The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War

The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

On 2 August 1944, in the wake of the complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre in Belorussia, Winston Churchill mocked Adolf Hitler in the House of Commons by the rank he had reached in the First World War. 'Russian success has been somewhat aided by the strategy of Herr Hitler, of Corporal Hitler,' Churchill jibed. 'Even military idiots find it difficult not to see some faults in his actions.'Andrew Roberts's previous book Masters and Commanders studied the creation of Allied grand strategy; Beating Corporal Hitler now analyses how Axis strategy evolved. Examining the Second World War on every front, Roberts asks whether, with a different decision-making process and a different strategy, the Axis might even have won. Were those German generals who blamed everything on Hitler after the war correct, or were they merely scapegoating their former Führer once he was safely beyond defending himself?In researching this uniquely vivid history of the Second World War...
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The Aachen Memorandum

The Aachen Memorandum

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

May 2045. England has become a minor region of the European superstate, politically correct but inert, weighed down by bureaucracy and unaware of past glories. With British culture diluted to near extinction by European influence, the nation having lost its Crown and its Parliament, nationalistic pride is liable to land you in prison, or even worse... Oxford don Horatio Lestoq finds the dead body of a prominent politician and is immediately tagged as prime suspect. On the run and desperate to clear his name, can he free himself from the tangled web of an EU government conspiracy, or will he become ensnared like those before him who tried to reveal fiercely guarded hidden truths?
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Napoleon

Napoleon

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the first modern biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth...
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Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe

Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

June 18, 1815, was one of the most momentous days in world history, marking the end of twenty-two years of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. On the bloody battlefield of Waterloo, the Emperor Napoleon and his hastily formed legions clashed with the Anglo-Allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington — the only time the two greatest military strategists of their age faced each other in combat. With precision and elegance, Andrew Roberts sets the political, strategic, and historical scene, providing a breathtaking account of each successive stage of the battle while also examining new evidence that reveals exactly how Napoleon was defeated. Illuminating, authoritative, and engrossing, Waterloo is a masterful work of history.
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Elegy

Elegy

Andrew Roberts

History / Biography

On 1 July 1916, after a five-day bombardment, 11 British and 5 French divisions launched their long-awaited 'Big Push' on German positions on high ground above the Rivers Ancre and Somme on the Western Front. Some ground was gained, but at a terrible cost. In killing-grounds whose names are indelibly imprinted on 20th-century memory, German machine-guns - manned by troops who had sat out the storm of shellfire in deep dugouts - inflicted terrible losses on the British infantry.The British Fourth Army lost 57,470 casualties, the French Sixth Army suffered 1,590 casualties and the German 2nd Army 10,000. And this was but the prelude to 141 days of slaughter that would witness the deaths of between 750,000 and 1 million troops.Andrew Roberts evokes the pity and the horror of the blackest day in the history of the British army - a summer's day-turned-hell-on-earth by modern military technology - in the words of casualties, survivors, and the bereaved.
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