1939, Countdown to War

This country`s most distinguished historian of the Second World War ... Overy`s book is easily the best account of Europe`s descent into the death and destruction that were Hitler's element` Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard

24 August 1939: The fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Hitler has ambitions to invade Poland and hopes Stalin will help him. The West must stop them. If they fail, the world will go to war.

Richard Overy`s dramatic account re-creates hour-by-hour the last days of peace, as politicians and the public braced themselves for a war they feared might spell the end of civilization.