Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

There are fortunately very many compendiums on the World War II, which is not only a testament to the fact that the most apocalyptic war, humanity has ever fought, still commands a massive interest, but it also gives a glimmer of hope that we collectively manage to learn from those events to never repeat them (remember, WWI was proclaimed the "war to end all wars" and humanity emerged from it with a strong resolve to never allow a world war to happen).I myself have read several, being acutely interested in the topic (as I said repeatedly, there is hardly a single Soviet family not scathed by that war and my family is no exception). Of all I've read so far, "Inferno" stands head and shoulders above the others.BALANCE (big picture vs tactical details) - 8/10. The space-time continuum of WWII is partitioned into major events with a chapter dedicated to each. The Author has done an excellent job giving the sufficient background and the "macro" picture of the events discussed but also going to the ground and describing in significant detail the realities of those events, how they were experienced by all sides of the conflict. There is a massive amount of quotes and diary and letter excerpts from the participants. Also, when it comes to tactical information, this book doesn't fall into a trap of being reduced to a laundry list of individual unit movements or covering each and every unit involved. All in all, I found the style of "Inferno" the most likable and relatable.OBJECTIVITY - 10/10. With more and more sources of information becoming available, there is clearly a trend toward a less simplistic view of events that both led to WWII and the War itself. In that sense, this book excels - it pulls no punches and there are no sacred cows. This is how I exect a true historian narrate the events - without attitude or bias. Massive blunders are called when they happened (on both sides there were many), the ineptness and political bickering of the Allies' commanders is exposed. More importantly than anything, this is the first book (to my memory) that calls out the paradox of the Russian front: clearly, USSR has shouldered the overwhelming majority of the burden and anything less would likely result in a completely different outcome of the War. Yet the fact that the USSR prevailed was due to the absolutely brutal attitude of the Soviet state toward its own subjects. In short, had the Soviets not been willing to sacrifice so many so easily (and to keep sacrificing until the last day of war), their victory would not have happened. Overall, the book is bound to leave one quite cynical and bitter: far from being an unequivocal battle of good vs evil, all sides shamelessly (or maybe the right word is "rationally" ?) exploited every opportunity to pursue their goals.STYLE - 10/10. I found the book difficult to put down. The juxtaposition of different theaters of war was extremely helpful and engaging and I found Mr. Hastings' analysis very insightful and objective.Overall, if you are planning to read just one book on WWII, I highly recommend this one (disclaimer: I still have a couple of single-volume treatises on the topic I am yet to read, so my recommendation might change).

Crafting a significant story around a trivial phrase, “all hell broke loose,” Max Hastings pulled off an impressive literary feat – a strategic narrative of World War II told from the bottom-up by “the voices of the little people and not the big ones” (xviii). As Hastings notes in his introduction, Inferno is about the human experience of common men and women who fought, lived, died, and suffered through the war. Prior to reading Inferno, I had a good “big picture” understanding of WWII. What was missing, however, was Hastings vast, first-hand accounts of the combatants and the civilians who experience the war. The understanding of the toll on civilians -- Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Indians, and Holocaust victims – was particularly sobering.Inferno is refreshingly bereft of the great men, their momentous political and military decisions and the grand campaigns of the war. Of the great men, Hastings provides only his assessment, often stinging, of their performance as leaders. They are not the protagonists of his narrative and they provide only the strategic backdrop against which normal human beings experienced the war. For example, Hastings notes the presence of Admirals Fletcher and Nagumo at the Battle of Midway in 1942, but the story of the combat itself is told through the experience of the sailors and airman who did the fighting and dying. The author uses this formula masterfully throughout the book moving seamlessly between the big picture in each theater of operation and the mass of civilian and military humanity in the picture.Hastings is unambiguously ecumenical in his treatment of relative contributions and suffering of the warring powers. Even the casual reader will note the difference in scale of the war on the Eastern Front compared to all other European and Pacific theaters of operation. Between 1941 and 1943, the Soviet Union was fighting 80% of the German military. So, while the Americans and British battled 23 German divisions in North Africa and Italy, the Soviets fought against 177 divisions on the Eastern Front. Even after D-Day, the Soviets did the lion’s share of the ground combat until the end of the war. Likewise, Hastings points out the almost incomprehensible number of Soviet military and civilian wartime deaths – 27 million people, 15 percent of their pre-war population.The author also provides an interesting counterpoint to the notion of the “good war.” For the hundreds of millions of inhabitants in British and French colonies there was nothing good about WWII. Most did not understand what they and their colonial masters were fighting for or against. Many who did understand the Allies cause distained Axis ideologies. That distain, however, did not necessarily translate into fighting to preserve British and French dominion over them. Many, in fact, took up arms and allied themselves with the Japanese against their former colonial masters. Hastings also recounts the little-known tragedy of the 1943-44 Bengal famine in which 1-3 million died from British racism and benign neglect of the Raj.If there is a miss in Inferno -- and it is not a big one -- it is in Hastings’ assessment of the war’s leaders. The author seems unreasonably harsh on his countrymen, somewhat less severe on the Americans and unnecessarily adoring of the Soviets. That said, however, there is much to like in Inferno.

To tackle such a broad subject in one volume is really an awesome task. Aside from the obvious dominant players, many, many other nations were so deeply affected ("World" war is an appropriate term) that any of these stories would legitimately take volumes to represent adequately. The big picture from this book is what it is, a big picture, with statistics, major battles, great shifts, interesting details about some of the main players; for instance I was well interested in understanding better the evolution of Stalin strategy, as the war developed, particularly as compared to Hitler stubbornness and short sight.I do have reservations regarding most of Hastings negative comments on how the French handled the war. He claims that there is no book written on the war from a French perspective, implying perhaps that the French would rather forget it all. Well, try Brave Genius by Sean Carroll, perhaps not a French author, but certainly someone that appears to understand very well the war situation, particularly the Resistance movement, from a French perspective. Fascinating book on this and other subjects.All together, Inferno is an eye opener, well written and comprehensive book that should definitely be of interest to anyone that wants to learn about this hard to believe legacy of our times.

Imagine you are a forty-five year old man, married, with adult children. Your parents and your wife's parents are alive. You have many friends and relatives. You are educated, intelligent and thoughtful. You are a good provider for your wife and children. A new political party takes control of your government, or perhaps the government of the country next door to yours. Within five years you and your wife have been shoved into a ditch and shot to death. Your parents and your wife's parents have been shot to death. Your daughter has been raped and murdered. Your son is starving to death in a concentration camp.It is almost impossible to imagine how unjust this is. Yet, during World War II, this kind of thing didn't happen dozens of times or hundreds of times or thousands of times or hundreds of thousands of times. This kind of thing happened millions of times. This type of brutality, and the magnitude of the brutality, is almost incomprehensible. Yet, it happened. And it happened a mere seventy years ago.Mr. Hastings' book is a one volume history of this terrible war and is told in chronological fashion. The historical events that so many of us are familiar with are recounted carefully and commented on, but the book is primarily focused on giving the reader an understanding of what the war meant to those who participated in it and those who were affected by it: the soldiers, sailors, and airmen on all sides, and the millions of pathetic, hopeless civilians caught up in its horror.The bloodshed is breathtaking. Just about every history of the war agrees that the German invasion of Poland was a spectacular success. Yet the Germans suffered 16,000 dead and 30,000 wounded. (The Polish suffered far worse, with 70,000 dead and 700,000 taken prisoner.) This is the first battle, the outbreak of the war, and already the carnage is astonishing.Most people understand how brutal the Germans were to the Russians, and how many millions of Russians were killed. What may be new to some readers is that this brutality was not an unforeseen byproduct of war: the deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians by starvation was contemplated and accepted at the highest levels of the Nazi government. They knew that they would not have the provisions to feed them and they didn't care. 21,000,000 Russians died during the war. A German soldier recounts in his diary that as his column was marching through fields of dead, he noticed a six year old boy, naked from the waste down, wandering through the desolation. His parents were dead, his relatives were dead, he had no home to go to, and no food to eat. It would be cold that night.The Japanese were no less cruel to those they subjugated. In Burma, for example, Japanese soldiers routinely slapped Burmese citizens who annoyed or offended them. Japanese policy eventually changed so that only the officers could slap Burmese citizens. In China, the Philippines and Korea, their treatment of their subjects was abominable. Pillage, torture, rape, executions, medical infliction of disease, wholesale murder. Millions of Chinese died from starvation or disease. There are several stories of Chinese teenage girls who were simply taken from their homes and given to squads of Japanese soldiers for their pleasure. Many did not survive. Many of those that did survive were forever tainted. This kind of thing occurred on a massive scale, all through China and southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of women were used as pleasure girls.The final Russian assault on Berlin was possibly as barbaric as anything in history, second only the German invasion of Russia. Stalin, by then numerically superior to the devastated German forces, cared nothing for strategy or tactics or the welfare of his soldiers. He simply threw wave after wave of them at well-defended lines. 40,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in the attack on Seelow Heights alone, a mere suburb of Berlin.But once the Russians gained control of the city, an orgy of rape and murder ensued almost like nothing else in human history. Nobody was spared. Polish prisoners were attacked, Jews were attacked, even Russian prisoners were attacked. A German doctor pleaded with them to spare him; his wife was Jewish and he had managed to protect her through the Hitler era. They shot him, and while he lay dying, they raped his wife. From Stalin all the way down to the merest foot soldier--many of whom were uneducated brutish peasants--the Russians were going to have their revenge. The carnage continued for weeks if not months after the war had officially ended.One could go on and on. The devastation was practically world-wide. Starvation in India after a terrible monsoon, and with Britain unable to spare any transport for food. Starvation and devastation in Italy. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos killed and Manila razed to the ground during the terrible fighting on Luzon. The terrible battle of Budapest, not well-known in the west, during which 80,000 Russians, 38,000 civilians, and 40,000 German soldiers were killed. Hundreds of thousands of Germans and Hungarians were captured, and sent to their doom in Siberia. When it was done the city was like a slaughterhouse: walls red with blood, dead animals and humans everywhere, everything broken and shattered. And when the survivors emerged, they were met by the revenge-minded Russian horde.How could human beings to this to one another? An answer is provided. Basically, if your leaders make it clear that those you subjugate are inferior, and that you are not constrained in anything you do so long as it is to the benefit of your leaders, then you are no longer restrained by law, social restraint, or basic human decency. "The power and the certainty of being able to use force without any resistance are the sweetest and most noxious poison that can be introduced . . . "It is very sobering to realize that so many succumbed to this delicious lust for power so recently in our history, and also very sobering to know that it can easily happen again.

I've read quite a few books about WWII and prior to reading 'Inferno' considered myself fairly knowledgeable about the subject. However, 'Inferno' expanded and greatly deepened my understanding of the war.In the forward Hastings explains that he is not here to retread over well-trodden ground. Much has already been written about the Wehrmacht's 1940 blitzkrieg of France, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad and D-Day. Instead Hastings wants to focus on lesser known engagements and to try to show them to the reader from the eyes not of the marshals and generals directing them but from the perspective of the rank and file soldiers and helpless civilian bystanders.He succeeds quite well in his endeavor. Perforce he must discuss the actions of Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. There's no way around that. But some of the most famous generals, men like Patton, Montgomery, Halsey, MacArthur, Guderian, and Rommel, are barely mentioned at all. And often when they are it is to point out their many shortcomings or their overblown reputations.He spends what in other books would be a disproportionate amount of time on the Japanese campaign in southeast Asia and the fall of Singapore, often providing the perspectives of Malays and Chinese. A good deal of time is devoted to Burma and India, as well, and he gives equal time to trying to convey the view from its inhabitants eyes.As my father pointed out in his review, Hastings amply demonstrates that it was the Russians who contributed the lion's share to the defeat of Hitler. And while I had known this, I hadn't quite realized just how lopsided their contribution was. It feels wrong to applaud this contribution, though, because this sacrifice was made only because Stalin and his marshals and generals were so callous in their disregard for their subjects' lives.France comes across as fickle and venal. In the face of their own failure to repel the German invasion they became almost eager collaborators, often actively resisting the Allies. After reading this, I am shocked that the Allies gave France a seat at the victors' table.Hastings doesn't recoil from illustrating the monstrosity of the two principal Axis regimes (although at 60,000, I think he underestimates the death toll of the Rape of Nanking; Iris Chang put it well over 200,000). However, he also shows where the Allies failed to live up to their ideals. This is particularly true in the case of the orgy of vengeance undertaken by the Russians as they liberate Russia and pursue the Wehrmacht into Germany and take Berlin.In showing these failures, he never strays into moral equivalence (such as the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden or Tokyo, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan). I applaud his properly calibrated moral compass.He also takes on the conventional wisdom of the war, for example, showing that submarine warfare by the Axis in the Atlantic never seriously threatened the war effort. He also takes MacArthur to task for his egotistical and wasteful campaign to liberate the Philippines. In Hastings view, it should have been bypassed since by the time MacArthur returned, the Japanese army there was basically a hostage.When I first finished this book, I rated it four stars. However, now having set my thoughts down on paper (as it were), I have decided to give it five. The proverbial 'must read' for all WWII enthusiasts.

Unvarnished history of the violence and futility of war. Graphic in detail of the brutality in the European and Pacific campaigns. Not limited to Japan and Germany but also includes US and British actions during WWII. Interesting slants on why Allies did not make a fuss about entering Berlin first and giving Stalin what he wanted - - Berlin and access to the nuclear scientists developing atomic weapons in that area. Stalin knew that the US was developing an atomic weapon and, looking at his post-war strategies, Stalin had to develop the nuclear card. The author includes letters from combatants to their loved ones relating the horrors of combat. In turn correspondence from civilians in Germany to their front-line loved ones, for instance, regarding the Allied bombing of civilian targets in Europe are included. This correspondence gives this well-researched and written story of WWII a human face and brings home the sadness, fear, and futility of real people facing the nightmare of just trying to survive. I highly recommend this book but reader beware there are graphic descriptions of what hot steel, moving at a high rate of speed can do to the human body, not to mention to the soul. George A., Portland, OR

Hastings’Inferno’ is a good reference for WW2 but that’s it. He has to speed write up the entire WW2 story in 600 pages. So most stuff doesn’t get significant insight it deserves. You’re better off reading Hastings separate books on the European and Pacific theaters of the war.

Personally I didn't quite understand who all the players were in WWII and their interactions. I didn't know that Japan and Nazi Germany were co-conspirators and communicated and plotted continually. I knew England was highly involved but was surprised to see how many states under English rule they had to deal with and try to protect and defend. And the reasons the US got involved considering national politics and national support at the time. I didn't know the entire interaction between the US, England and Russia and the allied effort to stop Nazi Germany. It was surprising to discover how ruthless Stalin was to his own people during this time. And way more than this did I discover. I think this is a pretty comprehensive book that made me more aware of the times during the late 30s and mid-40s. It is well written, appears to be factual, and explains things in an understandable manner. I would recommend this book.

Purchased this for my grandson who is enthralled with anything WW11. He loved it!

É um pouco longo, mas é ótimo. Muito legal.

I read this with great interest as much was new. But was surprised by the negative views of essentially all the British Commonwealth efforts. Seemed a bit of a revision of history.

This is a hefty book by a respected writer (if not quite an academic) and provides an effective single volume overview. Quality of the book is also decent for the price point.

All Max Hastings books are excellent.