Britains War Machine

Author : David Edgerton
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199832676
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Britain's War Machine written by David Edgerton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-09 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. David Edgerton's bold, compelling new history shows the conflict in a new light, with Britain as a very wealthy country, formidable in arms, ruthless in pursuit of its interests, and in command of a global production system. Rather than belittled by a Nazi behemoth, Britain arguably had the world's most advanced mechanized forces. It had not only a great empire, but allies large and small.Edgerton shows that Britain fought on many fronts and its many home fronts kept it exceptionally well supplied with weapons, food and oil, allowing it to mobilize to an extraordinary extent. It created and deployed a vast empire of machines, from the humble tramp steamer to the battleship, from the rifle to the tank, made in colossal factories the world over. Scientists and engineers invented new weapons, encouraged by a government and prime minister enthusiastic about the latest technologies. The British, indeed Churchillian, vision of war and modernity was challenged by repeated defeat at the hands of less well-equipped enemies. Yet the end result was a vindication of this vision. Like the United States, a powerful Britain won a cheap victory, while others paid a great price.Putting resources, machines and experts at the heart of a global rather than merely imperial story, Britain's War Machine demolishes timeworn myths about wartime Britain and gives us a groundbreaking and often unsettling picture of a great power in action.

Author : Robert Jackson
Publisher : Pen and Sword
ISBN 13 : 1526746441
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bren Gun Carrier written by Robert Jackson and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide that blends the history behind this British tank with resources for military vehicle modeling enthusiasts. One of the most versatile fighting vehicles in the British army and many other forces for a quarter of a century, the Universal Carrier—more popularly known by its original title of Bren Gun Carrier—was developed as a fast and agile infantry-support vehicle. In this volume of Pen & Sword’s LandCraft series, Robert Jackson traces its design and manufacturing history and describes its operational role throughout its long career. The Bren Carrier served in every theater of the Second World War, from northwest Europe, North Africa and the Soviet Union to the Far East. Then, with the war over, it was operated by many belligerents in a string of other conflicts around the world, including Israel’s struggle for independence and the war in Korea. A selection of archive photographs showing the Bren Carrier in action gives a graphic impression of how adaptable it was and records the variety of equipment it could carry. The book is an excellent source for the modeler, providing details of available kits together with specially commissioned color profiles which illustrate how the Bren Carriers used by different units and armies appeared.

Author : Mark Phythian
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Arming Iraq written by Mark Phythian and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chilling story of how the West armed the East -- as well as its coverup and its implications.

Author : David Edgerton
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141975172
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book England and the Aeroplane written by David Edgerton and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the strange mixture of romanticism, militarism and technology that has made planes so important to England, from the brilliant author of Britain's War Machine The history of England and the aeroplane is one tangled with myths - of 'the Few' and the Blitz, of boffins, flying machines, amateur inventors and muddling through. In England and the Aeroplane David Edgerton reverses received wisdom, showing that the aeroplane is a central and revealing aspect of an unfamiliar English nation: a warfare state dedicated to technology, industry, empire and military power. England had the strongest air force in the Great War, the largest industry in the world in the 1920s, outproduced Germany by 50% at the time of the Battle of Britain and was the third largest producers of aeroplanes well after this time. In a revelatory recounting of the story of aeronautical England, from its politics to its industry and culture, David Edgerton reconfigures some of the most important chapters of our history. Reviews: 'A brilliant polemic' Guardian 'Full of good stories ... an illuminating read' Spectator 'A tour de force, after which the history of the aircraft industry will never be quite the same again' Business History 'David Edgerton's sure-footed essay ... sees Britain from an unusual perspective ... His arguments provide sound backing for the idea that modern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one' Economist About the author: David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is the author of a sequence of groundbreaking books on 20th century Britain: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; and Britain's War Machine, published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900.

Author : Daniel Todman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190658495
Total Pages : 864 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 written by Daniel Todman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of Daniel Todman's account of Great Britain and World War II The second of Daniel Todman's two sweeping volumes on Great Britain and World War II, Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947, begins with the event Winston Churchill called the "worst disaster" in British military history: the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 to the Japanese. As in the first volume of Todman's epic account of British involvement in World War II ("Total history at its best," according to Jay Winter), he highlights the inter-connectedness of the British experience in this moment and others, focusing on its inhabitants, its defenders, and its wartime leadership. Todman explores the plight of families doomed to spend the war struggling with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and, above all, the absence of their loved ones and the uncertainty of their return. It also documents the full impact of the entrance into the war by the United States, and its ascendant stewardship of the war. Britain's War: A New World, 1942-1947 is a triumph of narrative and research. Todman explains complex issues of strategy and economics clearly while never losing sight of the human consequences--at home and abroad--of the way that Britain fought its war. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped Great Britain and the world.

Author : David Edgerton
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781139448741
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Warfare State written by David Edgerton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-08 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A challenge to the central theme of the existing histories of twentieth-century Britain, that the British state was a welfare state, this book argues that it was also a warfare state, which supported a powerful armaments industry. This insight implies major revisions to our understanding of twentieth-century British history, from appeasement, to wartime industrial and economic policy, and the place of science and technology in government. David Edgerton also shows how British intellectuals came to think of the state in terms of welfare and decline, and includes a devastating analysis of C. P. Snow's two cultures. This groundbreaking book offers a new, post-welfarist and post-declinist, account of Britain, and an original analysis of the relations of science, technology, industry and the military. It will be essential reading for those working on the history and historiography of twentieth-century Britain, the historical sociology of war and the history of science and technology.

Author : Maurice Burke
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780961746308
Total Pages : 105 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Britain's War Machine in Ireland written by Maurice Burke and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : David Edgerton
Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 9780141975979
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the British Nation written by David Edgerton and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This nation was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. David Edgerton's fascinating perspective produces refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.

Author : Leo McKinstry
Publisher : John Murray
ISBN 13 : 9781848547049
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Operation Sealion written by Leo McKinstry and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Superbly written and gripping' Daily Express The thrilling true account of Hitler's first defeat. In the summer of 1940, the Nazi war machine was at its zenith. France, Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries were all under occupation after a series of lightning military campaigns. Only Britain stood in the way of the complete triumph of Nazi tyranny. But for the first time in the war, Hitler did not prevail. The traditional narrative of 1940 holds that Britain was only saved from German conquest by the pluck of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain. The image of Dad's Army recruits training with broomsticks is a classic symbol of the nation's supposed desperation in the face of the threat from Operation Sealion, as the German plan for invasion was code-named. Yet as Leo McKinstry details, the British were far more ruthless and proficient than is usually recognised. The brilliance of the RAF was not an exception but part of a pattern of magnificent organisation. In almost every sphere of action, such as the destruction of the French naval fleet or the capture of German spies, Britain's approach reflected an uncompromising spirit of purpose and resolution. Using a wealth of primary materials from both British and German archives, Leo McKinstry provides a ground-breaking new assessment of the six fateful months in mid-1940, beginning with Winston Churchill's accession to power in May and culminating in Germany's abandonment of Operation Sealion.

Author : Patrick Wright
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780571207459
Total Pages : 499 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tank written by Patrick Wright and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When British tanks first crawled onto the battlefields in September 1916, they inspired laughter as well as dread. But these 'big jokes' went on to transform the nature of ground warfare forever. For this captivating narrative of the tank's history, Patrick Wright went to arms factories and military bases around the world. He was the first western writer to be received by the First Warsaw Tank Brigade after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, and he discussed Operation Desert Storm with the US Army's Armour Centre in Fort Knox. The tank, Wright discovers, is as much a terrifying cultural phantom as a practical war machine. He gives us the tank's fascinating story through the eyes of the people who have tried to face up to it - from the renegade artists in Prague who painted a Soviet memorial tank pink, to the solitary protester in Tiananmen Square whose bravery touched the world.