Bomber Command - Softcover

Max Hastings

4.19

1,581 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330513613 ISBN 13: 9780330513616

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 2010

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Bomber Command's air offensive against the cities of Nazi Germany was one of the most epic campaigns of World War II. More than 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF's attempt to win the war by bombing. The struggle in the air began meekly in 1939 with only a few Whitleys, Hampdens, and Wellingtons flying blindly through the night on their ill-conceived bombing runs. It ended six years later with 1,600 Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes, equipped with the best of British wartime technology, razing whole German cities in a single night. Bomber Command, through fits and starts, grew into an effective fighting force.

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Book Description:

Bomber Command’s air offensive against the cities of Nazi Germany was one of the most epic campaigns of World War II. More than 56,000 British and Commonwealth aircrew and 600,000 Germans died in the course of the RAF’s attempt to win the war by bombing. In Bomber Command, originally published to critical acclaim in the U.K., famed British military historian Sir Max Hastings offers a captivating analysis of the strategy and decision-making behind one of World War II’s most violent episodes. With firsthand descriptions of the experiences of aircrew from 1939 to 1945—based on one hundred interviews with veterans—and a harrowing narrative of the experiences of Germans on the ground during the September 1944 bombing of Darmstadt, Bomber Command is widely recognized as a classic account of one of the bloodiest campaigns in World War II history. Now back in print in the U.S., this book is an essential addition to any history reader’s bookshelf.

From the Back Cover:

Sir Max Hastings, recipient of the 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing, has written one of the classic accounts of World War II. Upon publication, Bomber Command, winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize, attracted controversy but today is widely considered a classic account of one of the longest and bloodiest campaigns of World War II. This work, in Hastings’s characteristic prose, profiles the harrowing experiences of Bomber Command’s aircrew from 1939–45, the entire length of the air war of Europe, as well as the controversy surrounding the development and implementation of area bombing. Written from a vast collection of documents, letters, diaries, and interviews from many surviving senior officers, Bomber Command remains an important contribution toward understanding one of the most violent struggles of the war.

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