What happened when millions of British servicemen were “demobbed”—demobilized—after World War II? Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets, and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labor force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarized by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, newspapers, reports, novels, and films, Alan Allport illuminates the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families, and society at large—a gripping story that’s in danger of being lost to national memory.

Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War

History

Allport, Alan

Europe

Yale University Press

The trials, troubles and triumphs of returning home after the end of World War Two. What happened when millions of British servicemen were “demobbed”—demobilized—after World War II? Most had been absent for years, and the joy of arrival was often clouded with ambivalence, regrets, and fears. Returning soldiers faced both practical and psychological problems, from reasserting their place in the family home to rejoining a much-altered labor force. Civilians worried that their homecoming heroes had been barbarized by their experiences and would bring crime and violence back from the battlefield. Drawing on personal letters and diaries, newspapers, reports, novels, and films, Alan Allport illuminates the darker side of the homecoming experience for ex-servicemen, their families, and society at large—a gripping story that’s in danger of being lost to national memory.

Demobbed: Coming Home After World War Two

More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport’s rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.

Browned Off and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945

A sweeping, groundbreaking epic that combines military with social history, to illuminate the ways in which Great Britain and its people were permanently transformed by the Second World War. Here is the many-faceted, world-historically significant story of Britain at war. In looking closely at the military and political dimensions of the conflict's first crucial years, Alan Allport tackles questions such as: Could the war have been avoided? Could it have been lost? Were the strategic decisions the rights ones? How well did the British organize and fight? How well did the British live up to their own values? What difference did the war make in the end to the fate of the nation? In answering these and other essential questions he focuses on the human contingencies of the war, weighing directly at the roles of individuals and the outcomes determined by luck or chance. Moreover, he looks intimately at the changes in wartime British society and culture. Britain at Bay draws on a large cast of characters--from the leading statesmen and military commanders who made the decisions, to the ordinary men, women, and children who carried them out and lived through their consequences--in a comprehensible and compelling single history of forty-six million people. For better or worse, much of Britain today is ultimately the product of the experiences of 1938-1941.

Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941

KNOPF

Looks at the geography, history, people, culture, economy, and future of Austria.

Austria (Modern World Nations)

Teen & Young Adult

Chelsea House Pub

England (Modern World Nations)

Looks at freedom of speech in the United States from different perspectives, offering statistics, statutes, legal opinions, and studies to help form an educated opinion.

Freedom of Speech (Point/Counterpoint)

Children's Books

A biography of the thirty-second president whose three terms in office spanned the years of the Depression and the Second World War.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Great American Presidents)

Biographies & Memoirs

Presents diverse viewpoints on immigration and on making English the official language of the United States.

Immigration Policy (Point/Counterpoint)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Allport, Alan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Allport, Alan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Allport, Alan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War

Demobbed: Coming Home After World War Two

Browned Off and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945

Browned Off and Bloody-Minded: The British Soldier Goes to War 1939-1945

Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941

Austria (Modern World Nations)

England (Modern World Nations)

Freedom of Speech (Point/Counterpoint)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Great American Presidents)

Immigration Policy (Point/Counterpoint)