Talbot C. Imlay

A comparative analysis of how Britain and France faced the audit of war 1938-1940, written in the spirit that while it might be true that democracies can be more efficient in war than dictatorships, this tells you little unless you are prepared to do the necessary comparative studies. Apart from considering how the British political consensus came to accept total war with Nazi Germany, and how the French came to shy away from that abyss, the main point of this monograph is to chart the process by which the Anglo-French leadership lost confidence in the strategy of the long war against Germany, and began to embrace "panacea" strategies to hopefully win a short war; meaning notions such as occupying the Swedish iron mines or mounting an aerial campaign against Soviet oil facilities.… (mais)