The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
by Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
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Book Summary Information
Author: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken BurnsEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-09-11
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
Book Review: Misconceptions about the Second World War
Summary: 4 Stars
Instead of a full book review, this is a response to one reviewer's notion about the US's role in World War II. It should bob up to the surface, I thought, rather than lie submerged as a comment, since such misconceptions are surprisingly widespread in some circles. I certainly wouldn't suggest that this author is so misguided. Quite the contrary. First, note the dates in his book's subtitle: it's strictly about the US's involvement. Also, it focuses on photographs of the war, so it concentrates on the Pacific theatre and on later stages of the European war, such as the liberation of concentration and extermination camps -- thereby graphically confirming several of my points below.
Some basic facts should help to correct the notion by Mr Eskildson ("Pragmatist") about "...how lucky America was [upon entering WWII, at], having to throw our almost non-existent military immediately into total conflict against fully mobilized Japan, Germany, and Italy - yet managing to hold on until our military could be built up." Put briefly, luck had nothing to do with it, and there wasn't much that was immediate about the US's response to the war in Europe.
First, the US delayed entry while Australia, New Zealand, and Canada gathered upon the invasion of Poland, in 1939, long before '42, to join the Allies opposing Hitler. The US's 3-year delay was at least partly the result of the strong influence of Nazi sympathizers within US borders - such as Ambassador Joe Kennedy and other prominent figures who resisted Roosevelt and what they only later came to call a just cause.
Less obvious than this vital issue about dates, though, is another overlooked circumstance worth considering. As historian Max Hastings has shown in his 'Armageddon' and elsewhere, the Soviets were the ones who bore the brunt of the Nazi war. Hastings is not the first to remark on this, although he may be the first in the west to show that it happened knowingly, cynically, through a deliberate strategy on the part of the US and some of its Allies, and despite urgent cries for help from its Soviet ally (and Poland as well). Meantime, a horrific price was being paid in cities razed, lives lost, cannibalism and other desperate acts, while the Soviets wore down the formidable German war machine to more 'manageable' size for confrontation by the western Allied forces.
To illustrate by turning to the war's crudest terms, in the end the US involvement meant about 300,000 dead souls. That's roughly the same as Yugoslavia's toll. The figure also compares with the 300,000 Soviet soldiers who died fighting for the strategically insignificant port of K?nigsberg, capital of Eastern Prussia, before turning it into de-Germanized Kaliningrad.
Soviet casualties, meanwhile, are estimated to have reached around 27 million, including at least 9 million dead soldiers, or probably more like 15 million -- along with about as many civilian casualties. As the war raged along Germany's dreaded eastern front, the Allied push to Berlin was delayed to ensure not only success, but the least number of US and western casualties.
A less crude perspective on the matter is that, even _after_ German adjustments subsequent to the D-Day landings, the Axis powers devoted a total of 59 divisions to defend their western flank. Meantime, they stationed no less than 156 divisions on their far more dangerous, nearly 3,000-mile-long Soviet front.
So it was not especially 'lucky,' and the US's involvement was far weaker than that "total" commitment purported by this reviewer. On the contrary: taking along its western partners, the US was prudent, even canny -- so anything but noble about the ongoing slaughter of its presumed allies. During that dithering, and the subsequent one before advancing on Berlin (in both of which Churchill played a key role, according to John Lukacs) Warsaw was pummelled to rubble, London was fire-bombed and near ruins, the French were turned against one another, old Balkan enmities were twisted to Nazi advantage, Czech villages were flattened, Spain groaned under Fascism, and millions of Jews, Gypsies and others were slaughtered in a frenzy of duty-driven technological efficiency, as if they were all so much unwanted subhuman dreck.
Without a doubt, even before 1940 many US citizens bravely enlisted in Spain, England and Canada, ready to die in the fight against Nazi tyranny. US might was indispensable to the war prosecuted in the Pacific; the Brits certainly had no clout to defend their Empire. Besides, the US government covertly provided a real, and indeed truly tremendous leg-up (albeit on loan) to the two countries bravely prosecuting the European war: massive contributions of materiel supported the British and Soviet war efforts, without which the Americas would be the next domino to fall to the new barbarians. And, to be fair, the Soviet regime was seen as deeply suspect, and with ample reason -- even if more by Churchill than by Roosevelt. On this point: in war, expediency and prudential thinking trump morality, and such decisions were made so the two mightiest armies would grind one another down, making room for the liberal democracies to come out on top. All of which is unimpeachable reasoning, in the circumstances: banal as it may sound, victory was crucial to the survival of western civilization as we know it. Just let's not call it luck or the result of some swift military response.
The victors got to write the history: in the war's aftermath Hollywood and TV promoted the story that the US heroically stepped in and saved the day, often single-handedly. Ignoring the historical evidence served those industries very well, and audiences were massively misdirected worldwide, from Pasadena to Tasmania, Athens and Lima, Peru (where, as boys, my friends and I also cheered on those same heroes).
This provides a more accurate measure of the US's role, no matter how some like to regard their contribution. It's long past time to scrap the idea that it's the sole preserver of democracy, and the world's saviour from fascist regimes. After the deceptions unmasked about the US's own variant on fascism -- the militarist-corporatist, torture-supporting, early 21st century White House regime -- the time has surely come to re-appraise the historical record, and for facts to trump jingoism.
Summary of The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945
The vivid voices that speak from these pages are not those of historians or scholars. They are the voices of ordinary men and women who experienced-and helped to win-the most devastating war in history, in which between 50 and 60 million lives were lost.
Focusing on the citizens of four towns- Luverne, Minnesota; Sacramento, California; Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama;-The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Woven largely from their memories, the compelling, unflinching narrative unfolds month by bloody month, with the outcome always in doubt. All the iconic events are here, from Pearl Harbor to the liberation of the concentration camps-but we also move among prisoners of war and Japanese American internees, defense workers and schoolchildren, and families who struggled simply to stay together while their men were shipped off to Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa.
Enriched by maps and hundreds of photographs, including many never published before, this is an intimate, profoundly affecting chronicle of the war that shaped our world.
History buffs, Ken Burns fans, and anyone whose life has been touched by war will be awed by Burns's new book, The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945, a stunning companion to his PBS series airing in September 2007. Focusing on the citizens of four towns, The War follows more than forty people from 1941 to 1945. Maps and hundreds of photographs enrich this compelling, unflinching narrative. Check out some of the photographs and read the first chapter below. --Daphne Durham
Exclusive Photographs from The War
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Read the First Chapter of The War
A Necessary WarI don't think there is such a thing as a good war. There are sometimes necessary wars. And I think one might say, "just" wars. I never questioned the necessity of that war. And I still do not question it. It was something that had to be done. --Samuel Hynes
Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, began as most days do in Honolulu: warm and sunny with blue skies punctuated here and there by high wisps of cloud. At a few minutes after eight o'clock, the Hyotara Inouye family was at home on Coyne Street, getting ready for church. The sugary whine of Hawaiian music drifted through the house. The oldest of the four Inouye children, seventeen-year-old Daniel, a senior at William McKinley High and a Red Cross volunteer, was listening to station KGMB as he dressed. There were other sounds, too, muffled far-off sounds to which no one paid much attention at first because they had grown so familiar over the past few months. The drone of airplanes and the rumble of distant explosions had been commonplace since spring of the previous year, when the U.S. Pacific Fleet had shifted from the California coast to Pearl Harbor, some seven miles northwest of the Inouye home. Air-raid drills were frequent occurrences; so was practice firing of the big coastal defense batteries near Waikiki Beach.
But this was different. Daniel was just buttoning his shirt, he remembered, when the voice of disk jockey Webley Edwards broke into the music. "All army, navy, and marine personnel to report to duty," it said. At almost the same moment, Daniel's father shouted for him to come outside. Something strange was going on. Daniel hurried out into the sunshine and stood with his father by the side of the house, peering toward Pearl Harbor. They were too far away to see the fleet itself, and hills further obscured their view, but the sky above the harbor was filled with puffs of smoke. During drills the blank antiaircraft bursts had always been white. These were jet-black. Then, as the Inouyes watched in disbelief, the crrrump of distant explosions grew louder and more frequent and so much oily black smoke began billowing up into the sky that the mountains all but vanished and the horizon itself seemed about to disappear.
Read more from Chapter 1...
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