Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II
Drawing on the author’s deep understanding of military history and weaponry, and of the strengths and frailties of politicians and generals, this is Len Deighton’s classic myth-puncturing analysis of the opening years of the Second World War.Reissued by William Collins, ‘Blood, Tears and Folly’ offers sweeping analysis of six theatres of war: the Battle of the Atlantic, Hitler’s conquest of western Europe, the war in the Mediterranean, the battle for the skies, Operation Barbarossa and the German assault on Russia, and the entry of Japan into what was from that point a truly global war.This is the period during which the Allied powers were brought to the brink of utter defeat, and Deighton offers an unflinching account of the political machinations, the strategy and tactics, the weapons and the men on both sides who created a world of terror and millions dead, of the Holocaust, and of nuclear devastation.As Deighton writes: ‘the time has come to sweep away the myths and reveal the no less inspiring gleam of that complex and frightening time in which evil was in the ascendant, goodness diffident, and the British – impetuous, foolish and brave beyond measure – the world’s only hope.’
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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
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
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
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.
One such woman was my grandmother, an audacious and inspirational person who left her job as a chef to become a skilled oxyacetylene welder making flame traps for night-fighters. Thousands of women like her, building airplanes, tanks and ships, were immortalized in America by the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ campaign. Britain’s survival during the leanest days of the war owes a debt of gratitude to the Women’s Land Army. These hard-working women succeeded in cultivating every available square foot of land and saved the country from starvation when the U-boat campaign was at its most successful.
