Societies at War – serie

This is the first study of the aims that motivated the major powers – the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Germany and Japan – to fight in the Second World War. The book shows, in a way that has not previously been attempted, how some war aims were constants that were unlikely to be abandoned except as a result of total defeat while others arose and sometimes declined as a result of the fortunes of war. Fresh light is shed on the wartime transition of the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status, while the author shows that consistency is most evident in Great Britain, content with the international prewar status quo, and Nazi Germany, intent from the first on destroying it and replacing it with a new order in which all liberal and civilised values would be annihilated.Based largely on published sources, including published documentary material, the aim is to ensure accessibility for a range of readers. The level at which it is pitched, the synthesis of a broad range of material, its breadth of coverage and the comparative element will make this an ideal text for students studying the Second World War.

For Britain the Second World War exists in popular memory as a time of heroic sacrifice, survival and ultimate victory over Fascism. In the Irish state the years 1939-1945 are still remembered simply as 'the Emergency'. Eire was one of many small states which in 1939 chose not to stay out of the war but one of the few able to maintain its non-belligerency as a policy.How much this owed to Britain's military resolve or to the political skills of Éamon de Valera is a key question which this new book will explore. It will also examine the tensions Eire's policy created in its relations with Winston Churchill and with the United States. The author also explores propaganda, censorship and Irish state security and the degree to which it involves secret co-operation with Britain. Disturbing issues are also raised like the IRA's relationship to Nazi Germany and ambivalent Irish attitudes to the Holocaust.Drawing upon both published and unpublished sources, this book illustrates the war's impact on people on both sides of the border and shows how it failed to resolve sectarian problems on Northern Ireland while raising higher the barriers of misunderstanding between it and the Irish state across its border.

This book examines in depth for the first time the origins, development, and reception of the major dramatic screen representations of ‘The Few’ in the Battle of Britain produced over the past seventy years. It explores both continuity and change of presentation in relation to a wartime event that acquired near-mythical dimensions in popular consciousness even before it happened and has been represented multiple times over the course of the past seven decades. Alongside technical developments, considerable social, cultural, and political fluctuation (as well as an expansion of factual knowledge concerning the battle itself) occurred in this period, all of which helped to shape how the battle came to be framed at particular junctures. The ways in which the Battle of Britain was being represented in other fictional forms as well histories and commemorations form part of the context in which screen representations are explored.Films discussed in detail include The Lion Has Wings, First of the Few, Angels One Five, Reach for the Sky and Battle of Britain, along with the television productions Piece of Cake and A Perfect Hero. Foreign productions, such as A Yank in the RAF and Dark Blue World, as well as abandoned projects and dramas in which ‘The Few’ feature in a more tangential fashion, are also mentioned in context. The emphasis throughout is on production issues and the extent to which these screen dramas reflected or influenced popular understanding of 1940. The Battle of Britain on Screen is therefore a contribution to the growing scholarly literature on how the Second World War has been remembered and represented within the United Kingdom.