Yes, indeed, another post on the subject of historians following my report from the frontline on the war between German historians. This time, I am pleased to say, there are no academic fisticuffs, not least because one of the historians concerned is a lady, Prof. Margaret MacMillan, to be precise. She has written a book - a mammoth book - entitled The War That Ended The Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War. I can thoroughly recommend this book, er, not because of its historical expertise, its acute perceptions, its magisterial sweep and all that sort of thing, because I haven't actually read a page of it so far! No, what I can recommend it for is fitness training - it is 21/2" thick and it weighs a ton! Thus, every morning before I sit down at this computer to waste yet more of the rest of my life I intend to use it for some weight-training exercises. I had thought it would be an ideal book to take on my forthcoming hols but, alas, I don't think I can afford the excess baggage charges!
The other book I have just started was probably as hefty as Prof. MacMillan's as a hard-back edition but thankfully I bought a paper-back version. It is by Lloyd Clark, an historian and lecturer at Sandhurst and it is simply titled "Kursk: The Greatest Battle". In just a few lines Mr. Clark forces us to re-adjust our entire picture of WWII which, for many obvious and all too human reasons have been entirely coloured by Normandy and the war on the western front. He reminds us:
The Soviet losses alone equated to the total number of dead from all belligerent nations on all fronts during the Great War. Every week Stalin's armed forces accumulated a football stadium's worth of dead, and every three months mourned as many lives as the United States did in the entire war.
[...]
While the Normandy landings during the summer of 1944 did mark a major turning point in the war in Europe, we should remember that by the end of that year, 91 Allied divisions in northwest Europe faced 65 German divisions across a 250-mile front, while at the same time in the east, 560 Soviet divisions fought 235 German divisions across 2,000 miles.
Yes, you are right, that was the sound of my mind boggling!