by Max Hastings
First published 2011
World War II consumed sixty million lives across six years of global combat. Max Hastings draws from thirty-five years of research to construct a comprehensive single-volume history of the conflict. He weaves together stories of ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances: British housewives enduring the Blitz, Indian peasants suffering famine, SS officers executing mass murder, and Leningrad residents surviving a brutal siege that drove some to cannibalism. Japanese kamikaze pilots and American naval crews face death in the Pacific while Finnish soldiers mount fierce resistance against Stalin's invading forces. Hastings traces the war's major turning points through human experience rather than strategic abstraction. He examines Hitler's fatal decision to remain in the Soviet Union, Stalin's willingness to sacrifice millions to exhaust German forces, Churchill's leadership during Britain's darkest period, and Roosevelt's guidance before and after America joined the fight. The narrative extends beyond familiar battlefields to explore overlooked tragedies like the Bengal famine of 1943-1944, which killed over one million people and marked the beginning of the end for British rule in India.
Genres: history, 20th-century, world-war-ii, non-fiction, military-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-fiction
Setting: Britain, India, Leningrad, Soviet Union, Pacific, Finland, Bengal
Period: 1939-1945
729 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: death, violence, war