The War in the West

Résumé du livre

The Second World War is the most cataclysmic event in recent European history. In this new history of the War in the West, historian James Holland looks at the conflict from a broader perspective than ever before, and in doing so, challenges some of the fundamentals of its by-now familiar story. The first part of this extraordinary new two-volume account spans oceans and continents from the perspectives of all the nations it will engulf. Holland's epic narrative takes us from the opening salvoes to the astonishing early German victories, from the fjords and mountains of Norway to the grey swell of the Atlantic, and from the corridors of power to the islands of the Mediterranean and the deserts of North Africa. By examining the war on land, in the air and on sea, Holland is able to reveal the events behind the events, and demonstrate that, with the vast industrial mobilization which took place, this was not just military history, but political and economic history too.0His guides through this immense human drama are the people who helped to make history, who fought and shaped the war as it evolved: the politicians, industrialists, generals, ordinary fighting men and women, and civilians too. Drawing on more than a dozen years of research that has taken him around the world visiting archives, battlefields, and interviewing many of those who fought and lived through that conflict, James Holland has not only recreated a monumental event in all its terrible and majestic glory, but he has also written an account that will redefine our understanding of the war itself.