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The Second World War
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best History & Biography (2012)A masterful and comprehensive chronicle of World War II, by internationally bestselling historian Antony Beevor.
Over the past two decades, Antony Beevor has established himself as one of the world's premier historians of WWII. His multi-award winning books have included Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945 . Now, in his newest and most ambitious book, he turns his focus to one of the bloodiest and most tragic events of the twentieth century, the Second World War.
In this searing narrative that takes us from Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 to V-J day on August 14, 1945 and the war's aftermath, Beevor describes the conflict and its global reach -- one that included every major power. The result is a dramatic and breathtaking single-volume history that provides a remarkably intimate account of the war that, more than any other, still commands attention and an audience.
Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, Beevor's grand and provocative account is destined to become the definitive work on this complex, tragic, and endlessly fascinating period in world history, and confirms once more that he is a military historian of the first rank.
Over the past two decades, Antony Beevor has established himself as one of the world's premier historians of WWII. His multi-award winning books have included Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin 1945 . Now, in his newest and most ambitious book, he turns his focus to one of the bloodiest and most tragic events of the twentieth century, the Second World War.
In this searing narrative that takes us from Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939 to V-J day on August 14, 1945 and the war's aftermath, Beevor describes the conflict and its global reach -- one that included every major power. The result is a dramatic and breathtaking single-volume history that provides a remarkably intimate account of the war that, more than any other, still commands attention and an audience.
Thrillingly written and brilliantly researched, Beevor's grand and provocative account is destined to become the definitive work on this complex, tragic, and endlessly fascinating period in world history, and confirms once more that he is a military historian of the first rank.
863 pages, Hardcover
First published June 5, 2012
About the author
Antony Beevor
41 books2,333 followersAntony James Beevor is a British historian who was educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous historian of World War II, John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on the Second World War and the 20th century in general.
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March 18, 2023
“Some people complain that the Second World War still exerts a dominating influence nearly seven decades after its end…This phenomenon should hardly be surprising, if only because the nature of evil seems to provide endless fascination. Moral choice is the fundamental element in human drama, because it lies at the very heart of humanity itself…No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion. In short, the Second World War defies generalization along with the categorization of humans…”
- Antony Beevor, The Second World War
There is no shortage of books on World War II. It is one of the most-written-about periods in all of history. But while it exerts a powerful hold, most of us don’t want to spend our entire lives reading about a single subject, no matter how vast and varied. To that end, when it comes to culling an endless reading list, it is helpful to find those rare author-historians that combine knowledge, research acumen, and readability.
Antony Beevor certainly belongs within that select group. He is a trusted brand in the thriving marketplace of books on the Second World War. Though he is not my absolute favorite, I respect his judgments and I trust his preparation. Even if I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, I believe he comes to them fairly.
I mention this, because the only reason I picked up The Second World War is Beevor’s name on the front cover. Frankly, a single-volume history of the war is not what I’m missing in my life. I already have a pretty good general grasp of those terrible years, and long-ago moved onto more detailed volumes about specific aspects of the conflagration. Indeed, if I’m being honest, I’m better at remembering specific dates between 1937 and 1945 than I am at recalling my kids’ birthdays.
With Beevor, though, I knew I’d be getting more than a high-level overview of what happened. I’d be getting his considered thoughts about what it all meant.
***
Unsurprisingly, given the impossible scale, Beevor structures The Second World War by a mixture of chronology, geography, and theme. Most chapters, all of which are datelined, cover a couple months in a specific area. By way of example, the first chapter encompasses the three months in 1939 leading up to Germany’s invasion of Poland.
Certain chapters have a lot more breadth. For instance, while acknowledging that some historians mark the war’s beginning from July 7, 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army clashed with Chinese soldiers at the Marco Polo Bridge, Beevor uses the more traditional date of September 1, 1939, when Hitler’s legions swarmed across the Polish border. Nevertheless, Beevor does not neglect the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War, but puts it into a supersized chapter that spans several years.
When a topic does not fit neatly into a space-and-time division, Beevor gives it a thematic chapter. Thus, instead of parceling out the Holocaust in bits and pieces, he devotes a couple different chapters to analyzing the shift in the Nazi’s annihilationist plans from roving ad hoc death squads to semi-permanent murder factories.
At all times, Beevor works to keep you oriented, often starting a chapter by referring to what is happening elsewhere.
***
The solid organizing principles of The Second World War are extremely important, because Beevor makes a point of showing how events on opposite ends of the globe could still be related. Whether you prefer to view the war as one huge conflict, or as a series of smaller interrelated ones, events everywhere were affected by events everywhere else. Many decisions that seem strange in hindsight can be explained by finite resources, overstretched militaries, and competing branches of service.
***
In terms of depth, The Second World War exists mainly at the strategic or operational level. This is just a concession to reality, as any detailed look at each major battle would necessitate several dozen massive tomes. Occasionally, Beevor will dip down to the tactical level, such as his discussions on the Battles of Stalingrad and Berlin. It is probably not a coincidence that Beevor has previously written standalone books about both.
Even though Beevor could not possibly cover the movement of every company in every skirmish, he provides just enough first-person accounts to remind you of the visceral horrors experienced by millions. He is especially good at communicating the sufferings of civilians caught in a trap made by cruel and distant men. Bombed, starved, herded into camps, executed wholesale, and forced from their homes, there is quite enough here to make you despair of the species.
***
Beevor is internationalist in his perspective, spending a good amount of space on forgotten theaters, such as China. Given that China’s participation is often either ignored or interpreted through the prism of Cold War politics, he does an excellent job of summarizing the trials of Chiang Kai-Shek, “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell, and William Slim as they try to navigate insurmountable supply issues, malaria, and vicious in-fighting.
Recognizing that the bulk of the fighting took place on Soviet soil, however, the Eastern Front dominates this book.
The west has often been accused – often by other westerners – of producing an Anglo-American-centered view of the Second World War, trumpeting D-Day while ignoring Operation Bagration. There are some good reasons for this, as the Soviet Union’s conduct during the war – especially its role in starting the damn thing – is really, really problematic. That said, there can be no doubting that Russia endured the worst of it, and Beevor gives them their due.
It should also be noted that Beevor can be quite critical of Russia, so much so that his prior books have been banned there on occasion. In my opinion, Beevor’s positions are not only supportable, but a necessary counterweight to the strange trend of post-Cold War historiography that essentially accepted every Stalinist myth at face value. Beevor rightly points out the inflow of Lend Lease supplies, the opening of three different land fronts (North Africa, Italy, and France) that drew German divisions, and the consequences of the Anglo-American sky-front, whose bombing missions destroyed the Luftwaffe and stripped the Eastern Front of 88 millimeter artillery, meaning that its tank-killing properties were not unleashed on the Soviets.
***
The interconnectedness of World War II is Beevor’s chief theme. It is no surprise that he starts The Second World War by introducing us to the possibly-apocryphal tale of Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean man conscripted by the Japanese, the Soviets, and the Germans, before finally being allowed to surrender to the Allies in France.
Aside from centering the Soviet Union, and giving China their overdue credit, Beevor stresses the smaller countries that often get overshadowed. Even with everything else going on, he manages to spare words for places like Burma, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. He tries to describe the crazy skein of circumstances that allegedly took Yang Kyoungjong from Korea to Normandy Beach, or that led a French SS unit to desperately fight the Russians in Berlin.
***
Of course, there is too little space for so much suffering. The Japanese occupation of Indochina, for one, gets only a sentence or two, even though the manmade famine there killed roughly two million people.
That’s the absurdity of World War II that Beevor captures so well. It is full of singular events that – had they happened at any other time – would be immortalized for their unalloyed tragedy. Because these things happened in such a death-warped context, they are simply added to the pile. All these intensely personal disasters – fear, pain, torture, familial separation, physical and sexual assault, death – are transformed into statistics.
The thing about The Second World War that will stick with me longest is its conscious stripping of triumphalism. Beevor thoroughly documents the atrocities of the Axis, consistently notes the brutal expediencies of the Allies, and reminds us that even when it ended, the Cold War still loomed, forming a shadow that looked curiously like a mushroom. This is profoundly despairing stuff, yet also feels like an entirely honest appraisal.
- Antony Beevor, The Second World War
There is no shortage of books on World War II. It is one of the most-written-about periods in all of history. But while it exerts a powerful hold, most of us don’t want to spend our entire lives reading about a single subject, no matter how vast and varied. To that end, when it comes to culling an endless reading list, it is helpful to find those rare author-historians that combine knowledge, research acumen, and readability.
Antony Beevor certainly belongs within that select group. He is a trusted brand in the thriving marketplace of books on the Second World War. Though he is not my absolute favorite, I respect his judgments and I trust his preparation. Even if I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, I believe he comes to them fairly.
I mention this, because the only reason I picked up The Second World War is Beevor’s name on the front cover. Frankly, a single-volume history of the war is not what I’m missing in my life. I already have a pretty good general grasp of those terrible years, and long-ago moved onto more detailed volumes about specific aspects of the conflagration. Indeed, if I’m being honest, I’m better at remembering specific dates between 1937 and 1945 than I am at recalling my kids’ birthdays.
With Beevor, though, I knew I’d be getting more than a high-level overview of what happened. I’d be getting his considered thoughts about what it all meant.
***
Unsurprisingly, given the impossible scale, Beevor structures The Second World War by a mixture of chronology, geography, and theme. Most chapters, all of which are datelined, cover a couple months in a specific area. By way of example, the first chapter encompasses the three months in 1939 leading up to Germany’s invasion of Poland.
Certain chapters have a lot more breadth. For instance, while acknowledging that some historians mark the war’s beginning from July 7, 1937, when the Japanese Imperial Army clashed with Chinese soldiers at the Marco Polo Bridge, Beevor uses the more traditional date of September 1, 1939, when Hitler’s legions swarmed across the Polish border. Nevertheless, Beevor does not neglect the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War, but puts it into a supersized chapter that spans several years.
When a topic does not fit neatly into a space-and-time division, Beevor gives it a thematic chapter. Thus, instead of parceling out the Holocaust in bits and pieces, he devotes a couple different chapters to analyzing the shift in the Nazi’s annihilationist plans from roving ad hoc death squads to semi-permanent murder factories.
At all times, Beevor works to keep you oriented, often starting a chapter by referring to what is happening elsewhere.
***
The solid organizing principles of The Second World War are extremely important, because Beevor makes a point of showing how events on opposite ends of the globe could still be related. Whether you prefer to view the war as one huge conflict, or as a series of smaller interrelated ones, events everywhere were affected by events everywhere else. Many decisions that seem strange in hindsight can be explained by finite resources, overstretched militaries, and competing branches of service.
***
In terms of depth, The Second World War exists mainly at the strategic or operational level. This is just a concession to reality, as any detailed look at each major battle would necessitate several dozen massive tomes. Occasionally, Beevor will dip down to the tactical level, such as his discussions on the Battles of Stalingrad and Berlin. It is probably not a coincidence that Beevor has previously written standalone books about both.
Even though Beevor could not possibly cover the movement of every company in every skirmish, he provides just enough first-person accounts to remind you of the visceral horrors experienced by millions. He is especially good at communicating the sufferings of civilians caught in a trap made by cruel and distant men. Bombed, starved, herded into camps, executed wholesale, and forced from their homes, there is quite enough here to make you despair of the species.
***
Beevor is internationalist in his perspective, spending a good amount of space on forgotten theaters, such as China. Given that China’s participation is often either ignored or interpreted through the prism of Cold War politics, he does an excellent job of summarizing the trials of Chiang Kai-Shek, “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell, and William Slim as they try to navigate insurmountable supply issues, malaria, and vicious in-fighting.
Recognizing that the bulk of the fighting took place on Soviet soil, however, the Eastern Front dominates this book.
The west has often been accused – often by other westerners – of producing an Anglo-American-centered view of the Second World War, trumpeting D-Day while ignoring Operation Bagration. There are some good reasons for this, as the Soviet Union’s conduct during the war – especially its role in starting the damn thing – is really, really problematic. That said, there can be no doubting that Russia endured the worst of it, and Beevor gives them their due.
It should also be noted that Beevor can be quite critical of Russia, so much so that his prior books have been banned there on occasion. In my opinion, Beevor’s positions are not only supportable, but a necessary counterweight to the strange trend of post-Cold War historiography that essentially accepted every Stalinist myth at face value. Beevor rightly points out the inflow of Lend Lease supplies, the opening of three different land fronts (North Africa, Italy, and France) that drew German divisions, and the consequences of the Anglo-American sky-front, whose bombing missions destroyed the Luftwaffe and stripped the Eastern Front of 88 millimeter artillery, meaning that its tank-killing properties were not unleashed on the Soviets.
***
The interconnectedness of World War II is Beevor’s chief theme. It is no surprise that he starts The Second World War by introducing us to the possibly-apocryphal tale of Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean man conscripted by the Japanese, the Soviets, and the Germans, before finally being allowed to surrender to the Allies in France.
Aside from centering the Soviet Union, and giving China their overdue credit, Beevor stresses the smaller countries that often get overshadowed. Even with everything else going on, he manages to spare words for places like Burma, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. He tries to describe the crazy skein of circumstances that allegedly took Yang Kyoungjong from Korea to Normandy Beach, or that led a French SS unit to desperately fight the Russians in Berlin.
***
Of course, there is too little space for so much suffering. The Japanese occupation of Indochina, for one, gets only a sentence or two, even though the manmade famine there killed roughly two million people.
That’s the absurdity of World War II that Beevor captures so well. It is full of singular events that – had they happened at any other time – would be immortalized for their unalloyed tragedy. Because these things happened in such a death-warped context, they are simply added to the pile. All these intensely personal disasters – fear, pain, torture, familial separation, physical and sexual assault, death – are transformed into statistics.
The thing about The Second World War that will stick with me longest is its conscious stripping of triumphalism. Beevor thoroughly documents the atrocities of the Axis, consistently notes the brutal expediencies of the Allies, and reminds us that even when it ended, the Cold War still loomed, forming a shadow that looked curiously like a mushroom. This is profoundly despairing stuff, yet also feels like an entirely honest appraisal.
March 10, 2013
Single-volume chronologies of WW2 seem to be all the rage of late, and this book must compete with such works as Max Hastings' "Inferno" and Gerhard Weinberg's "World at Arms." Unlike the two mentioned, which take a particular unique vertical slice, Beevor just tries to tell a decade-long story about two theaters of war, and do it competently. In that he succeeds, for the most part.
While the writing is not the breathtaking sort often reached for by the likes of Weinberg, it is readable and enjoyable for the most part. Like Thomas Ricks' new book, "The Generals," Beevor's history sets out to skewer many sacred cows. Some, like Bernard Montgomery, Mark Clark, and Douglas MacArthur, are easy targets, excoriated by everyone. But Beevor provides some deserving critiques of Eisenhower and Bradley, as well. And he holds Churchill's feet to the fire as well, giving the British prime minister his due where necessary, but denouncing Churchill not only for his outdated empire philosophy and his Africa-and-Italy-First plan for waging war, but also for silly plans to challenge the Soviets, such as Operation Unthinkable. And yes, FDR is placed under the microscope as well.
In short, Beevor's book is useful for its competent analysis of WW2, and for treating the war in a manner akin to "Game of Thrones." Yes, the Axis powers were terrible monsters that needed to be defeated. But no one on the Allied side was worthy of unabashed heroic praise, and Beevor avoids that. There are few heroes here.
While the writing is not the breathtaking sort often reached for by the likes of Weinberg, it is readable and enjoyable for the most part. Like Thomas Ricks' new book, "The Generals," Beevor's history sets out to skewer many sacred cows. Some, like Bernard Montgomery, Mark Clark, and Douglas MacArthur, are easy targets, excoriated by everyone. But Beevor provides some deserving critiques of Eisenhower and Bradley, as well. And he holds Churchill's feet to the fire as well, giving the British prime minister his due where necessary, but denouncing Churchill not only for his outdated empire philosophy and his Africa-and-Italy-First plan for waging war, but also for silly plans to challenge the Soviets, such as Operation Unthinkable. And yes, FDR is placed under the microscope as well.
In short, Beevor's book is useful for its competent analysis of WW2, and for treating the war in a manner akin to "Game of Thrones." Yes, the Axis powers were terrible monsters that needed to be defeated. But no one on the Allied side was worthy of unabashed heroic praise, and Beevor avoids that. There are few heroes here.
October 3, 2019
Hard to give this anything other than 5 stars. Being an absolute novice on the subject, I found this book fascinating, horrifying, edifying, and generally mind-blowing. For anyone worried it will be too dry, it is roughly 25% politics and military strategy, and 75% excerpts from countless first-hand accounts by soldiers, civilians, leaders, and poets. For example:
"I saw a woman who's dress and hair had just caught fire, she was trying to run from the inferno but the tarmac had melted and her feet were glued to the road." - From the diary of a german soldier describing the firebombing of Hamburg
I'm not sure I've ever read anything quite so shocking.
"I saw a woman who's dress and hair had just caught fire, she was trying to run from the inferno but the tarmac had melted and her feet were glued to the road." - From the diary of a german soldier describing the firebombing of Hamburg
I'm not sure I've ever read anything quite so shocking.
November 12, 2020
Lice rata je strašno.
Nakon završetka Prvog svjetskog rata skrojena je nova mapa svijeta. Sile Antante na čelu sa SAD, iscjepkale su i uspostavile nove granice Centralne Evrope. Kao gubitnik, Njemačka Versajskim mirovnim ugovorom počinje da gubi status velesile. Prvo napušta Belgiju, potom njene nekadašnje kolonije kao što su Palestina i Mesopotamija poptpadaju pod Britanskom okupacijom, Njemačka Jugozapadna Afrika postaje mandat Južne Afrike, a Belgija postaje mandatar u Ruandi i Burundi. Togo i Kamerun djele Francuska i Britanija. Konferencija je odlučila da se Alzas i Lorena vrate Francuskoj, a lijeva obala Rajne bude okupirana i demilitarizovana narednih petnaest godina. Saarska oblast bogata rudama dobija poseban status. Međutim, jedna od najvažnijih odluka Pariske mirovne konferencije jeste priznavanje nezavisnosti Poljske, a jedna od najtežih određivanje njenih granica. Procjenjuje se da je 58 000 kvadratnih kilometara oduzeto Njemačkoj, i pripojeno Poljskoj. Teritorije su predstavljale koridor koji je odvajao Istočnu Prusku od ostatka Rajha.
U konačnom, kada je u maju 1919. godine završena rasprava o njemačkim granicama pokazalo se da je Njemačka izgubila jednu sedminu svoje teritorije, i jednu desetinu stanovništva. Dogovoreno je da Njemačka u roku od dvije godine isplati dvadeset milijardi u uglju, dok će konferencija odrediti visinu ratnih reparacija i način njihovog plaćanja. Sve ovo i mnoge druge klauzule dovelo je do toga da Njemačka Versajki ugovor nazove licemjernim Diktatom (Das Diktat) koji je nametnut jednostrano, primjenom Vilsonovih načela. Sve ovo uzdiće ogorčenost njemačkih generala i oficira, i potpaliti bijes i razjarenost kod običnog naroda. Mnogi u Evropi neće ni slutiti da je Versaj samo otvorio kapije za novi rat.
Svakako da će prva velika žrtva Versajskog ugovora neminovno biti Poljska, narodu Varšave i drugih gradova je samo ostalo da sačekaju kada će se teška giljotina sručiti na njihov vrat. Naravno da Hitlera nije zanimalo samo zauzimanje otetih teritorija, primjerice Istočna Pruska čime bi se samo vratio na početni položaj, već je želio da čitava Srednja Evropa kao i cijela Rusija do Volge postanu njemački životvorni prostor (Lebens raund). To bi Njemačkoj obezbjedilo privrednu nezavisnost i povratilo joj status velike sile. Naftna polja na Kavkazu samo je jedan od zalogaja koje treba zagristi. Po njegovom neutaživom apetitu novi rat će postati nova istorija.
Koliko je Entoni Bivor odradio dobar posao govori u prilog da je čitav Drugi svjetski rat ispisao na hiljadu strana uz sjajan prevod Nenada Dropulića. Toliko o piščevoj municioznosti, predanosti, saznanju i volji da to sažme i na tako prijemčiv i jednostavan način prezentuje ne samo poznavaocima rata već i onima koji tek teže da nešto čopnu od njega. Bivor je nekako metodistički pristupio Drugom svjetskom ratu, pruživši nam izvještaj o događajima neposredno poslije Prvog svjetskog rata, kao i neke geopolitičke događaje, koji su bačeni u sjenku a koje on osvjetljava, tako što podrobno opisuje Kinesko-Japanski rat od 1937. do 1945. kao i način na koji se on savršeno stapa s Drugim svjetskim ratom. Međutim, Bivor pominje i izlaganje nekih azijskih istoričara koji tvrde da je rat započet još 1931. kada je Japan izvršio invaziju na Mandžuriju. Pisac je pokrivao sve frontove, ulazio u duševna stanja aktera rata, od predsjednika, generala i oficira pa sve do običnih ljudi. Svaki front posjeduje mapu, tako da je čitaocu olakšano praćenje jedinica u toku oslobađanja i zauzimanja teritorija. Pisac ne izostavlja moral vojnika na bojištu, pogrom metkom i gasom, diplomatska sučeljavanja zemalja učesnica, ekonomske posljedice, nedostatak radne snage i mnoge druge peripetije koje rat sa sobom vuče. Drugi svjestki rat od Entoni Bivora je knjiga koju sam s lakoćom pročitao. Knjiga koja naprosto vuče da je čitaš dalje, da saznaš, pa i emocionalno se vežeš za neke junake rata.
September 21, 2020
"This was the murder of everyday traditions that grandfathers passed to their grandchildren, this was the murder of memories, of a mournful song, folk poetry, of life, happy and bitter, this was the destruction of hearths and cemeteries, this was the death of a nation which had been living side by side with Ukrainians over hundreds of years."
- Vasily Grossman on the Holocaust in the Ukraine
Warning: This review contains facts of the Second World War that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
This review is dedicated to all members of the Allied forces who served in the Second World War.
The Second World War is the most destructive and deadliest conflict in all of human history, killing between 70-85 million people, or approximately 3% of the 1940 world population. Historians generally agree the conflict started on September 1st, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, though some historians argue the war really started back in 1937 with the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a conflict mainly between Japan and China that ended up killing between 15 and 22 million people. This conflict is also covered in the book, which I liked because I didn't know anything about it beforehand.
In The Second World War, Antony Beevor brilliantly combines the endless amount of facts one needs to convey to educate a reader on a topic as vast as the largest conflict in world history with firsthand accounts, diary entries, and even discussions and phone calls involving world leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler.
In a world where every movie and video game produced seems to only feature the contributions of the United States to the war, I thought Beevor did a superb job highlighting the unsung but immense contributions of countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He also did a fabulous job of highlighting the heroic contributions of women throughout the war. People seem to think women only helped on the home front and as nurses and etc. Not true. There were female fighter pilots, female snipers, female anti-aircraft gun crews, and at Stalingrad, one of the most brutal battles in world history:
The bravest of the brave in Stalingrad were the young women medical orderlies, who constantly went out under heavy fire to retrieve the wounded and drag them back. Sometimes they returned fire at the Germans. Stretchers were out of the question, so the orderly either wriggled herself under the wounded soldier and crawled with him on her back, or else she dragged him on a groundsheet or cape.
Another thing I loved about the book is that, between all the different firsthand accounts, diary entries, discussions, and phone calls, the reader gets a very "behind-the-scenes" feel of the war. Beevor also tells you things like what the environment smelled like, looked like, and sounded like for the men and women who were really there, and this puts you into the battle in a way I've never read in a historical account before.
The author is also not afraid to pull any punches; he tells things like they really were. He isn't afraid to tell you that someone generally admired like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was charming on the surface but "cold" and "manipulative" in private. Or that General MacArthur was "an egomaniac obsessed with his own inflated legend." This blunt honesty provides greater insight into some of the events of the war and the decisions made by these men.
I also loved what I call the "war stories" told in this book; some of them are truly incredible. A journalist coming upon Leo Tolstoy's estate to find his granddaughter evacuating it to escape the incoming Nazis, the heroic story of JFK and his fast torpedo boat PT-109 in the Pacific campaign, Japanese soldiers charging Soviet tanks with samurai swords...the list goes on. There are tons of them, and they're amazing. They're worth the price of the book just in themselves.
If I could offer one criticism of the book it was that the sheer amount of facts became daunting at times. Some reviews I've read of this book say it mostly contains firsthand accounts, but that's simply not true. I'd say at best this book was 60% facts and 40% firsthand accounts. Though the facts are told in a very readable way that I didn't find boring and that flowed almost like a narrative, it's still a lot of information to take in. I wish there had been more firsthand accounts to supplement all the facts. Particularly, I found the section on the North African campaign somewhat lacking in firsthand accounts; it was presented mostly as facts.
I want to take a few minutes now to talk about the parts of the book that are difficult to read...
The Second World War officially ended on September 2nd, 1945 with the surrender of the Empire of Japan to Allied Forces, but is this really when the war ended? For tens, maybe hundreds of millions of people across the globe, the effects lasted for years and even generations afterward. Among countless shockwaves caused by the war, the repatriation of millions of prisoners of war, refugees, and concentration camp survivors and the recoveries of the economies of nations broken by the conflict stand out. But most dramatic of all are the effects on the Jewish people. The effects of the Holocaust.
In 1939, the Jewish population in Europe stood at 9.5 million. By 1945, the population was down to 3.8 million. The Jewish population in Europe has not recovered to this day, and in fact it continues to shrink, recorded at only 1.4 million in 2010, 65 years after the Second World War ended. The suffering of the Jewish people is highlighted starkly in The Second World War, but this material is not for the faint of heart. I was reduced nearly to tears, and at times had to stop reading because I felt physically ill.
Some of it is just so hard to believe. It's unthinkable that human society could be reduced to such evil. The "sardine method" employed by the Nazis, where they dug trenches, laid a row of Jews facedown in the trench, shot them, and then brought in the next row of Jews and told them to lie facedown on top of the bodies, repeated as many times as they could to fill the holes, I found particularly disturbing. I doubt that such accounts will ever leave me.
One thing that became apparent to me as I read this book is that the Second World War was more horrific than any of us were taught in school. I knew a bit about the Holocaust, but I didn't know cannibalism was rampant throughout the war. Starved prisoners in the concentration camps were reduced to it. As were dehumanized Soviet prisoners during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern front. As were Japanese troops in the Pacific campaign:
Japanese officers and soldiers resorted to cannibalism and not just of enemy corpses. Human flesh was regarded as a necessary food source, and 'hunting parties' went forth to obtain it. In New Guinea they killed, butchered and ate local people and slave labourers, as well as a number of Australian and American prisoners of war...
The atrocities of this war are the things nightmares are made of: the systematic Nazi program to exterminate the Jews, the mass rape of women and young girls by Soviet armies, Japanese piling their own rotting dead to use as sandbags in the Pacific campaign, German soldiers stealing winter clothing and the last food of Soviet civilians, leaving them to starve and freeze to death, Japanese using live Chinese soldiers for bayonet practice during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the firebombing of German cities that melted civilians where they stood...but perhaps most shocking of all, the Danzig Anatomical Medical Institute in Poland, where corpses from the Stutthof concentration camp were used in experiments by the Nazis to try to turn them into leather and soap.
In the end, war is hell. Antony Beevor doesn't sugarcoat it for you, and I won't sugarcoat this book either. This is a difficult book to read, and there isn't a lot of hope or joy to be found in these pages. That being said, I have never read a more powerful book in my life. Through his masterful command, omniscient presentation, and flawless writing, Antony Beevor has done a tremendous service to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, as well as the fallen soldiers and veterans of the greatest conflict in human history, by leaving behind a masterpiece for the ages that tells us all a story we must never, ever forget.
Highly recommended.
- Vasily Grossman on the Holocaust in the Ukraine
Warning: This review contains facts of the Second World War that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
This review is dedicated to all members of the Allied forces who served in the Second World War.
The Second World War is the most destructive and deadliest conflict in all of human history, killing between 70-85 million people, or approximately 3% of the 1940 world population. Historians generally agree the conflict started on September 1st, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, though some historians argue the war really started back in 1937 with the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, a conflict mainly between Japan and China that ended up killing between 15 and 22 million people. This conflict is also covered in the book, which I liked because I didn't know anything about it beforehand.
In The Second World War, Antony Beevor brilliantly combines the endless amount of facts one needs to convey to educate a reader on a topic as vast as the largest conflict in world history with firsthand accounts, diary entries, and even discussions and phone calls involving world leaders like Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler.
In a world where every movie and video game produced seems to only feature the contributions of the United States to the war, I thought Beevor did a superb job highlighting the unsung but immense contributions of countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He also did a fabulous job of highlighting the heroic contributions of women throughout the war. People seem to think women only helped on the home front and as nurses and etc. Not true. There were female fighter pilots, female snipers, female anti-aircraft gun crews, and at Stalingrad, one of the most brutal battles in world history:
The bravest of the brave in Stalingrad were the young women medical orderlies, who constantly went out under heavy fire to retrieve the wounded and drag them back. Sometimes they returned fire at the Germans. Stretchers were out of the question, so the orderly either wriggled herself under the wounded soldier and crawled with him on her back, or else she dragged him on a groundsheet or cape.
Another thing I loved about the book is that, between all the different firsthand accounts, diary entries, discussions, and phone calls, the reader gets a very "behind-the-scenes" feel of the war. Beevor also tells you things like what the environment smelled like, looked like, and sounded like for the men and women who were really there, and this puts you into the battle in a way I've never read in a historical account before.
The author is also not afraid to pull any punches; he tells things like they really were. He isn't afraid to tell you that someone generally admired like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was charming on the surface but "cold" and "manipulative" in private. Or that General MacArthur was "an egomaniac obsessed with his own inflated legend." This blunt honesty provides greater insight into some of the events of the war and the decisions made by these men.
I also loved what I call the "war stories" told in this book; some of them are truly incredible. A journalist coming upon Leo Tolstoy's estate to find his granddaughter evacuating it to escape the incoming Nazis, the heroic story of JFK and his fast torpedo boat PT-109 in the Pacific campaign, Japanese soldiers charging Soviet tanks with samurai swords...the list goes on. There are tons of them, and they're amazing. They're worth the price of the book just in themselves.
If I could offer one criticism of the book it was that the sheer amount of facts became daunting at times. Some reviews I've read of this book say it mostly contains firsthand accounts, but that's simply not true. I'd say at best this book was 60% facts and 40% firsthand accounts. Though the facts are told in a very readable way that I didn't find boring and that flowed almost like a narrative, it's still a lot of information to take in. I wish there had been more firsthand accounts to supplement all the facts. Particularly, I found the section on the North African campaign somewhat lacking in firsthand accounts; it was presented mostly as facts.
I want to take a few minutes now to talk about the parts of the book that are difficult to read...
The Second World War officially ended on September 2nd, 1945 with the surrender of the Empire of Japan to Allied Forces, but is this really when the war ended? For tens, maybe hundreds of millions of people across the globe, the effects lasted for years and even generations afterward. Among countless shockwaves caused by the war, the repatriation of millions of prisoners of war, refugees, and concentration camp survivors and the recoveries of the economies of nations broken by the conflict stand out. But most dramatic of all are the effects on the Jewish people. The effects of the Holocaust.
In 1939, the Jewish population in Europe stood at 9.5 million. By 1945, the population was down to 3.8 million. The Jewish population in Europe has not recovered to this day, and in fact it continues to shrink, recorded at only 1.4 million in 2010, 65 years after the Second World War ended. The suffering of the Jewish people is highlighted starkly in The Second World War, but this material is not for the faint of heart. I was reduced nearly to tears, and at times had to stop reading because I felt physically ill.
Some of it is just so hard to believe. It's unthinkable that human society could be reduced to such evil. The "sardine method" employed by the Nazis, where they dug trenches, laid a row of Jews facedown in the trench, shot them, and then brought in the next row of Jews and told them to lie facedown on top of the bodies, repeated as many times as they could to fill the holes, I found particularly disturbing. I doubt that such accounts will ever leave me.
One thing that became apparent to me as I read this book is that the Second World War was more horrific than any of us were taught in school. I knew a bit about the Holocaust, but I didn't know cannibalism was rampant throughout the war. Starved prisoners in the concentration camps were reduced to it. As were dehumanized Soviet prisoners during Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern front. As were Japanese troops in the Pacific campaign:
Japanese officers and soldiers resorted to cannibalism and not just of enemy corpses. Human flesh was regarded as a necessary food source, and 'hunting parties' went forth to obtain it. In New Guinea they killed, butchered and ate local people and slave labourers, as well as a number of Australian and American prisoners of war...
The atrocities of this war are the things nightmares are made of: the systematic Nazi program to exterminate the Jews, the mass rape of women and young girls by Soviet armies, Japanese piling their own rotting dead to use as sandbags in the Pacific campaign, German soldiers stealing winter clothing and the last food of Soviet civilians, leaving them to starve and freeze to death, Japanese using live Chinese soldiers for bayonet practice during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the firebombing of German cities that melted civilians where they stood...but perhaps most shocking of all, the Danzig Anatomical Medical Institute in Poland, where corpses from the Stutthof concentration camp were used in experiments by the Nazis to try to turn them into leather and soap.
In the end, war is hell. Antony Beevor doesn't sugarcoat it for you, and I won't sugarcoat this book either. This is a difficult book to read, and there isn't a lot of hope or joy to be found in these pages. That being said, I have never read a more powerful book in my life. Through his masterful command, omniscient presentation, and flawless writing, Antony Beevor has done a tremendous service to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, as well as the fallen soldiers and veterans of the greatest conflict in human history, by leaving behind a masterpiece for the ages that tells us all a story we must never, ever forget.
Highly recommended.
August 14, 2012
I will open by writing that I know very little about the Second World War. Well, I KNEW very little about the Second World War. After reading this book I now know a lot more. I'm not sure I'm happier for the knowing.
I did not sit down and read this book through in one sitting. To be honest I've had it for several months and I read it chapter by chapter in between all of the other books I have read this summer. It was too much war for me to take all at once. That does not mean that it was a bad book - not at all! In fact it read beautifully. I just could not take all of that war all at once. I had to pace myself. So pace myself I did and I am a bit later with this review than I promised and I do apologize for that. But this is the first time I've really gotten into the nitty-gritty of WWII and well, it was a lot.
The book discusses all of the battles on all of the fronts of the war. That is a LOT of battles. Mr. Beevor goes into detail about commanders, equipment and all that goes into what makes war and battles happen. I was woefully ignorant as to the Pacific end of WWII and now have a better idea of what the Japan/China side of the war was about.
The one thing that bothered me immensely though, was Mr. Beevor's treatment and descriptions of Hitler. He seemed to be treating him as a puppet rather than as the leader of the Reich. He never has Hitler fully taking charge of, or giving him responsibility for the Holocaust and to write a book about this war and to take Hitler off the hook for that horror is just egregious. I don't understand.
I can't begin to write as to whether this is a definitive work on WWII as I have minimal knowledge of the facts as I stated earlier. I can state that it was easy to read, albeit a bit slow at times. I liked that I was able to learn so much as I was reading the book chapter by chapter as to increase my knowledge of this pivotal time in modern history.
I did not sit down and read this book through in one sitting. To be honest I've had it for several months and I read it chapter by chapter in between all of the other books I have read this summer. It was too much war for me to take all at once. That does not mean that it was a bad book - not at all! In fact it read beautifully. I just could not take all of that war all at once. I had to pace myself. So pace myself I did and I am a bit later with this review than I promised and I do apologize for that. But this is the first time I've really gotten into the nitty-gritty of WWII and well, it was a lot.
The book discusses all of the battles on all of the fronts of the war. That is a LOT of battles. Mr. Beevor goes into detail about commanders, equipment and all that goes into what makes war and battles happen. I was woefully ignorant as to the Pacific end of WWII and now have a better idea of what the Japan/China side of the war was about.
The one thing that bothered me immensely though, was Mr. Beevor's treatment and descriptions of Hitler. He seemed to be treating him as a puppet rather than as the leader of the Reich. He never has Hitler fully taking charge of, or giving him responsibility for the Holocaust and to write a book about this war and to take Hitler off the hook for that horror is just egregious. I don't understand.
I can't begin to write as to whether this is a definitive work on WWII as I have minimal knowledge of the facts as I stated earlier. I can state that it was easy to read, albeit a bit slow at times. I liked that I was able to learn so much as I was reading the book chapter by chapter as to increase my knowledge of this pivotal time in modern history.
December 6, 2022
Incredible. This masterpiece is the definitive history of World War Two. Beevor writes incredibly detailed accounts of all the battles and political maneuvering in lucid prose that never bogs down. He also includes many details that were suppressed by the victors, especially regarding the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese military, which are generally not as familiar to most of us as the Nazis' atrocities, but were often even more shocking, if not quite as numerous in scope. The evil madness of the Nazi regime is elucidated in these pages, as is the complicity and culpability of the German populace. Many histories give short shrift to the impact of military engagements on the hapless, suffering civilians caught between armies, but not this book. Their agonizing plight is heart rending to read about. The author does not hold back in relating the foibles and faults of Allied leaders. Churchill comes off as somewhat erratic, and Roosevelt as naive and foolish when dealing with Stalin. The Soviet leadership is exposed as irredeemably diabolical and treacherous. The second world war, as revealed in these pages, was the greatest man made tragedy this planet has ever seen. It is practically unfathomable for those of us living in today's privileged societies. This book will school you and mesmerize you at the same time. I give it my highest recommendation.
Want to read
June 3, 2012Every nation experienced and remembers the war in different ways. For the British, French and Poles, it began with the Nazi attack on Poland in September 1939. For Russians, notwithstanding their assaults on Poland, Finland and the Baltic States, the real war started in June 1941 with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. For Americans, it began with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For Japan, however, Pearl Harbor was the continuation of an expansionist military adventure that started with the invasion of Chinese Manchuria in 1931. A general history of the war needs to embrace this variety of experience and capture the interplay between the momentous events unfolding on different continents and the high seas.
Antony Beevor effectively meets this challenge. A former British army officer and author of admired works on Stalingrad and the Allied invasion of Normandy, Beevor is gifted writer who knows how to keep a good story rolling. "No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion," he observes.
The brutality and courage of individual soldiers and civilians emerge in Beevor's powerful accounts of battles such as Kursk, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.
Mankind has never known a war as devastating in its violence and profound in its moral implications as the second world war.
Antony Beevor effectively meets this challenge. A former British army officer and author of admired works on Stalingrad and the Allied invasion of Normandy, Beevor is gifted writer who knows how to keep a good story rolling. "No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion," he observes.
The brutality and courage of individual soldiers and civilians emerge in Beevor's powerful accounts of battles such as Kursk, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.
Mankind has never known a war as devastating in its violence and profound in its moral implications as the second world war.
November 12, 2020
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
--The Second World War
Acknowledgements
Index
(The full and extremely extensive notes and bibliography for this book are available in the hardback edition and also on the author's website at: www.antonybeevor.com. The sources have been omitted from the paperback to make it a more manageable and readable size.)
List of Maps
--The Second World War
Acknowledgements
Index
(The full and extremely extensive notes and bibliography for this book are available in the hardback edition and also on the author's website at: www.antonybeevor.com. The sources have been omitted from the paperback to make it a more manageable and readable size.)
March 22, 2013
In the acknowledgements to his latest history, The Second World War, Antony Beevor says that he wrote this comprehensive tome on one of the biggest events in human history because he wanted to fill in the gaps to his own knowledge of the topic. But, he says, “above all it is an attempt to understand how the whole complex jigsaw fits together, with the direct and indirect effects of actions and decisions taking place in very different theatres of war.” In this, Beevor succeeds where no other historian I have read has. Weighing in at 833 pages (with notes), Beevor deftly describes and analyzes the political and military strategic events, people, and decisions that started, fought, and ended World War II. Potentially more importantly, he debunks one myth after another surrounding this war.
Geographically and politically, the European and Pacific Theaters were fairly cordoned off from each other, outside of the involvement of the United States and the British, but not entirely. Beevor pulls the thread to examine how the Soviet victory at Khalkhin Gol in eastern Mongolia in the summer of 1939 ensured that the Soviets stayed out of the eastern war (Beevor is not, of course, the only historian to make this important point) and how that affected both theaters. As he pulls the thread further, the interactions of east and west, Axis and Allies, become more acute. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have almost no strategic interaction (there are a handful of exceptions), but their actions on three or four fronts each create a strategic graph theory problem of biblical proportions for the Allies. As a big-picture example, the United States did not just face a Pacific versus Europe resource competition. The United States faced resource competition between Stillwell’s command supporting the Chinese Nationalists, MacArthur’s forces, Halsey’s forces, the preparation for an invasion of western France, operations in North Africa and then Italy, strategic bombing campaigns on both sides, and Lend-Lease to many a slew of locations. To compound this, American leaders needed to maintain support for the war at home and keep the Alliance together while trying to shape the post-war world through a political minefield of communists, socialists, fascists, colonialists, revolutionaries, and democratists. All while trying to actually win the war. If you consider the number of facets and decisions required in this complex world, multiply these considerations by the same problems with which all of the other Allies (and enemies) were forced to contend. The result is an exponentially large equation to determine the outcomes of a world in flux moving at the speed of a tank. Beevor is at his best in this work when he examines these interdependencies of these fronts, the Allies’ force structure to address them, and the inter- and intra-national political considerations. For students of strategy, this alone makes The Second World War worth reading.
Beevor is equally as good at myth-busting the saintliness of the war’s heroes, the competence of its tragic warriors, and the general sense that it was, in fact, a “good war.” Almost none of the major players of the war get a pass (more on an exception below). Montgomery was “egotistic, ambitious and ruthless, possessing a boundless self-confidence which occasionally bordered on the fatuous.” MacArthur receives even harsher treatment that includes accusations of gross corruption. Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Patton, Brooke, Bradley, Stalin, Zhukov, Clark, Stillwell, Halsey, et al, are all described by their weaknesses and mistakes as much as they are by their strengths and failures. The sheer volume of egomania among these great captains significantly exceeded their capabilities, as Beevor explicitly demonstrates. That is not to suggest that these were not extraordinary men in extraordinary times - on the contrary. But none of these men were as idyllically competent as many histories would have us believe. The Axis powers are given the same treatment, if not more with rightful criticism focused on their general inhumanity. As a young Armor officer undergoing basic maneuver traing, a number of German officers were still considered gods of mechanized warfare: Rommel, Peiper, Guderian, von Rundstedt, etc. Further analysis, as done in this book, shows that these men were not nearly as good as I was taught. And those that were actually tactically or operationally superior, such as Peiper, were so ruthless with their own men and civilians that their tactics should hardly be extolled, never mind exemplified, by modern Western armies. It is well past time to end this infatuation with German maneuver exceptionalism as it never really existed. (As an aside, my experience has been that those who believe in this exceptionalism also believe, incorrectly in my opinion, in Israeli maneuver exceptionalism. The sooner we end these fantasies, the better for the education of the coming generations of maneuver leaders.)
Before I return to the myth-busting of the “good war” trope, I would be remiss if did not discuss this book’s shortcomings, of which I found two. Anyone who has read extensively on World War II, a population I consider myself a part of despite my just now revisiting the topic after many years, has a pet rock about this war: some issue or topic, preferably obscure and contrarian, which is used by its holder to judge all writing and analysis of World War II. I have one of these and his name was Major General Philippe Leclerc who commanded the French 2d Armored Division. Although Leclerc was a competent and brave commander, he had absolutely no regard for the Allied chain of command or unity of effort. He had a reputation for ignoring his orders and doing whatever he pleased for the glory of France and/or himself. There was an obscure incident that occurred in August 1944 towards the very end of Operation OVERLORD during the attempt to trap hundreds of thousands of Germans in the Falaise Pocket. The battle to close the gap and encircle the German forces inside the pocket was hard fought and in the end a victory for the Allies. But at least one Panzer corps (and most likely more) escaped. There were three reasons: Montgomery’s inability to drive his forces south fast or hard enough, Bradley’s indecision, and Leclerc disobeying orders. The really long-story-short is that Leclerc was so excited to end the battle so that he could turn south and spearhead the liberation of Paris that he exceeded his divisional boundary in the Foret d’Ecouves. This caused a massive traffic jam with the U.S. 5th Armored Division and provided the German Army defenders time and space to establish a defensive line that allowed more German forces to escape encirclement (see page 416 at this link). I find Leclerc’s actions unconscionable. In a book that aims to break down the many cults of personality surrounding the key characters of this conflict, Beevor misses this opportunity and gives Leclerc a pass. I will grant the author some forgiveness in that if he picked on the foibles of every division commander in the war (even if this particular one was a prominent player) then this book would expand to be many volumes. But this is my pet rock and I am miffed that Leclerc’s egomania likely led to the deaths of many soldiers and Beevor did not take a written hammer to him for it.
Some readers will complain that the Pacific Theater receives short shrift in this book. Many of the battles are not detailed, but that is true of most battles in both theaters. This book was not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the fighting, but rather of the strategic decisions and actions that comprised the whole of the war. Tactics are rarely discussed anywhere unless they are needed for the larger analysis, such as in Stalingrad where the type of fighting played a role in the Red Army’s ferocity in the outbreak that in turn had a number of strategic implications through the end of the war. So yes, Midway gets all of two pages, but that is all that particular battle warrants when not examining the tactical situation of the battle that was irrelevant to strategy in the Pacific. Rest assured that the major strategic concerns of the Pacific are addressed in detail as well as relevant tactical analysis.
No, the second major issue with this book, besides some redundancies, is sloppiness in editing. There are too many sentences that do not make sense because of various errors. Thankfully the errors do not create ambiguity and thus confusion, but they are irritating and interrupt the flow of the book. They also increase in number near the end. It is a rather large book so some errors are expected, but the publisher would do well to give it another scrub before a second printing. Related to this is the index, which is a mess. For example, there you will find in order: Cholitz, Chungking, Chou, Ciano. There is the obvious problem that Chou should precede Chungking, but more importantly is that “Churchill” is not to be found between “Chungking” and “Ciano”. Winston Churchill is not in the index. That is a major mistake if I have ever seen one.
These problems are overwhelmed by this book’s positive contribution to the study of World War II and military history and strategy in general. Beevor attacks the “good war” campaign and stops it dead in its tracks. The incomprehensible costs of this war should cause anyone about to describe it as “good” to pause. Indeed, fascist and imperialist aggressors and mass murderers were defeated and there is no denying that was a good thing. However, the Western Allies were hardly angels themselves if potentially lesser devils. Atrocities on the ground in the Pacific and western European fronts are detailed and are comparatively benign. But the strategic bombing campaign conducted against civilians on both sides of the war with no tangible military objectives should be viewed through a realist lens. If the Allies had lost the war, its leaders would have been tried for war crimes. And these crimes pale in comparison not only with Nazi and Japanese atrocities, but also with Soviet atrocities and later Chinese crimes. Beevor is also quite harsh on the Western leaders for acquiescing to Stalin on Eastern Europe, saying that they sold out half of Europe to save the other half. He is not wrong in this. It is important to note that Beevor does not suggest that World War II was an unjust war, he in fact says that is (from the Allied perspective, naturally), but rather that we should remove our rosy glasses on the West’s activities during the war and understand analysis of the war and its events for what they are and why “good” is not a descriptor of this war. He describes the war as “so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion.” Indeed this is true. Beevor’s account of it sets a high bar of scholarship and unprejudiced perspective for such study.
I originally posted this at: http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/2012...
Geographically and politically, the European and Pacific Theaters were fairly cordoned off from each other, outside of the involvement of the United States and the British, but not entirely. Beevor pulls the thread to examine how the Soviet victory at Khalkhin Gol in eastern Mongolia in the summer of 1939 ensured that the Soviets stayed out of the eastern war (Beevor is not, of course, the only historian to make this important point) and how that affected both theaters. As he pulls the thread further, the interactions of east and west, Axis and Allies, become more acute. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan have almost no strategic interaction (there are a handful of exceptions), but their actions on three or four fronts each create a strategic graph theory problem of biblical proportions for the Allies. As a big-picture example, the United States did not just face a Pacific versus Europe resource competition. The United States faced resource competition between Stillwell’s command supporting the Chinese Nationalists, MacArthur’s forces, Halsey’s forces, the preparation for an invasion of western France, operations in North Africa and then Italy, strategic bombing campaigns on both sides, and Lend-Lease to many a slew of locations. To compound this, American leaders needed to maintain support for the war at home and keep the Alliance together while trying to shape the post-war world through a political minefield of communists, socialists, fascists, colonialists, revolutionaries, and democratists. All while trying to actually win the war. If you consider the number of facets and decisions required in this complex world, multiply these considerations by the same problems with which all of the other Allies (and enemies) were forced to contend. The result is an exponentially large equation to determine the outcomes of a world in flux moving at the speed of a tank. Beevor is at his best in this work when he examines these interdependencies of these fronts, the Allies’ force structure to address them, and the inter- and intra-national political considerations. For students of strategy, this alone makes The Second World War worth reading.
Beevor is equally as good at myth-busting the saintliness of the war’s heroes, the competence of its tragic warriors, and the general sense that it was, in fact, a “good war.” Almost none of the major players of the war get a pass (more on an exception below). Montgomery was “egotistic, ambitious and ruthless, possessing a boundless self-confidence which occasionally bordered on the fatuous.” MacArthur receives even harsher treatment that includes accusations of gross corruption. Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower, Patton, Brooke, Bradley, Stalin, Zhukov, Clark, Stillwell, Halsey, et al, are all described by their weaknesses and mistakes as much as they are by their strengths and failures. The sheer volume of egomania among these great captains significantly exceeded their capabilities, as Beevor explicitly demonstrates. That is not to suggest that these were not extraordinary men in extraordinary times - on the contrary. But none of these men were as idyllically competent as many histories would have us believe. The Axis powers are given the same treatment, if not more with rightful criticism focused on their general inhumanity. As a young Armor officer undergoing basic maneuver traing, a number of German officers were still considered gods of mechanized warfare: Rommel, Peiper, Guderian, von Rundstedt, etc. Further analysis, as done in this book, shows that these men were not nearly as good as I was taught. And those that were actually tactically or operationally superior, such as Peiper, were so ruthless with their own men and civilians that their tactics should hardly be extolled, never mind exemplified, by modern Western armies. It is well past time to end this infatuation with German maneuver exceptionalism as it never really existed. (As an aside, my experience has been that those who believe in this exceptionalism also believe, incorrectly in my opinion, in Israeli maneuver exceptionalism. The sooner we end these fantasies, the better for the education of the coming generations of maneuver leaders.)
Before I return to the myth-busting of the “good war” trope, I would be remiss if did not discuss this book’s shortcomings, of which I found two. Anyone who has read extensively on World War II, a population I consider myself a part of despite my just now revisiting the topic after many years, has a pet rock about this war: some issue or topic, preferably obscure and contrarian, which is used by its holder to judge all writing and analysis of World War II. I have one of these and his name was Major General Philippe Leclerc who commanded the French 2d Armored Division. Although Leclerc was a competent and brave commander, he had absolutely no regard for the Allied chain of command or unity of effort. He had a reputation for ignoring his orders and doing whatever he pleased for the glory of France and/or himself. There was an obscure incident that occurred in August 1944 towards the very end of Operation OVERLORD during the attempt to trap hundreds of thousands of Germans in the Falaise Pocket. The battle to close the gap and encircle the German forces inside the pocket was hard fought and in the end a victory for the Allies. But at least one Panzer corps (and most likely more) escaped. There were three reasons: Montgomery’s inability to drive his forces south fast or hard enough, Bradley’s indecision, and Leclerc disobeying orders. The really long-story-short is that Leclerc was so excited to end the battle so that he could turn south and spearhead the liberation of Paris that he exceeded his divisional boundary in the Foret d’Ecouves. This caused a massive traffic jam with the U.S. 5th Armored Division and provided the German Army defenders time and space to establish a defensive line that allowed more German forces to escape encirclement (see page 416 at this link). I find Leclerc’s actions unconscionable. In a book that aims to break down the many cults of personality surrounding the key characters of this conflict, Beevor misses this opportunity and gives Leclerc a pass. I will grant the author some forgiveness in that if he picked on the foibles of every division commander in the war (even if this particular one was a prominent player) then this book would expand to be many volumes. But this is my pet rock and I am miffed that Leclerc’s egomania likely led to the deaths of many soldiers and Beevor did not take a written hammer to him for it.
Some readers will complain that the Pacific Theater receives short shrift in this book. Many of the battles are not detailed, but that is true of most battles in both theaters. This book was not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of the fighting, but rather of the strategic decisions and actions that comprised the whole of the war. Tactics are rarely discussed anywhere unless they are needed for the larger analysis, such as in Stalingrad where the type of fighting played a role in the Red Army’s ferocity in the outbreak that in turn had a number of strategic implications through the end of the war. So yes, Midway gets all of two pages, but that is all that particular battle warrants when not examining the tactical situation of the battle that was irrelevant to strategy in the Pacific. Rest assured that the major strategic concerns of the Pacific are addressed in detail as well as relevant tactical analysis.
No, the second major issue with this book, besides some redundancies, is sloppiness in editing. There are too many sentences that do not make sense because of various errors. Thankfully the errors do not create ambiguity and thus confusion, but they are irritating and interrupt the flow of the book. They also increase in number near the end. It is a rather large book so some errors are expected, but the publisher would do well to give it another scrub before a second printing. Related to this is the index, which is a mess. For example, there you will find in order: Cholitz, Chungking, Chou, Ciano. There is the obvious problem that Chou should precede Chungking, but more importantly is that “Churchill” is not to be found between “Chungking” and “Ciano”. Winston Churchill is not in the index. That is a major mistake if I have ever seen one.
These problems are overwhelmed by this book’s positive contribution to the study of World War II and military history and strategy in general. Beevor attacks the “good war” campaign and stops it dead in its tracks. The incomprehensible costs of this war should cause anyone about to describe it as “good” to pause. Indeed, fascist and imperialist aggressors and mass murderers were defeated and there is no denying that was a good thing. However, the Western Allies were hardly angels themselves if potentially lesser devils. Atrocities on the ground in the Pacific and western European fronts are detailed and are comparatively benign. But the strategic bombing campaign conducted against civilians on both sides of the war with no tangible military objectives should be viewed through a realist lens. If the Allies had lost the war, its leaders would have been tried for war crimes. And these crimes pale in comparison not only with Nazi and Japanese atrocities, but also with Soviet atrocities and later Chinese crimes. Beevor is also quite harsh on the Western leaders for acquiescing to Stalin on Eastern Europe, saying that they sold out half of Europe to save the other half. He is not wrong in this. It is important to note that Beevor does not suggest that World War II was an unjust war, he in fact says that is (from the Allied perspective, naturally), but rather that we should remove our rosy glasses on the West’s activities during the war and understand analysis of the war and its events for what they are and why “good” is not a descriptor of this war. He describes the war as “so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion.” Indeed this is true. Beevor’s account of it sets a high bar of scholarship and unprejudiced perspective for such study.
I originally posted this at: http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/2012...
July 2, 2015
For some crazy reason I bought both Beevor's book on World War II and Max Hasting's Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 when they were published in the US a couple years ago. While I wouldn't call myself a WW2 buff, my steady interest dates back to the summer of 1976 when I picked up John Lukacs' The Last European War, September 1939/December 1941 in a Georgetown bookstore. Lukacs provides a rich diplomatic history, and the kind of drama underlying the many novels of Alan Furst. Beevor and Hastings provide something different: an unsparing overview of carnage, cruelty and incomprehensible suffering.
I was somewhat prepared for this book, because I'd read Beevor's impressive Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 and The Fall of Berlin 1945, as well as the first chapters of D-Day: The Battle for Normandy– and I'd judge any of those books superior to this larger history, simply because there's no way one historian can master so much material or cover so many events in meaningful depth. (The book also suffers from a dearth of maps.)
However, even in a survey such as this, depths of horror and historical irony come through. And I learned some important facts that I hadn't know before, such as Stalin's plans to invade Europe after the fall of Berlin. Beevor quotes General Shtemenko:
I was somewhat prepared for this book, because I'd read Beevor's impressive Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943 and The Fall of Berlin 1945, as well as the first chapters of D-Day: The Battle for Normandy– and I'd judge any of those books superior to this larger history, simply because there's no way one historian can master so much material or cover so many events in meaningful depth. (The book also suffers from a dearth of maps.)
However, even in a survey such as this, depths of horror and historical irony come through. And I learned some important facts that I hadn't know before, such as Stalin's plans to invade Europe after the fall of Berlin. Beevor quotes General Shtemenko:
"a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the Straits [with Denmark]… It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralyzed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experience divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month… All these plans were aborted when Stalin learned from [Beria] that the Americans had the atom bomb and were putting it into mass production."One awful example of irony is the political naiveté of the US China experts who supported Mao against Chiang Kai-shek.
[Agnes] Smedley, Theodore White and other influential American writers could not accept for a moment that Mao might turn out to be a far worse tyrant than Chiang Kai-shek. The personality cult, the Great Leap Forward which killed more people than the whole of Second World War, the cruel madness of the Cultural Revolution and the seventy million victims of a regime that was in many ways worse than Stalinism proved totally beyond their imagination.As for horror, Beever devotes only a couple paragraphs to the Japanese policy of eating their prisoners.
The [Japanese] practice of treating prisoners as "human cattle" had not come about from a collapse of discipline. It was usually directed by the officers. Apart from local people, victims of cannibalism included Papuan soldiers, Australians, Americans and Indian prisoners of war who had refused to join the Indian National Army. At the end of the war, their Japanese captors had kept the Indians alive so that they could butcher them to eat one at a time. Even the inhumanity of the Nazi’s Hunger Plan in the east never descended to such levels. Because the subject was so upsetting to families of soldiers who had died in the Pacific War, the Allies suppressed all information on the subject, and cannibalism never featured as a crime at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in 1946.All the usual horrors are documented as well: the Holocaust; the unrelenting ebb and flow of death in the "bloodlands"; the barbarous battles between the warrior states of Germany and Japan against the often unprepared conscripts from the democracies; the criminal "strategic" firebombing of cities. Yet Beevor is surely correct in his conclusion that "No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion."
Read
December 6, 2019Concise and with a gripping narrative, it is perfect for anyone wishing to have a complete account of the war. I sincerely believe that it will be considered a reference book on the subject. Totally recommended!
December 2, 2021
Another fantastic overview of WW2. Broad, brush strokes that gets across detail into all fronts of the war, but it also includes small stories about the 'little people' which added to the immersion.
May 14, 2019
I approached Antony Beevor's World War II with considerable trepidation. Beevor is brilliant at dealing with individual battles or campaigns but had never before attempted synthesis history. His survey of World War II is a resounding success as Beevor demonstrates his strength in this area.
Contrary to tradition which selects the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 as the starting point of WWI, Beevor uses Stalin's decision the previous June to mount a large scale response to Japan's incursions on the Mongolian frontier. Stalin's aim was to pacify the Eastern frontier in face of an increasingly strong possibility of a German move in the West. Beevor's choice is logically defensible. More importantly, it reflects a generational shift. For the last 60 years, our writing on WWII has concentrated on the European theatre because that is where our older relatives and their comrades fought. Going forward as China's economic, political and cultural importance grows we will pay more attention to the Asian theatre as these countries take on more importance in our business and personal lives. Beevor maintains a strong focus on China and Japan throughout the book which is clearly one of its strong points.
Beevor's great strength as an historian has been his ability to treat human suffering as central to war not as a collateral issue. In his previous books, he has always demonstrated a masterful ability to maintain simultaneous narratives on military actions, political decisions and the ongoing loss of life. Although relying on secondary sources, Beevor is again able to achieve this triple thread for the broader war. He criticizes bombing because in his view it caused many civilian deaths without significantly assisting the allied armies advance. He describes how armies resort to eating POWs when cut off from food. He recounts how occupying armies deliberately kill large numbers of non-combatants.
Beevor has certainly written the right overview work of World War II for our new century. However, synthesis history is still not what makes Beevor such a great historian and great is the only word to describe Beevor when he is doing what he is best at.
I personally believe that Antony Beevor deserves to become the third historian to receive the Nobel Literature Prize. He has the extraordinary ability to take on a subject that has been treated often and occasionally too often by other historians and find something new to say. His approach is not to offer new interpretations but rather to find new material that expands the scope of the study.
Beevor's two best books are Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin. For these two books, he extensively interviewed survivors from the cities in question. In this way, he was able to integrate the tale of the battle with the horrific experiences of the populations in the two cities where the armies fought. To cover the entire Second War, Beevor had to lay aside his greatest talent: that of interviewing civilians in order to describe the human experience of war.
If you want an overview, then read Beevor's World War II. If you want to read truly great history read Stalingrad, The Fall or Berlin or the Battle of Crete first.
Contrary to tradition which selects the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 as the starting point of WWI, Beevor uses Stalin's decision the previous June to mount a large scale response to Japan's incursions on the Mongolian frontier. Stalin's aim was to pacify the Eastern frontier in face of an increasingly strong possibility of a German move in the West. Beevor's choice is logically defensible. More importantly, it reflects a generational shift. For the last 60 years, our writing on WWII has concentrated on the European theatre because that is where our older relatives and their comrades fought. Going forward as China's economic, political and cultural importance grows we will pay more attention to the Asian theatre as these countries take on more importance in our business and personal lives. Beevor maintains a strong focus on China and Japan throughout the book which is clearly one of its strong points.
Beevor's great strength as an historian has been his ability to treat human suffering as central to war not as a collateral issue. In his previous books, he has always demonstrated a masterful ability to maintain simultaneous narratives on military actions, political decisions and the ongoing loss of life. Although relying on secondary sources, Beevor is again able to achieve this triple thread for the broader war. He criticizes bombing because in his view it caused many civilian deaths without significantly assisting the allied armies advance. He describes how armies resort to eating POWs when cut off from food. He recounts how occupying armies deliberately kill large numbers of non-combatants.
Beevor has certainly written the right overview work of World War II for our new century. However, synthesis history is still not what makes Beevor such a great historian and great is the only word to describe Beevor when he is doing what he is best at.
I personally believe that Antony Beevor deserves to become the third historian to receive the Nobel Literature Prize. He has the extraordinary ability to take on a subject that has been treated often and occasionally too often by other historians and find something new to say. His approach is not to offer new interpretations but rather to find new material that expands the scope of the study.
Beevor's two best books are Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin. For these two books, he extensively interviewed survivors from the cities in question. In this way, he was able to integrate the tale of the battle with the horrific experiences of the populations in the two cities where the armies fought. To cover the entire Second War, Beevor had to lay aside his greatest talent: that of interviewing civilians in order to describe the human experience of war.
If you want an overview, then read Beevor's World War II. If you want to read truly great history read Stalingrad, The Fall or Berlin or the Battle of Crete first.
April 15, 2018
Tremendous. Haven't been able to leave this alone over the last fortnight. Finished it last night.
Left me asking the question: how did civilisation survive such a conflict?
Left me asking the question: how did civilisation survive such a conflict?
September 19, 2023
Made easy by the author.
World events are laid out and where applicable connected so as I found it easier to understand the decisions, the moves and the outcomes.
I enjoyed this.
World events are laid out and where applicable connected so as I found it easier to understand the decisions, the moves and the outcomes.
I enjoyed this.
November 7, 2013
This is a subject where a single battle, a single country or a single person can take up more than one tomes of material. So, I imagine it's extremely hard to fit the whole war in a single book.
Yet Beevor has done it with surprising clarity, completeness and depth. I've read hundreds of books on WWII, and yet I found that there were actually new things to learn from this single-tome volume!
Beevor writes very nicely, with a fluid narrative that keeps the interest up with no let up. He manages to captivate the reader in a relentless push through the war.
Not that the book is without a few shortcomings. Beevor could/should have explained a bit more about how the world came to take up arms (but he does an excellent job on taking the focus away from what the Westerners consider the beginnings of WWII), and the ending is a hurried affair. More importantly, Beevor shows remarkable one-sidedness and naiveté when dealing with some sensitive political issues - like the Greek civil war, the dropping of the atom bomb or the plans of Stalin for the invasion of Western Europe. Oh well, no one's perfect, but it costs the book one star.
Highly recommended!
Yet Beevor has done it with surprising clarity, completeness and depth. I've read hundreds of books on WWII, and yet I found that there were actually new things to learn from this single-tome volume!
Beevor writes very nicely, with a fluid narrative that keeps the interest up with no let up. He manages to captivate the reader in a relentless push through the war.
Not that the book is without a few shortcomings. Beevor could/should have explained a bit more about how the world came to take up arms (but he does an excellent job on taking the focus away from what the Westerners consider the beginnings of WWII), and the ending is a hurried affair. More importantly, Beevor shows remarkable one-sidedness and naiveté when dealing with some sensitive political issues - like the Greek civil war, the dropping of the atom bomb or the plans of Stalin for the invasion of Western Europe. Oh well, no one's perfect, but it costs the book one star.
Highly recommended!
August 5, 2020
This is the third general history of WWII I've read, my first two being Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II by Robert Leckie and The Second World War by John Keegan.
Leckie's book was so exceptional that it's hard for any other book on the subject to live up to the standard it set. What makes Leckie's book so great is that it perfectly balances all the aspects of the war into a highly readable narrative.
Leckie devotes an entire chapter to painting a complete biographical portrait of each of the major characters of the war - not only the main figures such as Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, or the secondary political leaders like Mussolini, de Gaulle, Tojo, but also the military generals like Rommel, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Nimitz. Other military commanders like Stillwell, Clark, O'Connor, Wingate, and Patton are brought to life in the course of the story. This makes the story easy to follow because the characters actually means something to the reader.
Contrast that to Beevor in The Second World War. New names are dropped when they come up throughout the book at a rate that's hard to keep track of, especially since they lack context. It's hard to tell Rundstadt apart from Manstein or Rokossovsky apart from Vasilevsky when you don't have a face to put the name to. The only characters whose minds Beevor lets you into are perhaps Churchill and Stalin and perhaps de Gaulle and Kai-shek.
Then take the battlefield accounts. Beevor does a decent job at this when he tries, like his descriptions of the massive artillery barrages of the Soviet offences and the feeling the scream of the Katyusha's put in the German soldiers' hearts, or the city street fighting in Stalingrad and Aachen. But most of these are sandwiched between somewhat boring shopping lists of which units encircled the salient from which direction. Add to this that the included maps are absolutely useless. I often found it very hard to picture what the geography of the battle looked like, let alone the tactical movement of units. Take this random example (page 495, and I really did choose this at random, examples like this not being hard to find):
Flip a few pages forward, it’s the same (page 540):
There are images Beevor could have really exploited: a battle in a “Sicilian hilltop village above terraces of olive groves, reached only by a dirt road twisting up the steep slope in hairpin bends” or “panzergrenadiers driving a huge flock of sheep in front of them over the minefields”, but instead Beevor briefly mentions then and then moves onto the numbers of casualties and the named of every individual unit. And how am I to picture “area between the US 45th Division and the recently arrived British 56th Division” when I can’t place them on a map or in my mind? And who is Mackensen? That name means nothing to me as a reader.
Compare this to Leckie’s account of Sidi Rezegh:
That’s like reading a novel! By contrast, Beevor’s writing is tedious and uninspired.
Similarly, Beevor is good at portraying the civilians' experience in the war when he tries, but he still doesn't match Leckie's ability to put you in the place, be it resisting Japanese banzai attacks on Guadalcanal or starving to death in Leningrad. Leckie makes you feel what it was like to be there, while Beevor simply tells you. The only other author I've read who is as skilled at mise-en-scene is Stephen E. Ambrose. As well, Leckie (and Ambrose) develops characters so you identify with their experience. Examples that comes to mind are his quotes from Robert Crisp’s Brazen Chariots: A Tank Commander in Operation Crusader or Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier. Beevor does very little of this. To be sure, he does quote Vasily Grossman’s account of the Eastern Front extensively, but not in a way that makes you identify with him.
And that brings us to another of Beevor’s weaknesses. His sources are very sparsely credited and he seems to be relying on a very small number of them. You can see this from the notes - there are usually only one or two notes to every page or two. Some of these are original research from Soviet or German state documents, but often these are only to back minor claims or anecdotes. When covering the major, well-known events, Beevor appears to be going from memory - or at least it seems that way from the lack of any noted sources. Where Beevor does need to rely on sources, like in the Chinese theatre, his accounts seem to all be based on a single source. For example, his coverage of China seems to be based entirely on Hans van de Ven and his coverage of Japanese war crimes entirely on Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes In World War II by Yuki Tanaka. On the Eastern Front experience, this really shows because whenever he devotes more attention to on-the-ground experiences of battles, it’s invariably to battles that Grossman writes about. This results in what feels like a lack of balance and proportion.
Where Beevor does excel is his grasp of the political and diplomatic jigsaw puzzle. He will often devote more time to the political maneuvering of the generals in the war room than to those of the armies on the battlefield. He spends several pages on the Tehran and Yalta conferences. He mentions every trip Churchill made to America. His coverage of Oran is more about the negotiations between Holland and Gensoul than the actual attack. His coverage of Berlin spends disproportionate attention to Zhukov’s messages to Stalin to claim credit; the Blitz, he talks about the public information campaign; resistance movements in Yugoslavia, France, and Poland, Beevor’s coverage is mostly about the political bickering between the various groups than about sabotage operations. His coverage of China focuses on every angle of the ménage-à-six between the Chinese Nationalists, Maoists, Japanese, Soviets, Americans, and the British. Throughout the book, Beevor shows a passion and skill at the political and diplomatic angles of the war beyond what you would get from any other author.
Another strength of Beevor is his coverage of some of the ancillary theatres that don’t get as much attention in other books. For example, China and the Balkans are covered quite thoroughly. As I mentioned, much of this coverage focuses on the political rather than the military struggles of these areas. Beevor also covers the Shoah relatively well, as well as other atrocities committed against civilians. Beevor also appears to try very hard to be balanced, giving his attention not only to the crimes of the Nazis and the Japanese but also to the Allies, for example, the rape of East Prussia in 1945. His attention to the Eastern Front also seems more appropriately balanced than other Western-centric historians. As much as his sources, and by extension, the proportion of detail to specific battles seems unbalanced, he does a good job giving an overall balance between the larger theatres of the war and he cannot be accused, as other authors often are, of neglecting the suffering of any victim.
Obviously, every author has their own style and emphasis and it’s worth reading them all. Each one will teach you about an aspect of the war the others might have glossed over. Beevor’s a good example of this advice. Reading him makes you appreciate that military encounters don’t happen on their own and that much political wrangling goes on behind the scenes. Likewise, from reading Keegan’s book, I learned how important economic labour, production capacity, armaments supply, and logistics are - wars are most often won purely by an excess of number rather than a single strategically taken hilltop.
That’s why I’ve undertaken to read all the single-volume histories of WWII, after which I’ll read about specific battles. My list includes:
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
2. All Hell Let Loose: The World at War, 1939-1945 (also published as Inferno) by Max Hastings
3. The Second World War by Antony Beevor
4. The Second World War War by John Keegan
5. The Second World War: A Complete History by Martin Gilbert
6. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II by Gerhard L. Weinberg
7. The Second World War series (six volumes) by Winston S. Churchill
8. Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II by Robert Leckie
9. History of the Second World War by B.H. Liddell Hart
10. The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
11. The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War by Andrew Roberts
12. The Second World War: A Military History by Gordon Corrigan
13. The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson
14. Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw
15. The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans
16. The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 by John Toland
17. The Liberation Trilogy Boxed Set by Rick Atkinson
18. The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 and Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3) by Ian W. Toll
But as an introduction, from those I’ve read so far, the one I’d recommend first is Robert Leckie’s rather than Beevor or Keegan.
Leckie's book was so exceptional that it's hard for any other book on the subject to live up to the standard it set. What makes Leckie's book so great is that it perfectly balances all the aspects of the war into a highly readable narrative.
Leckie devotes an entire chapter to painting a complete biographical portrait of each of the major characters of the war - not only the main figures such as Hitler, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, or the secondary political leaders like Mussolini, de Gaulle, Tojo, but also the military generals like Rommel, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Montgomery and Nimitz. Other military commanders like Stillwell, Clark, O'Connor, Wingate, and Patton are brought to life in the course of the story. This makes the story easy to follow because the characters actually means something to the reader.
Contrast that to Beevor in The Second World War. New names are dropped when they come up throughout the book at a rate that's hard to keep track of, especially since they lack context. It's hard to tell Rundstadt apart from Manstein or Rokossovsky apart from Vasilevsky when you don't have a face to put the name to. The only characters whose minds Beevor lets you into are perhaps Churchill and Stalin and perhaps de Gaulle and Kai-shek.
Then take the battlefield accounts. Beevor does a decent job at this when he tries, like his descriptions of the massive artillery barrages of the Soviet offences and the feeling the scream of the Katyusha's put in the German soldiers' hearts, or the city street fighting in Stalingrad and Aachen. But most of these are sandwiched between somewhat boring shopping lists of which units encircled the salient from which direction. Add to this that the included maps are absolutely useless. I often found it very hard to picture what the geography of the battle looked like, let alone the tactical movement of units. Take this random example (page 495, and I really did choose this at random, examples like this not being hard to find):
While the battle for the Primosole Bridge went on, the 51st Highland Division to the west attacked Francoforte, a typical Sicilian hilltop village above terraces of olive groves, reached only by a dirt road twisting up the steep slope in hairpin bends. To their left another part of the division managed to take Vizzini, after another short, fierce action. The Jocks of the Highland Division pushed on full of confidence. But they were soon to receive a nasty shock at Gerbini, where the Germans put up a strong defence at the adjoining airfield. The Hermann Göring and the Fall-schirmjäger Division deployed their 88mm anti-tank guns with devastating effect. The British XIII Corps on the coastal plain was blocked, while XXX Corps had to fight from ridge to ridge. British soldiers hated fighting in the rocky hills of Sicily and began to feel nostalgic for the North African desert.
Flip a few pages forward, it’s the same (page 540):
On 4 February, Mackensen’s attack on the British salient at Anzio began, with panzergrenadiers driving a huge flock of sheep in front of them over the minefields. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards and the 6th Gordons took the brunt of the fighting, as Mark IV Panzers came on behind. The 1st Infantry Division was forced back, losing 1,500 men, of whom 900 were taken prisoner. Another German attack came three days later against Aprilia. Once more a breakthrough to the sea was held off only by massed inflicted on the Allies to discourage them from a larger undertaking on the Channel coast later in the year. On 16 February the fighting rose to a new intensity. The 3rd Panzergrenadier Division and the 26th Panzer Division attacked Aprilia again, and the area between the US 45th Division and the recently arrived British 56th Division. Two days later, Mackensen threw in his reserves as well.
There are images Beevor could have really exploited: a battle in a “Sicilian hilltop village above terraces of olive groves, reached only by a dirt road twisting up the steep slope in hairpin bends” or “panzergrenadiers driving a huge flock of sheep in front of them over the minefields”, but instead Beevor briefly mentions then and then moves onto the numbers of casualties and the named of every individual unit. And how am I to picture “area between the US 45th Division and the recently arrived British 56th Division” when I can’t place them on a map or in my mind? And who is Mackensen? That name means nothing to me as a reader.
Compare this to Leckie’s account of Sidi Rezegh:
It was the 4th Armored Brigade that suffered most horribly on that dreadful fifth day. Major Robert Crisp, a famous South African cricket player, was in command of a troop moving up to Sidi Rezegh. He was in his command tank, a Honey. Alongside him in another Honey was his friend, Tom Eynon. They drove to the west, toward the enemy. Suddenly they came to the edge of a long escarpment, halting with an abrupt lurch. Over the air Crisp heard Eynon exclaim: “Jesus Christ, Bob! What the hell is all this?”
Below the tracks of their tanks and straight ahead of them was an airfield, its outer boundaries marked by the litter of wrecked German and Italian fighter planes, its center a smoking heap of twisted and burning tanks. To Crisp’s left the desert was empty, but to his right inside the depression he was astonished to see men at work digging slit trenches, planting mines, setting up antitank and field guns; even, incredibly, cooking a meal. Farther distant across the depression atop another escarpment were other figures, not quite so active. Crisp was puzzled. Who was who? The burning tanks, he was sure, were British Crusaders. But whose troops were these? He put in a call to his battalion headquarters, explaining the situation. Back came the reply: “Treat anything you see as enemy.”
Both Crisp and Eynon were astounded. They were certain the troops below them were friendly; those farther away were enemy. In fact, Crisp was going to machine-gun them. “Browning, traverse right,” he called to his gunner. “One, two thousand. Enemy infantry—” Crisp paused. Someone was banging on the side of the tank and shouting. Crisp looked down and saw a tall lean brigadier standing up in a little open car. He was not aware of it then, but he was looking at Jock Campbell, a legendary tank commander famous for his dash and daring.
That’s like reading a novel! By contrast, Beevor’s writing is tedious and uninspired.
Similarly, Beevor is good at portraying the civilians' experience in the war when he tries, but he still doesn't match Leckie's ability to put you in the place, be it resisting Japanese banzai attacks on Guadalcanal or starving to death in Leningrad. Leckie makes you feel what it was like to be there, while Beevor simply tells you. The only other author I've read who is as skilled at mise-en-scene is Stephen E. Ambrose. As well, Leckie (and Ambrose) develops characters so you identify with their experience. Examples that comes to mind are his quotes from Robert Crisp’s Brazen Chariots: A Tank Commander in Operation Crusader or Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier. Beevor does very little of this. To be sure, he does quote Vasily Grossman’s account of the Eastern Front extensively, but not in a way that makes you identify with him.
And that brings us to another of Beevor’s weaknesses. His sources are very sparsely credited and he seems to be relying on a very small number of them. You can see this from the notes - there are usually only one or two notes to every page or two. Some of these are original research from Soviet or German state documents, but often these are only to back minor claims or anecdotes. When covering the major, well-known events, Beevor appears to be going from memory - or at least it seems that way from the lack of any noted sources. Where Beevor does need to rely on sources, like in the Chinese theatre, his accounts seem to all be based on a single source. For example, his coverage of China seems to be based entirely on Hans van de Ven and his coverage of Japanese war crimes entirely on Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes In World War II by Yuki Tanaka. On the Eastern Front experience, this really shows because whenever he devotes more attention to on-the-ground experiences of battles, it’s invariably to battles that Grossman writes about. This results in what feels like a lack of balance and proportion.
Where Beevor does excel is his grasp of the political and diplomatic jigsaw puzzle. He will often devote more time to the political maneuvering of the generals in the war room than to those of the armies on the battlefield. He spends several pages on the Tehran and Yalta conferences. He mentions every trip Churchill made to America. His coverage of Oran is more about the negotiations between Holland and Gensoul than the actual attack. His coverage of Berlin spends disproportionate attention to Zhukov’s messages to Stalin to claim credit; the Blitz, he talks about the public information campaign; resistance movements in Yugoslavia, France, and Poland, Beevor’s coverage is mostly about the political bickering between the various groups than about sabotage operations. His coverage of China focuses on every angle of the ménage-à-six between the Chinese Nationalists, Maoists, Japanese, Soviets, Americans, and the British. Throughout the book, Beevor shows a passion and skill at the political and diplomatic angles of the war beyond what you would get from any other author.
Another strength of Beevor is his coverage of some of the ancillary theatres that don’t get as much attention in other books. For example, China and the Balkans are covered quite thoroughly. As I mentioned, much of this coverage focuses on the political rather than the military struggles of these areas. Beevor also covers the Shoah relatively well, as well as other atrocities committed against civilians. Beevor also appears to try very hard to be balanced, giving his attention not only to the crimes of the Nazis and the Japanese but also to the Allies, for example, the rape of East Prussia in 1945. His attention to the Eastern Front also seems more appropriately balanced than other Western-centric historians. As much as his sources, and by extension, the proportion of detail to specific battles seems unbalanced, he does a good job giving an overall balance between the larger theatres of the war and he cannot be accused, as other authors often are, of neglecting the suffering of any victim.
Obviously, every author has their own style and emphasis and it’s worth reading them all. Each one will teach you about an aspect of the war the others might have glossed over. Beevor’s a good example of this advice. Reading him makes you appreciate that military encounters don’t happen on their own and that much political wrangling goes on behind the scenes. Likewise, from reading Keegan’s book, I learned how important economic labour, production capacity, armaments supply, and logistics are - wars are most often won purely by an excess of number rather than a single strategically taken hilltop.
That’s why I’ve undertaken to read all the single-volume histories of WWII, after which I’ll read about specific battles. My list includes:
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
2. All Hell Let Loose: The World at War, 1939-1945 (also published as Inferno) by Max Hastings
3. The Second World War by Antony Beevor
4. The Second World War War by John Keegan
5. The Second World War: A Complete History by Martin Gilbert
6. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II by Gerhard L. Weinberg
7. The Second World War series (six volumes) by Winston S. Churchill
8. Delivered from Evil: The Saga of World War II by Robert Leckie
9. History of the Second World War by B.H. Liddell Hart
10. The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
11. The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War by Andrew Roberts
12. The Second World War: A Military History by Gordon Corrigan
13. The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson
14. Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw
15. The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans
16. The Rising Sun: The Decline & Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-45 by John Toland
17. The Liberation Trilogy Boxed Set by Rick Atkinson
18. The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 and Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (Vol. 3) by Ian W. Toll
But as an introduction, from those I’ve read so far, the one I’d recommend first is Robert Leckie’s rather than Beevor or Keegan.
January 19, 2016
I have had the urge to read a good general history of the Second World War for years and finally decided to go for this one as Antony Beevor is highly regarded. This is a good narrative history that provides an accessible general picture of the central historical moment of the last century.
There wasn't much that really struck me as a revelation or an original and revisionist perspective having picked up a lot this history through other reading or documentaries and films, but I suppose you have to read more narrow and specific books to find that. Some things that stood out for me were the courage and suffering of Poland, which was terrorised by the Nazis, then terrorised by the Soviets, then sacrificed by the allies after they had shown so much heroism in what appears to have been an unavoidable instance of Realpolitik. Churchill seems to have done his best to do right by Poland but was unable to convince the Americans to take a hard line with Stalin when it could have lead directly to World War Three. I was aware that the fighting on the Eastern Front and in China was far more savage, with a far higher death toll than in the Western Front or other arenas, but I gained a better understanding. World War Two was the crucible that forged the Soviet Union. The USA and the UK and colonies lost less than 500,000 people each, Germany lost about 7,000,000, Japan lost about 3,000,000, whereas the Soviet Union lost 27,000,000 and China lost between 15 and 20,000,000 people. The seeds of the Cold War were sown here. The Soviets responded to German savagery with equal brutality, their country was shattered by the war and who can blame them for wanting to guarantee that it would never happen again and not trusting the west who suffered such (relatively) trifling casualties and allowed them to do the heavy lifting? I also gained an understanding of how overwhelmingly important logistics, supply lines and materiel are. When an army's supply lines are overstretched or cut off it doesn't matter how good your troops are. When the USA entered the war the end result was fairly certain because their industrial strength was unbeatable.
I would be interested to read another general history of the Second World War one day for contrast. A German or Russian one would provide an interesting alternative.
There wasn't much that really struck me as a revelation or an original and revisionist perspective having picked up a lot this history through other reading or documentaries and films, but I suppose you have to read more narrow and specific books to find that. Some things that stood out for me were the courage and suffering of Poland, which was terrorised by the Nazis, then terrorised by the Soviets, then sacrificed by the allies after they had shown so much heroism in what appears to have been an unavoidable instance of Realpolitik. Churchill seems to have done his best to do right by Poland but was unable to convince the Americans to take a hard line with Stalin when it could have lead directly to World War Three. I was aware that the fighting on the Eastern Front and in China was far more savage, with a far higher death toll than in the Western Front or other arenas, but I gained a better understanding. World War Two was the crucible that forged the Soviet Union. The USA and the UK and colonies lost less than 500,000 people each, Germany lost about 7,000,000, Japan lost about 3,000,000, whereas the Soviet Union lost 27,000,000 and China lost between 15 and 20,000,000 people. The seeds of the Cold War were sown here. The Soviets responded to German savagery with equal brutality, their country was shattered by the war and who can blame them for wanting to guarantee that it would never happen again and not trusting the west who suffered such (relatively) trifling casualties and allowed them to do the heavy lifting? I also gained an understanding of how overwhelmingly important logistics, supply lines and materiel are. When an army's supply lines are overstretched or cut off it doesn't matter how good your troops are. When the USA entered the war the end result was fairly certain because their industrial strength was unbeatable.
I would be interested to read another general history of the Second World War one day for contrast. A German or Russian one would provide an interesting alternative.
December 26, 2015
-Que coincidan rigor, ritmo e interés para el gran público es algo muy difícil, sí, pero no imposible.-
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Aproximación sintética (relativamente, claro, porque son más de mil páginas de texto sin contar los apéndices) a la Segunda Guerra Mundial que trata, con éxito, de mostrar cómo el conflicto global se construyó mediante enfrentamientos relacionados pero diferentes en muchos sentidos.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
Género. Historia.
Lo que nos cuenta. Aproximación sintética (relativamente, claro, porque son más de mil páginas de texto sin contar los apéndices) a la Segunda Guerra Mundial que trata, con éxito, de mostrar cómo el conflicto global se construyó mediante enfrentamientos relacionados pero diferentes en muchos sentidos.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....
February 5, 2021
Mostly army movement by army movement, blow by blow.
The author might object to being upbraided for putting too many trees in my forest, but I would have liked to have seen more scenes, tension-related examples of the trends he was describing. Failing that, or in addition to it, I would have liked to have gotten a peek into the minds of some of the war's figures.
What the author did do was to describe the mindset of the German people as they gradually edged toward the previously unthinkable and then became disenchanted with the Nazi movement as it failed to deliver results.
The author might object to being upbraided for putting too many trees in my forest, but I would have liked to have seen more scenes, tension-related examples of the trends he was describing. Failing that, or in addition to it, I would have liked to have gotten a peek into the minds of some of the war's figures.
What the author did do was to describe the mindset of the German people as they gradually edged toward the previously unthinkable and then became disenchanted with the Nazi movement as it failed to deliver results.
April 30, 2019
My favourite World War 2 book, I like how it covers the war in Aisa furing the 1930's before the outbreak of war in Europe. Really educational
July 9, 2016
Antony Beevorin "Toinen maailmansota" (WSOY, 2012) on liki tuhatsivuinen yleisesitys sodasta, josta on ehditty vuosien varrella kirjoittaa niin paljon, mutta johon voi ottaa edelleen uuden tulokulman ja josta arkistojen avautuessa löytyy alati uutta tutkittavaa.
Olen lukenut sotahistoriaa jonkin verran, mutta ihmeellisenä asiantuntijana en silti voi itseäni pitää. Beevorin teokset onkin suunnattu aika lailla minun kohderyhmälleni: yleistajuista ja kiinnostavaa historiaa, jota lukee sujuvasti kuin hyvää kaunokirjallista teosta. Luvut saattavat päättyä suoranaisiin cliffhangereihin:
"De Gaulle ja hänen kumppaninsa saapuivat [Moskovasta] Ranskaan viimein 17. joulukuuta, mutta kohtasivat saman tien saman tien odottamattoman kriisin. Saksalaiset joukot olivat tehneet läpimurron Ardenneilla, ja niiden arveltiin olevan matkalla Pariisiin." (s. 756).
Näkökulma vaihtelee kiinnostavasti ylhäältä aivan ruohonjuuritasolle asti. Valtionpäämiesten neuvottelupöydistä ja esikuntien karttojen äärestä siirrytään juoksuhautoihin ja pommien raunioittamiin kaupunkeihin. Sotilaiden ohella myös siviilit pääsevät kertomaan kokemuksistaan.
Euroopan ja Tyynenmeren sotanäyttämöt vaikuttavat usein korostuvan toista maailmansotaa käsittelevässä historiankirjoituksessa. Beevor on ilmeisesti juuri tämän vuoksi pyrkinyt tuomaan aiheeseen uutta näkökulmaa antamalla Kiinan tapahtumille runsaasti painoarvoa, ja onnistuu tällä tavalla täyttämään kokonaisen rintaman kokoisen aukon omassa yleissivistyksessäni.
Lisäksi kirjan luettuani tulin oppineeksi rutkasti pienempiä anekdootteja, olipa kyse sitten brasilialaisten joukkojen mukanaolosta Italiassa, Sostakovitsin saamasta käskystä tehdä sävellys Suomen valtaamisen juhlistamiseksi tai japanilaisten laivastoupseerien mieltymyksestä bridgeen. Sodassa käytetyistä biologisista aseista en ollut myöskään tietoinen, puhumattakaan japanilaisten harjoittamasta ihmissyönnistä, joka oli tiettävästi niin mittavaa, etteivät kyseessä voineet olla ainoastaan yksittäistapaukset.
Beevor on humanisti. Sodan kauhut välittyvät tekstistä voimakkaasti: kuolema, keskitysleirit, terroripommitukset, väestön pakkosiirrot, ruumiskasat, kidutus, kannibalismi, raiskaukset, siviiliuhrit, teloitukset... Lista on loputon. Syyttävä sormi ei osoita ainoastaan ns. tavanomaisia epäiltyjä, vaan saksalaisten, japanilaisten ja neuvostoliittolaisten lisäksi myös länsiliittoutuneitten suorittamista hirmutöistä kerrotaan.
Lukija joutuu väkisinkin pohtimaan, miten pöyristyttäviin tekoihin ihminen onkaan kykenevä, ja kuinka henkiinjääneet ovat voineet jatkaa elämäänsä rauniokasojen keskellä. Lienee siinä mielenterveys ollut koetuksella yhdellä jos toisellakin. Ei oma ukkinikaan koskaan tainnut kokonaan päästä yli rintamalla kokemistaan asioista, vaikkei hän ihan pahimpiin paikkoihin joutunut.
Sodan varjo on langennut myös seuraavien sukupolvienkin ylle, eikä maailma ole vieläkään täysin toipunut 1930- ja 1940-lukujen tapahtumista. Toipuneeko koskaan? Entä voimmeko oppia historiasta mitään? Sotia käydään jatkuvasti eri puolilla maailmaa, ja erilaisia hirmutekoja tapahtuu edelleen eri puolilla maailmaa. Se, jos mikä, pistää miettimään.
Olen lukenut sotahistoriaa jonkin verran, mutta ihmeellisenä asiantuntijana en silti voi itseäni pitää. Beevorin teokset onkin suunnattu aika lailla minun kohderyhmälleni: yleistajuista ja kiinnostavaa historiaa, jota lukee sujuvasti kuin hyvää kaunokirjallista teosta. Luvut saattavat päättyä suoranaisiin cliffhangereihin:
"De Gaulle ja hänen kumppaninsa saapuivat [Moskovasta] Ranskaan viimein 17. joulukuuta, mutta kohtasivat saman tien saman tien odottamattoman kriisin. Saksalaiset joukot olivat tehneet läpimurron Ardenneilla, ja niiden arveltiin olevan matkalla Pariisiin." (s. 756).
Näkökulma vaihtelee kiinnostavasti ylhäältä aivan ruohonjuuritasolle asti. Valtionpäämiesten neuvottelupöydistä ja esikuntien karttojen äärestä siirrytään juoksuhautoihin ja pommien raunioittamiin kaupunkeihin. Sotilaiden ohella myös siviilit pääsevät kertomaan kokemuksistaan.
Euroopan ja Tyynenmeren sotanäyttämöt vaikuttavat usein korostuvan toista maailmansotaa käsittelevässä historiankirjoituksessa. Beevor on ilmeisesti juuri tämän vuoksi pyrkinyt tuomaan aiheeseen uutta näkökulmaa antamalla Kiinan tapahtumille runsaasti painoarvoa, ja onnistuu tällä tavalla täyttämään kokonaisen rintaman kokoisen aukon omassa yleissivistyksessäni.
Lisäksi kirjan luettuani tulin oppineeksi rutkasti pienempiä anekdootteja, olipa kyse sitten brasilialaisten joukkojen mukanaolosta Italiassa, Sostakovitsin saamasta käskystä tehdä sävellys Suomen valtaamisen juhlistamiseksi tai japanilaisten laivastoupseerien mieltymyksestä bridgeen. Sodassa käytetyistä biologisista aseista en ollut myöskään tietoinen, puhumattakaan japanilaisten harjoittamasta ihmissyönnistä, joka oli tiettävästi niin mittavaa, etteivät kyseessä voineet olla ainoastaan yksittäistapaukset.
Beevor on humanisti. Sodan kauhut välittyvät tekstistä voimakkaasti: kuolema, keskitysleirit, terroripommitukset, väestön pakkosiirrot, ruumiskasat, kidutus, kannibalismi, raiskaukset, siviiliuhrit, teloitukset... Lista on loputon. Syyttävä sormi ei osoita ainoastaan ns. tavanomaisia epäiltyjä, vaan saksalaisten, japanilaisten ja neuvostoliittolaisten lisäksi myös länsiliittoutuneitten suorittamista hirmutöistä kerrotaan.
Lukija joutuu väkisinkin pohtimaan, miten pöyristyttäviin tekoihin ihminen onkaan kykenevä, ja kuinka henkiinjääneet ovat voineet jatkaa elämäänsä rauniokasojen keskellä. Lienee siinä mielenterveys ollut koetuksella yhdellä jos toisellakin. Ei oma ukkinikaan koskaan tainnut kokonaan päästä yli rintamalla kokemistaan asioista, vaikkei hän ihan pahimpiin paikkoihin joutunut.
Sodan varjo on langennut myös seuraavien sukupolvienkin ylle, eikä maailma ole vieläkään täysin toipunut 1930- ja 1940-lukujen tapahtumista. Toipuneeko koskaan? Entä voimmeko oppia historiasta mitään? Sotia käydään jatkuvasti eri puolilla maailmaa, ja erilaisia hirmutekoja tapahtuu edelleen eri puolilla maailmaa. Se, jos mikä, pistää miettimään.
January 20, 2020
A casual, armchair study of the second world war encompasses many books over many years, indeed, many decades -- it's a slow, layered, mental-edifice-building process -- and no two readers go about it in the same way. Everyone starts and proceeds from different points, and from different cultural backgrounds, with particular biases typically stemming from where one hails. Beevor mentions this latter point near the end of his expansive overview of The Second World War, and it's an important and pertinent point to make. Part of the enlightenment and the discovery in the process, though, is transcending those limiting boundaries as one looks at the event prismatically, and cross-culturally. Beevor himself does not quite overcome his Anglo-centric biases in this largely successful geopolitical overview of the war, but he is also limited by who his readers are likely to be, and what they are most likely to want to know, and I cannot fault him for this. Attempting to cram an event so vast and complex into a comparatively svelte 800 pages -- while managing to do it justice is -- in itself, a Herculean accomplishment. Anyone wondering if this is the book to start their journey in grasping the essence of the war can rest assured that this is as fine a place to start as any. Having read many books on the subject, I still learned a ton of information on aspects of the conflict about which I was only vaguely aware or even completely unaware.
The book oftentimes feels leisurely and well modulated and properly in proportion, yet rushed and perfunctory about certain events at others. In a book that tries to do so much in a condensed treatment on a subject that would even get short-shrift at encyclopedia length, I can't much fault Beevor. Even when the book covers familiar ground, the information surrounding those events simply adds greater layers to the edifice and reinforces comprehension and understanding and context.
I recommend it for both the novice and the experienced reader of WWII fare.
kr/eg '20
The book oftentimes feels leisurely and well modulated and properly in proportion, yet rushed and perfunctory about certain events at others. In a book that tries to do so much in a condensed treatment on a subject that would even get short-shrift at encyclopedia length, I can't much fault Beevor. Even when the book covers familiar ground, the information surrounding those events simply adds greater layers to the edifice and reinforces comprehension and understanding and context.
I recommend it for both the novice and the experienced reader of WWII fare.
kr/eg '20
March 16, 2024
In making the decision to take up a single volume, 800-page history of World War II a few things should be considered. First, WW II was too long, too complicated and too much the result of motives, personalities, intended strategies and in technical terns a near infinity of people, bits, parts, stuff and thingies. That is, no one volume of 800 pages is going to make of you an expert. I did learn from Anthoney Beevor. I may seek out other more focused of his book. You may want to think about why you might read this one.
For those who are just interested in a one volume overview, you could do a lot worse. Mr. Beevor has established himself as a reliable and intelligent historian of the period. The Second World War adds to the luster of his standing as an authority. For you, one and done should achieve your purposes. If you have years of reading into this era. Antony Beevor’s The Second World War is not going to tell you a lot new. You may enjoy how he skewers or favors some of the senior leaders. IMHO he likes very few and them only some of the time.
Except that it is an opening page of his book there is an unassuming picture. A bedraggled Asian soldier is being processed by someone in an American soldier’s helmet. If this a picture from the Pacific Theater, something about the uniforms are not right. The Asian is a Korean named Yang Kyoungjong. He had been forcibly conscripted into the Japanese Army, captured by and forced to enlist into the Russian Army, then captured by and forced into the German Army and the picture is of him being processes as a D-Day prisoner of the US Army. Wars, however much they are expressions of politics and colored by technology, they are lived out by humans.
What many reviews seem to have missed is that by not spending a lot of time on high level strategies, Beevor allows himself a greater amount of time on the issue of the human costs. His coverage of the holocaust as a gathering storm of evil is more historically correct and unflinching. Likewise, there is time for Japanese medical experiments on live victims, taken at random from occupied populations and what should have been protected war prisoners. In battle field and campaigns there are starving soldiers reduced to rag shoes, frozen in place and ground up under vehicles. In front and behind are civilians, bombed, beaten, machine gunned, gassed, raped and robbed.
He is also forthcoming on the largely wasteful and widely murderous use of high-level bombing by both the Brith and American bomber commands. The over-promised Norden bombsights aside, in retrospect or at the time, it should have been clear that high level bombing, particularly over cities was not going to be a war ending strategy. In fairness he notes that communications centers, rail heads, munitions plants and stockpiles, oil storage and the rest of the logistical centers in Europe tended to be in or near cities. The technology of the time meant that area bombing was a way to, and in fact did have an important effect on the ability of the axis armies to maintain industrial level warfare. By the end, much of the human cost had little more motive then, we had big bombers, why not use them?
Time has to be asked of the reader on the subject of Russia and the person of Stalin. Among certain Americans the politics of US/English toadying to Stalin is a matter of shame and proof of the inherit failure of liberalism. If one is capable of going beyond simplistic left/right thinking the problem is far more complex. Several contradictory realities drove this part of binging WW II to a quick end.
1. Both Churchill and Roosevelt overestimated their ability to treat with Stalin as if he were a normal political figure. Or for that matter, a normal person.
2. Russia fought, killed and otherwise engage a near multiple number of Germans, their allies and resources than the combined forces fighting the non-Russian, western allies.
3. The threat of Stalin making another treaty with Hitler was real and nearly impossible to calculate.
4. Russia in the war made it that much more winnable than Russia out of the war, or more dangerous, actively supporting Germany.
5. Stalin was criminally wasteful of the lives of Russians, and had little patience for allies unwilling to waste their people.
6. Allied efforts, including strategic bombing, landings in Africa and Italy did reduce the forces Germany could commit to its Russian Campaign. This would have a cumulative effect rather than immediate and therefore was easy to under-value.
While Beevor has some respect for American General Patton; Patton’s notion that the war could be easily continued by adding in the goal of defeating the Russian was beneath Beevor’s intelligence. Knowledge of the growing manpower shortages, limits on the economic ability to fight years longer and tangible exhaustion in their respect bodies politic made this a low form of arm chair counterfactual debate. Never anything reality based.
In general, The Second World War is Euro-centric and is uneven in its coverage the Pacific Theater. He all but dismisses the war as fought by the US Navy. He mentions the various island campaigns, noting the ones usually criticized and ultimately admits that his almost favored General McArthur was not promoting the more war winning stratigy .
His coverage of the war in China is more analytical. Here the problem was that the highly corrupt Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek was far more interested in eventually defeating his internal communist threat than in actively fighting the Japanese. American and Allied efforts to stiffen the Chinese national Army was at best effective, but limited to those immediately necessary for specific campaigns. Otherwise, the noncommunist Chinese soldier was ill-lead, ill-feed, badly equipped, and continually failed; too often in favor of the Chinese Communists.
Almost as an aside, I recently read a reviewer, whose motive for reading a WW II history was his inability to understand how France could have fallen so quickly. Beevor details the fact that the French Army was, ill-lead, ill-equipted, had its codes broken, its strategy compromised and fatal personality disputes at both the command and political levels. Russia had some of these same problems, but it had hundreds of extra miles to spare and many millions of more people who could be (literally) thrown under tank treads allowing Stalin to buy time.
For the rest, there were a few things that Beevor helped me to better understand, or was for reasons I do not understand skipped. He has little to say on what was grand allied strategy. Was the western front fought as a war of attrition by design? Should Allied, especially American ground strategy have been attacking along a broad front? To what degree were senior British generals made conservative in their execution because of the human waste they had survived in WW I?
What I had not realized was that the Allied forces includes more than Russia, US, England, France and Canada. Some countries like Rumania had forces on both sides. I have a much better understanding of the degree to which the Allies destroyed civilians, and property, friendly as well as enemy. High level bombing was one problem, WW II was fought, to an ever-increasing degree by Artillery. However tactically intended, high explosives can produce area-wide killing.
What has to be said, and it is all there in this book. Poland was an immediate cause for the European start of World War II. Poland proved to be a very valuable ally. It provided much needed pilots, sailors, the original copies of Germany's code machines and otherwise participated over its weight. In the end it was sold out and sacrificed. It was abandoned by the same countries, sometimes the same people who finally used it as the reason to stop Hitler. Poland was a victim of realpolitik, before the term was coined. None were ready to face down Stalin. We can fairly argue the degree to which that mad man was bluffing.
For those who are just interested in a one volume overview, you could do a lot worse. Mr. Beevor has established himself as a reliable and intelligent historian of the period. The Second World War adds to the luster of his standing as an authority. For you, one and done should achieve your purposes. If you have years of reading into this era. Antony Beevor’s The Second World War is not going to tell you a lot new. You may enjoy how he skewers or favors some of the senior leaders. IMHO he likes very few and them only some of the time.
Except that it is an opening page of his book there is an unassuming picture. A bedraggled Asian soldier is being processed by someone in an American soldier’s helmet. If this a picture from the Pacific Theater, something about the uniforms are not right. The Asian is a Korean named Yang Kyoungjong. He had been forcibly conscripted into the Japanese Army, captured by and forced to enlist into the Russian Army, then captured by and forced into the German Army and the picture is of him being processes as a D-Day prisoner of the US Army. Wars, however much they are expressions of politics and colored by technology, they are lived out by humans.
What many reviews seem to have missed is that by not spending a lot of time on high level strategies, Beevor allows himself a greater amount of time on the issue of the human costs. His coverage of the holocaust as a gathering storm of evil is more historically correct and unflinching. Likewise, there is time for Japanese medical experiments on live victims, taken at random from occupied populations and what should have been protected war prisoners. In battle field and campaigns there are starving soldiers reduced to rag shoes, frozen in place and ground up under vehicles. In front and behind are civilians, bombed, beaten, machine gunned, gassed, raped and robbed.
He is also forthcoming on the largely wasteful and widely murderous use of high-level bombing by both the Brith and American bomber commands. The over-promised Norden bombsights aside, in retrospect or at the time, it should have been clear that high level bombing, particularly over cities was not going to be a war ending strategy. In fairness he notes that communications centers, rail heads, munitions plants and stockpiles, oil storage and the rest of the logistical centers in Europe tended to be in or near cities. The technology of the time meant that area bombing was a way to, and in fact did have an important effect on the ability of the axis armies to maintain industrial level warfare. By the end, much of the human cost had little more motive then, we had big bombers, why not use them?
Time has to be asked of the reader on the subject of Russia and the person of Stalin. Among certain Americans the politics of US/English toadying to Stalin is a matter of shame and proof of the inherit failure of liberalism. If one is capable of going beyond simplistic left/right thinking the problem is far more complex. Several contradictory realities drove this part of binging WW II to a quick end.
1. Both Churchill and Roosevelt overestimated their ability to treat with Stalin as if he were a normal political figure. Or for that matter, a normal person.
2. Russia fought, killed and otherwise engage a near multiple number of Germans, their allies and resources than the combined forces fighting the non-Russian, western allies.
3. The threat of Stalin making another treaty with Hitler was real and nearly impossible to calculate.
4. Russia in the war made it that much more winnable than Russia out of the war, or more dangerous, actively supporting Germany.
5. Stalin was criminally wasteful of the lives of Russians, and had little patience for allies unwilling to waste their people.
6. Allied efforts, including strategic bombing, landings in Africa and Italy did reduce the forces Germany could commit to its Russian Campaign. This would have a cumulative effect rather than immediate and therefore was easy to under-value.
While Beevor has some respect for American General Patton; Patton’s notion that the war could be easily continued by adding in the goal of defeating the Russian was beneath Beevor’s intelligence. Knowledge of the growing manpower shortages, limits on the economic ability to fight years longer and tangible exhaustion in their respect bodies politic made this a low form of arm chair counterfactual debate. Never anything reality based.
In general, The Second World War is Euro-centric and is uneven in its coverage the Pacific Theater. He all but dismisses the war as fought by the US Navy. He mentions the various island campaigns, noting the ones usually criticized and ultimately admits that his almost favored General McArthur was not promoting the more war winning stratigy .
His coverage of the war in China is more analytical. Here the problem was that the highly corrupt Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek was far more interested in eventually defeating his internal communist threat than in actively fighting the Japanese. American and Allied efforts to stiffen the Chinese national Army was at best effective, but limited to those immediately necessary for specific campaigns. Otherwise, the noncommunist Chinese soldier was ill-lead, ill-feed, badly equipped, and continually failed; too often in favor of the Chinese Communists.
Almost as an aside, I recently read a reviewer, whose motive for reading a WW II history was his inability to understand how France could have fallen so quickly. Beevor details the fact that the French Army was, ill-lead, ill-equipted, had its codes broken, its strategy compromised and fatal personality disputes at both the command and political levels. Russia had some of these same problems, but it had hundreds of extra miles to spare and many millions of more people who could be (literally) thrown under tank treads allowing Stalin to buy time.
For the rest, there were a few things that Beevor helped me to better understand, or was for reasons I do not understand skipped. He has little to say on what was grand allied strategy. Was the western front fought as a war of attrition by design? Should Allied, especially American ground strategy have been attacking along a broad front? To what degree were senior British generals made conservative in their execution because of the human waste they had survived in WW I?
What I had not realized was that the Allied forces includes more than Russia, US, England, France and Canada. Some countries like Rumania had forces on both sides. I have a much better understanding of the degree to which the Allies destroyed civilians, and property, friendly as well as enemy. High level bombing was one problem, WW II was fought, to an ever-increasing degree by Artillery. However tactically intended, high explosives can produce area-wide killing.
What has to be said, and it is all there in this book. Poland was an immediate cause for the European start of World War II. Poland proved to be a very valuable ally. It provided much needed pilots, sailors, the original copies of Germany's code machines and otherwise participated over its weight. In the end it was sold out and sacrificed. It was abandoned by the same countries, sometimes the same people who finally used it as the reason to stop Hitler. Poland was a victim of realpolitik, before the term was coined. None were ready to face down Stalin. We can fairly argue the degree to which that mad man was bluffing.
September 1, 2017
It took me about 9 months to read this book by Antony Beevor. During this time period, I was consumed by the events that took place during 1939-1945 while the world and civilization plunged into uncertainty and fear. Everything that I had learned about the War previously seemed naive in comparison to what actually happened. I will not wax-poetic on exactly why that is, but I will say that I am very thankful I read this. I am left with an immense sense of appreciation at the heroism of the individual and the will to overcome seemingly magnanimous violence and inhumanity. The Second World War claimed so many lives that we will never be able to grasp the depth of loss on a human scale. The most important thing I walk away from this book with is to understand the obligation to commemorate the souls lost to this terrible conflict. The Second World War is a lynchpin moment in our collective history that should never fade into indifference, lest we forget.
Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent with the Red Army, said:
"There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervor. Instead of valor or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother..."
Words of loss in situations repeated countless times over across Europe and the South Pacific. A conflict that affected generations to come, with lessons gained and lost.
Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent with the Red Army, said:
"There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervor. Instead of valor or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother..."
Words of loss in situations repeated countless times over across Europe and the South Pacific. A conflict that affected generations to come, with lessons gained and lost.
December 23, 2012
I have always been fascinated with any and all things to do with World War II. From the rise of Hitler, to the bombing of Hiroshima, this is perhaps the richest time in the history of the world. Due to the staggering scale of this time period, most books, both fiction and nonfiction, choose to focus on specific events or characters. In this hugely ambitious work, Antony Beevor attempts to provide a narrative overview of the entire war.
In the book, Beevor effectively introduces the early onsets of the war for each nation that was involved. Spanning from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the end of the war in 45, Beevor manages to provide a research filled account without ever straying from his strong narrative flow. He finds a convincing balance between broad tellings of significant battles, military strategy, and intimate insights into the main personalities of the war.
At nearly 900 pages, this book is no small undertaking. I'll admit, I read bits of the volume between other novels over the course of three months. Despite the length, I felt like Beevor never sacrificed the telling of the story in favor of dry facts, so the book maintained a consistency that easily places it above other historical works. Overall, WWII enthusiasts, history buffs, and any lover of large scale stories is sure to enjoy this book.
In the book, Beevor effectively introduces the early onsets of the war for each nation that was involved. Spanning from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the end of the war in 45, Beevor manages to provide a research filled account without ever straying from his strong narrative flow. He finds a convincing balance between broad tellings of significant battles, military strategy, and intimate insights into the main personalities of the war.
At nearly 900 pages, this book is no small undertaking. I'll admit, I read bits of the volume between other novels over the course of three months. Despite the length, I felt like Beevor never sacrificed the telling of the story in favor of dry facts, so the book maintained a consistency that easily places it above other historical works. Overall, WWII enthusiasts, history buffs, and any lover of large scale stories is sure to enjoy this book.
March 4, 2020
This is the definitive deep-dive into the history of World War II. Beevor, who fought in the war in Germany, has written an extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive account, extending from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the end of the war in 1945. As the Washington Post put it, "This is World War II as Tolstoy would have described it–the great and the small."
I don't normally quote from the text in reviews, but Beevor sums up perfectly why, some seven decades after the war, it still dominates so much of our attention:
"No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion. In short, the Second World War defies generalization along with the categorization of humans...."
I don't normally quote from the text in reviews, but Beevor sums up perfectly why, some seven decades after the war, it still dominates so much of our attention:
"No other period in history offers so rich a source for the study of dilemmas, individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power politics, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism and unpredictable compassion. In short, the Second World War defies generalization along with the categorization of humans...."
December 28, 2015
Antony Beevor's general history of the Second World War is a momentous achievement. Weighing in at 880 pages it provides a comprehensive, well considered and well written account of a truly momentous set of events in world history. Writing a general history of one of the twentieth century’s ‘Total Wars’ is a formidable task. Although the timeframe for the First and Second World Wars are individually relatively narrow, the geographical breadth and sheer range of events make it difficult to construct a readable narrative. Writers can focus on particular regions or campaigns at the expense of understanding the chronological links with events elsewhere. In focussing on military strategy, the political context or contingency of individual decisions in battle can be lost. The other challenge is writing quality prose for the general reader which doesn’t descend into armies and corps colliding and repositioning like pawns on a chessboard. Finally an enormous quantity of secondary research must be assessed.
This book manages to accomplish these difficult requirements with flair. It compares favourably with Keegan’s history, whose prose is a bit turgid and where coverage of aspects such as Japan’s excursions in China in the 1930s is a bit light. The structure of focussing on particular geographic areas for periods of a few months, noting connections with other parts of the globe where appropriate, makes the narrative flow more naturally than Martin Gilbert’s strictly chronological structure. Finally Beevor, having submerged himself in researching aspects of the Second World War for over thirty years, is able to write gripping prose with the right amount (for this reader anyway!) of opinion and interpretation to make a gripping story.
Beevor doesn’t conceal his views. Most participants face criticism or praise without too much evidence of partisanship. Stalin is rightly castigated for his truly cruel regime and failure to anticipate the German invasion in 1941, however Beevor rightly highlights his effective (if Machiavellian) manipulation of the rivalry of Zhukov and Konev in the race for Berlin. His criticisms of the way Roosevelt played into Stalin’s hands are well made, and there is certainly an argument that Churchill’s warnings about Stalin’s intentions should have been paid more heed. Beevor certainly doesn’t whitewash Churchill though. After his 1944 visit to Moscow Churchill felt the trip had been a success - Beevor pronounces that “his self-delusion could at times match that of Roosevelt”.
“Bomber” Harris is one commander who receives particular criticism (Montgomery, MacArthur and Mark Clark are others). He portrays Harris as possessing an obsessive belief that the destruction of German cities by bombing would win the war. “Harris was … not prepared to take any criticism, or willingly accept other requests from generals or admirals, whom he was convinced had tried to undermine the RAF since its independence”. Beevor portrays Harris as deliberately deceiving the public and his superiors that bombing targets had military singificance. As Beevor points out “Harris was now openly defining success by the number of urban acres his bombers had reduced to rubble”. In my opinion, expressing such views backed up by the facts is an appropriate function for an historian, providing explanation and interpretation.
Beevor concludes his book with a strong section on the legacy of the war, and the importance of “recogniz[ing] the millions of ghosts from the mass graves as individuals”. Throughout the book he manages to convey both the major strategic dilemmas, whilst also deftly interweaving individual stories and experiences from all sides. For example in discussing Harris’ “remorseless campaign” he gives a vivid description of the bombing of Cologne on 29 June 1943. Albert Beckers describes how “you cannot imagine what it is like to cower in a hole when the air quakes, the eardrums burst from the blast, the light goes out, oxygen runs out and dust and mortar crumble from the ceiling”. Readers of this book, despite the enormous scope of this horrendous historic event, will have a solid understanding of the rights and wrongs, causes and course as well as the experience of the Second World War.
This book manages to accomplish these difficult requirements with flair. It compares favourably with Keegan’s history, whose prose is a bit turgid and where coverage of aspects such as Japan’s excursions in China in the 1930s is a bit light. The structure of focussing on particular geographic areas for periods of a few months, noting connections with other parts of the globe where appropriate, makes the narrative flow more naturally than Martin Gilbert’s strictly chronological structure. Finally Beevor, having submerged himself in researching aspects of the Second World War for over thirty years, is able to write gripping prose with the right amount (for this reader anyway!) of opinion and interpretation to make a gripping story.
Beevor doesn’t conceal his views. Most participants face criticism or praise without too much evidence of partisanship. Stalin is rightly castigated for his truly cruel regime and failure to anticipate the German invasion in 1941, however Beevor rightly highlights his effective (if Machiavellian) manipulation of the rivalry of Zhukov and Konev in the race for Berlin. His criticisms of the way Roosevelt played into Stalin’s hands are well made, and there is certainly an argument that Churchill’s warnings about Stalin’s intentions should have been paid more heed. Beevor certainly doesn’t whitewash Churchill though. After his 1944 visit to Moscow Churchill felt the trip had been a success - Beevor pronounces that “his self-delusion could at times match that of Roosevelt”.
“Bomber” Harris is one commander who receives particular criticism (Montgomery, MacArthur and Mark Clark are others). He portrays Harris as possessing an obsessive belief that the destruction of German cities by bombing would win the war. “Harris was … not prepared to take any criticism, or willingly accept other requests from generals or admirals, whom he was convinced had tried to undermine the RAF since its independence”. Beevor portrays Harris as deliberately deceiving the public and his superiors that bombing targets had military singificance. As Beevor points out “Harris was now openly defining success by the number of urban acres his bombers had reduced to rubble”. In my opinion, expressing such views backed up by the facts is an appropriate function for an historian, providing explanation and interpretation.
Beevor concludes his book with a strong section on the legacy of the war, and the importance of “recogniz[ing] the millions of ghosts from the mass graves as individuals”. Throughout the book he manages to convey both the major strategic dilemmas, whilst also deftly interweaving individual stories and experiences from all sides. For example in discussing Harris’ “remorseless campaign” he gives a vivid description of the bombing of Cologne on 29 June 1943. Albert Beckers describes how “you cannot imagine what it is like to cower in a hole when the air quakes, the eardrums burst from the blast, the light goes out, oxygen runs out and dust and mortar crumble from the ceiling”. Readers of this book, despite the enormous scope of this horrendous historic event, will have a solid understanding of the rights and wrongs, causes and course as well as the experience of the Second World War.
August 24, 2012
This is the third of three really good comprehensive histories of the second world war to come out in the past two years (along with those by Andrew Roberts and Max Hastings). It is comprehensive and well written. What is most important, however, is how the book tells a coherent story. Any single volume history of the war must leave things out. You can tell this here, since Beevor has published multiple well received volumes on various battles of the war before this one - on such critical battles as the Normandy landings and the Stalingrad campaign. I won't worry about summarizing the plot or giving away any secrets. Beevor excels at keeping the distinct lines of the multiple intertwined subconflicts of WWII clear as he follows them along to the end. His skill comes across in seeing what he chooses not to present as well as what he presents. This was apparent to me in his chapters on the Normandy landings, since I had recently finished his earlier book on the campaign.
I don't wish to make a recommendation from among the three recent comprehensive histories (Beevor, Hastings, Roberts). Beevor and Roberts are more similar in their focus on campaigns, strategies, and key personalities, while Hastings has a different focus on the experiences of the participants as reflected in memoirs, diaries, letters, etc. - although there is much of that in the other books as well. I was just as engaged in reading Beevor as I was with the other two and did not see it as repetitious. It is a bit of bad luck, however, to come out with a very good but very long book shortly after two other fine historians have published their volumes. Beevor is definitely worth a read, although it is a long book.
I don't wish to make a recommendation from among the three recent comprehensive histories (Beevor, Hastings, Roberts). Beevor and Roberts are more similar in their focus on campaigns, strategies, and key personalities, while Hastings has a different focus on the experiences of the participants as reflected in memoirs, diaries, letters, etc. - although there is much of that in the other books as well. I was just as engaged in reading Beevor as I was with the other two and did not see it as repetitious. It is a bit of bad luck, however, to come out with a very good but very long book shortly after two other fine historians have published their volumes. Beevor is definitely worth a read, although it is a long book.
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