Search results for ""Author Charles Stephenson""
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Stalin's War on Japan: The Red Army's 'Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation', 1945
Did Japan surrender in 1945 because of the death and devastation caused by the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or because of the crushing defeat inflicted on their armies by the Soviet Union in Manchukuo, the puppet state they set up in north-east China? Indeed, the Red Army's rapid and total victory in Manchukuo has been relatively neglected by historians. Charles Stephenson, in this scholarly and highly readable new study, describes the political, diplomatic and military build-up to the Soviet offensive and its decisive outcome. He also considers to what extent Japan's capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict. The military side of the story is explored in fascinating detail - the invasion of Manchukuo itself where the Soviet 'Deep Battle' concept was employed with shattering results, and secondary actions in Korea, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. But equally absorbing is the account of the decision-making that gave rise to the offensive and the political and diplomatic background to it, and in particular the Yalta conference. There, Stalin allowed the Americans to persuade him to join the war in the east; a conflict he was determined on entering anyway. Charles Stephenson's engrossing narrative throws new light on the last act of the Second World War.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Eastern Fleet and the Indian Ocean, 1942 1944: The Fleet that Had to Hide
The story of the British Eastern Fleet, which operated in the Indian Ocean against Japan, has rarely been told. Although it was the largest fleet deployed by the Royal Navy prior to 1945 and played a vital part in the theatre it was sent to protect, it has no place in the popular consciousness of the naval history of the Second World War. So Charles Stephenson's deeply researched and absorbing narrative gives this forgotten fleet the recognition it deserves. British pre-war naval planning for the Far East is part of the story, as is the disastrous loss of the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse in 1941, but the body of the book focuses on the new fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir James Somerville, and its operations against the Japanese navy and aircraft as well as Japanese and German submarines. Later in the war, once the fleet had been reinforced with an American aircraft carrier, it was strong enough to take more aggressive actions against the Japanese, and these are described in vivid detail. Charles Stephenson's authoritative study should appeal to readers who have a special interest in the war with Japan, in naval history more generally and Royal Navy in particular.
£15.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd The Siege of Tsingtau: The German-Japanese War 1914
The German-Japanese War was a key, yet often neglected, episode in the opening phase of the First World War. It had profound implications for the future, particularly in respect of Japans acquisition of Germanys Micronesian islands. Japans naval perimeter was extended and threatened the United States naval strategy of projecting force westward. The campaign to relieve Germany of Tsingtau, the port and naval base in China, and its hinterland posed a grave threat to Chinese independence. The course of the Second World War in China and the Pacific cannot be explained without reference to these events. Charles Stephenson's account makes fascinating reading. The siege of Tsingtau by the Japanese, with token British participation, forms the core of his story. He draws on Japanese and German primary sources to describe the defences, the landings, the course of the siege, and eventual German surrender. His study will be absorbing reading for anyone interested in the campaigns of the First World War outside of Europe, in German colonial expansion and the rise to power of Japan.
£14.99
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Churchill as Home Secretary: Suffragettes, Strikes, and Social Reform 1910-11
There can be few statesmen whose lives and careers have received as much investigation and literary attention as Winston Churchill. Relatively little however has appeared which deals specifically or holistically with his first senior ministerial role; that of Secretary of State for the Home Office. This may be due to the fact that, of the three Great Offices of State which he was to occupy over the course of his long political life, his tenure as Home Secretary was the briefest. The Liberal Government, of which he was a senior figure, had been elected in 1906 to put in place social and political reform. Though Churchill was at the forefront of these matters, his responsibility for domestic affairs led to him facing other, major, challenges departmentally; this was a time of substantial commotion on the social front, with widespread industrial and civil strife. Even given that Home Secretaries never do have an easy time', his period in office was thus marked by a huge degree of political and social turbulence. The terms Tonypandy' and Peter the Painter' perhaps spring most readily to mind. Rather less known is his involvement in one of the burning issues of the time, female suffrage, and his portrayal as the prisoners' friend' in terms of penal reform. Aged 33 on appointment, and the youngest Home Secretary since 1830, he became empowered to wield the considerable executive authority inherent in the role of one of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, and he certainly did not shrink from doing so. There were of course commensurate responsibilities, and how he shouldered them is worth examination.
£22.50
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Mussolini, Mustard Gas and the Fascist Way of War: Ethiopia, 1935-1936
In early October 1935 and without any declaration of war some two hundred thousand men, comprising soldiers and airmen of the Italian armed forces, Fascist ‘Blackshirt’ Militia, Eritrean ascari and Somali dubats, invaded the independent state of Ethiopia (Abyssinia). It was an operation entirely of choice, the chooser being Il Duce: Benito Mussolini. The resultant conflict is often described as a colonial war. Whilst it was certainly launched with the intent of turning Ethiopia into an Italian possession, it was in fact a war of aggression against an independent, sovereign, state with membership of the League of Nations. A state that had, according to one of its nineteenth-century rulers, been ‘for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans’. The swiftness of the Italian victory resulted from their possession and ruthless use of technology; most particularly aircraft, mustard gas, and motorisation/mechanisation. Since they were fighting an enemy who possessed none of these things, then they were able to wage, indeed inaugurate, what the prominent military theorist JFC Fuller dubbed ‘totalitarian warfare’. This, he opined, was the Fascist, the scientific, way of making war. In his considered view, the Fascist Army that waged it was ‘a scientific military instrument.’ This book examines that campaign in military and political terms.
£22.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Germany's Asia-Pacific Empire: Colonialism and Naval Policy, 1885-1914
An overview of Germany's naval and imperial activities in East Asia and the Pacific in the years leading up to the First World War. This book examines German attempts to acquire colonial territories in East Asia and the Pacific, and discusses the huge impact this had on local and other international powers. It covers the German acquisition of Kiautschou in 1897, which had profound consequences for China, beginning a "scramble for concessions" by other western powers; the formation of the powerful German East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron which was seen by the British as a major threat, andwhich resulted in the advent of the Fleet-Unit concept and the birth of the Royal Australian Navy; the Japanese siege and capture of the key German base of Tsingtau in 1914, and the fate of the various former German colonies afterGermany's defeat in 1918. The book contains many illustrations from the author's extensive private collection. Charles Stephenson is an extensively published military historian, whose books include: Moel Famau and the Jubilee Tower of King George III (2008); Servant to the King for His Fortifications: Paul Ive and the Practise of Fortification (2008); The Admiral's Secret Weapon, published by Boydell in 2006; Fortifications ofthe Channel Islands, 1941-45: Hitler's Impregnable Fortress (2006); The Fortifications of Malta, 1530-1945 (2004); and Zeppelins: German Airships, 1900-1940 (2004).
£85.00