Taylor, A. J. P.

"The Second World War surpassed all previous wars in the sheer cost of many millions of lives, the majority of them civilian. It left a world reeling from physical destruction on a scale never experience before or since, and from the psychological traumas of loss, of imprisonment and genocide, and permanent exile from home.". "In this short book, Joanna Bourke turns an unblinking eye on the events and outcomes in the vast number of places where the war was fought: throughout Western and Central Europe, on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, in the Pacific, in Africa, in Asia. She shows where the strategic decisions came from and how they were implemented. In addition to the facts of this global conflict, she details the human, individual cost. Through diary entries and recorded oral history, we experience how ordinary people felt when they witnessed or heard of events, from the declaration of war on the radio to the mass murders carried out by Nazi soldiers in Russian villages." "Our understanding of the past conflict and our own age of violence and human atrocity into which the Second World War thrust us will be greatly enhanced by the scope and detail of this book."--BOOK JACKET.

Brief survey of European civilization from 1914 to 1945 by a noted British historian.

"This is the frightening account of the murder at Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and how this relatively minor event inexorably led to the bloodiest war in history." --from inside jacket flap.

Picture-text survey of the causes, campaigns, and consequences of the conflict, with critical analysis of the failures and futilities of the "War to end all war."

One of the most popular and controversial historians of the twentieth century, who made his subject accessible to millions, A.J.P. Taylor caused a storm of outrage with this scandalous bestseller. Debunking what were accepted truths about the Second World War, he argued provocatively that Hitler did not set out to cause the war as part of an evil master plan, but blundered into it partly by accident, aided by the shortcomings of others. Fiercely attacked for vindicating Hitler, A.J.P. Taylor's stringent re-examination of the events preceding the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1st September 1939 opened up new debate, and is now recognized as a brilliant and classic piece of scholarly research.'Highly original and penetrating... No one who has digested this enthralling work will ever be able to look at the period again in quite the same way' Sunday Telegraph.

A prodigious work of scholarship as well as a labor of love. Taylor's history of Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook whom Asquith once dubbed ""the little Canadian adventurer on the make"" spans some 50 years of British politics, the Depression and both Worm Wars. Beaverbrook -- financier, press lord, kingmaker, politician and historian -- is established beyond dispute as one of the dominant personages of 20th century British history. ""I did not make situations; I turned them to account,"" Beaverbrook once said of himself. It was this ability which earned him the reputation of unscrupulous, self-seeking opportunist -- a reputation which Taylor's biography refutes at every turn. Since 1967 when they were first opened to researchers, Taylor has acted as honorary director of the Beaverbrook Archives, the vast library of contemporary history which contains, aside from Beaverbrook's own lifelong records, the papers of Lloyd George and Bonar Law. Using this new material Taylor reassesses the role of Beaverbrook and Lloyd George in the momentous Cabinet crisis of 1916 which elevated the latter to premiership. With equal care Taylor pursues Beaverbrook's war propaganda at the Ministry of Information, his lasting fidelity to Empire Free Trade, and his crucial role as Minister of Aircraft Production and Churchill's intimate adviser in World War II. A Tory radical in the tradition of Joseph Chamberlain, Beaverbrook was a parvenu millionaire, a Canadian, and a singularly poor ""party man."" His position as constant outsider was thus assured: he turned it to advantage by becoming the arch conciliator, string-puller, and political go-between of his age. Luckily for Britain he was endowed with a virtually infallible instinct for bringing together the right combination of men in moments of national emergency, supporting them while the crisis lasted, then quickly retreating to guard his own position as backstage potentate. The temperamental affinities between Taylor and Beaverbrook -- both gadflies within the Establishment -- are intrinsic; in chronicling the incomparable career of Max, Taylor has abandoned his conventional posture of Olympian cynicism though not his sharp judgment. He has produced a complete vindication of the shadowy titan whom lesser historians have regarded with enmity and suspicion. Masterful.