The dramatic & little-known story of how in the summer of 1920 Lenin came within a hairs breadth of shattering the painstakingly constructed Versailles peace settlement & spreading Bolshevism to western Europe. In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess following a brutal civil war & the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to Germany itself economically ruined by defeat in World War I & racked by internal political dissension. Between Russia & Germany lay Poland a nation that had only just recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign oppression. But it was economically & militarily weak & its misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 laid it open to attack. Egged on by Trotsky Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky. All that Great Britain & France had fought for over four years now seemed at risk. By the middle of August the Russians were only a few kilometres from Warsaw & Berlin was less than a weeks march away. Then occurred the Miracle of the Vistula: the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped & achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history. As a result the Versailles peace settlement survived & Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country. The battle for Warsaw bought Europe nearly two decades of peace & communism remained a mainly Russian phenomenon subsuming many of the autocratic & Byzantine characteristics of Russias tsarist tradition. ...

This remarkable Journal written shortly after the event describes not only the author's own experiences of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising but the wider picture. With the Soviet Army's arrival imminent the Polish Underground fighters decided to wage open warfare against the hated Nazi occupiers. This courageous decision was taken despite the Poles' chronic shortage of arms ammunition & medical support. They fully expected the Soviets to relieve them gratefully for hastening the defeat of the Germans. With cruel & calculated cynicism the Soviets halted their offensive & let the uneven match be settled without their involvement. The outcome was inevitable
- Warsaw was largely destroyed the Polish men women & children fighters crushed & the Nazis weakened. The Soviets then moved in. This journal is a unique record of the bitter fighting when neither side were prepared to give quarter.
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This latest volume maintains the impressive standards of scholarship & research from the field of warship history. This edition features a range of diverse articles including the story of the devastating Typhoon that hit the Japanese ' Fourth Fleet' in the mid-1930s the Semi-Dreadnoughts of Danton Class an overview of the Ocean Patrol Vessel type a medical history of two Jutland battlecruisers & the self-destruction & salvage of the French Fleet at Toulon in 1942. Contributors include Philippe Caresse Matthew Seligmann Hans Lengerer Conrad Waters Jon Wise Stephen Mc Laughlin Enrico Cernushi & Vincent P. O' Hara. ...

Covers a vast range of warships from ancient times to present day destroyers aircraft carriers & stealth corvettes. This title features action-packed comic strips that recount epic sea battles. It also features massive cutaway illustrations that reveal the inner workings of warship engines & weaponry. ...

The Washington Treaty of 1922 designed to head off a potentially dangerous arms race between the major naval powers agreed to legally binding limits on the numbers & sizes of the principal warship types. In doing so it introduced a new constraint into naval architecture & sponsored many ingenious attempts to maximise the power of ships built within those restrictions. It effectively banned the construction of new battleships for a decade but threw greater emphasis on large cruisers.rn This much is broadly understood by anyone with an interest in warships but both the wider context of the treaty & the detail ramifications of its provisions are little understood. The approach of this book is novel in combining coverage of the political & strategic background of the treaty
- & the subsequent London Treaty of 1930
- with analysis of exactly how the navies of Britain the USA Japan France & Italy responded in terms of the types of warships they built & the precise characteristics of those designs. This was not just a matter of capital ships & cruisers but also influenced the development of super-destroyers & large submarines.rn Now for the first time warship enthusiasts & historians can understand fully the rationale behind much of inter-war naval procurement. The Washington Treaty was a watershed & this book provides an important insight into its full significance.

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No warship name in British naval history has more battle honours than Warspite. While this book looks at the lives of all eight vessels to bear the name (between 1596 & the 1990s) it concentrates on the truly epic story of the seventh vessel a super-dreadnought battleship conceived as the ultimate answer to German naval power during the arms race that helped cause WW1. Warspite fought off the entire German fleet at Jutland survived a mutiny between the wars & then covered herself in glory in action from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean during WW2. She was the flagship of Admiral Sir John Cunningham when he mastered the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean her guns inflicting devastating damage on the enemy at Calabria in 1940 & Matapan in 1941. She narrowly avoided destruction by the Japanese carrier force that devastated Pearl Harbor. She provided crucial fire support for Allied landings in Sicily Italy Normandy & Walcheren. A lucky ship in battle she survived dive-bombers off Crete & glider bomb hits off Salerno. The Spite had a reputation for being obtuse at unexpected moments running aground & losing her steering several times; she broke free from her towropes on the way to the breakers & ending up beached at St Michaels Mount where it took a decade to dismantle her. She had fought to the end. But this is not just the story of a warship. Wherever possible the voices of those men who fought aboard her speak directly to the reader about their experiences. The Warspite is also the story of a great naval nation which constructed her as the ultimate symbol of its imperial power & then scrapped her when the sun set on that empire. Iain Ballantyne is a much published naval author. His books for Pen & Sword include Warspite London & Victory in the Famous Ships of the British Navy series as well as Strike From the Sea. He is editor of Warships International. ...

The war is over... In Bristol three very different women wait for their loved ones to return home. But Edna's fiance returns badly crippled. & Charlotte's husband comes back a very different creature to the kind gentle man she remembers. & as for Polly her GI boyfriend doesn't come back at all leaving her with a bun in the oven & a scandal in the making... Note: originally published as THE REST OF OUR LIVES by Jeannie Johnson ...

World War II affected every aspect of life on the British home front. From food rationing to air-raid shelters to war work those left at home had to make huge changes in their day-to-day lives as Britain mobilised economised & saved in the name of Victory. Wartime Britain" takes a look at what these changes actually meant for families: how families coped when parents went to fight & children were evacuated; how pets were fed during rationing; the rise in road accidents during the blackout; & the infamous 'shelter cough'." ...

Here we trace the history of the Second World War through six wartime Christmases with fascinating information on how people in Britain Allied troops at home & British servicemen aboard celebrated the festive season. This highly illustrated & informative guide explores how people made the most of trying times hanging paper chains in air-raid shelters & enriching Christmas cakes with gravy browning. Through rationing bad news & good absences losses & homecomings Christmas cheer bubbled up during these dark years. For many of course Christmas proved a sad time with reflections on the years of peace gone by toasting loved ones far away & thinking of those who would never come home. But for six years Christmas & the New Year were celebrated with song jokes simple gifts & the wish that next year the war will be over. ...

During World War Two Britain had to look to the land to provide the produce it had previously shipped in from abroad meaning huge changes on both the agricultural & domestic scenes. Accompanying an 8-part BBC series & written by the three presenters who spend a year living on a reconstructed farm from the era Wartime Farm sets these changes within a historical context & looks at the day-to-day life of that time. Exploring a fascinating chapter in Britains recent history we see how our predecessors lived & thrived in difficult conditions with extreme frugality & ingenuity. From growing your own vegetables & keeping chickens in the back yard to having to make do & mend many of the challenges faced by wartime Britons have resonance today. Fascinating historical detail & atmospheric story-telling make this a truly compelling read. ...