1939 Countdown to War

"Overy's book is easily the best account of Europe's descent into...death and destruction." -- Evening Standard(London) A brilliantly concise narrative of the days leading to the outbreak of history's greatest conflagration, 1939takes readers hour by hour through the nail-biting decisions that determined the fate of millions. Richard Overy, a leading historian of the period, masterfully recreates the jockeying for advantage that set Europe's greatest powers on a collision course. Would Stalin join Hitler in a bid to divide Poland and flout the West? Would Britain and France succeed in forcing Germany to reason? And how far would a defiant Poland push its claim to exist? In the summer of 1939, the course of events was anything but assured, as this exceptionally absorbing book drives home.

Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter, U.K. A leading expert on the history of the Second World War, he has written such acclaimed books as The Twilight Years, Why the Allies Won, and The Dictators, winner of the Wolfson Prize in 2005.