The Guns Fell Silent and the War Began PDF Download

Author: Charles V. Engelbrecht
Publisher: Engelbrecht & Associates
ISBN: 9780962143106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

View

Book Description

Author: James Riordan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780192751638
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

View

Book Description
Jack Loveless attempts to avert his grandson's questions about his role in World War I by taking him to visit the battlefield graveyards in France. While there he meets a German soldier from the past and vividly remembers the Christmas truce, a miraculous moment when the guns fell silent and horrors of war were temporarily forgotten in a football match. Suggested level: secondary.

Author: James Riordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press - Children
ISBN: 0192735713
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description
Jack, standing among the war graves, sees a face he recognizes. Suddenly, it's 1914 again and he's a young lad back in the trenches. Visions of killing and misery come to him with horrible clarity. But then Jack remembers too the incredible moment when the guns fell silent for a short time, and fighting gave way to football on the frozen ground of No-Man's-Land. This amazing story, based on true facts from the First World War, will transport readers back to the war fields of France and show that even in times of conflict and extreme sadness, there is always hope.

Author: Joseph E. Persico
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0375760458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

View

Book Description
November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.”

Author: Allen Packwood
Publisher: Grub Street Publishers
ISBN: 1473893917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

View

Book Description
An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.

Author: MARTIN. MACE
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912205561
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 114

View

Book Description

Author: Paul Fussell
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199971951
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

View

Book Description
A new edition of Paul Fussell's literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, now a classic text of literary and cultural criticism.

Author: Geoffrey Wawro
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 712

View

Book Description
The "stirring," definitive history of America's decisive role in winning World War I (Wall Street Journal). The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet it has all but vanished from view. Historians have dismissed the American war effort as largely economic and symbolic. But as Geoffrey Wawro shows in Sons of Freedom, the French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918, and would have lost the war without the Doughboys. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle" -- but it was a distinctly American miracle. In Sons of Freedom, prize-winning historian Geoffrey Wawro weaves together in thrilling detail the battles, strategic deliberations, and dreadful human cost of the American war effort. A major revision of the history of World War I, Sons of Freedom resurrects the brave heroes who saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.

Author: Stanley Weintraub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439107130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

View

Book Description
From an acclaimed military historian comes the astonishing story of World War I's 1914 Christmas truce—a spontaneous celebration when enemies became friends. It was one of history's most powerful—yet forgotten—Christmas stories. It took place in the improbable setting of the mud, cold rain, and senseless killing of the trenches of World War I. It happened in spite of orders to the contrary by superiors. It happened in spite of language barriers. And it still stands as the only time in history that peace spontaneously arose from the lower ranks in a major conflict, bubbling up to the officers and temporarily turning sworn enemies into friends. Silent Night, by renowned military historian Stanley Weintraub, magically restores the 1914 Christmas Truce to history. It had been lost in the tide of horror that filled the battlefields of Europe for months and years afterward. Yet, in December 1914, the Great War was still young, and the men who suddenly threw down their arms and came together across the front lines—to sing carols, exchange gifts and letters, eat and drink and even play friendly games of soccer—naively hoped that the war would be short-lived, and that they were fraternizing with future friends. It began when German soldiers lit candles on small Christmas trees, and British, French, Belgian, and German troops serenaded each other on Christmas Eve. Soon they were gathering and burying the dead, in an age-old custom of truces. But as the power of Christmas grew among them, they broke bread, exchanged addresses and letters, and expressed deep admiration for one another. When angry superiors ordered them to recommence the shooting, many men aimed harmlessly high overhead. Sometimes the greatest beauty emerges from deep tragedy. Surely the forgotten Christmas Truce was one of history's most beautiful moments, made all the more beautiful in light of the carnage that followed it. Stanley Weintraub's moving re-creation demonstrates that peace can be more fragile than war, but also that ordinary men can bond with one another despite all efforts of politicians and generals to the contrary.

Author: David Reynolds
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857206389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

View

Book Description
In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to personal tragedies, however moving, we have lost the big picture: the history has been distilled into poetry. In TheLong Shadow, critically acclaimed author David Reynolds seeks to redress the balance by exploring the true impact of 1914-18 on the 20th century. Some of the Great War's legacies were negative and pernicious but others proved transformative in a positive sense. Exploring big themes such as democracy and empire, nationalism and capitalism and re-examining the differing impacts of the War on Britain, Ireland and the United States,TheLong Shadowthrows light on the whole of the last century and demonstrates that 1914-18 is a conflict that Britain, more than any other nation, is still struggling to comprehend. Stunningly broad in its historical perspective, The Long Shadowis a magisterial and seismic re-presentation of the Great War.