Search results for ""Author R. T. Howard""

In 1945, did President Truman really need to use two atomic bombs against Japan – and could he not have given Japan advance warning about the terrifying ‘device’ his scientists had developed? After 9/11, could not President George W. Bush have targeted only Osama bin Laden instead of toppling the entire Taliban regime in Afghanistan? Why, in 2011, did David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy use military force to remove a Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, who had repeatedly offered peace talks and compromise? They were all, in their different ways, ‘Warmongers’ who waged unnecessary wars, or used a grossly disproportionate amount of force. In modern times (since 1648), many other leaders across the world have also been ‘warmongers’ for the same reasons. Some of these individuals were bloodthirsty, some reckless, but most were badly informed or just foolish. An underlying theme is that all these shows of force have rebounded on the perpetrator (or, in one case, very nearly did so). The warmongers also share other features, and five in particular that are identified in this book, which explain why they fought unnecessary wars, and which will give clues to when unnecessary wars of the future will be fought. Warmongers is designed to challenge assumptions and to provoke discussion about when and in what circumstances force is ever really justified – so pertinent at a time of ongoing war in, and war-weariness about, Syria and Afghanistan.

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Exactly a century ago, intelligence agencies across Europe first became aware of a fanatical German nationalist whose political party was rapidly gathering momentum. His name was Adolf Hitler. From 1933, these spy services watched with growing alarm as they tried to determine what sort of threat Hitler's regime would now pose to the rest of Europe. Would Germany rearm, either covertly or in open defiance of the outside world? Would Hitler turn his attention eastwards - or did he also pose a threat to the west? What were the feelings and attitudes of ordinary Germans, towards their own regime as well as the outside world? Despite intense rivalry and mistrust between them, these spy chiefs began to liaise and close ranks against Nazi Germany. At the heart of this loose, informal network were the British and French intelligence services, alongside the Poles and Czechs. Some other countries - Holland, Belgium, and the United States - stood at the periphery. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished British, French, German, Danish, and Czech archival sources, Spying on the Reich tells the story of Germany and its rearmament in the 1920s and 1930s; its relations with foreign governments and their intelligence services; and the relations and rivalries between Western governments, seen through the prism of the cooperation, or lack of it, between their spy agencies. Along the way, it addresses some of the most intriguing questions that still perplex historians of the period, such as how and why Britain defended Poland in September 1939, and what alternative policies could have been pursued?

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