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Even if you have read other histories of World War II you will want to read this book by the man The Economist calls Britain’s finest military historian. And if you haven’t, there is no better way to start than with this scholarly yet immensely readable history of the last great war.
Here are only a few of its virtues:
1. Maps. Roberts provides a large number of maps and sketches of the most important battles and campaigns, in order of time, in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, at the beginning of the book. This makes it easy for the reader to follow the action without the typical frustrating searches in the book’s interior when maps are interspersed with text–and there are not enough of them.
2. Eye for telling detail. A book of this scope has to husband its quotes and anecdotes very carefully so as to illuminate what is important without bogging the reader down. Roberts is at his best here. For example, that Patton was a colorful general with a high opinion of his own talents is well known. Roberts conveys this with a quote from Patton’s diary during the war: “When I think of the greatness of my job and realize that I am what I am, I am amazed, but on reflection, who is as good as I am? I know of no one.” And Roberts skillfully conveys the mindless horror of the war. He quotes, on the German side, a Lieutenant Schutte whose company commander saw the face of what he thought was an enemy sniper, and fired a full clip of his pistol into what turned out to be “a bodiless head, which had been blown off by an artillery blast and tossed up into the tree, where it had lodged.”
3. Wit and humor. Roberts has a dry wit that enlivens a book which inevitably has more horror than humor. Of Charles de Gaulle, he writes that examples of his ingratitude towards his British wartime hosts are legion. “De Gaulle’s staple diet between 1940 and 1944 was the hand that fed him.” And on the “special relationship” between England and America: “The British and American generals in the west between 1943 to 1945 did indeed have a special relationship: it was especially dreadful.” And he reports on the moments of unintended humor from Hitler himself. At one of the military conferences during the war (Hitler had them meticulously documented for posterity by six–eventually eight–parliamentary stenographers) Hitler declared: “One always counts on the decency of others. We are so decent.”
4. The human side. Roberts gives us an insight into the foibles of the war’s great (and not so great) generals, including their vanity and efforts to outdo the others, in public relations if not on the battlefield. General Mark Clark emerges as the biggest self-promoter of the lot. Roberts quotes from one book on the war that noted Clark had fifty men working on public relations, which included a “three to one” rule. “Every press release was to mention Clark three times on the front page and at least once on all other pages–and the General also demanded that photographs be only taken of him from his left side. His public relations team even came up with a Fifth Army song: ‘Stand up, stand up for General Clark, let’s sing the praises of General Clark…He was very fond of that song.'” On the other hand, Roberts lets us see a softer side of General Patton, revealed after the war by General John Hull, who worked with Patton closely on three campaigns. “At heart he was very gentle, he was modest, very friendly, not at all superior in his attitude toward you…when he left a formation where he bawled somebody out, he might sit down and write a prayer…So, all in all he was quite a character, interesting and very likeable if you knew him.”
5. Asks interesting questions. Roberts asks questions that were not raised during the war or in its immediate aftermath but have become a focus of concern decades later. Should the Allies have bombed the railroad lines to Auschwitz? Was the Pope culpable in not speaking out against the Holocaust while it was in progress? Could the battle of El Alamein, with its heavy casualties for the Allies, have been avoided? Was it justifiable–or indeed of strategic value–to bomb the civilian population in occupied Europe, Germany and Japan? And, of course, what has become the most asked question, Should the U.S. have dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Roberts also raises the question, throughout the book, Could a different decision by Hitler, at various pivotal moments, have produced a Nazi victory?
Roberts delivers thoughtful and sometimes surprising answers to these and many other questions he raises in this chronicle of what fellow historian Max Hastings calls “the largest event in human history.” To learn what his answers are, read the book.
It is a privilege to meet and interview the author.
