Gilbert's a very able historian of WWII and his choice to follow a strict, day by day, chronological approach was obviously very conscious, but it's also a serious flaw. I think he chose it primarily to bring out details and maintain focus on Nazi atrocities large and small, and those of the German army generally, as well as those of Imperial Japan. It works, to the point where it gets tiresome for me, and that’s because it so badly interferes with coherent historical narrative. Maybe more importantly, it contributes to this preposterously subtitled “complete” history of the war having large gaps in important areas. The battles for Stalingrad and St. Petersburg, for example, are so chopped up that it’s hard to pull the disparate pieces together. But they’re nevertheless covered reasonably well; we’re never told how and when German forces got into Italy, in what numbers, formations, with what materiel, etc. The Pacific war is particularly chopped up, and you’ll have to go elsewhere to get any clarity or detail about what was happening on the east Asian mainland.

To be fair, Gilbert certainly knew the weaknesses inherent in his approach and he surely chose it knowingly. It is too easy to think of the Holocaust as an abstraction, and a sanitized one, and to use that abstraction to avoid thinking about its true horrors, about the very human depths of evil involved, and about all the other atrocities and evils that weren’t part of the plan to eliminate European Jewry. Apparently, cutting through this tendency was Gilbert’s first, second and third priority. He probably succeeded, but that precluded producing a good history of the war. For me, that’s unfortunate. The book has its place, and a valuable one, but it misrepresents itself. It probably should have let the context of the war be more of a background to the book’s primary focus, allowing the author to both focus more on the atrocities and not pretend to be presenting a solid history of the war. I wouldn’t suggest this book to anyone who hasn’t read a couple other good histories of WWII. As a footnote, it does have many very good maps, which similar books often don’t have.
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A receita para este excelente livro é uma pitada de tudo e nada em excesso. Assim, tem economia quanto baste, ideologia na medida em que é necessária para explicar os factos, estratégia militar e política porque é disso que afinal se trata, mas também episódios de gente comum que luta, sofre e morre, quer em combate, quer atrás das linhas. Talvez dê demasiada importância aos judeus, mas o autor investigou a questão judaica por isso quis utilizar todo o material disponível.
Por detrás das grandes tendências há dramas humanos que o autor quis revelar. Acho que a História só fica a ganhar. Finalmente, há uma isenção que por vezes até dói. Apesar de tudo, gostei mais do livro do mesmo autor sobre a I Guerra Mundial. Pareceu-me mais dramático. Ou talvez fosse porque conheço melhor a história da Segunda Guerra do que a da Primeira. ( )

Aria, acqua, terra. E fuoco, fuoco ovunque, esploso dalle bombe degli Junkers nella battaglia d’Inghilterra, dai razzi degli aerosiluranti giapponesi Kate negli scontri alle isole Midway, dai fucili dell’Armata rossa per le strade di Berlino (fonte: Google Books)

Tit. orig.: Second World War Ed. especial concebida para o Jornal Expresso