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The People's War

Author: Angus Calder

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-07-31

Total Pages: 658

ISBN-13: 144810310X

The Second World War was, for Britain, a 'total war'; no section of society remained untouched by military conscription, air raids, the shipping crisis and the war economy. In this comprehensive and engrossing narrative Angus Calder presents not only the great events and leading figures but also the oddities and banalities of daily life on the Home Front, and in particular the parts played by ordinary people: air raid wardens and Home Guards, factory workers and farmers, housewives and pacifists. Above all this revisionist and important work reveals how, in those six years, the British people came closer to discarding their social conventions than at any time since Cromwell's republic. Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize in 1970, The People’s War draws on oral testimony and a mass of neglected social documentation to question the popularised image of national unity in the fight for victory.

Home Fronts

Author: Mark J. Crowley

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 9781783272259

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Examines the "home front" war effort from an overall imperial perspective, assessing the contribution of individual imperial territories.

London At War

Author: Philip Ziegler

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-04-24

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1446496260

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In 1939 London was not merely the greatest city in the world, it was the most tempting and vulnerable target for aerial attack. For six years it was the frontline of the free world's battle against Fascism. It endured the horrors of the Blitz of 1940 and 1941, the V1s, the V2s. Other cities suffered more intensely; no other city was so constantly under attack for so long a time. This is the story of London at war - or, perhaps, of Londoners at war, for Philip Ziegler, known best as a biographer, is above all fascinated by the people who found their lives so suddenly and violently transformed: the querulous, tiresome yet strangely gallant housewife from West Hampstead; the turbulent, left-wing retired schoolmaster from Walthamstow, always having a go at the authorities; the odiously snobbish middleclass lady from Kensington, sneering at the scum who took shelter in the Underground; the typist from Fulham, the plumber from Woolwich. It was their war, quite as much as it was Churchill's or the King's, and this is their history. Through a wealth of interviews and unpublished letters and diaries, as well as innumerable books and newspapers, the author has built up a vivid picture of a population under siege. There were cowards, there were criminals, there were incompetents, but what emerges from these pages is above all a record of astonishing patience, dignity and courage. 'I hope,' Ziegler writes, 'we will never have to endure again what they went through between 1939 and 1945. I hope, if we did, that we would conduct ourselves as well.'

Britain at War 1939 to 1945

Author: James Lingard

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2015-05-14

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 1504942132

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The book has excellent reviews from UCL People (University College London) and the Historical Association, a British charity for teachers. It gives a short insight into the horrors of the home front told from the perspective of someone who actually experienced them, a fascinating look at the harsh realities of life in Britain, life full of drama and the danger of impending death. How did a family with a small child caught up in such a war survive? There follows an overview of the major campaigns in World War II, giving an insight into the big picture, enlivened by personal experiences and quotations from Churchill. A Canadian reviewer has said, This book was a relatively quick read that would be of interest to those who might not have much background in the events of the war or those who know the broad details but want the day to day understanding of how lives were affected by things like bombing raids. James Lingard has meticulously researched and presented the timeline of events for the war, but where this book really shines as far as I am concerned is in the sharing of his own familys experiences as they were personally impacted. Though only a young boy when the war began, his life was affected in multiple ways and his family was at one point thought killed as their air raid shelter was destroyed. In actual fact they had gone out to the woods for an outing, which ultimately saved their lives! Another enjoyable part of the book was the quotes Lingard used at the beginning of each chapter. Many of these quotes were taken from speeches by Churchill or other prominent men of the time and they add to the general picture and emotions of the period.

Europe at War 1939-1945

Author: Norman Davies

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2008-09-04

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 0330472291

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The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known: after six years of brutal fighting on land, sea and in the air, the Allied Powers prevailed and the Nazi regime was defeated. But as in so many things, the truth is somewhat different. Bringing a fresh eye to bear on a story we think we know, Norman Davies.Davies forces us to look again at those six years and to discard the usual narrative of Allied good versus Nazi evil, reminding us that the war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters - Hitler and Stalin - whose fight for supremacy consumed the best people in Germany and in the USSR . The outcome of the war was at best ambiguous, the victory of the West was only partial, its moral reputation severely tarnished and, for the greater part of the continent of Europe, ‘liberation’ was only the beginning of more than fifty years of totalitarian oppression. ‘Davies writes with real knowledge and passion.’ Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard ‘Punchy and compelling' Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

Browned Off and Bloody-Minded

Author: Alan Allport

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0300213123

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More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport’s rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.

London War Notes, 1939-1945

Author: Mollie Panter-Downes

Publisher:

Published: 1972-01-01

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9780582101463

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Which People's War?

Author: Sonya O. Rose

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2004-07-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0191037532

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Which People's War? examines how national belonging, or British national identity, was envisaged in the public culture of the World War II home front. Using materials from newspapers, magazines, films, novels, diaries, letters, and all sorts of public documents, it explores such questions as: who was included as 'British' and what did it mean to be British? How did the British describe themselves as a singular people, and what were the consequences of those depictions? It also examines the several meanings of citizenship elaborated in various discussions concerning the British nation at war. This investigation of the powerful constructions of national identity and understandings of citizenship circulating in Britain during the Second World War exposes their multiple and contradictory consequences at the time. It reveals the fragility of any singular conception of 'Britishness' even during a war that involved the total mobilization of the country's citizenry and cost 400,000 British civilian lives.

The British Home Front 1939–45

Author: Martin Brayley

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-07-20

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1782001239

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The population of Britain was mobilized to support the war effort on a scale unseen in any other Western democracy – or in Nazi Germany. They endured long working shifts, shortages of food and all other goods, and complete government control of their daily lives. Most men and women were conscripted or volunteered for additional tasks outside their formal working hours. Under the air raids that destroyed the centres of many towns and made about 2 million homeless, more than 60,000 civilians were killed and 86,000 seriously injured. This fascinating illustrated summary of wartime life, and the organizations that served on the Home front, is a striking record of endurance and sacrifice.

The Home Front

Author: Susan Briggs

Publisher: Weinfeld and Nicolson

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780070078055

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Great Britain during WWII as shown through photographs and drawn media.