Compulsory military service in Britain can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times, but it was only in the twentieth century that it became universal. Conscription occurred during both world wars with a total of eight million men in total being conscripted into the army, navy and air forces, and after the end of the Second World War compulsory service continued for another eighteen years to meet overseas commitments and under the threat of the Cold War. Conscription in Britain 1939-1963 outlines the historical record of conscription from the fyrd of the Dark Ages, through to Nelson's day and up to and including the First World War. The book goes on to concentrate on conscription during the Second World War and National Service which continued in the decades afterwards. The strategic and political considerations that governed British military recruitment in the period 1939-1963 are described and analyzed. Individual experiences in the services are examined, putting human flesh on the strategic and political skeleton. The book looks at aspects of conscription including the demands made on the services, how officers and men were selected and trained, and how discipline was imposed. The years following the Second World War are also investigated, considering the effect of twenty four years continuous conscription on the services themselves; on women's rights; on attitudes towards authority and patriotism; on race issues and on the breakout of individualism in the 1960s.

Conscription in Britain 1939-1963 not only outlines the historical record of conscription from the fyrd of the Dark Ages through to Nelson's day and the First World War, but also explores conscription during the Second World War and the National Service that continued in the decade afterwards. Covering the major aspects of the topic, this book analyzes the strategic and political considerations that governed British military recruitment during this time, and sheds light on individual experiences in the services--Publisher's blurb.

In the network of Nazi camps across wartime Europe, prisoner of war institutions were often located next to the slave camps for Jews and Slavs; so that British PoWs across occupied Europe, over 200,000 men, were witnesses to the holocaust. The majority of those incarcerated were aware of the camps, but their testimony has never been fully published. Here, using eye-witness accounts held by the Imperial War Museum, Russell Wallis rewrites the history of British prisoners and the Holocaust during the Second World War. He uncovers the histories of men such as Cyril Rofe, an Anglo-Jewish PoW who escaped from a work camp in Upper Silesia and fled eastwards towards the Russian lines, recounting his shattering experiences of the so-called 'bloodlands' of eastern Poland. Wallis also shows how and why the knowledge of those in the armed forces was never fully publicised, and how some PoW accounts were later exaggerated or fictionalised. British PoWs and the Holocaust will be an essential new oral history of the holocaust and an extraordinary insight into what was known and when about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

During World War II women took on railway roles which were completely new to females. They worked as porters and guards, on the permanent way, and in maintenance and workshop operations. In this book Susan Major features the voices of women talking about their wartime railway experiences, using interviews by the Friends of the National Railway Museum. Many were working in ‘men’s jobs’, or working with men for the first time, and these interviews offer tantalising glimpses of conditions, sometimes under great danger. What was it about railway work that attracted them? It’s fascinating to contrast their voices with the way they were portrayed in official publicity campaigns and in the light of attitudes to women working in the 1940s. These women talk about their difficulties in a workplace not designed for women – no toilets for example, the attitudes of their families, what they thought about American GIs and Italian POWs, how they coped with swearing and troublesome colleagues, rules about stockings. They describe devastating air raids and being thrust into tough responsibilities for the first time. This book fills a gap, as most books on women’s wartime roles focus on the military services or industrial work. It offers valuable insights into the perceptions and concerns of these young women. As generations die out and families lose a direct connection, it becomes more important to be able to share their voices with a wider audience.

Recent years have seen a growing role for private military contractors in national and international security. To understand the reasons for this, Elke Krahmann examines changing models of the state, the citizen and the soldier in the UK, the US and Germany. She focuses on both the national differences with regard to the outsourcing of military services to private companies and their specific consequences for the democratic control over the legitimate use of armed force. Tracing developments and debates from the late eighteenth century to the present, she explains the transition from the centralized warfare state of the Cold War era to the privatized and fragmented security governance, and the different national attitudes to the privatization of force.

The Korean War in Britain explores the social and cultural impact of the Korean War (1950–53) on Britain. Coming just five years after the ravages of the Second World War, Korea was a deeply unsettling moment in post-war British history. From allegations about American use of ‘germ’ warfare to anxiety over Communist use of ‘brainwashing’ and treachery at home, the Korean War precipitated a series of short-lived panics in 1950s Britain. But by the time of its uneasy ceasefire in 1953, the war was becoming increasingly forgotten. Using Mass Observation surveys, letters, diaries and a wide range of under-explored contemporary material, this book charts the war’s changing position in British popular imagination and asks how it became known as the ‘Forgotten War’. It explores the war in a variety of viewpoints – conscript, POW, protester and veteran – and is essential reading for anyone interested in Britain’s Cold War past.

This book is about women in World Wars I & II - women working in factories and on farms, or toiling perilously in field stations just behind the front lines, in inhospitable hospitals and convalescent homes. It is, therefore, about the prodigious contribution women made to the war efforts from 1914-1918 and 1939-1945, standing in for the men who had left their places of work for the various theatres of war from Greece and Italy to Belgium, from Mesopotamia to France. Their tasks were many and various: keeping the troops supplied with shells, bullets and explosives, keeping the nation from starving to death, keeping hundreds of thousands of wounded troops alive so that they might fight another day. The book is, in short, the uplifting but sometimes tragic story of the many women who stepped up to work in the factories, hospitals, field stations, in transport and in civil defense, on the farms and shipyards, or signed up to the various military and civil services during the two world wars of the 20th century, ‘wars to end all wars…’. The book is different because it deals with women’s labour in both world wars and in all occupations, it covers the discrimination and prejudice they faced from men at every level, military and civilian, even when they had demonstrated beyond doubt that they were quick learners, industrious and proficient, and usually as good as any man. The book raises the embarrassing question why it has it taken so long for the prodigious contribution women made in both wars to be recognized, and why some women workers still remain air brushed from our military history after more than a century. As it turned out, little was beyond their capabilities and it is reasonable to suppose that without their huge efforts and accomplishments both wars might have turned out very differently for us.