I am now coming to the end of Antony Beevor's maasive The Second World War. The cheap thing to say would be that the experience seemed to have lasted as long as the events it describes, and indeed the endless accounts of advances and retreats, break-throughs and break-outs, encirclements, bombings, landings, tank battles and so on and so forth, are not obviously the recipe for an easy read. But I found the book anything but boring or tiring, and I am still trying to puzzle out why.
One lesson I draw from this conflict (and from the First World War as well) is that, once you get into it, it's very difficult to get out of it. To that extent at least, there is something to be said for appeasement.
Another point that emerges very clearly from the narrative is the extraordinary level of bestiality displayed right from the start by the Germans and Japanese as the, so to speak, default option.
The American and British military leaders come in for some harsh criticism, in particular Clark, Montgomery, Ritchie, Patton and Macarthur. Eisenhower, for all his faults, was clearly the right choice for supreme commander. For Britain, with its tradition of military know-how, the War was for a long time one humiliation after another, outfought and out-thought at every turning by the Germans and the Japanese.
None of the political leaders are given a clean bill of health, either morally or strategically, though Beevor makes clear the extreme difficulties with which they had to contend.
Statistically speaking, you were better of in uniform than out of it. 50 to 55 million dead, compared to 21 to 25 million in the military. In all, 3% of the world's population in 1940 was killed.
Lastly, the War was not strictly a WORLD war inasmuch as South America escaped completely unscathed.
One lesson I draw from this conflict (and from the First World War as well) is that, once you get into it, it's very difficult to get out of it. To that extent at least, there is something to be said for appeasement.
Another point that emerges very clearly from the narrative is the extraordinary level of bestiality displayed right from the start by the Germans and Japanese as the, so to speak, default option.
The American and British military leaders come in for some harsh criticism, in particular Clark, Montgomery, Ritchie, Patton and Macarthur. Eisenhower, for all his faults, was clearly the right choice for supreme commander. For Britain, with its tradition of military know-how, the War was for a long time one humiliation after another, outfought and out-thought at every turning by the Germans and the Japanese.
None of the political leaders are given a clean bill of health, either morally or strategically, though Beevor makes clear the extreme difficulties with which they had to contend.
Statistically speaking, you were better of in uniform than out of it. 50 to 55 million dead, compared to 21 to 25 million in the military. In all, 3% of the world's population in 1940 was killed.
Lastly, the War was not strictly a WORLD war inasmuch as South America escaped completely unscathed.
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