1939: Countdown to War

Authors: Overy, Richard
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
BISAC/Subject: HIS027100, HIS037070, HIS010020
ISBN: 9781101500415, Related ISBNs: 0143120069, 0670022098, 1101500417, 9780143120063, 9780670022090
Classification: Non-Fiction
Number of pages: 176,
Audience: General/trade
Synopsis: "Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into...death and destruction." --Evening Standard (London)

A brilliantly concise narrative of the days leading to the outbreak of history's greatest conflagration, 1939 takes readers hour by hour through the nail-biting decisions that determined the fate of millions. Richard Overy, a leading historian of the period, masterfully recreates the jockeying for advantage that set Europe's greatest powers on a collision course. Would Stalin join Hitler in a bid to divide Poland and flout the West? Would Britain and France succeed in forcing Germany to reason? And how far would a defiant Poland push its claim to exist? In the summer of 1939, the course of events was anything but assured, as this exceptionally absorbing book drives home.

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