Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II. Len Deighton

       Blood, Tears and Folly

      An Objective Look at World War II

      LEN DEIGHTON

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      First published by William Collins in 2014

      First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1993

      Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2014

      Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

      Cover design: Antoni Deighton

      Cover illustration: Gunther Prien’s U-47 (U-Boot Type VIIB built by Germaniaweft Krupp in 1938); cover photograph shows four WRNS with Webley revolvers practising at the pistol range © Imperial War Museum Archive

      Source ISBN: 9780007531172

      Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007549498

      Version: 2017-03-15

      To your children, and ours

       ‘Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valour our only shield.’

      Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, 8 October 1940

      CONTENTS

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

      Cover Designer’s Note

      Illustrations

      Introduction

      PART ONE: The Battle of the Atlantic

1 Britannia Rules The Waves

2 Days of Wine and Roses

3 Exchanges of Secrets

4 Science Goes to Sea

5 War on the Cathode Tube

PART TWO: Hitler Conquers Europe

6 Germany: Unrecognized Power

7 Passchendaele and After

8 France in the Prewar Years

       9 An Anti-Hitler Coalition?

       10 German Arms Outstretched

       11 Retreat

       PART THREE: The Mediterranean War

       12 The War Moves South

       13 A Tactician’s Paradise

       14 Double Defeat: Greece and Cyrenaica

       15 Two Side-Shows

       16 Quartermaster’s Nightmare

       PART FOUR: The War in the Air

       17 The Wars Before the War

       18 Preparations

       19 The Bullets Are Flying

       20 Hours of Darkness

       21 The Beginning of the End

       PART FIVE: Barbarossa: The Attack on Russia

       22 Fighting in Peacetime

       23 The Longest Day of the Year

       24 ‘A War of Annihilation’

       25 The Last Chance

       26 The War for Oil

       PART SIX: Japan Goes to War

       27 Bushido: The Soldier’s Code

       28 The Way to War

       29 Imperial Forces

       30 Attack on Pearl Harbor

       31 The Co-Prosperity Sphere

       Conclusion: ‘Went The Day Well?’

       Plate Section

       Notes and References

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also By Len Deighton

       About the Publisher

       Cover Designer’s Note

      The story of the Second World War is one of tremendous technological change combined with great human emotion. When I set out to design the covers for this reissue of Len Deighton’s trilogy of Second World War histories, Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly, I wanted to incorporate both of these elements into a unified design theme that could be used on all three books. The books were among the first to offer a balanced narrative of the war with both sides of the story being represented, and I felt it was essential that the cover designs were similarly complete.

      To convey the concept of technological change and development I created illustrations that begin as a set of plans on the back cover and continue across the spine to become a full-colour image of a fighting machine on the front. Many things we take for granted today, such as the mobile phone, microwave and air-traffic control, owe their development to the innovation that took place during the war.

      The Second World War affected the lives of every man, woman and child living in Western Europe between 1939 and 1945. Television news has made us accustomed to watching remotely piloted drones waging war from the safety of our living room sofas, uninvolved except for the opinions we choose to express. In contrast I felt it was important to remind readers of the direct participation and sacrifice made by everyone during the war, so I carefully chose photographs of women in a variety of roles.

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