions of the former Ottoman Empire were carved up with scant regard for the wishes of those who lived there. Frontiers were devised and alien dynasties imposed on the populations as arbitrarily as in medieval times. From the outset the project was destined to failure. Conflicting and ambiguous promises had been made to the Arabs during the war but were not honoured. Brief hopes for Arab unity were dashed, and a harsh belief in western perfidy persists to the present day. Britain was quick to see the riches promised by the black pools of oil that lay on the ground around Baghdad. When France too grasped their importance, bitter differences opened up and the area became the focus of a return to traditional enmity. The war-time allies came close to blows and then drifted apart, leaving a vacuum of which Hitler took advantage. Working from both primary and secondary sources, Walter Reid explores Britain's role in the creation of the modern Middle East and the rise of Zionism from the early years of the twentieth century to 1948, when Britain handed over Palestine to UN control. From the decisions that Britain made has flowed much of the instability of the region and of the world-wide tensions that threaten the twenty-first century. How far was Britain to blame?

Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East

Author: Shareen Blair Brysac

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2009-10-12

Total Pages: 768

ISBN-13: 0393342433

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A brilliant narrative history tracing today’s troubles back to the grandiose imperial overreach of Great Britain and the United States. Kingmakers is the gripping story of how the modern Middle East came to be, as told through the lives of the Britons and Americans who shaped it. Some are famous (Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell); others infamous (Harry St. John Philby, father of Kim); some forgotten (Sir Mark Sykes, Israel’s godfather, and A. T. Wilson, the territorial creator of Iraq). All helped enthrone rulers in a region whose very name is an Anglo-American invention. The aim of this engrossing character-driven narrative is to restore to life the colorful figures who gave us the Middle East in which Americans are enmeshed today.

Churchill & His Generals
Churchill & His Generals

Author: Raymond Callahan

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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On the eve of World War II, the British army was more an international police force than a combat ready fighting force. This book examines its transformation in a look at Great Britain's top commanders in the field.