Blood, Tears and Folly
An Objective Look at World War II
LEN DEIGHTON
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by William Collins in 2014
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1993
Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2014
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Cover design: Antoni Deighton
Cover illustration: Gunther Prien’s U-47 (U-Boot Type VIIB built by Germaniaweft Krupp in 1938); cover photograph shows four WRNS with Webley revolvers practising at the pistol range © Imperial War Museum Archive
Source ISBN: 9780007531172
Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007549498
Version: 2017-03-15
To your children, and ours
‘Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valour our only shield.’
Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, 8 October 1940
CONTENTS
Cover Designer’s Note
Illustrations
Introduction
PART ONE: The Battle of the Atlantic
1 Britannia Rules The Waves
2 Days of Wine and Roses
3 Exchanges of Secrets
4 Science Goes to Sea
5 War on the Cathode Tube
PART TWO: Hitler Conquers Europe
6 Germany: Unrecognized Power
7 Passchendaele and After
8 France in the Prewar Years
9 An Anti-Hitler Coalition?
10 German Arms Outstretched
11 Retreat
PART THREE: The Mediterranean War
12 The War Moves South
13 A Tactician’s Paradise
14 Double Defeat: Greece and Cyrenaica
15 Two Side-Shows
16 Quartermaster’s Nightmare
PART FOUR: The War in the Air
17 The Wars Before the War
18 Preparations
19 The Bullets Are Flying
20 Hours of Darkness
21 The Beginning of the End
PART FIVE: Barbarossa: The Attack on Russia
22 Fighting in Peacetime
23 The Longest Day of the Year
24 ‘A War of Annihilation’
25 The Last Chance
26 The War for Oil
PART SIX: Japan Goes to War
27 Bushido: The Soldier’s Code
28 The Way to War
29 Imperial Forces
30 Attack on Pearl Harbor
31 The Co-Prosperity Sphere
Conclusion: ‘Went The Day Well?’
Plate Section
Notes and References
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also By Len Deighton
About the Publisher
The story of
