Len Deighton - Blood, Tears and Folly - An Objective Look at World War II

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

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

Title Page Blood, Tears and Folly An Objective Look at World War II LEN DEIGHTON

Copyright William Collins An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com 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

Dedication To your children, and ours

Epigraph ‘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

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 the Second World War is one of tremendous technological change combined with great human emotion. When I set out to design the covers for this reissue of Len Deighton’s trilogy of Second World War histories, Fighter , Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly , I wanted to incorporate both of these elements into a unified design theme that could be used on all three books. The books were among the first to offer a balanced narrative of the war with both sides of the story being represented, and I felt it was essential that the cover designs were similarly complete.

To convey the concept of technological change and development I created illustrations that begin as a set of plans on the back cover and continue across the spine to become a full-colour image of a fighting machine on the front. Many things we take for granted today, such as the mobile phone, microwave and air-traffic control, owe their development to the innovation that took place during the war.

The Second World War affected the lives of every man, woman and child living in Western Europe between 1939 and 1945. Television news has made us accustomed to watching remotely piloted drones waging war from the safety of our living room sofas, uninvolved except for the opinions we choose to express. In contrast I felt it was important to remind readers of the direct participation and sacrifice made by everyone during the war, so I carefully chose photographs of women in a variety of roles.

One such woman was my grandmother, an audacious and inspirational person who left her job as a chef to become a skilled oxyacetylene welder making flame traps for night-fighters. Thousands of women like her, building airplanes, tanks and ships, were immortalized in America by the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ campaign. Britain’s survival during the leanest days of the war owes a debt of gratitude to the Women’s Land Army. These hard-working women succeeded in cultivating every available square foot of land and saved the country from starvation when the U-boat campaign was at its most successful.

The extraordinary women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry created a secret unit that was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to undertake espionage work for the Special Operations Executive. Bletchley Park’s work in cracking the ‘Enigma’ codes is well known, and many of the brilliant code-breakers were women. The magnificent women ferry-pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary flew everything from fast and nimble Spitfire fighters to large and powerful Lancaster heavy bombers, many with battle damage and in need of repair. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy depended on an army of women radar controllers to manage their operations in the air and at sea.