{"title":"Nicholas Browne","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121020","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"With the advent of Japan, a European war became a world war and this European war continued on three fronts. The largest front was in Russia where the Germans had conquered large tracts of land and threatened the great cities of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. The other two fronts, smaller in the use of manpower but not in territory, were in North Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Japan changed all this and started a world war. Their ambitions were directed at control of the Pacific Ocean and south east Asia. Most of the latter was in the hands of foreign empires and the Japanese struck a chord with the object of taking  the Philippines from the US, Malaya from the British and Indonesia from the Netherlands. This they did very quickly. During the winter the Germans were pushed back on the Moscow sector. They had to make a decision as to whether they wanted to take Moscow or Stalingrad and go into the Caucasus. German weakness was a lack of oil, so for the time being Moscow was safe. The Russians were learning fast how to wage war and they now retreated in good order and only fought the Germans from a position of advantage. In North Africa, the armies moved backwards and forwards until the Germans gained an ascendancy and came close to Cairo on the El Alamein line. However, they were exhausted and lost their mild but important air superiority. German tankers were being sunk in the Med and the Allies had found an able new commander. A great battle was fought at El Alamein. An Axis army was defeated and they never regained the  initiative. The oil and food war was centred on the eastern American seaboard. The Germans had much success as the Americans did not use a convoy system for the Allied tankers. The attacks were only debilitating as the US were concentrating on getting their troops and supplies into North Africa. The great German objective was to starve Britain into submission and to interdict the oil supply lines which would stop the bombing of Germany In the Pacific, the Japanese wanted to form a defensive zone which stretched at its furthest borders from the Aleutians, the Hawaiian Islands, Fiji and onto Australia. The Japanese thought they could do this by winning a great naval battle which would give them control of the Pacific. The Japanese had a great fleet, superior to the Americans. The Battle of Midway as it became known, revolved around the carriers and their aircraft and pilots. There were four Japanese  carriers and three American. The four Japanese carriers were sunk while the Americans lost one.  The Japanese air arm was savaged. The battle was truly decisive although the Americans only took control of the western Pacific.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753927581969,"sku":"NGR9781739121020","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53635740139793,"sku":"GOR014989616","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1739121023.jpg?v=1751445854"},{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121051","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"This volume is concerned with how the war was ended and how power was distributed. This was best seen at the Yalta Conference where the big three leaders met. What was remarkable about the conference was Stalin’s determination to extend his influence into Eastern Europe with the border on a Slav line and Roosevelt teaming up with Stalin to belittle the British Empire. Neither Roosevelt nor Stalin thought they ruled empires, they thought of themselves as leaders of a nation and the contiguity of their structure validated this. Roosevelt was very ill and it was a magnificent effort to get to Yalta but he came with one big objective which was to further the establishment of the United Nations. Here he was at odds with the British Empire who wanted several nations to be included as sovereign states. The Soviets wanted two extra places but sided with the US against the British. The big division was on Poland. The Lublin Poles were under the control of the Soviets and were not going to be undermined by the London Poles who wanted democratic elections to parliament. Stalin paid lip service to democracy but it did not engage him. At Yalta, Stalin got what he wanted, Roosevelt pushed on with the United Nations while Churchill felt isolated. The two leaders with territory that was on the whole contiguous, had ganged up on him. Roosevelt was intent on dismembering the British Empire and he was succeeding. The war ended in Europe in May 1945. It would continue in the east for another few months bought to an end by the atom bomb which is a remarkable story on its own.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753933480209,"sku":"NGR9781739121051","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53635924328721,"sku":"GOR014989647","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1739121058.jpg?v=1751153211"},{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121037","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"In this volume the decisive battles were on the Russian front. At Stalingrad the Germans were held and forced to retreat. At Kursk the Soviets nullified the advantage that the Germans previously had in tanks and aircraft and again the Germans were forced to retreat. On the Atlantic Ocean the Allies gained superiority through the use of intelligence and aircraft. In North Africa the Germans were defeated and the battle was resumed in Sicily. In the Far East the Japanese still controlled most of the Pacific Ocean, but the Americans were building ships to confront them. In the South Pacific the war continued at Guadalcanal which was in part a land battle and in part a sea battle. The British lost Malaya and the fight continued in Burma with Japan having the upper hand. All these battles on several fronts were nothing compared to the production of the atom bomb. Oppenheimer was the brains behind the bomb, but its production was a great engineering feat which has been underrated. The man who organised this was General Leslie Groves. This massive endeavour, which in the context of the war could only be done by the US. Nils Bohr did not believe they could do it and he was nearly right. It was the brilliance of the nuclear scientists that created the bomb but it was the engineers that delivered it.  To do this task required enormous competence. Groves wanted a field command but was prevailed upon to lead the Manhattan Project. Groves could be abrasive and appear to others to be over confident but the biggest compliment he was paid was that he produced the best out of people revealing their intrinsic abilities. For an engineer to do this to the world’s greatest scientists was a major achievement. He believed in the competence and brilliance of Oppenheimer and was not phased by his communist connections. The one scientist with whom he had difficulties was Leo Szilard, an able man, but to Groves he was disruptive and not a team player. Szilard was contemptuous of an engineer making decisions on a par with the intellectual brilliance of the scientists. Yet the Manhattan Project was an engineering project and Groves delivered. It was a tour de force with a team that worked together at the highest creative level.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753934659857,"sku":"NGR9781739121037","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53635742335249,"sku":"GOR014989617","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1739121031.jpg?v=1751433822"},{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121006","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"Jan Smuts was a brilliant man who played an important but peripheral role in the affairs of the 20th century. An Afrikaans by birth, he fought against the British in the Boer War and accepted what resulted from that conflict. As a distinguished Boer, he was politically active in the formation of South Africa and in dealing with the Indians whose leader was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was fighting for Indian equality with the whites. Smuts and Gandhi shared a friendship which, although they were of different faiths, led to similar views on religion. Gandhi, a Hindu, rejected Hinduism while Smuts rejected the divinity of Christ but retained his belief in the secular Christ. Having made his peace with the British and considered that the virtues of the British Empire outweighed its defects, he became the leader of the British forces in East Africa and won a victory over the German led forces. It was a definitive victory although the opposition never surrendered and ended up in southern Africa with 1000 Germans and 4000 native Africans. By this time, Smuts had joined the War Cabinet in London and his influence continued at the Peace Conference in Paris. He acted for South Africa and was influential in introducing the mandate  system for nations linked to the great powers. He also became friendly with Keynes and supported his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. As a Boer he understood the perils of alienating the defeated. Between the wars he had an important role in South African politics. Although an Afrikaans he was thought too Anglophile by his fellow Boers. While Botha was alive he could be protected and they could act in tandem. During the second war, he was Premier of South Africa and he was close to Churchill who recognised his worth and used him as a constant adviser and friend. They both shared a common greatness and they both agreed that Europe should be attacked in 1944 through the soft underbelly which led to Vienna. Smuts had a philosophy which appealed to Einstein and Einstein suggested that his scientific approach and Smuts’s philosophy of holism could be the intellectual basis of a new world order","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49753935839505,"sku":"NGR9781739121006","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53341004136721,"sku":"GOR014861717","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1739121007.jpg?v=1751153211"},{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121044","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"Like anything worthwhile the economic solution to the problems of the world wars had a long genesis. A major problem was the role of gold, another problem was the role of the dollar. By 1944 US was supreme. It held five sevenths of the world's gold reserves and was overwhelmingly the world's creditor nation. Britain, however, was a debtor nation which reduced its influence. Economics is an esoteric subject with little popular appeal. This resulted in two protagonists having overwhelming authority- Harry Dexter White for the United States and John Maynard Keynes for the British Empire. Harry White's family came from Lithuania, were Jewish, and left because of the pogroms. They established themselves in the US in the hardware business. Harry White gradually  made his own way to Washington via academia. He knew exactly what he wanted. Fixed world wide exchange rates controlled by the US and a quota system which would allow the exchange rates to be stable. He was a believer in gold and with the US holding five sevenths of the reserves and being the world's creditor nation would lead to the US controlling world trade through the dollar. White was a globalist. He saw the whole world included in his system, including Russia with whom he negotiated via a representative who had to report back to Moscow which made for difficulties. White worked with Keynes who was much more a colleague than a protagonist. They worked in tandem and mostly in agreement.  Two institutions came out of Bretton Woods which exist to this day, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Here there was a profound disagreement with White wanting world trade to be controlled by the US and the dollar. Keynes wanted a more neutral system which he called bancor and excluded the dominance of any one nation. White with the backing of the President and Morgenthau, his Secretary of State, won. There was nothing that Keynes, the representative of an important debtor nation could do. 80 years after Bretton Woods the fixed exchange rates have gone in 1971 as the US become a debtor nation with the Vietnam War. However the importance of the IMF remains. The problem is that the dollar has advantages in world trade which are being challenged by Russia and China who claim with some justification that US is a debtor nation out of control. Russia and China have their problems but they are probably right that a more neutral system, as advocated by Keynes, be created.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50468423532817,"sku":"NGR9781739121044","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53635937730833,"sku":"GOR014989650","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/173912104X.jpg?v=1750864794"},{"product_id":"globalisation-of-war-book-nicholas-browne-9781739121013","title":"The Globalisation of War","description":"This volume deals with the Great War and its aftermath of 21 years. The war had been an artillery war with great casualties. The innovations such as the tank and aircraft were recent inventions seeking dominance in battle, sometimes achieving it but their time would come over twenty years hence. The war led to the breakdown of empires left a dangerous constitutional void. This hadn’t been foreseen and the system initiated by Queen Victoria was under pressure. Her belief was that royalty was a caste apart and marrying into many of the royal houses of Europe would stabilise the continent for the future. Kings, Queens and  Emperors come and go  but they bring continuity. When Tsar Nicholas abandoned his throne, it was offered to another member of the family but he didn’t want to take on the inheritance. This showed a lack of belief in the idea of monarchy. Likewise the defeated German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm was rejected by his people and the Crown Prince was rejected at the same time. Both the Tsar and the Kaiser ruled their countries and were related to Queen Victoria by marriage. On the other hand the British Empire and the republican French Empire flourished. The Russians were the most virulent in their opposition to monarchy killing the Emperor, the Empress and their children without mercy. The German Emperor was merely sent into exile in Holland. In the Ottoman Empire the Emperor held on for a few years until the people rebelled and the Empire disintegrated leaving the nation of Turkey on its own. It was saved by its Great War leader, Kemal Ataturk who rid the nation of its royal family and its Muslim faith. Not that it interfered with personal belief but it secularised the nation which was a profound action resonating to this day.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50468425367825,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50468427268369,"sku":"NGR9781739121013","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53635938058513,"sku":"GOR014989646","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1739121015.jpg?v=1750897335"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-nicholas-browne.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}