Rain of Ruin - Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan

<A remarkable account of the terrible climax of the Second World War in Asia, published to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

<''A short but quietly devastating book, in which Overy adds new perspectives to a subject that has often been approached from a narrowly American angle... Overy''s book is a sombre reminder that the border between civilisation and savagery is wafer-thin.'' <- Philip Snow,
In the closing months of the Second World War hundreds of thousands of Japanese, mostly civilians, died in a final outburst of violence from the air. American planes were beginning to run low on plausible targets when it was decided to use two atomic weapons in a final, terrible flourish to try to end the war.

Richard Overy''s remarkable new book rethinks how we should regard this last stage of the war and the role of the bombing. This book explores the way in which the willingness to kill civilians and destroy cities became normalized in the course of a horrific war as moral concerns were blunted and scientists, airmen, and politicians followed a strategy of mass destruction they would never have endorsed before the war began. But it also engages with the new scholarship that shows how complex the effort to end the war was in Japan, where ''surrender'' was entirely foreign to Japanese culture.<>

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Richard Overy is Honorary Research Professor of History at the University of Exeter and one of Britain's most distinguished historians. His major works include The Dictators, winner of the 2005 Wolfson Prize, The Morbid Age and The Bombing War, which won a Cundill Award for Historical Excellence in 2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Richard Overy
• Verlag: Penguin Books Uk
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erscheint: 05.03.2026
• EAN: 9781802065978
• ISBN: 978-1-80206-597-8
• Seiten: 224
• Abmessung: 129 mm x 198 mm x 15 mm
• Themen: Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik > Geschichte > Allgemeines, Lexika; Sachbuch > Geschichte > 20. Jahrhundert (bis 1945); Sachbuch > Geschichte > Sonstiges; Hiroshima, Japan, Tokyo, HISTORY / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies), HISTORY / Military / General, military history, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Asia / Japan, HISTORY / Military / Nuclear Warfare, Air forces & warfare, Second World War, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Asian History, History of the Americas, Air forces and warfare, Nuclear weapons, Modern warfare, c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2), HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War II / General, HISTORY / Military / Aviation & Space