Robin Neillands

In what may be his last book, the late Neillands, a distinguished British military historian, covers the campaign in northwestern Europe that commenced with the breakout from Normandy and ended with the Battle of the Bulge. It is a story familiar even to many nonspecialist readers, but in retelling it Neillands points up for a general audience the strategic conflict between Eisenhower and Montgomery. Montgomery favored a single concentrated thrust under his command, whereas Eisenhower favored several thrusts across a broad front. Neillands argues cogently (though without conclusively proving his case) that admiration of Eisenhower's affability and American bias against Montgomery's lack of the same quality have obscured the technical superiority of Montgomery's generalship, in particular as a strategist. Thoroughly researched and equipped with superior maps, Neillands' volume has a place in any collection serving World War II history students and buffs.

To this day, World War I remains a source of misunderstanding; the bitter reality of the conflict is often clouded by various myths and falsehoods. Many of these misconceptions suggest that the ineptitude of the generals on both sides of the trenches led to the gruesome stalemates and battles. This well-researched and highly readable account reveals the truth behind this fallacy and other events by setting them in a wider context. In 1915 the burden of fighting was shifting from the British Army to the Territorial Forces who were enthusiastic amateurs at best. The battles were either disasters or inconclusive, but the real reason for the failures was that the war--which originally began in the name of liberation for Belgium--had lost its moral argument and was now just another bloody, senseless slaughter. Millions died on the Western Front in 1915 on muddy battlefields, and as this study reveals, there was no glory attached to their deaths.

The Dieppe Raid is one of World War II’s most controversial hours. In 1942, a full two years before D-Day, thousands of men, mostly Canadian troops eager for their first taste of battle, were sent across the English Channel in a raid on the French port town of Dieppe. Air supremacy was not secured; the topography—a town hemmed in by tall cliffs and reached by steep beaches—meant any invasion was improbably difficult. The result was carnage: the beaches were turned into killing grounds even as the men came ashore, and whole battalions were cut to pieces. In this book, Robin Neillands has traced numerous surviving veterans of the Raid, in the United Kingdom and Canada, to tell the harrowing story of what actually took place, hour by hour, as disaster unfolded. He has also exhaustively explored all the archival evidence to establish as far as possible the paper trail of command, of who knew—or should have known—what was happening, and whether the whole debacle could have been prevented. The result is the definitive account of one of the Allies’ darkest hours.

What happened to the Allied armies in Normandy in the months after D-Day? Why, after the initial success of the landings, did their advance stall a few miles inland? How did the Germans, deprived of air support, hold off such massive forces for months? A fresh and incisive examination this most crucial campaign-with accounts from veterans on both sides-sheds new light on its demands and difficulties, as well as the plans and performance of all the commanders involved.

The bomber campaign against Germany is one of the most contentious of World War II. Was anything achieved by the deaths of thousands of German civilians-many of them women and children? Or were all means justified against Nazi Germany? Acclaimed military historian Robin Neillands examines every detail of the allied campaign led by British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris: the strengths and fundamental flaws, the technical difficulties and developments and, above all, the day-to-day, night-by-night endurance of the crews flying to the limit in discomfort and danger, facing flak and enemy fire. Personal experiences of British, American, Canadian, Australian and other ally fliers play a key part in this account, along with those of German airmen and civilians. Though The Bomber War discusses Guernica and the destruction of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it concentrates on the European theater, on Germany's air war against the allies - over Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Coventry-which led the fierce allied raids carried out against Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and the Ruhr and-most notorious of all-the tremendous destruction of Dresden in the last months of the war. Robin Neillands also examines the complex moral issues involved in the air war, and of the case made against "Bomber" Harris. This is a timely addition to the history of conflict; the age of free-fall bombs has passed, but many veterans-on both sides-are still alive to state their case, and to tell a knew generation what their war was like.

"The damning public opinion that the British generals -- most notably Haig, French, Plumer, Gough and Byng -- sent hundreds of thousands of young men to their deaths in the trenches of the Western front, is one that hasn?t changes in over sixty years? Robin Neillands challenges the popular myth about the incompetence and callousness of the Great War generals and examines the events that took place on the Western front through the eyes of these same officers to explain the circumstances that led them to plan and fight as they did"--Jacket.

The Green Berets. The Navy SEALs. The secret Delta Force. The British SAS. The Israeli Mossad. Almost every country has a special force unit in their military. But what do they do, whom do they recruit, and how do they train? Robin Neillands, renowned military historian and himself a former Royal Marine Commando, tells the story of special forces since the end of the World War II, where possible in the words of the soldiers themselves. He describes the operational successes and failures, advances in military technology crucial to special force effectiveness, and the achievements, challenges, and exploits of a wide range of special force units. From the intense cold of the Korean winter, the mountains of Cyprus, and the Libyan night, to the jungle heat of Vietnam and the green hills of Northern Ireland, In the Combat Zone provides a compelling and revealing portrait of these highly trained troops, without the by-now banal glorification so characteristic of such discussions. As Neillands writes, "A great many special forces soldiers have helped me with this book, on the understanding that I told it straight and did not use their accounts to produce yet another `gung-ho heroes' epic."

From Indian independence to the return of Hong Kong to China, British military specialist Neillands thoroughly chronicles Britain's retreat from empire. He offers a paean to the empire and its soldiers, and he clearly resents the U.S. pressure that hastened decolonization. In addition to accounts of Britain's strictly colonial experience, Neillands also covers Britain's experience at the end of the Palestine mandate and in Northern Ireland. Although his work makes good reading for those interested in world history in the second half of the 20th century, it is far too informal for serious academic writing, and it often feels like a collection of memoirs from old colonial hands. Britain is seen as always leaving its colonies ten years too soon.

xix, 230 p., p. of plates : 24 cm

This is the story of the last five months of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich, from New Year's Day to VE Day, May 8, 1945. It is a story told not in the words of historians or scholars, but in the words of the people who lived through it, who fought and endured: soldier and civilian, American infantryman and British paratrooper, Canadian gunner and Australian pilot, New Zealand POW and German civilian. With his unrivalled gift for popular history Robin Neillands, in his follow-up to the enormously successful D-Day 1944, recreates in engaging narrative fashion the most dramatic and bloody months of the war. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, letters, and inside eyewitness testimony from veterans about such subjects as the esprit de corps in the Allied and Axis armies, the discovery of the concentration camps, dissension in the Allied command, and the meeting of Russians and Americans at the Elbe, the book recounts the effects of many of the most crucial events of the conflict on soldier and civilian alike. The Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Auschwitz, the Malmedy Massacres, the fall of Warsaw to the Red Army, the destruction of Dresden, the lynching of Allied aircrews, Yalta, Hitler's "Scorched Earth" directive, the massive parachute drops by the Allied forces, the death of Roosevelt, the last days of Hitler, and, finally, the surrender of Germany - it's all here, rendered in engrossing and rich detail in this example of military history at its finest.