FIGHTING THE PEOPLE'S WAR

Sub-titled 'The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War', this mammoth 932 page Cambridge University Press softback offers an unprecedented, panoramic history of the 'citizen armies' of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa. Drawing on new sources to reveal the true wartime experience of the ordinary rank and file, Jonathan Fennell fundamentally challenges our understanding of the war and of the relationship between conflict and socio-political change. He uncovers how fractures on the home front had profound implications for the performance of the British and Commonwealth armies, and he traces how soldiers' political beliefs, many of which emerged as a consequence of their combat experience, proved instrumental to the changes of the postwar era. 'Fennell draws on a wide literature and deep archival research to explore how the Commonwealth armies fought key battles and campaigns, but he never loses sight of the role of citizen soldiers and how they exerted agency in calamitous defeats and gritty victories.' - Tim Cook. The book forces us to rethink the way we view the armies of the British Empire and the modern British experience, wartime cohesion within participating societies and comradeship which in turn brought classes together in the post-war 'quiet revolution' that ended the Empire and redefined the Commonwealth. It is a hugely impressive and sweepingly ambitious book which brings together the military histories of all the British Commonwealth nations for the first time and asks vital questions about the relationship between wartime experience, society and politics in a trans-national way and the scale, size and significance of this book is nothing but staggering. Fennell is a Senior Lecturer of Defence Studies at King's College London. Tables, maps, list of abbreviations, 932pp in heavyweight softback.