The Home Guard ' a Military and Political History'

ISBN-13: 9780198205777 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 296 str.

S. P. MacKenzie

Opis

The extraordinarily popular British television program "Dad's Army" suggests that Britain's Home Guard during the Second World War was home to charming incompetence and lighthearted buffoonery. In 1940, however, the threat of a German invasion of Britain appeared very real. S. P. MacKenzie's detailed and readable history of the Home Guard offers a new perspective on the men who took up the challenge. Despite its popular image of old men and teenagers playing soldiers, the Home Guard, often as large as the wartime army, became an astonishingly strong political force in its own right. Quite literally the people in arms, it proved able to exert a good deal of influence on policy.
The Home Guard was never called upon to fulfil its military role, though there was a brief attempt to resurrect it in the 1950s. Since then it has been largely neglected by military historians and there have been few serious examinations of the part it played in the Home Front. This book fills that gap.

Recenzje

This could well be the difinitive history on a subject which has been rather neglected...the writing is refreshingly free of oral and anecdotal evidence and there has been considerable research into War Office Cabinet papers...Throughout, all references and bibliography are clearly listed in this, an excellent new book, at a very moderate price.

O autorze

S. P. MacKenzie is Assistant Professor of History, University of South Carolina, Columbia. His book The Politics of Military Morale: Current-Affair and Citizenship Education in the British Army 1914-1950 (OHM, 1992) won the Templer Medal for the best contribution to military history in 1992