Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of the Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole.
This is a new examination of the politics of strategy and the background to them during Churchill's first year as Britain's wartime leader. It draws extensively both on official archives and on the private papers of many of the political and military leaders. Among the individual topics considered and reinterpreted are Churchill's relations with Chamberlain and the Conservative Party, the political repercussions of the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, and the emergence of a strategy for the Middle East and Greece that would affect the postwar settlement of Europe
World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today. World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and -- most lethal of all -- poison gas, all received their first widespread use.
