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Buy the Book
Taking a Good Look at World War II
There’s no better one-volume history of the war than Andrew Roberts’ latest masterpiece.
The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World
War
By Andrew
Roberts
(Harper, 712 pages,
$29.99)
LIKE THE ANNUAL inundation of the Nile, each year brings its fresh flood of increasingly trivial books about World War II, many of them slanted, pedantic, or downright silly. Like so many other contemporary historians, most of today’s chroniclers of the Second World War have a perverse inclination to write more and more about less and less. The high-or low-water mark for WWII trivia may have been reached in 2004 with the publication of Peter Conradi’s earnest but error-sprinkled Hitler’s Piano Player, an excruciatingly detailed biography of Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, a third rate Third Reich propagandist and court buffoon who occasionally served as der Führer’s lounge pianist.
All the more reason, then, to welcome a healthy corrective to this flood of fluff—a concise but comprehensive history that gets to the heart of one of mankind’s greatest struggles with keen intelligence and a minimum of cant. This is exactly what The Storm of War by British historian Andrew Roberts does. The broad sweep of Mr. Roberts’s narrative, which never flags, marches the reader from battle to battle, theater to theater of this colossal contest, but it does much more than merely chronicle events.
Besides vividly evoking the storm of war, Mr. Roberts offers his readers that rarest of the historian’s gifts, the ability to synthesize. For history, like science, is much more than an inventory of ingredients or occurrences; it is, to quote a dictionary definition of synthesis, “the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.”
Again and again, Mr. Roberts achieves historical synthesis, taking us behind the scenes and into the minds of antagonists and protagonists to help us understand why people acted the way they did, and why things turned out the way they did. His ultimate act of synthesis is to be found in the last paragraph of the last page of his narrative: “Analyses of Hitler’s defeat have tended to portray him as a strategic imbecile—‘Corporal Hitler’—or otherwise as a madman, but these explanations are clearly not enough. The real reason Hitler lost the Second World War was exactly the same one that caused him to unleash it in the first place: he was a Nazi.”
By which Mr. Roberts means—and amply demonstrates in his text—that Hitler’s various political and racial obsessions, which formed the basis of Nazism, undercut all of his initial military and diplomatic triumphs and made the eventual Allied victory not only possible but well nigh inevitable. A few examples:
• It was Hitler’s paranoid anti-Semitism that stripped Germany of thousands of its most brilliant minds, including many of the key scientists and mathematicians who, as political refugees, would create the atomic bomb in America.
• It was his racist xenophobia, his obsession with Lebensraum for his Aryan supermen, that led Hitler to alienate millions of victims of Soviet oppression who welcomed the Germans as liberators only to turn against them after being treated as subhuman slave labor.
• The flip side of Hitler’s Nazi racism—his admiration for and identification with the Anglo-Saxon–dominated British Empire—meant that the man whose conquering legions had blitzed their way through Western Europe would show little interest in the German General Staff’s plans for invading the British Isles at their weakest moment, still dreaming of an Aryan consortium in which the Thousand Year Reich would rule the European continent while overseas Untermenschen would remain under the heel of a British Empire upon which, with Hitler’s help, the sun would never set.
• Even the Nazi cult of death and violence, initially directed against political opponents, minorities, and foreign foes, would eventually be turned on the German people as Hitler ordered whole armies to die where they stood and, when he finally recognized that defeat was inevitable, led him to the egomaniacal conclusion that Germany had been unworthy of him and therefore deserved to die when he did.
Mr. Roberts also brings his considerable analytic skills to bear on the Allied effort and its leaders. His pen portraits of Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Marshall, and the rest are vivid, insightful, and often highly entertaining, as is his choice of source material. Witness this telling glimpse of two battling egos: “Patton and Montgomery had long mutually loathed one another—Patton called Monty ‘that cocky little limey fart,’ Monty thought Patton a ‘foul-mouthed lover of war’…”
In this particular case, they were both right—and Mr. Roberts’s lapidary choice of quote tells us a lot about the character of the men themselves, as well as what they thought of each other. His appreciation for Eisenhower—whose reputation as both soldier and statesman has enjoyed a well-deserved resurgence in recent years—is equally pithy and on the mark. When, on September 1, 1944, Ike took over day-to-day control of all ground forces from Montgomery, he had almost as much to fear from the bitter animosities dividing Monty, Patton, and Omar Bradley, each with an egocentric war plan of his own, as he did from the enemy.
“It is sadly impossible to believe that the best demands of grand strategy, rather than their own egos, actuated these soldiers,” Mr. Roberts writes, “and Eisenhower had the difficult task of holding the ring between them and imposing his own view. His greatness—doubted by some like [Field Marshall Sir Alan] Brooke and Montgomery—stems in part from his success in achieving that.”
Mr. Roberts is also a model of intelligent objectivity when it comes to weighing the various national contributions to Allied victory. He recognizes the key role of American industrial and military might in tipping the balance and underscores the pivotal importance of his native England’s determination to go it alone after the fall of France without overstating the case. And he also gives the Devil his due where many Western historians have not:
It was the Russians who provided the oceans of blood necessary to defeat Germany, and it cannot be reiterated enough that out of every five Germans killed in combat—that is, on the battle field rather than in aerial bombing or through other means—four died on the Eastern Front. It is the central statistic of the Second World War.
Thanks to Mr. Roberts’s mastery of substance, style, and, yes, statistics, readers can now enjoy a comprehensive, one-volume history of that war that is far superior to most of the works preceding it.
About the Author
Aram Bakshian, Jr. served as an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan and writes frequently on politics, history, gastronomy, and the arts.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (43) | Leave a comment
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Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 8:15AM
Roberts could have used English in his last paragraph. Nazi is a short German abbreviation for Nationalist. Hitler was a Nationalist first, then a Socialist. National Socialism is what it was.
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 4:46PM
It doesn't disturb most of you that Japan was nuked, twice; however if the Bomb had been available long before Germany had surrendered and Germany had been nuked 'just' once you would be uncomfortable.
Asians are considered more expendable by caucasians.
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 4:59PM
... today the asian moon is on the ascendant, the caucasian moon is on the wane.
We are coming full circle.
DaveS| 9.22.11 @ 6:04PM
Thy name is 'fringe,' Alan.
If the eastern mind/culture didn't grasp one bomb's effects, then what ninny mind/culture is that?
My late father-in-law was on his way to the Honshu invasion, but was diverted between Hawaii and the drop-off and spent some months in the Phillipines. Reasons: Little Boy and Fat Man.
If you were honest, you cry more about firebombing Tokyo - which led to way more loss than the 'bombs' of which you speak.
The commander of the assault on Pearl Harbor regretted the action from the beginning. He didn't know how right he was.
Five-hundred thousand American casualties saved: good trade for an attacked nation. Japan's mistake; the region's misery - and all precipitated by the Rising Sun empire.
Come back when you are not as infirm.
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 6:16PM
You are evasive, DaveS:
you did not address the fact that Japanese were considered expendable, while Germans were not.
DaveS| 9.22.11 @ 6:59PM
Nobody, but the imperial Japanese leadership, considered the Japanese people expendable.
Cpm| 9.22.11 @ 8:36PM
Tell that to citizens of Dresden, ask them how inexpendible they felt, if anyone who was there lived to tell about it.
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 8:58PM
"Tell that to citizens of Dresden"
What was the radiation level in Dresden iafter the firebombing? how many died from radiation sickness?
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 9:01PM
difference is:
if Germany had been nuked we would not have been forgiven for dropping the Bomb on them. But it was different with Japan.
chuck| 9.22.11 @ 10:08PM
War is Hell, and it is won by destroying the enemy's ability and will to fight. If the bomb was ready, and Germany still had the means and the will to continue fighting, then I have no doubt that Germany would have been nuked. Race had nothing to do with it, and you are an idiot to believe that it did.
Cpm| 9.22.11 @ 10:42PM
The atomic bomb was developed as a direct result of Germany's atomic research, not for annihilating Japanese. Refute that.
Nick| 9.23.11 @ 2:43AM
Cpm,
No, it wasn't. There, I refuted it.
Cpm| 9.23.11 @ 10:31AM
You don't know jack, Nick. Our German scientists knew what their German scientists were up to. They went to Roosevelt. Manhattan Project is born. Japanese didn't have any German scientists. Stop carrying Alan's water.
Nick| 9.24.11 @ 2:27AM
Cpm,
I just made an assertion, like you did.
The Japs did have a nuclear program, by the way. It was way, way behind ours, of course. As well as nuclear, they had a biological and chemical weapons program. Some of which they used on the Chinese.
All the major powers were working on an atomic bomb during the war. I know more than you think I do.
DaveS| 9.24.11 @ 8:25AM
80,000 to 200,000 Japanese died in firebomb raids in Tokyo over a period of a couple of days. Are the circumstances of their deaths any less important than the deaths (mostly immediate) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Radiation killed relatively few; the blast (by design) did by far the most. You'd be blessed to be the average casualty at Hiroshima versus Tokyo.
Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 7:48PM
Alan, just once try to stay on topic. You make no sense with that comment.
Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 7:52PM
Alan,
You were responding to my comment. You are able to figure that out aren't you?
If you want to make the first comment to an article then get up earlier or get in line like everyone else.
Alan Brooks| 9.22.11 @ 8:59PM
My comments are in fact about WWII.
Kevin Dunn| 9.23.11 @ 1:38AM
It disturbs me that Japan was nuked ONLY twice!
Lucius Severus Pertinax| 9.23.11 @ 4:39PM
While at University(SDSU) I took a couple of classes on US foriegn policy and the Cold War under Waldo Heinrichs, one of my favorite professors.
We spent a good deal of time on whythe US used the Bomb on Japan and if it were justified.
One thing that interested me about the literature we went over, which was quite extensive, was the silence upon the domestic political ramifications of NOT using the Bomb.
Suppose the Bomb had been developed and NOT used. Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands would have ahead; a quarter of a million American dead was the usual estimate.
After all that, and it came to light that the Government HAD the Bomb but did not use it (and it WOULD come out) , can one imagine the political consequences?
What would millions of registered voters think when they learned that countless sons, brothers , fathers, husbands, would never come home when the means were in hand to avoid it? Can one believe that there would have been another Democrat in the White House inside the next thirty years, at least, as a result?
Harry Truman, old -time Kansas City machine politician that he was, could not have been unaware of this.
In short, it was politically necessary to use the Bomb, once it had been developed.
The Japanese were expendable simply because THEY did not vote.
The Clintidote| 9.23.11 @ 5:39PM
Doesn't disturb me one iota. The message was:
"Don't fcuk with us, don't attack us. Since you did, here's two atomic bombs - because we regard the lives of our soldiers as more valuable than yours, so we choose to preserve them and defeat you. Now STFU and/or die."
And they did.
Occam's Tool| 9.24.11 @ 2:47PM
No, if Germany had been nuked once or twice that would have been appropriate.
Kevin O| 10.26.11 @ 4:31PM
How expendable were the caucasians, or even the non-japanese asians to the japanese? Try asking the the survivors of Nanking, Bataan, Korea, Unit 731, or the POW camps.
JA| 9.22.11 @ 9:09AM
@BobK.
No, Hitler was always a socialist, first and foremost. He hated capitalism, profits and ALL religions.
The Nazi party was originally the German Workers Socialist Party and Hitler joined that party in the 1920s.
Frankly , the only difference betwixt communists and nazis is that the communists were , and are, very very patient in conquering other nations - typically by fomenting "home grown" revolts thru the use of espionage and other subversive activities - all disguised as "home grown."
The Nazis did not want to waste time with all of this. They were very impatient and wanted to expand their empire via military invasion.
Aside from this, there is very very little difference between a Nazi or communist.
By the way, the term fascist was invented by Mussolini - who also was a socialist.
Though, one big difference betwixt communists and nazis is the great superiority and expertise that communists had when it came to exterminating people; the nazis were rank amateurs in this category compared to the communists.
Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 10:43AM
It is a small but important issue. Without the backing of the German people he could not have done what he did and he got their support by appealing to their nationalism which he believed in. He said that the people ("volk") come before the state.
You can read a good analysis of this in Historian John Lukacs's "Democracy and Populism--Fear and Hatred" in the chapter, "Misuse and misreading of National Socialism as an "Ideology" and in the chapter, "Misuse and misreading of Fascism" at pp 116 and 117 in which you will discover that Stalin ordered that the term national socialism was forbidden to be used. After 1932 any references to Hitler, or National Socialism or to the Third Reich was always to fascists or hitlerites because germany's national socialism could be mistaken for his own russian national socialism.
Lukacs also wrote a number of histories on Churchill and Hitler and on WWII and it's aftermath.
The chapters from the above cited book on "Popular sovereignty and socialism;" Popular sovereignty and nationalism;" and Nationalism and socialism" are also very enlightening on these issues.
JimP| 9.23.11 @ 4:12PM
I agree with you JA, but you forgot to mention that the Nazis had better looking uniforms than the Ruskies/commies.
POST American| 9.22.11 @ 9:19AM
"The Federal Reserve has pumped
so many BILLIONS into [Nazi] Germany
that they DARE NOT name the total."
-Rep. Charles McFadden
1935
---------AS we BEHOLD the rise of the MOST
awesomely genocidal regime hstory's EVER
seen ---ACROSS the Pacific, itself entirely
a Globalist bankster creation; itself entirely
enabled by the betrayal of the American
economy and technology; itself almost entirely
underwritten by the US taxpayer.
-----------------TAKE HEED PEOPLE.
HUAC meets NUREMBURG ----TAKE HEED.
Juan Jose Morales-Castillo | 9.22.11 @ 9:35AM
What does Herr Roberts have to say about the postwar fate of the Central European countries that ended up being enslaved by Dzhugachvili--a fate that even Allied nations Poland and Czechoslovakia had to suffer?
Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 11:05AM
I haven't read the book yet but I intend to get it and read it. I am confident he has written about the Yalta conference in February 1945 and Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill and their division of Europe at that time. After Roosevelt died Truman more or less left it alone at Potsdam and Stalin, for his part, complied with the letter of the agreement when it came to problems with Greece and Trieste.
As far as the eastern european countries post war fate, Roberts wrote a history of the 2nd world war, not it's aftermath. For that you should read historian John Lukacs's "The Legacy of the Second World War." ISBN 978-0-300-17138-9
JP| 9.22.11 @ 10:31AM
With the fall of the old Soviet Union, much documentation that was previously unavailable became available to Western historians. Retired Army Colonel, David Glanz, published a number of well researched studies concerning the Nazis invasion of the USSR. And slowly much new research has come to light concerning, Hitler, Stalin, the German General Staff (both OKH, OKW), as well as the Soviet High Command (STAVKA).
Here are a few things that have come to light:
Operation Sealion (the proposed invasion of Great Britain) was doomed to failure. As Admiral Raeder (commander of the German Navy) pointed out in a 1940 memo, the amount of barges need to move 3 Infantry Corps across the Channel would require all of the barges in Germany, as well as the captured territories. This would cripple all of Central Europe's river traffic. And they would be sitting ducks for the RAF. Hitler's decision to allow the BEF to evacuate Dunkirk in June of 1940 looms large. Without the 300,000 professional British soldiers who escaped France, the UK would have been litterally defenceless.
The decision to invade Russia has always been placed squarely in Hitler's corner. However, as early as July 1940 the German Army High Command had invasion plans drawn up. Until December 1941, Hitler pretty much allowed the German Army free reign in drawing up and executing the plans to invade the USSR. And while Hitler did change the focus of the invasion in Aug of 1941 from Moscow to the northern and southern wings of the USSR (Lenningrad and the Ukraine), he had good reason to. The German Army totally underestimated the size and capabilities of Stalin's army. And depsite two huge encirclement operations (Minsk and Smolensk), Guderian's and Hoth's panzer groups were in serious trouble. As David Glanz has written, by the end of July of 1941, it was obvious that without a significant period of rest, the panzers of Army Group Center didn't have the fighting power to capture Moscow (Hoth's panzers suffered 60% losses, Guderian's panzer had lost over 50% of thier vehicle transport and 45% of thier panzers). And the decision to launch Operation Typhoon (the final attack on Moscow in Oct of 1941) was a plan written and endorsed by almost all senior field commanders, save Rundstedt. Six weeks later winter and disaster struck.
This is not to say Hitler didn't share the lions share of the blame. But, until the disaster of the Winter of 1941-42, Hitler relied upon the expertise of his high trained and credentialed Wehrmacht staff officers.
Sean| 9.22.11 @ 10:31AM
Sounds no different than any other history of WWII. You mean Hitler had no interest in conquering Britain? I thought we would all be speaking German if he wasn't defeated! WWII ended in appeasement to the Soviets. With out English involvement it probably would of ended with annexation of Poland and Germany and Soviets at war in a few years.
Many hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans volunteered for German service on the Eastern front to combat the communists. After the war the British turned them over to the Soviets knowing they would be killed. There were really very few good guys in that war. One thing going for Patton was he refused to hand prisoners over to the Soviets to be killed.
JP| 9.22.11 @ 12:06PM
It's worse than you realize. All the Soviet soldiers who suffered as German POWs (and were sent to work as slaves in factories and mines) were returned to Stalin. He condemned almost all of them as traitors either sent them to Gulags (where they died of starvation or exposure) or the firing squads.
Tiddly| 9.22.11 @ 12:27PM
The author seems not to have noticed about one-half of World War Two---that the Allies and Japan were in a death struggle during those years as well.
The title of his book should have "in Europe" added to the end the title.
Bob K.| 9.22.11 @ 3:16PM
Yes he does. Read this review of the book and you will see.
http://wavefunction.fieldofsci.....ndrew.html
And the United States took care of the Japanese largely by itself, with help from Australia and New Zealand, even though the majority of the USA's efforts, money and resources were concentrated on the European part of the war.
JFGalt| 9.22.11 @ 12:56PM
The scariest part of Hitler's rise to power was that he did it in one of the most educated countries in Europe. Intellegent people were sucked into his abyss. He showed future demigods how easy it was to fool most of the people most of the time and to have them still bless you as their sons and families died for a worthless cause.
canuckistani| 9.22.11 @ 5:12PM
It's amazing the concessions people will make to their integrity and honor when a smooth talkin conman tells them "it's those people" not you that are responsible for the problems of the day......
Sound familiar?
proreason| 9.24.11 @ 12:11PM
True.
But the good news is that Hitler was also a competant leader during the early years of his rule. If he hadn't turned the German economy around, and quickly, things would have turned out differently.
We have a slight advantage in being ruled by an incompetant ideologue and con man.
D Roamer | 9.22.11 @ 11:42PM
An interesting observation, respect for education, always the German forte. My observation is that the bitterness of the WWI treaty, which was severe, putting Germany in a position of no recovery, other than violating the treaty, was the start of WWII. Also religion lost it's hold on a former Lutheran and Catholic nation and lost it's conscience. Martyr Dietrich Bonhoffer and some others.
Occam's Tool| 9.22.11 @ 2:45PM
Th author also covered the War against Japan. Brilliantly. In Detail and Depth.
To comment on a book review, it helps to have read the book in question.
This is a magnificently clearly written book. This is the book I will use to educate my children on WWII in home school.
POST American| 9.22.11 @ 11:52PM
---------------------BOTTOM LINE----------------------
And, as people who've read history know,
Imperial Japan was itself very largely,
the creation of another Roosevelt ---Teddy Roosevelt,
in his secret 'understandings' with Tokyo at the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War.
FDR's mother's family was on the go in the region
too ----deep in the opium trade, like MOST of the Yale foreign service, Globalist 'eel--eat'.
They opened the door to the Japanese colonization of Korea, and, eventually, Manchuria.
BOTH places also became staging grounds for horrific
EUGENICS 'experiments'.
And BTW ---we now wonder how much
Globalist intrigue was even behind the Russo-
Japanese War.
It was no secret that the British aristocracy envied
the wealth and reach of the old Tsars.
Further, the Tzars for all their faults
----DID resist BOTH turning the money
system over to unaccountable PRIVATE, foreign USURY
-----AND Freemasonry.
Although the secret police and pogroms
were, undoubtedly, real ---we've never
heard so much as a word about the Tsars
being involved with EUGENICS.
The friendship between Tsar Alexander
and Lincoln over the banking issue is now
well known.
BOTH freed their indentured
populations at almost the same time.
Of course, now, Japan, like the US, has
served its purpose and now must be taken down
--and put away by any and all means.
-----------HUAC meets NUREMBERG 2012---------
Hal G. P. Colebatch| 9.23.11 @ 1:42AM
I have read the book. It is excellent and very comprehensive. A fine piece of writing.
W| 9.23.11 @ 2:53PM
Roberts also wrote "Masters and Commanders," about Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Brooke, and "A History of the English speaking Peoples since 1900." Both are excellent.
POST American| 9.24.11 @ 12:59AM
-----------------BOTTOMLESS LINE-------------------
Capstone Freemasonry's instigations of 2 world
wars, and a host of 'die-all--ek--tick' conflicts
from Bolshevism, Nazism and MAO,
to 'Feminism' and 'Gay Lib'
is now common knowledge. (SEE Alan Watt)
And NOW onto WW III.
"Understand, we are in the middle of the
MOST awful war the world has ever seen.
As Cheney himself said, it's to last a hundred years.
A hundred years war. A 'War Against theWorld'."
-ALAN WATT
---------------ARE YOU AWAKE YET?----------------