Victor Davis Hanson’s latest work, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, is a synthesis of existing scholarship on World War II, presented with insights from the history of warfare throughout the ages befitting the author’s expertise in the broad sweep of military history. The book is arranged topically, with sections dealing with air, naval, and land warfare as well as the ideas, weapons, economies, and people that energized, fought, fueled, and led the conflict. Hanson’s analysis of the bloodletting from 1939 to 1945 is perceptive and provocative and his exploration of counterfactuals provides plenty of material for speculation among those well-versed in the history of the war. https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/12/comprehending-the-big-lessons-of-world-war-ii/
Victor Davis Hanson, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and noted classicist, makes frequent allusions to pre-modern battles and wars, illustrating how geography, tactical circumstances, and human nature weave their way throughout time. Thus we learn that the Normandy invasion “was the largest combined land and sea operation conducted since the invasion of Greece by King Xerxes of Persia in spring 480 BC,” which led to the epic battles at Thermopylae and Salamis. Hanson also explains what is different about World War II, including the racism and ideology that fueled the conflict and which led to the industrialized slaughter of millions in death camps and by starvation.
Hanson categorizes World War II as a war of machines. The book examines various aspects of long range bombing, carrier aviation, and submarine wars in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, always with an eye to determining why the Allies won and the Axis powers lost. Tiger, Panther, Sherman, and T-34 tanks; Katyusha rocket launchers and American howitzers; Lancaster and B-29 bombers; Messerschmidt, Zero, Spitfire, Hurricane, Thunderbolt, and Mustang fighters; Essex class carriers and fast battleships; the iconic M-1 rifle and Sturmgewehr 44; and other weapons are analyzed for their role in the fighting and outcome of the war. Having examined the implements of combat, Hanson pays due attention to the supreme leaders and military commanders who devised strategy and led operations, as well as the economic output of the great powers that made victory possible or defeat inevitable.