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in passing on to me material which she gathers for her own researches. Rod Suddaby is only the foremost of the Imperial War Museum staff whose assistance contributes so much to the works of every historian of modern war, while the London Library and the National Archive provide wonderfully sympathetic settings for research. Douglas Matthews here once more shows himself a master indexer, and I am warmly grateful for his contribution. With only a brief interruption, Rachel Lawrence has been my long-suffering and peerlessly effective personal assistant for twenty-five years, an ordeal which includes collating my notes and references. My wife Penny is never less than a perfect partner, though I sometimes fancy that she would prefer to have lived through the Second World War than to read any more books about it written by me. To them all I offer deep gratitude, for I know that my labours would swiftly plough into sand without such sympathy, guidance and support.

By the same author

REPORTAGE

America 1968: The Fire this Time

Ulster 1969: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland

The Battle for the Falklands (with Simon Jenkins)

BIOGRAPHY

Montrose: The King’s Champion

Yoni: Hero of Entebbe

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Going to the Wars

Editor

Did You Really Shoot the Television?

MILITARY HISTORY

Bomber Command

The Battle of Britain (with Len Deighton)

Das Reich

Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy

Victory in Europe

The Korean War

Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield

Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944–45

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944–45

Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940–45

COUNTRYSIDE WRITING

Outside Days

Scattered Shots

Country Fair

ANTHOLOGY (EDITED)

The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes

Copyright

HarperPress

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First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2011

ALL HELL LET LOOSE. Copyright © Max Hastings 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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ISBN 978-0-00-733809-2

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-733812-2

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* Throughout this book, the word ‘casualties’ is used in its technical military sense, meaning men killed, missing, wounded or taken prisoner. In most ground actions in most theatres, approximately three men were wounded for each one killed.

* For an explanation, see chapter 14.

* In this text, for convenience I have referred to all Axis decrypted messages as Ultra, although the Americans used the codeword Magic to denote Japanese traffic.

* In this text the italicised word front is used as in the Red Army’s parlance, to denote an army