Singapore: The Chain Of Disaster
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st us ed.,
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - some tears. Page Condition: Good. Markings: No markings. Usual shelf-wear.
In one of the most catastrophic military defeats in British imperial history, the fall of Singapore in February 1942 sent shockwaves through the Allied world — and Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby's Singapore: The Chain of Disaster presents a meticulously researched and unflinching account of how it came to pass. Kirby chronicles the sequence of strategic blunders, intelligence failures, and command breakdowns that left over 80,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops at the mercy of a numerically inferior Japanese force, laying bare the institutional and political decisions that sealed Singapore's fate long before the first shot was fired. Drawing on his unparalleled access to official records — Kirby was the editor of the official British military history of the war against Japan — the author argues with forensic authority that the disaster was not merely a battlefield failure but the inevitable consequence of years of imperial complacency and misplaced priorities. Written with the precision of a military analyst and the conviction of an eyewitness to history, this controversial account cuts through the myths of the impregnable fortress to reveal a story of institutional failure at the highest levels. For those seeking to understand how empires unravel, the final question Kirby poses lingers long after the last page is turned: could it all have been so easily avoided?
Author: Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby
Format: Hardback
Published: 1971, Macmillan
Genre: WW2
Edition: 1st us ed.,
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Worn/faded - some tears. Page Condition: Good. Markings: No markings. Usual shelf-wear.
In one of the most catastrophic military defeats in British imperial history, the fall of Singapore in February 1942 sent shockwaves through the Allied world — and Major-General S. Woodburn Kirby's Singapore: The Chain of Disaster presents a meticulously researched and unflinching account of how it came to pass. Kirby chronicles the sequence of strategic blunders, intelligence failures, and command breakdowns that left over 80,000 British, Australian, and Indian troops at the mercy of a numerically inferior Japanese force, laying bare the institutional and political decisions that sealed Singapore's fate long before the first shot was fired. Drawing on his unparalleled access to official records — Kirby was the editor of the official British military history of the war against Japan — the author argues with forensic authority that the disaster was not merely a battlefield failure but the inevitable consequence of years of imperial complacency and misplaced priorities. Written with the precision of a military analyst and the conviction of an eyewitness to history, this controversial account cuts through the myths of the impregnable fortress to reveal a story of institutional failure at the highest levels. For those seeking to understand how empires unravel, the final question Kirby poses lingers long after the last page is turned: could it all have been so easily avoided?