How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won - The Second World Wars

An in depth but somewhat verbose account of his concepts and astute observations. Having read War and Peace many years ago, I feel that this marathon read should have been entitled “War and War”. I highly recommend this book for its perspicacity and realpolitik lessons.

Treats WW2 in a different way. I doesn't discuss battles or generals except as examples of how the war was carried out. Gives a good overview on how and why the war was fought in different ways by different countries for different reasons.

VDH provides a unique perspective on WW II. I don't believe that most people understand the shear idiocy of the Axis countries in even starting the war and horrendous number of casualties suffered by all of the combatants.

Great Book! As a US Army Infantry Officer of over ten years: Victor Davis Hanson (The Classicist) provides a unique, perspective and insight, I wish his books were around when I was still on active duty. Well done!

I'm a great fan of VDH. Classicist, military analyst, historian, political commentator. His views are always worth reading and he is immensely persuasive. And this is an absorbing and highly creditable work, though IMHO it is hard to know exactly what it is aiming at. It is history written through a military filter, yet not exactly a military history at least of the conventional sort. It reads rather like a brilliant professor's summary of his views, based on his overall knowledge. My reservations are that....again, hard to put on a finger on exactly....but he asserts conclusions without reckoning with counter-analysis or counter-evidence. Now, I recognize an author cannot "do" WWII in all its complexity in a work of this size and debate every point. Maybe the best way I can put it is that the work is probably too sophisticated and assumes too much background to be useful for beginners, and yet is rather too conclusory for more knowledgeable readers. An example: VDH simply assumes that Japan and Germany would lose because of the imbalance of resources of "Axis" versus Allies. True enough, in retrospect. But this assumes that the USA fully mobilized its resources, adopted a "Europe first" approach, that Stalin effectively mobilized Russia's army, that the Alliance held together, and other uncertainties. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is the political angle seems to be slighted in VDH's analysis, which is a bit surprising given that the classical histories VDH admires give substantial weight to political will and political decision-making.

Concise overview of the beginning, conduct and ending of WW2. Not bogged down in endless detail, but easy to read chapters with all viewpoints incorporating each participants strength and weakness that determined the final outcome of the conflict.

This book offers an excellent assessment and interpretation of the events leading up to and during World War II at the grand strategic level. There is little, if any, original research in the book. In looking at the bibliography and the citations of the chapters, I would say that the author (Victor Hanson) has probably read every significant book published on World War II in English over the past 30 years.

In my opinion, the book’s author is better at assessing major events and their significance than in discussing details of tanks and artillery. He makes many errors regarding weapon armament and development.

For example, in Chapter 7 “Ships and Strategies”, he states “Had Germany and Italy finished a carrier – for example, a Graf Zeppelin-class carrier carrying twelve or so modified Bf 109s and perhaps 30 adapted Ju 87 Stukas—they would have had a far better chance of winning the battles of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.” This is, unfortunately, a naive assessment that you frequently read in fantasy alternative histories of WW II. The navies that had aircraft carriers-- such as the US, Britain and Japan-- developed ships, pilots, aircrew, aircraft and doctrine over a period of 20 years from around 1918 through 1939. Germany and Italy weren’t going to match this in just three or four years. They also weren’t going to match the British Navy with just one or two small aircraft carriers deployed to the North Atlantic.

In Chapter 7, the author also invents a US battleship that didn’t exist in WW II: the “North Dakota.” There was a US battleship “South Dakota,” but no “North Dakota.”

Another questionable assessment also in Chapter 7: the author states that submarines could be built far more cheaply than battleships and cruisers. This is true, but a WW II submarine cost as much as a destroyer. In addition, submarine attacks by any of the navies in WW II only succeeded against other navies that couldn’t, or were unable, to provide adequate anti-submarine escorts for their merchant cargo ships.

Another questionable assessment in Chapter 7: “By 1939, the promise of improved submarines seemed to guarantee greater success in World War II, given superior ranges, speeds, depths, and armament.”, This is completely wrong: the technical performance of submarines in 1939 wasn’t much better than that of 1918. The German Type XXI U-boats of 1944 / 1945 eventually revolutionized submarine performance after WW II, but that certainly wasn’t the case of submarines during most of WW II.

Chapter 15 “Tanks and Artillery” offers further examples of the author’s technological weaknesses. In several places he states that the German Panzer IV was initially armed with a 50 mm gun. This incorrect: the Panzer IV was initially armed with a 75 mm L/24. It was never armed with a 50 mm gun. It was progressively upgraded with a 75 mm L/43 and then a 75 mm L/48. Another distortion or exaggeration occurs on pages 373: “… the classical German 75 mm tank gun (mostly known as the 7.5 cm KwK 42 L/70)—with a longer barrel …could easily penetrate thick armor at long distances in a way that the Sherman’s 75 could not.” The statement on armor penetration is correct, but the claim that this gun was the “classic” German anti-tank weapon is wrong. The 7.5 cm L/70 was only used to arm the Panther tank and the Jagdpanzer IV self-propelled anti-tank vehicle. Far more towed 75 mm L/46 and vehicle-armed L/48 guns were manufactured and deployed than the 75 mm L/70.

Other errors occur at the end of Chapter 15. The caption for the first photo states “By 1941 Krupp was building the famous 88 mm cannon in plants expropriated throughout occupied Europe. Here a French factory turns out anti-aircraft models of the famous gun.” The photo shows a German 50 mm anti-tank gun, not an 88 mm anti-aircraft gun. The French caption within the photo reads “Construction de cannons antichars” which translates as “Construction of anti-tank guns.”

The second photo at the end of Chapter 15 is of a German railway gun. The caption reads: “Despite their dramatic appearance, Germany’s huge K-5 rail runs never justified the time, manpower, and expense involved in their deployment. The battery pictured here was integrated into the Atlantic Wall defenses in France by 1944.” Whatever gun this is, it is not a K-5. I am not an expert on German railway artillery, but I have compared this photo with those shown in several books I have on German railway artillery. The 280 mm L/76 K-5 had a barrel almost 70 feet long. In comparing the barrel length to the breach in this photo, it is clearly not that of a K-5. I think there are at least three possibilities of what this gun really is: 1) a 28 cm “Schwere Bruno,” 2) a 24 cm “Theodor Bruno,” 3) a captured 274 mm French gun. I think this latter gun is a real possibility: the Germans mounted hundreds of captured French guns in the Atlantic Wall, if only to take advantage of the large amounts of captured French ammunition to go with them.

I thought the best chapters were Chapter 18 “The Workers,” Chapter 19 “The Dead,” and Chapter 20 “Why and What Did the Allies Win?” The chapters really don’t offer anything new in the way of data or information, but they offer excellent summaries of production, mass deaths, and how victory or defeat was achieved. I never cease to be amazed at how cruel and murderous human beings can be with each other. World War II resulted in 60 to 80 million deaths, or around 4% of the world population of the time. At least ¾ of them were civilians. They were starved, shot, gassed, and bombed because they were of the wrong race, wrong religion, wrong ethnic group, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least so-called lower animals kill for important things like food and sex.

I've read multiple books on World War 2. I don't mind re-reading events. But Victor Hanson presents material that multiple other authors have over-looked or omitted. It is always refreshing to say " now isn't that interesting." I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in this period with material that is organized and presented in an original manner with very interesting insights added.

Although Victor Davis Hanson is primarily a military historian, this is not, strictly speaking, a book of military history. There have been innumerable books written about the history of World War 2. Due to an intense interest in airplanes dating to around my eighth year, I have read many many of these histories myself. Probably hundreds over the last half-century, perhaps as many as a thousand. Therefore, while I am not nearly as much of an expert as VDH, I feel that I can confidently assert that there has rarely been a book like this written about the war. It is difficult to pigeonhole "The Second World Wars" into a neat category, but it is probably closest to a highly detailed after-action report. VDH examines just about every aspect of the war—armies, navies, air forces, civilian populations, industrialization, ideology, and civilian and military leaders, just to name a few—and describes the characteristics of these for each of the belligerents, while also discussing how these various characteristics played into the way that the war proceeded.

This is, at first glance, an odd way to organize a book. Indeed, I had trouble for the first hundred pages or so keeping my attention on the subject at hand. I kept wanting to go off and look at some aspect of the war that caught my attention because of a chance remark by VDH. However, as I began to get more into the manuscript, I became better attuned to the advantages of the organization of the work. I began looking forward to the quantitative and qualitative comparisons between, for example, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army as military forces (the Wehrmacht was much better at killing its enemies, but it didn't matter, because the Red Army was able to bring overwhelming superiority in men and arms to every battle as the war went on, so all the killing did was to delay the inevitable. The Wehrmacht never had a chance to win on the Eastern Front after the middle of 1942).

Although I have some quibbles with the authors judgement on certain points (the utility of the P-38 as a fighter plane, for example. VDH says it was lackluster, yet the top four or five scoring American aces flew P-38s.), these are minor, and no two individuals will ever have the same judgement even on simple things, much less something as broad and sweeping as the most horrific conflict in human history. The vast majority of his judgements and analysis, however, fits squarely into the mainstream of historical thought on the conflict. Indeed, for someone who has studied the war, there are not many surprises here. What this work brings to the table is an extraordinary depth and breadth of analysis that touches on so many aspects of the war that it is difficult to think of another work with an equally broad view of the conflict. VDH touches on areas that few of us have even considered, and even if we have, we have likely forgotten what we read.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in how the war happened, and why it turned out the way that it did. After reading this, you will wonder how the Axis powers ever thought they could win, without pure wishful thinking on their parts. The most surprising thing this book brings out is that both Germany and Japan started their wars without any proposed end game. It was a reckless and insane toss of the dice where they were essentially saying, "Well, we will set the world on fire and see what happens. We are pretty sure that the people we are fighting will give up." And both countries paid for the hubris of their leaders in a fashion unimaginable before 1939.

At the top let me be clear that this review is not about the contents of the book. I've just started it. My comment is directed at the printing of the book. The copy that I received from the store was, according to the copyright page, the third printing. Having worked in the print industry, the book was printed using digital press technology. I can tell by the way the ink is absorbed into the paper and the absence of glossy gathers for the photographs included with the book. Please note: I fully support digital press technology that can achieve excellent results and has been a godsend for keeping back title books in print. In the case of the book that I received, however, there are issues. The book block was created with a thin, serif font (the ones with the little "dots" and "tails" on the letters) on a creme paper. My guess is that the press operator was not watching or taking densitometer readings regularly and the water-based ink being applied to the paper dipped below specification resulting in a very, very light typeface that is difficult to read against the creme paper. After about 10 pages, I have to stop and rest my eyes. At 529 pages of text, it's going to be a slog! Knowing the current state of digital technology, the average reader should NEVER be able to tell the different between an offset printed book and a digitally printed book, with the exception of the photographs. I think my copy of this book resulted from a breakdown in quality control at the printer that may have only occurred temporarily, until the press operator increased the amount of ink being applied to the paper being passed through the press. Your result may vary.

This is not a book you easily read start to finish, indeed, I could not finish it, choosing instead to read select chapters (the best ones 18, 19, and 20). First, the writing is boring, “encyclopedia-like,” and tedious. It also suffers from the lack of a good editor (not to mention a proofreader). Given Hanson’s other works, my expectations were fairly high. Some interesting insights, but otherwise disappointing and a waste of money.

This is a "30,000 foot" level overview of the dynamics that made the Second World "Wars" what they turned out to be. A series of small border clashes in Europe and Asia wasn't supposed to become the worst global conflict in history, but did.

None of it is a new or original insight for those who study that conflict, but it's a useful overview for the casual reader. For example, Hanson makes it clear that neither the German nor the Japanese leadership expected their adversaries to fight to the finish. They would settle for peace, leaving the Axis powers with most of their gains. Consequently the Axis' preparations for and conduct of military operations were totally unsuited to a long-term conflict, and therefore doomed from the start.

There are a number of such useful insights, but they are marred by Hanson's atrocious writing style. He is ungrammatical, repetitive, and disorganized in his exposition. Badly-constructed sentences run on for entire paragraphs, making them almost unreadable. Parenthetical clauses are embedded within dashed clauses embedded inside sentences that should have been broken into several. In fact, the book might make a good object lesson for aspiring editors - something Hanson desperately needed but apparently didn't get.

Finally, Hanson is making a polemical argument in this book: Nations should be well-armed and respond forcefully to aggression to stop it before it starts. The League of Nations was a fantasy; the Nazis should have been crushed preemptively in 1937-8. Translated into contemporary terms, Hanson would favour an early and violent response to nations like North Korea rather than long-term deterrence and management. Whether that is the best policy in the modern nuclear world is doubtful.

No I did not buy this book from the store, but I did read it.

As others note, it uses a unique structure to dissect WWII, focusing not on chronology or people, but on themes such as airpower, seapower, leadership, etc. This causes a few redundancies when reviewing some events, but it allows for incredibly deep analysis.

The book is not afraid of quoting statistcs, and the numbers lay bare some facts that are uncomfortable, enlightening or frightening. For example, it is well-known that the most deadly bombing event during WWII was neither the Hiroshima or Nagaski atomic bombs, but the Tokyo firebombing in February, 1945. What I did not realize that if there was no atomic bomb, the U.S. and U.K. would have redirected their entire respective air forces on Japan with regular raids of 3,000-4,000 heavies, delivering the equivalent payload of an atomic bomb every single month. Think about that. Or, we know that Russia incurred massive casualties defending the Motherland from their former Allies, but 75% of their armor troops died in their tanks.

If someone wants to understand the "how's" of WWII, this is the book to read.

Two factors made this book an instant “Must Have” and “Must Read” work. The first factor was that Victor Davis Hanson wrote it. Hanson is both a classicist and a military historian. He is equally at home teaching, speaking, or writing about the ancient Greeks and Romans. His skills include being adept at discussing the literature of the Greeks and Romans. Want to know about Homer, Herodotus, or Livy? Read Hanson. Particularly, see Who Killed Homer?, Warfare and Agriculture in Ancient Greece, Bonfire of the Humanities, or A War Like No Other.

But he is also one of the premier military historians of our time. Rank him right up there with John Keegan. See Carnage and Culture, Ripples of Battle, The Soul of Battle, or The Savior Generals. (We can add this point also: Hanson is a first rate political commentator as well. See his contributions as found on his web-site or on the National Review web-site.)

The second reason was the title: The Second World Wars. As I have stated before, my love of history began with studying World War II and other events in 20th Century history. That love has never diminished. (My love for other parts of history has increased, however). Oddly enough, I never took a college class that covered WWII nor have I taught it much in recent years. But I continue to read about it.

If one wants to know the story of the Second World War, don’t read this book. If one wants to know the causes, don’t read this book. If one wants to read extensively about the incredible cast of leaders (political and military), don’t read this book. If one enjoys the narratives of the battles, the clash of arms, the suffering and the glory of what the soldiers, sailors, and airmen faced…need I repeat myself?

Who then should read this book? Those who already have read extensively on the war. This is a BIG PICTURE ANALYSIS of the war. It is an accounting of multitudes of numbers, details, weapon capabilities, geographical factors, industrial outputs, and casualties. As such, I loved it.

Who besides Victor Davis Hanson could fill a book with a million statistics, facts, and figures, and then make ample use of references to ancient wars, and still produce an incredibly mind-numbing and brilliant work? I found myself constantly asking, “How could a war of this magnitude have actually taken place?” and “How could Hanson have assembled and made sense of all these details?”
Most nights (for I read this book at night), I was only able to absorb and cover 10 to 20 pages of this book. That is a testimony in its favor. (I always had the “page-turner” close by to read after the Hanson book.) But each night, I looked forward to reading this book.

The Axis powers simply took on more than it was possible for them to achieve. Of course, one can examine ways they could have won the war or achieved some degree of survival. Some of the decisions of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese defy reason.

On the part of Hitler: Why attack Russia when Britain was still a formidable force that was hurling bombs on Berlin itself? Why declare war on the United States after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Why waste so much manpower holding places like Norway? Why leave Malta and Gibraltar in Allied hands? Why waste money and resources on some major weapons that were never produced in ample numbers? And, of course, why brutalize people you needed on your side?

To Mussolini: Why declare war on France? That little venture, along with the attack on Greece, helped doom Italy. Why enter into a war when Italy did not have an adequate army or industry to wage war? Why join in with the efforts to conquer Russia?

To Japan: Why leave the American forces in Pearl Harbor wounded, but not destroyed? Why provoke America and Britain into a war when war with China was already consuming so much manpower?

Along with those issues, the Allied powers made plenty of mistakes on their own. The fall of France in 1940 continues to defy imagination. Britain made enough blunders to lose the war a dozen times over. The United States would have committed blunders of almost irreparable harm had it not been for the British restraints. Russia’s conduct–meaning Stalin’s–was horrendous and stupid at times.

Yet Britain, America, and Russia produced weapons, planes, tanks, artillery guns, trucks, and bombs in such numbers that the sheer weight of it all should have crushed the Axis powers. Add to that, the manpower (which was not made up solely of males).

Hanson’s account calls on the reader to reconsider the impact of the Allied bombing campaign over Germany and Japan. The types and amount of planes that Britain and America produced and employed was staggering. The air war was the second front that Stalin often complained about the lack of. The British really made a substantial contribution to winning the war both through being at war with Germany longer than any other allied country and in terms of quality production of weaponry. And no one can successfully dismiss Churchill’s roles and rhetoric.

If your love of history spurs you to want to make the comparisons between opposing forces, this is the book for you. If you have read and enjoyed Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy, but feel like you are ready for some behind the scenes details, this book will amaze you. If you enjoy comparisons of the recent past (World War II) to the distant past (the Peloponnesian War), you will find those comparisons here.

In short, this book is a great contribution by one of our finest historians. And this book is absolutely vital to add to your library and reading list for understanding the Second World War.

If the name Victor Davis Hanson is new to you, you've been missing years of superb essays and books and may want to reevaluate your use of time. Just saying.

This is a heavy book. Literally (two pounds; I weighed it) and thematically. Hanson takes 529 pages (not including 63 pages of notes and 37 pages of works cited) to bring facts into perspective.

This is not a book from the perspective of those doing the fighting, whether Private or General. This is the war as seen from a strategic perspective. Sounds dull, but not so. The many statistics help us understand the war as we (OK, me) hadn’t seen before.

The book is divided into seven groups.
1. Ideas
2. Air
3. Water
4. Earth
5. Fire [tanks and artillery]
6. People
7. Ends

Hanson expects us to already know something of the war, and some geography. If we don’t, we’ll often be referring to Wikipedia (which isn’t a bad idea either).

As an example of seeing the war with new eyes, it’s now clear to me that until America entered the war after Pearl Harbor, it was only Great Britain under Churchill's leadership, its cities regularly bombed, that defied Germany, already the conqueror of most of Europe. The history of the world pivots on this man’s shoulders. Many of us are not speaking German because of him.

I also learned that due to Britain's refusal to capitulate, Hitler felt forced to attack Russia, its former partner. It was a gamble that could have given us, had it succeeded, a world run by Nazis.

We’ve all heard it was America's factories that produced the guns, tanks, planes, ships, etc, that helped defeat the Axis powers, but until reading this book it was never clear to me how critical, and how amazing, the production was. Page 221: "The United States produced nearly 2.4 million military transport vehicles, a greater number than the entire combined production of the Axis, British and Russians."

Page 458: "Japan - which was not much damaged by American bombing until after March 1945 - built an incredible 16 aircraft carriers (of all sizes and categories, from fleet to escort to light) during the war. That was an amazing achievement until compared with more than the 150 light, escort and fleet carriers that the United States deployed during the same period." (How many carriers do we have now? Eleven.)

Page 225: "It was regarded as a great feat of mobilization that the Americans had created nearly a 100-division army in less than a year and a half, but in nearly the same time period the Soviets mobilized over 400 new and replacement divisions, albeit smaller in size, far less equipped and motorized, and with no need to transport them across thousands of miles of ocean to the front.” (How many divisions do we have now? Army, 11; Marines, 7 expeditionary units.)

Until Hanson's chapter, "Air," I never appreciated the perils of being an airman in this war. Page 129: “The American bombing of the Third Reich had been successful but costly: 40,000 aircrew members dead, 6000 aircraft lost, and $43 billion spent.” That’s just in Europe, and doesn’t include fighting in Asia.

What this book most impresses on me is the scale of the fighting. Page 225: "No other army [Soviet] experienced such losses. About 4.5 million Russians died in the first full year of the German invasion alone, a number almost as large as the size of the German army itself in 1941." Four and a half million dead? In one year? We lose four soldiers in Niger and it's a national traumatic experience.

I could go on and on, example after example. The chapter, "The Dead," is a tour de force by itself.

This shouldn't be the first book on WWII to read, and for those steeped in the war’s history will be merely a review. For the rest of us, it's well worth our time and attention.

For even those well read on the background, battles, and outcome of World War II, Victor Davis Hanson’s book will likely add to knowledge and perspective on the war. He argues that the outcome was never in doubt once the Soviet Union and the US entered the war for reasons of geography, population size, manufacturing capacity, logistics and leadership.

Unlike Churchill and FDR, the leadership of the Axis — Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese Emperor and military — lacked experience with the world outside their home countries. In particular, they underestimated the resources that would be required to support military operations far beyond their national borders, whether struggling with the distances in Russia, the logistical challenges of North Africa, the vastness of the Pacific, or the challenges of importing oil and other raw materials that had to be transported from far outside their national borders. Equally, they underestimated the ability of the United States and Great Britain to build the ships, aircraft and logistical infrastructure to fight and win distant battles around the globe. Finally, they underestimated the capacity of the Soviet Union to produce tanks and aircraft and a ruthlessness on Stalin’s part that matched their own.

One is left wondering what would have happened had Hitler been content with his victories in 1940 and had never invaded the Soviet Union. Or if the Japanese had secured oil and other raw materials by invading the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, leaving untouched America’s Pacific possessions. Or if Hitler had not declared war on the US days after Pearl Harbor, thus making possible FDR’s Europe-first strategy.

The book answered a question that had always puzzled me. How did the US supply the Soviet Union with some 1,900 locomotives, 11,000 rail cars, thousands of US-made trucks (constituting a third of the Red Army’s trucks), along with vast quantities of food and clothing? I had read about the losses suffered by the few convoys delivering supplies to the northern Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk, and I was aware that some shipments came through Iran. These routes hardly seemed sufficient as a means to transport such a level of equipment. What Hanson explained, however, was that Tokyo and the Soviet Union were not at war (until the final weeks before Japanese surrender). The Japanese did not interfere with Russian ships bringing American supplies from the US West Coast ports to Vladivostok. It underscored Hanson’s larger point that the three Axis powers never coordinated their war effort in the way achieved by US and Britain, and to a certain extent with the Soviet Union.

Hanson also points out that the victors suffered more deaths than the defeated in World War II if you consider the military and civilian casualties of the Soviet Union and China (although as a percentage of total population, German losses were very high). If the Japanese home islands had been invaded, Japan’s losses would have soared. But as a Japanese your chances of survival were better than those in Germany or the Soviet Union, unless you were living in a Japanese city subject to American bombing, or were on one of the islands Japan defended with nearly every soldier fighting to the death.

Hanson has written extensively on classical Greek military and political history and he sprinkles his chapters with references to analogous ancient battles and political decisions. I didn’t feel these were particularly helpful because I wasn’t familiar with those battles. He didn’t elaborate much on their relevance, which was probably just as well, since that would have required quite a digression at each instance. Perhaps he is hoping readers will turn to his other books to educate themselves.

Overall, this is a useful perspective on how the war was fought and won, and a complement to our understanding of specific military decisions and battles in World War II.

This terrific book was lent to me by a friend. I have read hundreds of books about WWII or various aspects of it. This was by far the best. There are a thousand books that will tell you what happened. “The Second World Wars” tells also tells you why things happened as they did. As he did for the Peloponnesian War in “A War Like No Other,” Hanson does not write in chronological order, but breaks the various wars (he says that many wars joined into one) down into parts like Airpower, Sea Power, Land Power, Industrial and Economic Power, Sieges, Invasions, the leaders, and at the end, who gained what. Perhaps the most powerful section is entitled “The Dead,” which gives casualty estimates by country. WWII killed over 60 million people, about as many as died during Mao’s various purges, revolutions and famines in China after he came to power. You will be both overwhelmed and surprised. He says that about 23,000 civilians died every day of World War II, about four times the dead at Gettysburg. This is a must-read for military history and WWII buffs. It should be read by every college student, but of course few could read a book of this length (over 500 pages). Get it.

Robert A. Hall
Author: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic

This is a good book to read after reading more focused books on minute subjects of WW2, because the war is too immense to be condensed down to a volume, but it does reiterate a bunch of points that need repeating--the allies were clearly superior to the axis at the start of the war and definitely by the end, and the axis were only able to negotiate within their space because no one knew how far ahead the allies actually were. Hanson also focuses on how much Soviet duplicity helped Hitler, how much British help was useful, and how military fanatics OVERWHELMING focus on how good one tank is vs another or one aircraft vs another fails to account for how much of that tank a country is able to produce, or how much aviation fuel a country has to spare in training a pilot to use said aircraft.

There's a bunch of Hanson haters in the review section, this book has the least amount of objectionable "rightwing" slanted views, maybe you could argue what was done during Yalta had to be done, and that Eisenhower and the rest realized you couldn't enforce democracy in Russian Army territory without another big land war--but it seems that the general consensus agrees with Hanson's view that Churchill was more realistic about Stalin than Roosevelt's.

The book should be subtitled "How Great Britain Won WW II Despite American and Russian Aid." It is probably best appreciated by rabid anglophiles and would also be a great book for a student wishing to memorize many basic facts about WW II as the author repeats every point he wishes to make at least 10 times. However, it does provide some interesting insight into reasons why the allies defeated the axis powers.

Few understand the history and mechanics of war as well as VDH

This is a review in progress: I have just begun reading about the War at Sea.

So far, it has been a remarkable journey into the rooms of power and decision. VDH seems to have determined to answer the overarching Why and How questions of WW2, rather than the much narrower tactical issues. I can well imagine this as a briefing in the Spring of 1955 given to Eisenhower and Anthony Eden. How do we make sure we are ready for conflict, and how do we manage it so that is does not spread into another World War.
For those of us who love history, and are determined to learn it, so as not to repeat it, this is a remarkable view and insight into the most destructive armed conflict in human history. Professor Hanson brings his lifetime of study of matters military ranging from the Spartans to the War on Terror to bear on understanding the normal state of human existence: War. Peace, world wide and lasting, is a temporary aberration, and only perhaps to be realized through a thorough understanding of the ways of war.

This work on World War II is not the general travelogue that many books on the War turn into. Dr. Hanson interrupts the mythology of the German War Machine. German industry was never in a position to put Germany in a spot where they could win the War. Japan, was in the same situation. Once the US joined the War Germany faced 450 million citizens soldiers from the US and USSR as opposed to the 80 million it could draw from. Like Japan, an over extended Germany did not have the ability to push their frontiers farther in regards to conquest. And like Germany, Japan did not have enough citizens to fight extended wars against China, England, and the US.

This is an important work on WWII and anyone who either is a student of the War, or is a high school or college history instructor, should read this.

Ok, Ok, another WWII history book, I thought to myself but this one got really good reviews so I thought I'd try. Full disclosure - I borrowed it from the library. When I got it home, I'm thinking to myself: “There's no way I can finish this in two weeks.”. Surprise, this is a REALLY interesting and readable work. I don’t know how the author does it but you never seemed to get bogged down or bored with all the information. What the author doesn’t know about WWII is probably not worth knowing. For all of you that may have already read umpteen WWII history books don’t dismiss this as “just another WWII history book”. For those of you who have never read a comprehensive WWII history book, make it this one. At the risk of seemingly being a bit too picky, the only thing I thought the author could have gone into somewhat more was the role of the US Navy's submarine service in the defeat of Japan as well as the role of construction battalions (Sea Bees); but then again who knows what the publisher's editors did to the original manuscript. Be forewarned, this is 500+ pages (not counting notes at the end). Who knows how long the original manuscript was.

A new approach to a difficult and far-ranging subject. By arranging the book thematically the author highlights leaders, soldiering, weaponry, strategy, and economies of the various nations across the theatres of World War II, from the big-picture to precise details. Statistical comparisons illustrate his number-crunching, a good dose of maps shows the thrust of the various campaigns, and many seldom-seen photographs give an existential context to the narrative.

His overall thesis that the war was a strategic absurdity for the Axis powers is well-documented, not only by his persuasive arguments, but reinforced by his use of multiple perspectives. It's not just the relative lack of Axis manpower, weak economies, refusal or inability to update weapon-systems, and, the pursuit of dead-end 'miracle' weapons and doctrines that doomed their war effort, but the crucial lack of a cooperative strategy.

That fault was not fixable. As the author points out, the absolutist tendency of the Axis dictatorships meant that Hitler, Tojo and his clique, and Mussolini were actually more constrained by their regimes than the more flexible democratic leadership of the US and Britain, and the growth of Stalin's decision-making from paranoia to realism. Another way to put it might be that impulsive strategies worked for the Axis in the short term (Hitler's various coups and campaigns from '38-'41, and Japanese strikes in the Pacific in '41-early '42).

But, once problems developed, usually as a result of logistical bottlenecks, Germany and Japan had no answer, except to fight it out to the bitter end, hoping that V-2s or kamikazes would do more than scare the Allies. Italy went straight from impulsive moves to logistical nightmares, and never had a winning campaign.

The ultimate stupidity of the war was Hitler's insistence on pursuing the sadistic nihilism of the Holocaust. Even Stalin, with his comparably macabre degree of hatred, backed off from persecution given the exigencies of the war. At the purely military level, Hitler's gratuitous declaration of war on the US enabled his U-boats to sink a lot of our foolishly unescorted merchant ships, but also made D-Day inevitable. Short-term Axis gains, boasting and celebrating of tactical victories, but no idea of how to win. Given who Hitler was, there's no alternative history that could've produced an Axis victory in WWII.

Despite the many ways that The Second World Wars appeals to me, I do have some misgivings. As others have pointed out, the author gives too much credit to Britain's role in the war. Yes, they were at war with Germany for six years. And, yes, they were the sole active Allied belligerent for about a year--between the fall of France and Barbarossa. But, except for the six weeks of the French campaign in '40, they didn't confront the Germans head-on in Europe until they went in with the US in Italy and France in '43 and '44. Even then, their contribution was way below the level of WWI. That's why they took fewer casualties than any other of the major belligerents, not because they fought better than anyone else.

My other issues are quibbles: like many recent works of history, the editing could be tightened up. There's too much repetition (he uses 'existential' more than Sartre), and too many lists of examples when one example would do. On the other hand, with the exception of extolling the British contribution, he's very even-handed with praise and criticism in all areas: weapons, leaders, decision-making, etc. His facts and stats hold up to scrutiny and add much to his theses. Definitely this book is a must-read for the knowledgeable WWII enthusiast.

Victor Davis Hanson's The Second World Wars is one of the most expansive and unique books I have ever read on WW2. The book is not written chronologically, but rather divided into different categories (Sieges, Deaths, etc). This allows for a "big picture" view on various subjects but also gives Dr Hanson the freedom to really focus on these different aspects in a way that would not be altogether possible had it been written chronologically. Another aspect of the book I really enjoyed was the way Dr Hanson was able to relate it to previous wars, events, and people in a way I suspect most readers may not normally consider while reading. This is done wonderfully, and gives perspective both to how WW2 was similar to wars and events in the past and how it was sometimes wholly unique and new.

This book is not yet another recounting of well known facts. Instead, it is an analysis of the developments, trends, and actions of all major combatants and some minor nations as well. If you are well versed in military history, you will find little in the way of new information. The strength of this book lies in the fact that Victor Davis Hanson offers penetrating insight and compelling explanations for how events transpired. One key theme repeated throughout is how different the Second World War was from its predecessor, yet national leaders of the warring nations kept harkening back to their experiences in the First World War when devising strategy and evaluating events. A classic worth adding to your bookshelves. Highly recommended.

I have followed Victor Davis Hanson's publications for many years. Usually, I applaud his efforts. I follow his commentaries through the Hoover Institution, National Review and other sources and usually applaud his insights and conclusions. Unfortunately, his effort entitled The Second World Wars fails to meet my expectations. Regarding the war against Germany and Italy, he work remains exceptional; regarding the war in the Pacific, his treatment repeats glaring errors of fact, ignores many exceptional officers (whereas in his treatment of the European theater, he mentions almost every officer of note); slanders General MacArthur; comes to conclusions with which every Naval commander in the Pacific including Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey (as well as Joint Chiefs Chairman, Leahy but not CNO King) was well as Marshall and MacArthur would disagree. By inference he casts dispersion on the judgement of General Marshall and President Roosevelt. If you have interest in the European war, then read on; if you have interest in the Pacific, then take a pass.

I hadn't appreciated what a colossal event WW II was.

The book provides a crucial overarching context for the 12-15 piecemeal books I've read recently on the war.

The structure is brilliant. It easily serves both as a mnemonic device and an heuristic that assists you to remember and analyze WW II.

I particularly like how, for each element of the structure, the author draws comparisons between classical and other more recent, previous wars and WW II; and also how, again for each element of the structure but within the time frame of WW II, the author compares the six belligerents.

Until I read this book I had a superficial understanding of the stupendous scale of the death, industrial production and number of people involved in WW II; the immensely fateful decisions of the Axis countries; the mind-numbing battle for Stalingrad; and the ramifications of the war for the years that followed it. (I wonder if it's the unimaginable magnitude of the death and destruction in WW II that causes the collective amnesia about it that the another reviewer mentions below.)

It'll take me a while to process what it means about WW II and wars to come that - to pick but one example from the many things the author shows were produced at breakneck speed and in astounding quantities in the US, Britain and Russia - in the space of 48 months the US could gear up from nothing to produce 2,700 ten thousand ton Liberty ships. That's 1.8 ships launched per day over the 48 months but even more ships launched per day at the height of the production and learning curve!

This book is in a whole other league.

The book is a masterpiece, both as history and as literature. But Hanson ought to publish a second edition, with additional chapters on the roles of intelligence, deception, and special operations. Intelligence - particularly cryptology and aerial photography - played a huge role in the campaigns in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, not to mention the espionage networks active in every region of the conflict. Several excellent histories exist of the use of deception, and the accomplishments and follies of special operations. Yet The Second World Wars barely mentions any of these important aspects of the war's history. Surely Hanson could add worthwhile insights on all these topics.

Decided to give this book a try after hearing Dan Carlin of Hardcore History both praise and interview Mr. Hanson. This book is like a great episode of Hardcore History...in print. Each page filled with data and well-reasoned arguments as to who-did-what and why. Uniquely structured and well-written, this is an excellent addition to any library and will likely go down as Mr. Hanson's crowning work.

The book is well written, by a very accomplished author ... but that is all I can say in its favor.

Over, and over, and over, and OVER again we are told how the Allies won the war by producing more submarines, tanks, artillery pieces, rifles, bullets, nail-clippers, soldiers, aircraft, bombs, zippers, battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, toasters, and shoelaces than the Axis produced - which is why they won the war. Right. Got it.

It just never ends.

I was determined to finish, but gave up after about 500 pages.

A great analysis of World War II from a grand strategic and macroeconomic / industrial policy perspective. Very readable. Hanson analyzes each major combatant and theater of World War II. He concludes that the Axis powers should have known before initiating the conflict that they would ultimately be defeated based on the population, geography and industrial capacity of the allies. This book is surely on the reading list for many officers who are students at national war colleges.

I've read a lot of WWII history. This is one of the best.
Hanson has profited from continuing scholarship which reveals more and better statistics about the war, but he also handles the material very well. This is one of the few books that is organized around different aspects of the conflict rather than describing battles sequentially.
There are a few minor glitches (e.g., Malaysia v. Malaya, repeatedly) but they don't detract from the overall quality of the book.

Really fascinating book. The diffrence of this book is that the chapters are organized by subjects instead of chronologicaly. From artilery, sieges, the deads to the commanders. In this book the authors explains the mistakes of each sides and why Germany and Japan could not have won a global war against the temporary coalition of the American, British Empire and Soviet Union. As the author says that does not exclude that if Hitler would have been killed in 1942 there would have been a truce between the Soviet Union and nazi Germany.

Well documented, well researched. Its basic rules of war, the one who made less mistakes wins. Also shows that batleships like the Bismarck were waste of steel and could instead have built 50 submarines instead. The loss of a battleship is harder on a nation, like when the Bismarck was sunk it was the equivalent of hundreds of panzer IV drowned. The author explians that the Axis, particulary Germany where good at killing their ennemies wich was the difference in other wars that the loser killed more than he lost. Anyway this book is a tresaure that will be enjoyed by people interested in ww2.

I thought I knew most everything about WW 2, but this book tripled my knowledge about the war.
When WW One ended in 1919, Germany was largely untouched. Over the next 20 years Germany was allowed to run wild and re arm because its neighbors thought that appeasement would diminish the possibility of reliving the horrors of WW I.
They could not have been more wrong. 60 million died, mostly civilians. Its a lesson to remember today, one obviously NOT learned by Obama.
There were actually 4 world wars which started in 1939: two fronts in the Pacific and two fronts in Europe.

I have read enough World War II books to satisfy my curiosity and understand well enough for an amateur the causes and general sequence of events of this greatest of human tragedies. Mr. Hanson's brilliant commentaries on current events (I highly recommend you subscribe to his Private Papers emails on his website) often present points of view and analysis that one cannot find anywhere else. This book presents the many facets of World War II in a way that I have never read before, by ditching the customary and already well-told sequence of events for a strategic and big-picture analysis. This has the effect of leaving the reader with a rewarding perspective of the war that they may not have previously had. For that reason, this volume is well worth the time.

I am an English teacher, and a generalist when it comes to history. Yet despite the statistics, I have not been able to put this book down. It will be my go to Christmas book for all my history loving friends. I borrowed the book from the library, but quickly realized that I will have to buy my own copy. Skip my first step, and just buy it.

An incredibly readable history of the second world war. The book focuses more on analysis of why events unfolded the way they did than a dry accounting of the chronological events of the conflict. The most engaging historical book I've ever read.

Read accounts of World War Two by authors such as Antony Beevor and Max Hastings to fully appreciate the scope and depth of insights taken by Hanson in this analytical work. The classicist has written a new classic.

Hanson is knowledgeable but could write a book for layman. Hanson assumed his readers to be as knowledgeable as he is. Laymen will find it hard to follow his book.
He also sectioned his book into "air" "sea" n "land" wars. As such readers will be lost chronologically. When he finished "air" he went to "sea" giving a sense of repetitiveness. Then he went to "land". It is very easy to lose patience. The whole book then repeats on "weapon" n "man".
It is a shame a treasure of knowledge is lost in poor authorship.

A generally disappointing book. Already well worn territory written about by many scholars in many ways. Unfortunately the author's conclusions are also not much beyond ground or twists others have already explored. A disappointment especially when compared with the author's other works such as "A War Like No Other" which is excellent. If a reader doesn't have a grounding in World War II, the book will be hard to follow. If the reader has more than a basic grounding, there is not much original here the reader to engage with. The writing style is stiff and the editing poor - I always had the feeling the author was trying to use as many words as possible, which makes it laborious to read at time.

Somewhat repetitive. The author uses a short list of facts repeatedly to explain a fairly broad range of very different issues....... one size does not fit all when trying to explain the entire scope of WW2

Also, surprisingly Anglophile. The author mentions contributions made by England in all and every opportunity. It’s not that he is wrong but at times you wonder if the US was just along as a well endowed supporter.

As a contrast I recommend the books on Roosevelt, starting with “ Mantle of Command” to appreciate the governing hand the US had in this conflict

I read it as my wife paid real money to buy it here.
The first 400 pages are useless. I learned nothing knew and it was boring writing.
There is lots of repetition as if each chapter was to stand on its own.
Only if the final 100 pages does it get interesting.
Not recommended.