Inferno The World at War 19391945 (Audible Audio Edition) Max Hastings Ralph Cosham Inc Blackstone Audio Books
Download As PDF : Inferno The World at War 19391945 (Audible Audio Edition) Max Hastings Ralph Cosham Inc Blackstone Audio Books
From one of our finest military historians comes a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.
World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives-an average of twentyseven thousand a day. For 35 years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, singlevolume history of the entire war.
Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people-of soldiers, sailors, and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews-Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments-Hitler's refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late, Stalin's ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army, Churchill's leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, Roosevelt's steady hand before and after the United States entered the war-and puts them in real human context.
Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war's penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin's invading Red Army, and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru's words, "the final epitaph of British rule" in India.
Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the 20th century.
Inferno The World at War 19391945 (Audible Audio Edition) Max Hastings Ralph Cosham Inc Blackstone Audio Books
I'm in my 80s and began reading about the War before I grew up and served in the Korean War. Over the years I've read, learned from and admired numerous book about WWII. This book is the best WWII history I've read in over 20 years. The breath of the war that it covers is extraordinary and greater than any other that I've read. Moreover, the author never fails to include individuals both from the military and civilian life and their words help to bring readers like me closer to them, to their achievements and their sufferings. I've never read another WWII book that covers almost all of the countries that fought or suffered during the war.Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 (Audible Audio Edition): Max Hastings, Ralph Cosham, Inc. Blackstone Audio: Books, ,Max Hastings, Ralph Cosham, Inc. Blackstone Audio,Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945,Blackstone Audio, Inc.,B006K66Q42
People also read other books :
- The Prince Niccolò Machiavelli 9788826425177 Books
- The Spanish Army in the Peninsular War Weapons Tactics and Strategy Warriors of the World Book 5 eBook Leonard James
- Entre Generaciones Spanish Edition eBook Alejandro Mascó TEMAS Grupo Editorial
- Firetrap The Soul Scorchers MC The Scorched Souls Serialseries Book 1 edition by CL Riley Gemma Newey Literature Fiction eBooks
- Alef Beis Board Book B C Edelman 9781607630388 Books
Inferno The World at War 19391945 (Audible Audio Edition) Max Hastings Ralph Cosham Inc Blackstone Audio Books Reviews
Interesting take on WWII history. Hastings trolls though forgotten memoirs and letters to give us a personal view of the horror that was the war.
While Hasting starts out with the explicit intent to look at a personal view of the war he does regularly editorialize on the effectiveness of units, commanders and political leaders. He is writing with the benefit of hindsight, it is true, however many of his observations are trenchant and apt.
He explains the Wehrmacht's operational and tactical excellence without admiration. It is a fact and he presents it. He points out the Soviet bloodymindedness in attack, their reliance on mass and willingness to accept incredible casualties without rancor or horror. Just as a fact.
Hasting pokes many holes in the Anglo/American view of the war including the relative power of the Red Army and Allied forces in 1945.
It is a good book, but not a great one. I can't help but think that the narrative could have been polished a bit more.
Like so many of my generation, there is a fascination with the events that transpired in our youth, the Armageddon called World War II. Having read many of the historical accounts of those events, it is surprising to find an account that focuses primarily upon the personal experiences of ordinary people. This "bottom-up" view of the war does not neglect the key architects of the war, the politicians and generals who caused and planned the war. But the emphasis is on the vast numbers of common soldiers, civilians,wives, mothers, and children who bore the brunt of the terrifying global events.
The author is not an unbiased and detached observer. He has plenty of opinions stated openly and emphatically. He has no hesitation in lambasting the British and their empire, Churchill, and the lackluster performance of soldiers accustomed to their role as a lazy protectorate of foreign causes in Egypt, Burma, India and beyond. He does not minimize the evils of Stalin, the foolhardiness of Patton, and many other icons considered heroes of the war. He does not hesitate to charge Macarthur as a vain, self-aggrandizing maniac who sacrificed countless American lives in unnecessary island hopping.
The net impact of this finely detailed account of all the major venues in WWII, is a sense of horror. The numbers of casualties in all theaters of the war are numbing. But the quality of the suffering as much as the quantity of casualties remains the most appalling and reveletory aspect of the conflagration.
This is a long and frightening book. It is like an unending horror movie, frightening in the intensity and extent of human suffering.
I wasn't sure what to expect from a one-volume history of World War II but it turns out that this really isn't a conventional history of the war. Instead of writing about the chronology of the war or battles, Hastings writes about the human experience of the war. He writes about what soldiers, sailors, and airmen experienced as well as what civilians experienced. A recurring theme is the cost of the war in the east versus the cost of the war in the west. Often, World War II histories seem to gloss over things the Allies did wrong and mistakes they made, but Hastings is also balanced and honest. He points out that while the Axis were guilty of war crimes, the Allies' reputation was lily white either. This is a book that, in my opinion, should be required reading on the war because it lays out the human cost of World War II and puts the war in perspective.
There are extensive reviews of this book already, I'll add just a few comments. What I found to be the unique contributions of the book was its extensive use of the first person accounts of soldiers, ordinary townspeople, lower rank officers, etc. This gave an important flavor of what the war was like for those who experienced it. However, Hastings suffers greatly from hindsight bias. He repeatedly uses phrases such as "it should have been obvious that" for example, Japan had been defeated already and there was no reason for the Philippine campaign. The Japanese didn't seem to know that, as, even after the atomic bombs, large numbers of their generals and soldiers in China wanted to continue the war. The book is filled with such off-hand, judgmental comments taking points of view that could not have been known to the people engaged in the war at the time. Hastings is also dismissive, with one sentence back-hands, of many generals. He is scathing in his treatment of MacArthur, admittedly a troublesome figure, but not the incompetent Hastings makes him out to be. This is one of Hastings "should have knowns..." the US should have known that the campaign through what is now Indonesia was "unnecessary." One can almost hear Hastings sneer. He is similarly dismissive of, for example, Rommel, who he routinely berates as having no interest in logistics. He never provides data to back up these one sentence condemnations. This writer has seen extensive cable traffic from Rommel, in other works, pleading for oil, planes, tanks--the logistical support he needed. Hastings dismisses this in a sentence.
Read it for the human interest contributions. Don't take Hastings judgments of the worth of various military campaigns or officers too seriously.
I'm in my 80s and began reading about the War before I grew up and served in the Korean War. Over the years I've read, learned from and admired numerous book about WWII. This book is the best WWII history I've read in over 20 years. The breath of the war that it covers is extraordinary and greater than any other that I've read. Moreover, the author never fails to include individuals both from the military and civilian life and their words help to bring readers like me closer to them, to their achievements and their sufferings. I've never read another WWII book that covers almost all of the countries that fought or suffered during the war.
0 Response to "[S0I]⇒ Download Inferno The World at War 19391945 (Audible Audio Edition) Max Hastings Ralph Cosham Inc Blackstone Audio Books"
Post a Comment