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Galen Roger Perras - Stepping Stones to Nowhere, Häftad

Häftad, Engelska, 2004

Stepping Stones to Nowhere

The Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and American Military Strategy, 1867-1945

Av Galen Roger Perras

423 kr

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Beskrivning
The Aleutian Islands, a mostly forgotten portion of the UnitedStates on the southwest coast of Alaska, have often assumed a key rolein American military strategy. W.H. Seward, the US secretary of statewho brokered the purchase of Alaska, believed that the acquisitionwould permit the United States to dominate the Pacific. In the 1990s,Bill Clinton attempted to install an American ballistic missile defencesystem on the islands. But for most Americans, prior to the SecondWorld War, the bleak and barren islands were of far less interest thanthe Philippines.In Stepping Stones to Nowhere, Galen Perras shows how thatchanged with the Japanese occupation of the western Aleutians, whichclimaxed in the horrendous battle for Attu. Efforts to make the area amajor theatre of war rivalling Europe or the South Pacific foundered,but certainly not for lack of effort. The campaign was unique in itsinvolvement of Britain, the Soviet Union, and Canada. Perras revealshow this clash in the North Pacific demonstrated serious problems withthe way that American civilian and military decision makers sought toincite a global conflict.Thoroughly researched and accessible, this book will be invaluableto military and naval historians as well as those with a generalinterest in the history of the Second World War.
Produktinformation
  • Utgivningsdatum: 2004-01-01
  • Mått: 152 x 229 x undefined mm
  • Vikt: 380 g
  • Format: Häftad
  • Språk: Engelska
  • Antal sidor: 288
  • Förlag: University of British Columbia Press
  • ISBN: 9780774809900
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Galen Perras is an archivist at the National Archivesof Canada and the author of Franklin Roosevelt and the Origins ofthe Canadian-American Security Alliance, 1933-1945.

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The result is a comprehensive study which, rather than portraying the Aleutian campaign merely as a quixotic and ultimately inconsequential operation, explores the competing opinions and interests that led to the battles of Attu and Kiska. Stepping Stones to Nowhere succeeds in placing American activities in Alaska and the Aleutians during the Second World War, often dismissed as trivial in the historiography, into a broader context than has hitherto been recognized. - FDP (Canadian Military History, Book Review Supplement, Summer 2005) Recommended. (Choice, Vol. 41, No. 03) In this insightful, stimulating, and extraordinarily well-researched new book, Galen Roger Perras explores the dimensions of the long-vanished Mercator Projection world before the 1940s, when the northernmost reaches of the planet, and in particular the Aleutian Islands, were still a strategic dead end. Perras look in detail at the evolution of the Aleutian Chain and Alaska in US military thinking during the critical years of the 1930s and 1940s. This book is a wonderful reminder that in war, as in the rest of life, a compelling idea need not have any basis in reality to shape the world in which we live. - Terence M. Cole, University of Alaska Fairbanks (The International History Review) This interesting, important, and largely untold story gets the attention it deserves in this carefully detailed book. - Allan Smith (University of Toronto Quarterly, Winter 2004/05)

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