An epic book about a war that touched every human life on the planet. We review The Second World War by Antony Beevor.
Second World War – the blurb
The Second World War began in August 1939 on the edge of Manchuria and ended there exactly six years later with the Soviet invasion of northern China. The war in Europe appeared completely divorced from the war in the Pacific and China, and yet events on opposite sides of the world had profound effects. Using the most up-to-date scholarship and research, Beevor assembles the whole picture in a gripping narrative that extends from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific and from the snowbound steppe to the North African Desert. Although filling the broadest canvas on a heroic scale, Beevor’s THE SECOND WORLD WAR never loses sight of the fate of the ordinary soldiers and civilians whose lives were crushed by the titanic forces unleashed in this, the most terrible war in history.
Biggest Book of the Year
Without doubt this 950 paged, small print, monster takes the crown for biggest book of the year. That’s not including the notes and references that were removed from the paperback version to make the book more ‘manageable’. I’ve read a few LONG books this year, sometimes too long and was worried this non fiction doorstop was going to be a sinker. I’m pleased to say, whilst it was definitely an effort to read it was worth it.
Truly global
I’ve read extensively about the second world war but this book was the first one that truly brought into focus how global it really was. France, the Battle of Britain and the taking of Belin are barely mentioned. Well they are but over the course of nearly a thousand pages their page count is negligible. Beevor manages to really weave together the fight in the pacific, the battle for Stalingrad, the comings and goings in North Africa and China in a way I haven’t appreciated before. The pieces fit together in a perfectly placed jigsaw so you understand just how important it was that Stalin held on, Italy was taken and some tiny islands in the pacific were bombed beyond recognition. As always the figures quoted of dead and injured are incomprehensible yet with so many countries involved you do get a sense of why nearly 60 million people died as a result.
I haven’t read that before
Yes the usual suspects of Auschwitz, D-Day, and Valkyrie were included, yet so were battles I haven’t even heard of before. I had no idea of the brutalities faced in Finland. The way Beevor described the frozen tableau of dead soldiers was so evocative. Surely a film has been made of this somewhere? Parts of the book were also really moving. In a book strewn with dates, figures and names I found myself close to tears reading about how women hid babies in clothes to avoid the gas chambers.
I can’t deny that The Second World War was hard work. I set a page count each day and tried like hell to reach it, mostly failing. It took me over two weeks to read when I would normally have seen off 4 books in that same time. But I’m really pleased I’ve read it and the actual reading of it wasn’t too hard. It’s a brilliant over view and well researched, if a little biased at times. Don’t be put off by the page count, the effort is well worth the return.