On Borrowed Time

by Leonard Mosley and Mosley Leonard

Book Overview

On Borrowed Time: How World War II Began, by Mosley, Leonard This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• ISBN: B001E1SQ50
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Random House
• Length: 509 Pages
• Weight: 2.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Solid work of fascinating history.

Perhaps the best work of history I have ever read. That is all.

Excellent, original work of historical journalism

This is a well written, well researched text which includes a great deal of material drawn from the author's own notes, taken as a reporter inside Germany and a number of Eastern countries just prior to the outbreak of World War II. Like his contemporary, William Shirer, Leonard Mosley brings a professional eye to the major events of the period leading up to the start of the war, and the fact that he was often sur place, gives the book a most authentic ring. The book raises a number of seemingly minor but possibly vital questions such as: would Hitler's attitude to Chamberlain have been different had the British P.M. not turned up in Berchtesgarden with a staff of only four people? Certainly he began to develop a degree of contempt for Chamberlain from that meeting onward, and when it came time for the fateful meeting on the Rhine some months later, Hitler was openly contemptuous of the British P.M. Would things have also been different had the Czechoslovakian President, Eduard Benes, had more sleep just prior to the events of September 1938? Would he have seen things more clearly and called in the Russians, as he probably should have done (and, it is believed, nearly did do)? And would it not have been much more favourable for the British and French to fight Germany with Czechoslovakia in 1938, than without her in 1939? Mosley is very good at asking these sorts of questions, which, so many years later, may prove to have been very decisive indeed.How many odd events seemed to influence the mood of the leaders of that time. How many messages failed to get through to the right place. Sometimes they were inexplicably held up en route (Mosley suggests it may have been due, on occasions, to Communist spies in the British Secret Service - like Donald McLean). At other times, well placed people (like Paul Stehlin, the French Air Attaché in Berlin), tried to warn their governments repeatedly that things were hotting up, but were not taken seriously. As for the extraordinary series of errors committed by the Anglo-French military and political delegations to Moscow just prior to the invasion of Poland, Mosley covers them in detail and highlights many points hitherto overlooked. These and many other forgotten issues probably exerted a far greater influence at the time than has been thought since. Yet in the end, it was the personality of Adolf Hitler himself, although set off and to some extent complemented in exactly the wrong way by the French and British leaders of the period (and one might add, the Italian), which proved decisive. From the very start, it was undoubtedly Hitler's war, and Mosley brings this historical imperative more firmly into the light of day than ever. It nevertheless leaves one quite breathless, to see in detail how it all came about.

Great Book

Of all the books I have read about this period, On Borrowed Time, is without a doubt the best. Well written, tension filled and full of outrage. This book explains how the democratic states lost their way in the shadow of Hitler's evil. Highly recommended.

The Lead up to World War Two

This book is about the lead up to World War Two in Europe. It details much that went on in Europe from the rise of Nazism in Germany, thru the secret pact between Germany and the U.S.S.R. to divide Poland, to the beginning of the war itself. It details many of the problems with the governments of Poland, France, and Britian that allowed them to think that agreements with Hitler would be more than the paper they were written on.Good book. If you can find it.