Fateful Choices : Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw

Description: This hardcover book is in 'like new' condition. FATEFUL CHOICES TEN DECISIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 1940-1941 by IAN KERSHAW A spellbinding re-creation of a dramatic sequence of ten decisions made by leaders of the world's six major powers -- Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Mussolini and Tojo -- in the nineteen months between May 1940 and December 1941 that reshaped human destiny. In a mere nineteen months, from May 1940 to December 1941, the leaders of the world's six major powers made a series of related decisions that decided the course and outcome of World War II, cost the lives of million s and reshaped the course of human destiny from the point forward. How were these3 decisions made? What were the options facing these leaders as they saw them? What was the impact of personality, what that of larger forces? In a brilliant work with haunting contemporary relevance, Ian Kershaw tells the connected stories of these ten fateful decisions from the shifting perspectives of the protagonists, and in so doing rescues them from the sense of inevitability that now envelops them and restores to them a feeling of vivid drama and contingency -- the feelingt that things could have turned out very differently indeed. Each chapter follows the process of arriving at one decision from the viewpoint of the leader who made it. Decision 1: May 1940, The British War Cabinet driven by Churchill, agrees to fight on after the German blitzkrieg defeat of France, despite loud calls for negotiated settlement. Decision 2: Hitler decides to attack the Soviet Union. Decision 3: Japan decides to seize the "Golden Opportunity" and turn south, going after the colonial empires of countries that have fallen to Hitler. Decision 4: Mussolini decides to join the war on Hitler's side to grab a share of the spoils. Decision 5: Roosevelt decides to lend a helping hand to England. Decision 6: Stalin decides he knows best and ignores all the clear signals that Germany is going to invade. Decision 7: Roosevelt decides to wage undeclared war. Decision 8: Japan decides to go to war against the United States. Decision 9: Hitler decides to declare war on the United States. Decision 10: Hitler decides to kill the Jews of Europe. Decision relates to subsequent decision, through never simply or necessarily as expected. The clash of personalities, the various weaknesses of the different political systems, the challenge of intelligence, the misdiagnosis of risk and possibility -- all play their part. And after nineteen months, though much remained to be decided, the world's fate had been profoundly altered by these ten choices. Ian Kershaw studied at Liverpool and Oxford universities. He has taught at the University of Manchester at the Ruhr University in Bochum, West Germany, at the University of Nottingham, and since 1989 has been professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield. He is the author, most recently, of Making Friends with Hitler, which won the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, and the definitive two-volume biography of Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. The first volume was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Award and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, and the second volume won the Wolfson Literary Award for History and the inaugural British Academy Prize. The Penguin Press Printed in the U.S.A. First published in 2007 ISBN 978-1-59420-123-3

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