Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs
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Название: Winston’s War
Автор: Michael Dobbs
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007397624
isbn:
MICHAEL DOBBS
WINSTON’S WAR
FOR SANDY AND EDNA SAUNDERS, AND EDNA DICKINSON.
Much loved aunts and uncle.
‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.’
Neville Chamberlain, speaking about Czechoslovakia, hours before flying to Munich to negotiate the deal with Hitler that surrendered to Germany large parts of Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were not invited to the negotiations.
Contents
Part One: Blessed are the Peacemakers
Part Three: The Limits of Loyalty
London, Saturday 1 October 1938.
A story has to start somewhere. Ours begins on a disgruntled day in autumn, in the unsuspecting year of 1938.
It could have begun a generation earlier, of course – in 1914, as the British Expeditionary Force whistled its way off to war with the Kaiser. Or 1918, when the few that were left dragged themselves back. There again, we could have started a century earlier when the hooves of the Emperor Napoleon’s cavalry turned the continent of Europe into a muddy dying place that stretched from the tumbling rivers and mountains of Spain to the gates of imperial Moscow. Extend the imagination just a little and we could go back – why, a thousand years, to that day on a hill overlooking the coast of Sussex when King Harold raised his eyes to view his enemy in full retreat, and got nothing but an arrow for his efforts – or another thousand years still, to the time of the СКАЧАТЬ