Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mburnamfink 's review for:
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945
by Max Hastings
Hastings's goal with this book was to depict the Second World War through the eyes of ordinary people caught up in the maelstrom, to show the horror of industrialized total war. There have been shelves of books written about Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, or great battles like D-Day and Midway. But these were exceptional people, and exceptional moments. What of the rest of us?
Hastings demolishes any legend of a 'good war'. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan fought to ensure genocidal dominance over their hemispheres. The Soviet Union was a brutal totalitarian state that opportunistically hoped that the capitalists would weaken each other before Stalin's own war in 1943 or so, before Nazi invasion preempted that strategy. Churchill fought to secure a fading British Empire, with its own brutality, racism, and incompetence. France surrendered, and a solid majority of French citizens collaborated with the Nazi regime. American didn't want to fight the war till Pearl Harbor. And the war certainly wasn't about stopping the Holocaust.
As a broad and synthetic work, Inferno doesn't delve deeply into any particular moment. The chapters are organized chronologically and thematically. Hasting pushes a few broad points. Russians did most of the fighting and dying. The US and British forces had material supremacy, which compensated for a weakness in close quarters combat. And most people were scared, bored, hungry, and confused. The war was not glorious, and the world suffered immensely.
There are some elements that I disagree with. Hastings believes Nazi soldiers were categorically superior to Allied ones, and his argument that sailors could not be brave in the same way as soldiers is not one I'd care to repeat near a Navy veteran. For all that, this is a stark and stunning work of military history.
Hastings demolishes any legend of a 'good war'. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan fought to ensure genocidal dominance over their hemispheres. The Soviet Union was a brutal totalitarian state that opportunistically hoped that the capitalists would weaken each other before Stalin's own war in 1943 or so, before Nazi invasion preempted that strategy. Churchill fought to secure a fading British Empire, with its own brutality, racism, and incompetence. France surrendered, and a solid majority of French citizens collaborated with the Nazi regime. American didn't want to fight the war till Pearl Harbor. And the war certainly wasn't about stopping the Holocaust.
As a broad and synthetic work, Inferno doesn't delve deeply into any particular moment. The chapters are organized chronologically and thematically. Hasting pushes a few broad points. Russians did most of the fighting and dying. The US and British forces had material supremacy, which compensated for a weakness in close quarters combat. And most people were scared, bored, hungry, and confused. The war was not glorious, and the world suffered immensely.
There are some elements that I disagree with. Hastings believes Nazi soldiers were categorically superior to Allied ones, and his argument that sailors could not be brave in the same way as soldiers is not one I'd care to repeat near a Navy veteran. For all that, this is a stark and stunning work of military history.