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This book offers a major new analysis of how peace and security can be maintained in Europe and provides a radical vision of a technology-enabling future European defence. It weaves history, strategy, policy, and technology into a compelling analytical narrative and lays out the scale of the challenge Europeans and their allies face.
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
First published over thirty years ago, War in European History is a brilliantly written survey of the changing ways that war has been waged in Europe, from the Norse invasions to the present day. Far more than a simple military history, the book serves as a succinct and enlightening overview of the development of European society as a whole over the last millennium. From the Norsemen and the world of the medieval knights, through to the industrialized mass warfare of the twentieth century, Michael Howard illuminates the way in which warfare has shaped the history of the Continent, its effect on social and political institutions, and the ways in which technological and social change have in turn shaped the way in which wars are fought. This new edition includes a fully updated further reading and a new final chapter bringing the story into the twenty-first century, including the invasion of Iraq and the so-called 'War against Terror'.
The Cold War was a unique international conflict partly because Josef Stalin sought socialist transformation of other countries rather than simply the traditional objectives. This intriguing book, based on recently accessible Soviet primary sources, is the first to explain the emergence of the Cold War and its development in Stalin's lifetime from the perspective of Soviet policy-making. The book pays particular attention to the often-neglected "societal" dimension of Soviet foreign policy as a crucial element of the genesis and development of the Cold War. It is also the first to put German postwar development into the context of Soviet Cold War policy. Stalin vainly tried to mobilize the G...
This book examines the role of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It traces Europe's political, economic and financial crisis to the loss of these memories of the rupture of 1945. In order to survive the EU will have to prove that it can act effectively in the face of future challenges.
This book presents a comprehensive reassessment of Europe in the Cold War period, 1945-91. Contrary to popular belief, it shows that relations between East and West were based not only on confrontation and mutual distrust, but also on collaboration. The authors reveal that - despite opposing ideologies - there was in fact considerable interaction and exchange between different Eastern and Western actors (such states, enterprises, associations, organisations and individuals) irrespective of the Iron Curtain. This book challenges both the traditional understanding of the East-West juxtaposition and the relevancy of the Iron Curtain. Covering the full period, and taking into account a range of spheres including trade, scientific-technical co-operation, and cultural and social exchanges, it reveals how smaller countries and smaller actors in Europe were able to forge and implement their agendas within their own blocs. The books suggests that given these lower-level actors engaged in mutually beneficial cooperation, often running counter to the ambitions of the bloc-leaders, the rules of Cold War interaction were not, in fact, exclusively dictated by the superpowers.
This book examines early CIA U-2 operations looking at the missions flown and the sensors carried and describes how the imagery and electronic intelligence captured produced thousands of images and tape recordings that were used to produce high quality intelligence on the USSR's most secret military and scientific activities.
Exploring the visions of the end of the Cold War that have been put forth since its inception until its actual ending, this volume brings to the fore the reflections, programmes, and strategies that were intended to call into question the bipolar system and replace it with alternative approaches or concepts. These visions were associated not only with prominent individuals, organized groups and civil societies, but were also connected to specific historical processes or events. They ranged from actual, thoroughly conceived programmes, to more blurred, utopian aspirations -- or simply the belief that the Cold War had already, in effect, come to an end. Such visions reveal much about the contexts in which they were developed and shed light on crucial moments and phases of the Cold War.
Although the Cold War is over, the writing of its history has only just begun. This book presents an analysis of the origins of the Cold War in the decade after the Second World War, discussing the development of the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers and the reactions of the Western European states to the growing Soviet-American rivalry. Drawing on recently opened archives from the former Soviet Union as well as on existing research largely unavailable in English, distinguished authorities from each of the countries discussed provide new insight into the Cold War and into the Europe that has been molded by it. The book begins with an overview of United States Cold War policy ...
The city of Trieste stands as a symbol of the Italian-Yugoslav border dispute in the first decade after the Second World War. The problem included a much larger territory which covers the wider area of Trieste: ranging from the Julian Alps in the north to the base of the Istrian peninsula in the south; in the area where the Italians meet the South Slavs. Moreover, after the Second World War it was an area of confrontation for two ideologies: western democracy and communism. It was the place where the Iron Curtain lay between the two worlds for many decades of the Cold War. Often discussed from the socio-economic point of view, military aspects of the Trieste Crisis remain remarkably under-re...