History of the Second World War Book

I decided to read Liddell Hart’s History of the Second World War because I had seen it cited in many places as the definitive one-volume guide to a subject I have watched too many tv shows on but read few books about. (Surprisingly, it seems to be out of print, but I found several old hardcovers [not the one pictured here:] at the Strand.) I would recommend it to anyone interested in a one-volume history or the war, with the caveats below—most of which will probably not trouble the English speaker and broadly replicate the limitations of the familiar “History Channel” treatment of the subject.

The book is long, but well organized and rather readable, with the exception of several instances where the volume of units and geographical landmarks become too dense to follow. The plentiful maps are generally very good—I found myself referring to the them constantly while reading the text—but, inevitably, they are occasionally not quite detailed enough.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Liddell Hart devotes an undue amount of time to the matters he most familiar with, those involving the British Army. As a result, probably too much of the book is devoted to North Africa and Burma. Conversely, the book skimps on much description of the strategic outlook from the Soviet perspective; the chapters dealing with the Soviet offensives in 1944 and 45 are notably brief. Some of this may be due to a lack of access or resources; nonetheless it is noteworthy compared to the depth in which Hart covers the German leadership.

This is really a military history—there is very little in here about politics. The closest Liddell Hart comes is his treatment of disagreements between allied commanders (famously, Montgomery and Patton), which are good reading but fall short of what I remember from Keegan’s WWII overview. I would have preferred more on industrial and logistic factors, which arise mostly only when needed (allied amphibious resources in the Mediterranean, the Japanese shortages of oil cramping naval operations).

Interestingly, the book was quite interesting at those points where the narrative dips into politics and strategy. Liddell Hart’s handling of the outbreak of war in the neutral Low Countries and Norway was a new approach to the topic for me. He also emphasized the legitimacy of the British and American embargo of Japan as a causus belli, something I don’t think I’ve read very often.

Nonetheless, the book’s strengths really do lie in the authors’ military analysis, especially with respect to the Western and Germany armies. I understand that Liddell Hart got to know many of the German commanders well after the war, and this comes through in the text. At times, it seems bit too much like he is rooting for the Wehrmacht—in particular during the retreat from the Caucuses and Russia—but this also very much reflects the fact that Liddell Hart has a strong opinion on how the war should have been fought, and when commanders did not (in retrospect) follow his advice, he’s critical and vocal about what might have been gained had they done so.

This bias comes through most clearly in his description of the fall of France. He sees Guderian’s offensive as the key to the campaign, rightly so, but there’s a valid criticism to be made that this is justification after the fact, as well as that not enough weight is given the workings of chance (or politics, in the case of the British escape from Dunkirk, which I’ve read persuasively attributed to a political miscalculation on the part of Hitler to make peace with the British). It also features prominently in the chapters on the Russian offensives on the Eastern Front—Liddell Hart constantly criticizes Hitler for not allowing his general to adopt a more flexible defensive posture. Yet, as a reader, while this makes perfect sense, the author does not explain what exactly this would achieve beyond a delay of the inevitable.

It’s also worth remarking on Liddell Hart’s criticism towards the end of the book of the Allies’ demand for the Axis powers’ unconditional surrender. It’s a stance that I don’t think I’ve reader often before, if ever. When the author uses it to argue against the dropping of the atomic bomb, I’m somewhat sympathetic, but I think he too readily discounts the political arguments (i.e., preempting Russian involvement in the Pacific theater) that he mentions briefly and which I understand to more commonly hold sway. The book’s conclusion is also strangely sad. While this is undoubtedly due to the fact that it was written in the middle of the Cold War, presumably leaving Liddell Hart to question an outcome that led to the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, it strangely omits the obvious upside to defeating Germany and Japan. It’s arguable that any history of WWII, even a military one, cannot ignore the war’s unprecedented effect on civilian populations, overwhelmingly (though not entirely) carried out by the Axis powers. In a book that takes understandable umbrage at the RAF’s approach to area bombing, there surely could be some place to mention the atrocities of Nanking and Auschwitz. That said, if one is willing to swallow the caveats above, the History of the Second World War is an engaging and detailed one-volume of how WWII was fought and won.

###