[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Recently, I read a book review which has left me scratching my head. It’s by Trevor Wilson (English Historical Review, 71 (2006), 629-31) and is about, among other books, K. W. Mitchinson, Defending Albion: Britain’s Home Army, 1908-1919 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) — according to the publisher, ‘the first published […]
P. R. C. Groves explains why, in his view, Britain in the early 1930s was possessed by a ‘national defeatism’, namely the idea that war was immoral and should be banned, and the nations disarmed: The origins of the malady may be summarized as: the Voluntary System, the Somme and Passchendaele. The sacrifice of the
John Feather. A History of British Publishing. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. 2nd edition. Most of my primary sources, so far, are books; this will help me understand the economics and the ideologies of the book publishing industry. Corey Robin. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
Air University Press, the publishing arm of the USAF‘s Air University, has most of its books available in PDF format for free download. As one might expect, the subject matter is mostly American and recent, but some are on-topic for me, including Williamson Murray’s Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933-1945, George K. Williams’ Biplanes and
Stephen Dorril. Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism. London: Viking, 2006. I’m always up for books on British fascism. This one is perhaps aiming to do a Kershaw — a sort of history of the BUF through a biography of its leader. ‘[I]mportant and controversial’, according to the blurb. Medical Manual of Chemical Warfare.
Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang, eds. Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945. London: Pimlico, 2006. Scholars of the calibre of Richard Overy and Tami Davis Biddle examine the Dresden raid from a variety of angles. Hew Strachan contributes a chapter on “Strategic bombing and the question of civilian casualties up to 1945”. Why isn’t
J. M. Kenworthy. Peace or War? New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927. I ordered this back in January, before I realised that it’s just Will Civilisation Crash? (London: Ernest Benn, 1927), under a different title. And a different pagination. Oh well. David Zimmerman. Britain’s Shield: Radar and the Defeat of the Luftwaffe. Stroud: Sutton, 2001.
A. C. Grayling. Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? London: Bloomsbury, 2006. I haven’t really come to grips with the moral questions surrounding my subject yet (yes, bombing civilians is bad, but then war is generally not very nice, so …), so I’ll be
The Royal Navy is about to pay a high price for its neglect of airpower … Front cover of E. F. Spanner, The Broken Trident (London: E. F. Spanner, 1929). I just like this picture for some reason. Spanner was a retired naval architect who evidently had at least one bee in his bonnet, for
Another bit from the Earl of Halsbury’s 1944 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1926), this time from p. 217. It’s a couple of weeks after a massive Russo-German air strike on London, Paris, and in fact most of the bigger cities of western Europe. Two members of a group making its way to the southern coast of
