In this remote Indian village near the border with Burma, a
garrison of no more than 1,500 men, short of water and with the
wounded compelled to lie in the open, faced a force of 15,000
Japanese. They held the pass and prevented a Japanese victory that
would have proved disastrous. Six weeks of bitter fighting
followed as British and Indian troops drove the enemy out of
India. The Japanese army had suffered the worst defeat in its
history. Thousands of men lay dead while tens of thousands more
starved in a retreat eastwards. They called the journey back to
Burma the ‘Road of Bones’.
The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6th
August, 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of the
twentieth century. The principle of killing thousands of enemy
civilians from the air was already well established by 1945 and had
been practised by both sides. As this fascinating new history shows,
the bomb dropped that hot August morning in 1945 was in many ways
the world's offspring, in both a technological and a moral sense.
And it was the world that would have to face its consequences,
strategically, diplomatically, and culturally, in the years ahead.
A revised edition
of 'Falkland Islander's at War'. Falkland Islanders were the first
British people to come under enemy occupation since the Channel
Islands during the Second World War. This book tells how
islanders' warnings were ignored in London, how their slim
defences gave way to a massive invasion, and how they survived
occupation. While some established a cautiously pragmatic modus
vivendi with the occupiers, some islanders opted for active
resistance. Others joined advancing British troops, transporting
ammunition and leading men to the battlefields.
The siege of Kut is a story of blunders, sacrifice,
imprisonment and escape. The allied campaign in Mesopotamia began
in 1914 as a relatively simple operation to secure the oilfields
in the Shatt-al-Arab Delta and Basra area. Initially it was a
great success, but as the army pressed towards Baghdad its poor
logistic support, training, equipment and command left it isolated
and besieged by the Turks. By 1916 the army had not been relieved,
and on 29 April 1916, the British Army suffered one of the worst
defeats in its military history. Major-General Sir Charles
Townshend surrendered his allied force to the Turks in the
Mesopotamian (now Iraqi) town of Kut-al-Amara.
TO THE GATES OF STALINGRAD: THE
STALINGRAD TRILOGY, VOLUME 1
by David M Glantz &
Jonathan M House
The confrontation between German and Soviet forces at
Stalingrad was a titanic clash of armies on an unprecedented scale
— a turning point in World War II. Yet despite the attention
lavished on this epic battle by historians, it has been greatly
misunderstood. The first volume in this masterly trilogy draws on
previously neglected sources to provide the definitive account of
the opening phase of this campaign. Glantz has combed official
records from both sides to produce a work of unparalleled detail
and fresh interpretations. Jonathan House, an authority on
twentieth-century warfare, adds further insight and context
New in d/w - 678pp, 80 photographs,
87 maps
University Press of Kansas, 2009
ISBN 9780700616305
