Meticulous research provides the fullest insight yet into the impact of this bombing campaign on Britain’s home front during the Second World War. “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide,” the German Foreign Office announced in April 1942 as the Luftwaffe attacked Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. Over a thousand people died. These raids were direct retaliation for RAF raids on equally historic German cities. Hitler had ordered that “Preference is to be given . . . where attacks are likely to have the greatest possible effect on civilian life,” and in this narrow aim—as Jan Gore shows in the first full history of the raids to be published for over twenty years—they certainly succeeded. She explains the Luftwaffe’s tactics, the types of bombs that were used—high explosive, parachute mines and incendiaries—and records the devastating damage they caused. Her main focus is on the effect of the bombing on the ground. In graphic detail she describes the air raid precautions, the role of the various civil defense organizations and the direct experience of the civilians. Their recollections—many of which have not been published before—as well as newspaper articles and official reports give us a vivid impression of the raids themselves and their immediate aftermath. “One can never understand what either side hoped to achieve by destroying historic cities and killing and maiming their citizens during a conflict such as the second world war. Jan Gore attempts to explain the thinking behind it, and the awful consequences . . . A terrific account.” —Books Monthly

The Blitz Companion offers a unique overview of a century of aerial warfare, its impact on cities and the people who lived in them. It tells the story of aerial warfare from the earliest bombing raids and in World War 1 through to the London Blitz and Allied bombings of Europe and Japan. These are compared with more recent American air campaigns over Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, the NATO bombings during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and subsequent bombings in the aftermath of 9/11. Beginning with the premonitions and predictions of air warfare and its terrible consequences, the book focuses on air raids precautions, evacuation and preparations for total war, and resilience, both of citizens and of cities. The legacies of air raids, from reconstruction to commemoration, are also discussed. While a key theme of the book is the futility of many air campaigns, care is taken to situate them in their historical context. The Blitz Companion also includes a guide to documentary and visual resources for students and general readers. Uniquely accessible, comparative and broad in scope this book draws key conclusions about civilian experience in the twentieth century and what these might mean for military engagement and civil reconstruction processes once conflicts have been resolved.

The Israel Yearbook on Human Rights - an annual published under the auspices of the Faculty of Law of Tel Aviv University since 1971 - is devoted to publishing studies by distinguished scholars in Israel and other countries on human rights in peace and war, with particular emphasis on problems relevant to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. The Yearbook also incorporates documentary materials, relating to Israel and the Administered Areas, which are not otherwise available in English (including summaries of judicial decisions, compilations of legislative enactments and military proclamations). Volume 27 contains, amongst others, articles on The Laws of Air, Missile and Nuclear Warfare; The Protection of Civilians from Air Warfare; The Protection of Medical Aircraft in International Law; Missile Warfare and Exclusion Zones in Naval Warfare; Missiles with Non-Conventional Warheads and International Law.

Bomber Commands night offensive against Nazi Germany, which lasted for nearly six years, was one of Britains major contributions to the Allied effort during the Second World War. But the decision to conduct its main operations at night only came about following heavy losses by day, when its prewar medium bombers had been found lacking in modern air warfare. The Luftwaffe, too, had its early problems. Initially without a dedicated night fighter, it was ill-equipped to defend the Reich, and so the stage was set for what would become one of the most critical strategic encounters of the war.Things had to change on both sides. Soon there came new and more capable aircraft, in ever-increasing numbers, coupled with new tactics and technology, as each side strove to gain the upper hand. It became a fascinating encounter between the crews of Bomber Command and the Luftwaffes night fighter force, the Nachtjagd, with no shortage of courage and heavy losses on both sides. Amongst the epic encounters were Bomber Commands Thousand Bomber raids, the attack on the German V-weapons research establishment at Peenemnde, the campaigns against the industrial Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin, and the disastrous raid on Nuremberg. This new publication consolidates accounts from both sides and from all ranks of service in an effort to provide a comprehensive account of some of the most ferocious nocturnal engagements of the Second World War.

Bogen beskriver de tyske bombninger af Englands historiske byer, kendt som Hitlers ide udsprunget af den tyske Baedekar turistbrochure.

This is the second in the comprehensive ten-volume Germany and the Second World War. The five volumes so far published in German take the story to the end of 1941, and have achieved international acclaim as a major contribution to historical study. Under the auspices of the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), a team of renowned historians has combined a full synthesis of existing material with the latest research to produce what will be the definitive history of the Second World War. This volume surveys the first year of the war deliberately begun by Nazi Germany. The authors examine the train of interconnected political and military events, and set military operations against the background of Hitler's war policy and general aims, both immediate and long term. The authors show that the conflict took a course quite different from that which Hitler had intended, but nevertheless resulted in a series of conquests for the Third Reich.

Norwich, in common with most English cities, suffered enemy air attack and during a period of almost three and a half years bombs were dropped in every part of the city. The first German raid occurred on Tuesday 8 July 1940; the last on 6 November 1943. The total number of Alerts during 1943 was 95 with a total duration of 54 hours. The Crash Warning was sounded 50 times with a total duration of 19 hours 8 minutes. There was no large devastated area but throughout the city considerable damage was caused. All sections of life were affected and factories, railway stations, shops, schools, hospitals and churches sustained damage and many buildings were totally ruined. Of the citys 35,569 houses in 1939, 2,082 were destroyed entirely, 2,651 were seriously damaged and 25,621 were moderately damaged. In human toll 340 people were killed and 1,092 injured, over three-quarters of these casualties occurring in 1942 when the enemy carried out what became known as the Baedeker Raids upon Cathedral cities and historic and administrative capitals of the provinces.

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom faced severe shortages of essential raw materials. To keep its armaments factories running, the British government enlisted millions of people in efforts to recycle a wide range of materials for use in munitions production. Recycling not only supplied British munitions factories with much-needed raw materials - it also played a key role in the efforts of the British government to maintain the morale of its citizens, to secure billions of dollars in Lend-Lease aid from the United States, and to uncover foreign intelligence. However, Britain's wartime recycling campaign came at a cost: it consumed items that would never have been destroyed under normal circumstances, including significant parts of the nation's cultural heritage. Based on extensive archival research, Peter Thorsheim examines the relationship between armaments production, civil liberties, cultural preservation, and diplomacy, making Waste into Weapons the first in-depth history of twentieth-century recycling in Britain.

Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."