In my review of William Shirier’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I mentioned how scores of books have been written about that subject. I should have made a slight emendation to that claim: scores of books have been written about The Second World War, and there always will be new ones. As the most momentous conflict in human history, the information fit to print might well be limitless.
As such, readers looking for a basic yet comprehensive overview of World War II might be unsure where to look. Sure you can watch Saving Private Ryan, but cinema and television are no substitute for books. Like it or not, you’ll need to a consult a learned and eminent historian.
I myself did just that as I read two books by two different experts back-to-back. Those books were The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts and The Second World War by Antony Beevor.
Where They’re Similar
Both books deliver what they promise: one-volume histories of the entire Second World War. Their prose is clear and their narrative straight. Given the subject, what seems like a small compliment is in fact huge praise. But why? Answer: military historians often try to marry the descriptive history of the battle under study with the personal history of the heroes who partook in said battles. Unfortunately, such an approach does a disservice to both the heroes and the battle because the personal history of individual soldiers takes up space that should be devoted to explaining how the soldiers wound up in that battle in the first place. This means many learned books about the most famous battles in history—Dunkirk, Midway, Overlord, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa to name just a few—can be slow, arduous reads that leave little understanding in their wake.
Beevor and Roberts thankfully eschewed this traditional military history template. Instead, they limited themselves to describing the events as they happened and how key military and political leaders responded. 20/20 hindsight is unobtrusively employed by both authors to keep strict context and never to smugly moralize, which is always tempting with these sorts of books. Therefore, the reader will walk away with a firm understanding of what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. As such, both books earn a high recommendation and a five-star rating.
Readers should purchase both and they should quickly read both because the differences between the two books are just as revealing as their similarities.
Different Intentions
The largest divider between The Storm of War and The Second World War is each author’s intention when covering their subject. This abstract concept matters when reading any book because what the author sets out to do shapes the reader’s experience just as much as the story on offer. Furthermore, if the author is corrupted by interest, they will do demonstrable harm to the reader because an author putting their ideological perspective before their subject will give the reader a wholly false view of the world. Reading two books about the same subject unmasks this otherwise obscure inequality between author and reader because the identical subject matters acts like a controlled variable in a science experiment. If the subject is held constant, what else affects the outcome? Answer: the intention of the author. Thankfully, both Beevor and Roberts are pure of heart, so their differing intentions are ultimately benign.
With that out of the way, what is each author’s intention?
In The Second World War, Beevor’s intention is simple: cover everything that happened in World War II beginning from June 1939 when the first scuffles between the Soviets and the Japanese (I bet you forgot that part of the war) snowballed into a world war and ending in September 1945 with the surrender of Japan. In chronological order, all theatres of the conflict are described in a book of 750 pages. Beevor’s personal opinions are confined to the Introduction and Conclusion while editorial sprinkles join together otherwise unconnected events. The final result is a book that reads like a narrator’s script for a World War II documentary series. Modern historians do not make an appearance in Beevor’s text, giving the reader an unobstructed view of the events and the full range of emotions they evoke.
By contrast, Andrew Roberts comes to The Storm of War with an altogether different intention: to demonstrate Germany lost a potentially winnable war because of Hitler’s Nazi ideology. The Germans, corrupted by National Socialism, made so many ludicrous military decisions that the stupidity staggers the imagination even today. Ostensibly, this intention seems like Roberts is playing with a less favorable hand compared to Beevor. Wouldn’t proving a thesis contradict the book’s subtitle (‘A New History of The Second World War’)? The answer is no because Roberts’ central idea emerges from the evidence on offer rather than him concocting a harebrained theory and then mucking with the evidence to prove it. We see this play out as Roberts outlines the entirety of the conflict while subtly highlighting the instances where his thesis becomes self-evident fact. In my opinion, this is a historian’s foremost job responsibility: to spot patterns in history to provide deeper understanding. The Storm of War is a first rate example of a historian fulfilling said job description.
Though these intentions are clearly different, they both serve their respective text. Nevertheless, trade-offs to each author’s intention are made apparent by reading the other work. Beevor’s book leaves no corner of the conflict untouched and resolutely moves its narrative forward. The downside is there’s also no room for him to spot a pattern other historians might’ve missed or to focus extensively any one part of the conflict. His intention also constricts his writer’s voice to that of an omniscient narrator, which isn’t the most exciting of writer voices.
On the other hand, Roberts’ book solves some of the aforementioned downsides because he’s highlighting a particular through-line of the full history. Why the war started in 1939 as opposed to 1943 or some other date, for example, can be traced back to Hitler’s neurotic worldview and pathological impatience. Furthermore, Roberts’ arriving with something to say means his author voice has more room to express itself, the pleasant byproduct being his book is the wittier of the two works. But, and there’s always a but, Roberts’s having a central thesis at all means some parts of the conflict are squeezed out of his field of vision. Pretty much any part of the conflict occurring east of Istanbul is given one full chapter at best while the European theatre is comprehensively covered.
Or as the economists say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Conclusion
The Second World War and The Storm of War are masterpieces written by two of Britain’s foremost historians. Two lifetimes of scholarship are available to anyone with the twenty-five bucks to pay for them. It’s a far better use of your money than a KFC bucket meal.
No doubt other books attempting the same mission exist and are of comparable quality. Yet whether someone reads these two books or another twenty-two World War II books, what matters here is the author’s intention. What the author sets out to do directly affects your reading experience. One should keep that in mind if they suspect a charlatan is in their midst.
In the meantime, enjoy not one, but two supreme works of history.