The Many Not The Few

ISBN: 9781441131515 出版年：2012 页码：468 Richard North Bloomsbury Publishing

Immortalised in Churchill's often quoted assertion that never before "was so much owed by so many to so few", the top-down narrative of the Battle of Britain hestablished in British legend. Britain was savinvasion by the gallant band of Fighter Command Pilots in their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and the public owed them their freedom. Richard North's radical re-evaluation of the Battle of Britain dismantles this mythical retelling of events. Taking a wider perspective than the much-discussed air war, North takes a freconflict as a whole to show that the civilian experience, far from being separate and distinct, was integral to the Battle. This recovery of the people's stolen history demonstrates that Hitler's aim was not the military conquest of England, and that his unattained target was the hearts and minds of British people.