This book is subtitled ‘a global history of World War II’, and with the main matter stretching to 920 pages, it certainly has a go at it. On the whole, I would describe the book as interesting, thoughtful and thorough. If we consider its subtitle, I would say that it is perhaps not quite as global as may have been the original intent — but how could the book have been kept to a publishable length if it were otherwise? Inevitably it focuses on the main combatants, with thumbnail sketches of what is going on in the more peripheral places.
Perhaps inevitably — living as I do in Australia — this strikes me. Australia occupies maybe a couple of pages of the 920. Say 0.2%. The rest is implicit; like when the North African fighting is mentioned, Aussies were there, but the author cannot be expected to always note this.
The book focuses on the big picture. How did the Allies come to agree on a ‘Europe first’ approach? How did the western powers manage to work with a soviet Russia that had, before the Germans turned on it, invaded Poland and provided the raw materials that powered the Nazi assault on France and fueled the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain? A Russia that withheld information, spied on the Americans and the British, and then demanded they send thousands of planes and trucks? No matter what Stalin demanded of the West, it was sanctified by the millions of Russian dead; no matter how hard he was to work with, no-one could say the Russians were not making remarkable sacrifices. And of course, the West worried that Russia might make a separate peace — something that, in truth, Hitler’s ideology rendered extremely unlikely. These sorts of considerations form the meat of the book. There is a little about technology, a little about espionage, quite a lot about signals intelligence (which was hugely important, as the book makes clear) and a lot about why the various leaders did what they did (as far as can be known).
The book is on the whole highly successful. It is unafraid to make judgements on leaders. Roosevelt comes out well, Churchill as less objective but fundamentally sound, Stalin as strong and effective but very difficult to work with. Montgomery comes out badly, King and Marshall well, and Eisenhower comes out well too; better than, say, the egomaniacal MacArthur.
The biggest military operations are described in a little detail — enough to then back up analysis of how they affected the broader position, or why they justified the recall of a general, for example. The overall ebb and flow of fronts is more the book’s style. And then we get an interpolated chapter describing, for example, the home front, or the evolution of key weapons (jets, radar, atom bombs, rockets, that sort of thing).
The book makes it clear that as the war went on the Red Army was not only large, it was also good, something not all histories admit. It pays close attention to deals made over borders and suchlike, and shows how these things had repercussions after the war and up to today.
I would not say the prose is elegant. It is effective enough, but at times I had to reread a sentence or two. There are no pictures apart from a useful set of maps in the back. It is a book that knows what it is about — understanding the big picture, not minutia. You could almost call it a political history of the war (rather than a military hitory), and as such it is an excellent summary for the reader who is not going to go to primary sources. The author is not afraid to synthesise the material and make his own judgements, and on the whole, from what I know, they are generally interesting and most likely perceptive.
If what you want is what the book aims to deliver, it comes thoroughly recommended.
DSPACE 