Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York : Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 2012.
Description
A monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II, and its deeply personal consequences. Hastings simultaneously traces the major developments and puts them into real human context. He also explores some of the darker and less explored regions of the war's penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944.
Media reviews
..something compellingly different—"Inferno," a panoramic social history that not only recounts the military action with admirable thoroughness, crispness and energy but also tells the story of the people who suffered in the war, combatants and civilians alike. A vivid and opinionated book,
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distinguished by poignant and illuminating letters, diary entries and personal experiences of combatants and civilians on both sides. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member brenzi
I am not a reader of military history; not interested at all in deadly battle statistics. And do we really need another WWII book? Don’t we already have hundreds, maybe thousands of them? But early reviews of Max Hastings’ magisterial WWII epic piqued my interest because it was described as a
”Combat opened a chasm between those who experienced its horrors and those at home who did not. In December 1943, the Canadian Farley Mowat wrote to his family from the Sangro front in Italy: ‘The damnable truth is we are in really different worlds, on totally different planes, and I don’t really know you any more. I only know the you that was. I wish I could explain the desperate sense of isolation, of not belonging to my own past, of being adrift in some kind of alien space. It is one of the toughest things we have to bear---that and the primal, gut-rotting worm of fear.’” (Page 406)
That isolation is a main theme in the book and is even expressed by John Steinbeck:
”Isolation was a towering sensation, even for men serving amid legions of their compatriots. ‘I see all these thousands of lonely soldiers here,’ John Steinbeck wrote from the British capital in 1943 about the GIs on its streets. ‘There’s a kind of walk they have in London, an apathetic shuffle. They’re looking for something. They’ll say it’s a girl---any girl, but it isn’t that at all.’ Although soldiers often talk about women, under the stress and unyielding discomfort of a battlefield most crave simple pleasures, among which sex rarely features.”
If that was the case, it’s hard to explain the occurrences of violent rape that occurred with almost frightening regularity by servicemen on both sides of the struggle. That was one of the many things I learned about the war. I knew about the rape of thousands of German women in Berlin when the Russians finally occupied the city, (mostly from A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous) but I didn’t realize that the Allies were also guilty of the crime.
I ended up with pages and pages of notes, many delineating topics of which I was woefully ignorant. It would take pages and pages to discuss all these topics but here are the main items I took from the book: most of the other countries involved in the war suffered much more devastating human losses than the U.S. and Great Britain none greater than Russia and (very surprisingly) China. In unoccupied Western nations, some people prospered, especially U.S. farmers who saw their incomes rise by 156%. The Red Army was the main engine of the German defeat (as a matter of fact, they could probably have defeated the Nazi’s without the aid of the Americans and the British). The U.S. industrial might contributed more to victory than did its armies. Himmler diverted resources that could have been used for winning in Russia for the extermination of the Jews. There was a slow or no response by the Allies to the Jewish extermination. Soviet victories were purchased at a human cost no democracy would have accepted. The blunders of the German and Japanese leaders led to defeat. Truman’s greatest mistake, in protecting his own reputation, was his failure to deliver an explicit ultimatum before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And finally, WWII was the greatest and most terrible event in human history, involving citizens from every inhabited continent in the world except South America.
This was a truly awe-inspiring narrative, surprisingly comprehensive and written elegantly. Told through the voices of those who fought in or stood by those who did this book is very highly recommended especially for those who are not readers of military histories.
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book about the people, told in their voices through letters, diaries and other correspondence. So when it landed on the New York Times 100 Best Books of 2011 I knew it was going to be read…by moi. And when I got into the book, it became clear very quickly, that this was an exceptionally well written narrative that I would have a hard time putting down as I made my way through its 700+ painful pages. It was last summer that I read a book based on another war and realized for the first time (consciously, anyway) that it’s children who actually fight all the wars, sent there, most often, by old men. And a feeling of isolation is a common thread through all wars.”Combat opened a chasm between those who experienced its horrors and those at home who did not. In December 1943, the Canadian Farley Mowat wrote to his family from the Sangro front in Italy: ‘The damnable truth is we are in really different worlds, on totally different planes, and I don’t really know you any more. I only know the you that was. I wish I could explain the desperate sense of isolation, of not belonging to my own past, of being adrift in some kind of alien space. It is one of the toughest things we have to bear---that and the primal, gut-rotting worm of fear.’” (Page 406)
That isolation is a main theme in the book and is even expressed by John Steinbeck:
”Isolation was a towering sensation, even for men serving amid legions of their compatriots. ‘I see all these thousands of lonely soldiers here,’ John Steinbeck wrote from the British capital in 1943 about the GIs on its streets. ‘There’s a kind of walk they have in London, an apathetic shuffle. They’re looking for something. They’ll say it’s a girl---any girl, but it isn’t that at all.’ Although soldiers often talk about women, under the stress and unyielding discomfort of a battlefield most crave simple pleasures, among which sex rarely features.”
If that was the case, it’s hard to explain the occurrences of violent rape that occurred with almost frightening regularity by servicemen on both sides of the struggle. That was one of the many things I learned about the war. I knew about the rape of thousands of German women in Berlin when the Russians finally occupied the city, (mostly from A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous) but I didn’t realize that the Allies were also guilty of the crime.
I ended up with pages and pages of notes, many delineating topics of which I was woefully ignorant. It would take pages and pages to discuss all these topics but here are the main items I took from the book: most of the other countries involved in the war suffered much more devastating human losses than the U.S. and Great Britain none greater than Russia and (very surprisingly) China. In unoccupied Western nations, some people prospered, especially U.S. farmers who saw their incomes rise by 156%. The Red Army was the main engine of the German defeat (as a matter of fact, they could probably have defeated the Nazi’s without the aid of the Americans and the British). The U.S. industrial might contributed more to victory than did its armies. Himmler diverted resources that could have been used for winning in Russia for the extermination of the Jews. There was a slow or no response by the Allies to the Jewish extermination. Soviet victories were purchased at a human cost no democracy would have accepted. The blunders of the German and Japanese leaders led to defeat. Truman’s greatest mistake, in protecting his own reputation, was his failure to deliver an explicit ultimatum before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And finally, WWII was the greatest and most terrible event in human history, involving citizens from every inhabited continent in the world except South America.
This was a truly awe-inspiring narrative, surprisingly comprehensive and written elegantly. Told through the voices of those who fought in or stood by those who did this book is very highly recommended especially for those who are not readers of military histories.
Show Less
LibraryThing member hadden
Excellent book that tells the tales of WWII through short vignettes by many voices. Regretfully, the footnotes are all screwed up, in that numbers given to footnotes in the back are not shown in the text. Good book, bad history.
LibraryThing member Schmerguls
Jonathan Yardley, eminent Washington Post book critic said of this book "If you want to read only one book about World War II, this is the one." Well, I have read over 179 books about World War II but am glad I decided to read this 2011 book. Hastings was born after the war (in 1945) in London so
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all his knowledge of the war is based onthe accounts of others. He in the book often quotes from books I have read. He talks more about Britain's role than a non-Briton would, but his opinions are solid and he freely criticizes Brits when they deserve such. I found his opinions solidly based and agreed with most of them. One has to be overwhelmed anew by the gigantic death tolls and destruction which the War entailed, even though we have known such for long. He rightly points out the tremendous role the Russians had in Hitler's defeat, and one shudders to think what greater burden we would have had to bear if Hitler had not decided to attack Russia. Show Less
LibraryThing member GeoKaras
A superior one volume history of the Second World War, which combines an acurate and unsentimental narrative of events with the personal observations and experiences of those who fought in and those who suffered the horror of the most costly war of all time. Required reading for anyone seeking to
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understand the modern world. Show Less
LibraryThing member Luftwaffe_Flak
An absolutely great one volume account of the Second World War. In the introduction Hastings states that rather then state the common known if there was something little known he chose to reveal that information rather than what is widely known regarding the conflict. In this I think it serves
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those who know WWII intimately. His writing style is smooth and easy to digest. Personally for those interested in the conflict I would read Antony Beevors treatment of the War first, and then Max Hastings volume to flesh it out. Show Less
LibraryThing member neddludd
A magnificent achievement. Hastings is a wonderful writer, as well as a curious, insightful, and dilligent historian. This work combines military/diplomatic history with social history: the author's use of contemporary documentation from average citizens adds a dimension to our understanding of
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this supreme human catastrophe. Men and women confess their fears, their arrogance, their aspirations, their loves. Hastings is unstinting in his criticism of incompetence and sadism, as he is compassionate in the effects of barbarism on the common man. What's it like to freeze on the Russian steppes, or to fight in the steaming jungles of Burma? This book places you in foxholes, puts leeches on your skin, makes you suffer the diseases, terror, and exhilaration that soldiers experience. We hear from the Allies and the Axis, and gain a perspective denied to us before this wonderful work was published. For anyone interested in World War II, I almost guarantee that reading this book will provide information heretofore unknown. This is about as good as history is ever going to get. Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
Fascinating info and a really good read. The method of using the diaries etc of actual people is really fruitful and the author's opinions are just and well researched. JPH
LibraryThing member jburlinson
A good solid one-volume history of the war, one which does not neglect the conflicts that occurred outside the theaters of Europe (& North Africa) and the south Pacific. It's interesting to read this consecutively with another comprehensive account The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts, which tells
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the story more from the more familiar military/political perspective, while Hastings makes a point of gathering anecdotage from the so-called "average" person. Not that we're deprived of the perspective of the generals, diplomats, presidents and ministers, but we're given access to generous portions of the journals of dog soldiers, children, housewives, doctors, poets, petty criminals, farmers, and many others. Show Less
LibraryThing member MaineColonial
Max Hastings's impressive achievement here is that he has written such a readable one-volume study of the war. The book's readability is largely due to Hastings's inclusion of so many views from soldiers and civilians involved in the action. When the statesmen and generals are heard from, it is
Hastings uses an effective system to make vivid and understandable points. He starts with a 10,000-foot descriptive overview, buttressed with statistics and other data, but then lasers in with a story that encapsulates his point. In one such case, he writes about how Italy was boastfully confident about its military prowess, but then lost a huge percentage of its military capacity during the North African campaign. Hastings then offers this anecdote: "Mussolini's propaganda department in Rome made a film designed to demonstrate the superiority of fascist manhood. To this end, a fight was staged between former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera and Kay Masaki, a black South African taken prisoner in the desert. Masaki had never entered a boxing ring in his life, and was knocked down when the cameras began to roll. He picked himself up, however, and struck Carnera a blow that rendered him unconscious."
I'm much more familiar with social and political histories of WW2. This book focuses primarily on the tactical and military history (except for chapters 13 and 20), which has not been of particular interest to me previously. However, Hastings's writing is so lucid and lively that I was engrossed.
Hastings has a distinct point of view. He states strong criticisms of various well-known military leaders. He forcefully counters moral relativists who equate the bombings of Germany's cities with Germany's wartime murders. I was relieved that Hastings is not one of these "greatest generation" types who paint Allied soldiers as nonstop heroes with no real human frailties. He recognizes great contributions to the war effort and examples of bravery, but he also writes about soldiers who fell apart under the strain of battle, who committed cruelties and who deserted. One illuminating tale he tells is of Italy in the period after Mussolini was first deposed and Italy declared war on the Axis. Nearly everyone expected that fighting in Italy would cease, but Hitler sent in his troops to continue the fighting and reinstall Mussolini. From that point, desertions on both sides skyrocketed. Hastings writes that about 30,000 Axis soldiers deserted and about half as many Allied soldiers.
I was tremendously impressed by this history and I believe it would be both an excellent introduction to the topic for novices and a welcome and insightful overview for readers already familiar with WW2 history.
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more in their human roles, not their official statuses. (For example, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's Ambassador to Britain, insisted to Hitler that Britain would not intervene if Germany invaded Poland. When Britain declared war two days after the invasion, Hastings describes how Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering phoned von Ribbentrop and ripped him a new one.)Hastings uses an effective system to make vivid and understandable points. He starts with a 10,000-foot descriptive overview, buttressed with statistics and other data, but then lasers in with a story that encapsulates his point. In one such case, he writes about how Italy was boastfully confident about its military prowess, but then lost a huge percentage of its military capacity during the North African campaign. Hastings then offers this anecdote: "Mussolini's propaganda department in Rome made a film designed to demonstrate the superiority of fascist manhood. To this end, a fight was staged between former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera and Kay Masaki, a black South African taken prisoner in the desert. Masaki had never entered a boxing ring in his life, and was knocked down when the cameras began to roll. He picked himself up, however, and struck Carnera a blow that rendered him unconscious."
I'm much more familiar with social and political histories of WW2. This book focuses primarily on the tactical and military history (except for chapters 13 and 20), which has not been of particular interest to me previously. However, Hastings's writing is so lucid and lively that I was engrossed.
Hastings has a distinct point of view. He states strong criticisms of various well-known military leaders. He forcefully counters moral relativists who equate the bombings of Germany's cities with Germany's wartime murders. I was relieved that Hastings is not one of these "greatest generation" types who paint Allied soldiers as nonstop heroes with no real human frailties. He recognizes great contributions to the war effort and examples of bravery, but he also writes about soldiers who fell apart under the strain of battle, who committed cruelties and who deserted. One illuminating tale he tells is of Italy in the period after Mussolini was first deposed and Italy declared war on the Axis. Nearly everyone expected that fighting in Italy would cease, but Hitler sent in his troops to continue the fighting and reinstall Mussolini. From that point, desertions on both sides skyrocketed. Hastings writes that about 30,000 Axis soldiers deserted and about half as many Allied soldiers.
I was tremendously impressed by this history and I believe it would be both an excellent introduction to the topic for novices and a welcome and insightful overview for readers already familiar with WW2 history.
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LibraryThing member LynnB
I'm not particularly interested in military histories, but was drawn to this book because it is described as the stories of ordinary people -- civilians and solidiers. It is very well written, and I would have liked, if anything, even more quotes from letters, diaries, etc. and could have done with
The author has obviously done a lot of research, and while there are many anecdotes in the book, they are well grounded in scholarship. I enjoyed thinking about all the "what if" questions the author posed. Some relatively small decisions could have changed the outcome of parts, if not all, of the war. I had not realised that, at times, the likely outcome was too close to call.
Mr. Hastings has done an excellent job of showing the divided loyalties many combatants felt; the seeming incompetence and poor judgment often displayed by senior leaders and strategists; and Russia's struggles as it took the brunt of much of the fighting.
It would have helped if the book contained a time line of major events as it is not written chronologically. I read this for a book club, and found it long and somewhat repetitive; however, I also found it deeply moving. I would, perhaps, have enjoyed it more had I not had to read it in such a short period of time -- it was overwhelming in large doses.
At the end, this book left me sad. The extent of damage to civilians was horrendous. Except for the holocaust, I had no idea how much ordinary people suffered. What a price the world paid!
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a little less quanitfying of tanks, airplanes, etc.The author has obviously done a lot of research, and while there are many anecdotes in the book, they are well grounded in scholarship. I enjoyed thinking about all the "what if" questions the author posed. Some relatively small decisions could have changed the outcome of parts, if not all, of the war. I had not realised that, at times, the likely outcome was too close to call.
Mr. Hastings has done an excellent job of showing the divided loyalties many combatants felt; the seeming incompetence and poor judgment often displayed by senior leaders and strategists; and Russia's struggles as it took the brunt of much of the fighting.
It would have helped if the book contained a time line of major events as it is not written chronologically. I read this for a book club, and found it long and somewhat repetitive; however, I also found it deeply moving. I would, perhaps, have enjoyed it more had I not had to read it in such a short period of time -- it was overwhelming in large doses.
At the end, this book left me sad. The extent of damage to civilians was horrendous. Except for the holocaust, I had no idea how much ordinary people suffered. What a price the world paid!
Show Less
LibraryThing member rioux
This is the most harrowing account of WWII that I've ever read. It's good. But be ready for it.
LibraryThing member Speesh
A huge and hugely impressive and moving book, 'All Hell Let Loose' is a concise and precise, but detailed and passion-filled history of the war years of the Second World War. The book is a rivetingly fresh look at a period I thought I knew something about. It challenged me and it has - certainly -
Max Hastings never loses sight of his objective; to put into words an experience that which most ordinary people found indescribable. Explaining how the title came about, he writes; "Many resorted to a cliché: 'All hell broke loose.' Because the phrase is commonplace in eyewitness descriptions of battles, air raids, massacres and ship sinkings, later generations are tempted to shrug at it's banality. Yet in an important sense the words capture the essence of what the struggle meant to hundreds of millions of people, plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that in many cases lasted for years, and for at least sixty millions were terminated by death."
As hinted at above, you will get a thorough and nuanced idea of what the Second World War was actually like to live through for people like you and me. The leaders do get a look in here, and grand stratagems are discussed and illustrated, but it is the even-handed perspective with which he discusses how the war irreversably affected the lives of the ordinary person that shines through. Everyone who was forced to endure it, suffered. Some more than others, some like to say, but thankfully Max Hastings has the rationality to see through the modern cynical smokescreen: "It would have been insulting to invite a hungry Frenchman, or even an English housewife weary of the monotony of rations, to consider that in besieged Leningrad starving people were eating each other, while in West Bengal they were selling their daughters. Few people who endured the Luftwaffe's 1940-41 blitz on London would be comforted by knowledge that the German and Japanese peoples would later face losses from Allied bombing many times greater, together with unparalleled devastation."
We mostly all know the rough outline of the conflict. Our background and up-bringing makes us think we know who the good guys were, who the bad guys were. This book doesn't attempt to change that overall 'big picture', but by giving us provocative examples of how it was to be a participant or an 'active participant', willingly or un-willingly, we are challenged to come away with a much more thought-provoking image of what really went on.
But my over-riding impression from the first two-thirds and one of the main impressions I came away from the book with; is how un-prepared, amateurish and even cynical we 'victors' were before and during the first phases, wherever in the world 'we' were at the outbreak of conflict. Then even going towards the eventual victory over Nazi Germany and Japan, we often did our best to attempt the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory. Rather than entering the conflict determined, sure and with a grand strategy that would lead us inexorably on the path to justice and victory, I got the impression we could be said to have often relied on the other side making worse lash-ups of it than we did.
History and histories will always be written by the victors, but this book is a lot more objective than that might lead you to expect. Arrogance, broken promises, cynicism, fumbling, bumbling, incompetence, unreliability, naivity, it's all here and revealed in detail - on both sides. And who had to deal with all the shit? People like your parents and mine. As he points out: "Combatants fared better than civilians: around three-quarters of all those who perished were unarmed victims rather than active participants in the struggle."
The final chapter is brilliantly perfect. One of the best pieces of concise writing I can ever remember reading. It gathers together most of the big themes explored throughout the book and discusses them in a riviting and incredibly moving way: "It is impossible to dignify the struggle as an unalloyed contest between good and evil, nor rationally to celebrate an experience, and even an outcome, which imposed such misery on so many."
I never thought I would be so moved by a history of something I thought I knew so much about. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a brilliant book, I'm sorry I came to the end of it, I'm glad I didn't have to live through it.
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rewarded me with increased understanding both of the situation and for those who had to try and survive it. On both sides.Max Hastings never loses sight of his objective; to put into words an experience that which most ordinary people found indescribable. Explaining how the title came about, he writes; "Many resorted to a cliché: 'All hell broke loose.' Because the phrase is commonplace in eyewitness descriptions of battles, air raids, massacres and ship sinkings, later generations are tempted to shrug at it's banality. Yet in an important sense the words capture the essence of what the struggle meant to hundreds of millions of people, plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that in many cases lasted for years, and for at least sixty millions were terminated by death."
As hinted at above, you will get a thorough and nuanced idea of what the Second World War was actually like to live through for people like you and me. The leaders do get a look in here, and grand stratagems are discussed and illustrated, but it is the even-handed perspective with which he discusses how the war irreversably affected the lives of the ordinary person that shines through. Everyone who was forced to endure it, suffered. Some more than others, some like to say, but thankfully Max Hastings has the rationality to see through the modern cynical smokescreen: "It would have been insulting to invite a hungry Frenchman, or even an English housewife weary of the monotony of rations, to consider that in besieged Leningrad starving people were eating each other, while in West Bengal they were selling their daughters. Few people who endured the Luftwaffe's 1940-41 blitz on London would be comforted by knowledge that the German and Japanese peoples would later face losses from Allied bombing many times greater, together with unparalleled devastation."
We mostly all know the rough outline of the conflict. Our background and up-bringing makes us think we know who the good guys were, who the bad guys were. This book doesn't attempt to change that overall 'big picture', but by giving us provocative examples of how it was to be a participant or an 'active participant', willingly or un-willingly, we are challenged to come away with a much more thought-provoking image of what really went on.
But my over-riding impression from the first two-thirds and one of the main impressions I came away from the book with; is how un-prepared, amateurish and even cynical we 'victors' were before and during the first phases, wherever in the world 'we' were at the outbreak of conflict. Then even going towards the eventual victory over Nazi Germany and Japan, we often did our best to attempt the snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory. Rather than entering the conflict determined, sure and with a grand strategy that would lead us inexorably on the path to justice and victory, I got the impression we could be said to have often relied on the other side making worse lash-ups of it than we did.
History and histories will always be written by the victors, but this book is a lot more objective than that might lead you to expect. Arrogance, broken promises, cynicism, fumbling, bumbling, incompetence, unreliability, naivity, it's all here and revealed in detail - on both sides. And who had to deal with all the shit? People like your parents and mine. As he points out: "Combatants fared better than civilians: around three-quarters of all those who perished were unarmed victims rather than active participants in the struggle."
The final chapter is brilliantly perfect. One of the best pieces of concise writing I can ever remember reading. It gathers together most of the big themes explored throughout the book and discusses them in a riviting and incredibly moving way: "It is impossible to dignify the struggle as an unalloyed contest between good and evil, nor rationally to celebrate an experience, and even an outcome, which imposed such misery on so many."
I never thought I would be so moved by a history of something I thought I knew so much about. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a brilliant book, I'm sorry I came to the end of it, I'm glad I didn't have to live through it.
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LibraryThing member cortazar
This book is a huge expression of what war means, particularly from the point of view of the soldier.
Million of soldiers of every nacionality were involved in II World War. The more interesting thing of this book are the letters they wrote to families, friends, love ones. Through them we can see
Those letters show us the real face of the war, away from geo-politics, leaderships, generals and so on. How one american soldier in the forests of Guinea, thinking about what he intended to do once back home, he said that the first thing would be to flush the toilet a full day, to hear that particular sound only. How another one started driving in circles after having lost his hand in a attack so happy he was, because he was to go back home.
How it was a kind o hierarchy among the injuries, ranking first those who lost a leg and last, those with injuries in the colon. How the Soviet Union soldiers had to wait for some mate to be killed to take his weapon in turn and carry on the fight,because there were more soldiers than rifles. How german soldiers, about to die of hunger and freeze and receiving news from home about strategic bombing in the cities, still believed in their cause.
That is the truly experience of the war that this book describes so well.
What I like less in this book is the way that tells us about the goodness or the evil of the allied leaders, political and military, depending of the countries they belong to, giving a partial opinion from my point of view.
It seems that the supreme goodness was in the British side, a bit less but a lot of it, in the American side; all the leadership a evil in the Soviet Union side, fifty-fifty in France and so on. Too much partiality from my point of view.
Anyway, the great value of the book are the letters that soldiers of the fronts sent. I think the book could have been subtitled: "II World War through the postal correspondence of soldiers".
Million of soldiers of every nacionality were involved in II World War. The more interesting thing of this book are the letters they wrote to families, friends, love ones. Through them we can see
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the outstanding sufferings of those who took part in the different fronts of Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Italy, South-East of Asia, Pacific, Guinea.Those letters show us the real face of the war, away from geo-politics, leaderships, generals and so on. How one american soldier in the forests of Guinea, thinking about what he intended to do once back home, he said that the first thing would be to flush the toilet a full day, to hear that particular sound only. How another one started driving in circles after having lost his hand in a attack so happy he was, because he was to go back home.
How it was a kind o hierarchy among the injuries, ranking first those who lost a leg and last, those with injuries in the colon. How the Soviet Union soldiers had to wait for some mate to be killed to take his weapon in turn and carry on the fight,because there were more soldiers than rifles. How german soldiers, about to die of hunger and freeze and receiving news from home about strategic bombing in the cities, still believed in their cause.
That is the truly experience of the war that this book describes so well.
What I like less in this book is the way that tells us about the goodness or the evil of the allied leaders, political and military, depending of the countries they belong to, giving a partial opinion from my point of view.
It seems that the supreme goodness was in the British side, a bit less but a lot of it, in the American side; all the leadership a evil in the Soviet Union side, fifty-fifty in France and so on. Too much partiality from my point of view.
Anyway, the great value of the book are the letters that soldiers of the fronts sent. I think the book could have been subtitled: "II World War through the postal correspondence of soldiers".
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LibraryThing member Jacobflaws
One of the best contextual histories of WWII to date.
LibraryThing member jerry-book
Good review of entire war. Hastings points out the blunders by Hitler and Japanese leaders. But he does not hesitate to say Germany had the best generals and armies in the war. He notes how despite this the Russians were able to defeat the Germans because they were willing to suffer 25% casualties
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which would never have been accepted by Western forces. He notes Churchill was only helpful in 1940 in rallying the Brits. Show Less
LibraryThing member jamespurcell
An outstanding and suitably reflective history of WW2 which reads interestingly and well. Myths:, Monty's battle success, strategic bombing won the war, the prowess of citizen soldiers, great generals, are presented and mostly debunked by careful analysis they were few and most were German or
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LibraryThing member lamour
This a very complete history of WW II with the emphasis on the men & women who lived it. Hastings, while giving an overview of the strategy and official views of the leaders and their commanders, focuses on the soldiers lives as combatants and also as prisoners, the experiences of the civilians in
The main point here is that while this is a large volume with immense amounts of material, it is very readable.
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various countries and how it differed in each country. The main point here is that while this is a large volume with immense amounts of material, it is very readable.
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LibraryThing member Rose999
It was informative and all but also found it very boring, tbh I don't care about battle specifics or about weapons at all, so certain aspects were lost on me, I get that it's important to know about battles and certain armory but the details just bore me, I loved the letters and overarching history
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but I guess I need another kind of approach to maintain interest. Show Less
Awards
Independent Booksellers' Book Prize (Shortlist — 2012)
Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History (Winner — 2012)
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (History — 2011)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction — 2011)
Language
Original publication date
2011
Physical description
xx, 729 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
9780307475534