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    1939: Countdown to War
    1939: Countdown to War
    1939: Countdown to War
    Audiobook3 hours

    1939: Countdown to War

    Written by Richard Overy, PhD

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    On August 24, 1939, the world held its collective breath as Hitler and Stalin signed the now infamous nonaggression pact, signaling an imminent invasion of Poland and daring Western Europe to respond.

    In this dramatic account of the final days before the outbreak of World War II, award-winning historian Richard Overy vividly chronicles the unraveling of peace, hour by grim hour, as politicians and ordinary citizens brace themselves for a war that could spell the end of European civilization.

    Nothing was entirely predictable or inevitable. The West hoped that Hitler would see sense if they stood firm. Hitler was convinced the West would back down. Moments of uncertainty alternated with those of confrontation; secret intelligence was used by both sides to support their hopes. The one constant feature was the determination of Poland, a country created only in 1919, to protect its newfound independence against a vastly superior enemy.

    1939 documents a defining moment in the violent history of the twentieth century.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 23, 2010
    ISBN9781400188673
    1939: Countdown to War

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    Reviews for 1939

    4/5

    81 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Interesting info, some not true, probably bc the author took it’s info from other authors & not actually did the research himself.
    • 4/5
      This book reads like a single ominous antebellum drumbeat that gets more hair-raising as it goes along and actually induced chills at the start of war. The details are positively fascinating in that a) wow, all this went down! and b) all that went down is known in history! This is quite a valuable book from which a great many lessons can be derived. An important experience.
    • 3/5
      It's not necessarily that this is a bad book, but rather that Overy has already written The Road to War, an excellent work offering a much broader investigation of the leadup to war. (Both in terms of the period covered and the nations involved.)1939 presents a more focused view, narrowing in on a handful of events for a trio of actors. [Germany, Great Britain, and France. Poland gets a bit of discussion, but as they were largely a passive actor in terms of whether it would be a local war or a global one, their actions are primarily presented in relation to the other three.] Though more fine-grained at times than Road, I'd certainly recommend the latter before this book. In the end, I'd say that this work feels somewhat superfluous, and is for those who already know the general overview but want a detailed accounting of the actions taken in those final days.