Bücher von John Charmley

Of the three revisionist works John Charmley has written about British foreign policy in the mid-twentieth century this is the centrepiece. The author argues that Churchill deserves more credit for 'their finest hour' than has been granted, but just as his virtues were built on the heroic scale, so too were his faults and failures. The statesman who had struggled to destroy Nazism and restore Europe's balance of power ended by allowing Stalin to dominate central and eastern Europe.This is no mere exercise in debunking, in many ways the complex man presented in these pages is more interesting than the more hagiographical portraits.'This is not instant history run up to cause a sensation, but a meticulously documented reappraisal of Churchill's war leadership and of the career that led up to it. Nor is its tone contemptuous or vindictive. The author accepts that Churchill was a great man. His starting point is that even great men make mistakes.' John Keegan, Daily Telegraph 'Probably the most important revisionist text to be published since the war.' Alan Clark, The Times

The New York Times Book Review called John Charmley's previous book on Winston Churchill "entertaining, informative, and infuriating." With equally impressive scholarship, eloquence, and wit, Charmley now turns to the Anglo-American "special relationship" that was the cornerstone of Churchill's foreign policy, ruthlessly stripping away the myth to reveal the unsentimental reality of the Churchill years and beyond, from 1940 to 1957. Churchill carried on the war because of his misguided faith that U.S. help could be enlisted to save the British Empire, contends Charmley. President Roosevelt, however, sought an end to imperialism and thus entered the war only belatedly, ensuring that Britian would end the war weak and dependent on America. And Britian did indeed become a U.S. "pensioner"-a reality dramatically confirmed in 1956, when American pressure led to the removal of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. With vivid assessments of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden, John Charmley brilliantly continues his though-provoking-and sometimes infuriating-ways.

An important new reappraisal of the immediate origins of World War II. "Entertaining and absorbing....Chamberlain hardly emerges a hero from these pages, but at least there is no excuse left for regarding him as no more than a wimp in a wing-collar." -The Guardian.

In this controversial and challenging study based on extensive new work on Chamberlain's papers, John Charmley argues against the commonly held view that Chamberlain's policy of appeasement towards Hitler was naive and weak.

The Anglo-American alliance was the cornerstone of Churchill's foreign policy after 1940. Churchill carried on the war in 1940 because he believed that American help could save the British Empire. This book argues that his faith was misplaced, and that Franklin Roosevelt saw an end to imperialism as one of America's war aims.