The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (2011 original; edició 2011)

Good read but very little "new" material. That said, Roberts is a very entertaining writer. ( )

It’s clear from this book that Andrew Roberts is a fan of recycling, as this book is little more than a rehashing of the war as covered by others. Contrary to the subtitle, there is little that is “new” here; instead the reader gets a fairly standard interpretation of the war that is largely dependent on the work of others. Worse, his account concentrates heavily on the ground war involving Germany; the war against Japan in Asia is covered in only three of the book’s eighteen chapters, while the air and naval campaign in the West is crammed into a fourth. Roberts’s readable writing style will make this a good introduction for readers new to the conflict, but to someone already familiar with the war this book will be a reworking of what they have already read elsewhere. ( )

There are two things that are true of me as a reader.

1. I read a lot of books.

2. I read a lot of books about World War Two.

Because I am obsessive (this is probably an understatement) about tracking my reading I can calculate this exactly if I want to, but I’m guessing that around 20-30% of my reading is centered about the Second World War. Which is a rather roundabout way of introducing my thoughts on Andrew Roberts one-volume history of World War Two. I rarely give out 5 stars for a book, but this would be like 4.85 stars if one could give such a rating, and since it is my post I can.

Here is one thing that I liked, and one thing that I disliked in this book. To be clear I liked a lot more than one thing, and really only disliked one thing, but I’m trying to keep this short.

What I Liked - Churchill’s Zingers

Winston Churchill was possibly the most quotable person in history this side of Jesus. His speeches are legendary. His genius with language was best described by President John F. Kennedy (who actually stole it from Edward R. Murrow), “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” I knew about Churchill’s mastery of language, what I didn’t know was that during the war he delighted in sticking it to Hitler in the press. Take this excerpt from a speech before Parliament:

When Herr Hitler escaped his bomb on July 20th he described his survival as providential; I think that from a purely military point of view we can all agree with him, for certainly it would be most unfortunate if the Allies were to be deprived, in the closing phases of the struggle, of that form of warlike genius by which Corporal Schickelgruber has so notably contributed to our victory.(1)

He gigs Hitler, not just by crediting him the success of Allies, he also uses his family’s original surname before it was changed to Hitler. This was convenient for Churchill because Adolph Hitler hated his father, and it also slyly pointed out that Hitler couldn’t even prove his own Aryan heritage. He did this many times, and we can only dream of what Winston would have been like on Twitter.

What I Didn’t Like - The Missing Pacific

The only quibble that I have with Roberts’s history is that the war in the Pacific Theater gets the short straw. The book is impeccably researched and wonderfully written, and as a British writer he does a good job of being fair to the rest of the Allies, but the war effort in Europe takes up the vast majority of his work. I tested this theory by doing some searches (Viva la ebooks! Long live Kindle!) to see how many times the names of different Generals/Admirals occured. Here were the results:

MacArthur – 20

Patton – 95

Montgomery – 118

Eisenhower – 70

Rommel – 147

Guderian – 85

Nimitz – 8

It’s still a great book, but it needed more of the Pacific. How can a comprehensive history of the Second World War only mention Nimitz and MacArthur a combined 28 times?

Okay, the small rant is over. It was a great book, and it is hard to beat it in one volume, even it gives the Pacific the short end of the stick..

Stats

Pages - 797

Edition Read - Ebook

Sharp Score - 4.75 ( )

This was a fairly brief overview of the war, but what I appreciated was the British slant of the writing. I learned quite a bit I didn't know from the other WW2 histories, primarily because they have all been American focused. I should probably read something from the Russian perspective next time. ( )

A fairly detailed coverage of WWII, both western and Pacific fronts, with a very HEAVY concentration on armaments, manpower, battle strategies, equipment comparisons, military leaders, etc. Not much detail on the political, personal sacrifice. The number of casualties fit in with the mm size of artillery and the loss of tonnage on the seas. The closing comments, though, leaves you with the chilling thought that Hitler could possibly have won and that the world would be in a much different place. ( )