1939

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"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.

“Overy is one of the great historians of the second world war.”– Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times (London)

“This country’s most distinguished historian of the Second World War … Overy’s book is easily the best account of Europe’s descent into the death and destruction that were Hitler’s element” –– Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard (London)

“Nail-biting … with rare narrative verve, he documents the ultimatums, emissaries, letters and increasingly desperate proposals that shuttled across Europe in the countdown to war.””-– Ian Thomson Independent (London)

“Even those who think they know it all about how war broke out will learn something from Richard Overy’s book”-– Simon Heffer, Literary Review (London)

“One of the great historians of this conflict” — Simon Garfield, Observer (London)Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain’s most distinguished historians and an internationally renowned scholar of World War II. He is the recipient of the Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize and is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society. His many works include Blood and Ruins,  The Bombing War, Dictators and The Morbid Age.

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