A worm's eye view of WWII. It's 700 pages. It covers the European War and the far eastern war. It dwells on killings, casualties, cruelties, concentration camps, civilian hardships, prisoners of war, Gestapo atrocities, anti semetism, ship sinkings, the holocaust, and every other horrible event the occured in the period. Little discussion of the causes of the war, the failing of the west to stand up to Hitler, the reasons for the astonishing German victories of 1940, the means the allies used to finally crush Hitler. In short, a lot of colorful, if miserable, stories of little people getting stomped on, little discussion of how the war was fought and won, little discussion of the future effects of WWII.
The author, Max Hastings, has written a fair number of other books on politics and military history. Some of them are less down beat than this one.
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