So, this was published in 2007, but smells of the '90s, when people apparently were shocked to learn that Stalin and his cronies were actually pretty evil. It'll teach you a lot about the war in Europe, especially if you know little about it, particularly the importance of the Eastern Front and the Red Army. There's no narrative, but the format, especially for the more social history type bits, is great: a page or two on important themes, with references if you want to read more.

I would go to five stars, but for two bizarre flaws: first, considering how even-handed and 'objective' Davies tries to be, it's odd that the Poles can do no wrong, and, according to this book, are generally the most put-upon people in the world. They are mighty put-upon, no doubt, but Davies basically writes the hagiography of the country. I actually knew he'd do that, because he did it in his history of Europe as well.
More disturbing, for someone who is keen to stress the horrors of Soviet Russia, is his tendency to identify 'people who have read Marx with some sympathy' and Stalinists: for Davies, anyone who was a communist in the twentieth century just *was* a Stalinist. He ignores the importance and work of anti-Stalinist communists and socialists, (who spoke out against Nazism while the great 'democrats' were appeasing away, and to speak out against Stalinism itself).
In part, this is probably due to his insistence that the USSR and Nazi Germany be considered in the same light. Of course they should: they were both totalitarian states. But 'communism' is an economic system which is, in theory, compatible with all sorts of 'political' systems, no matter how slippery the distinction between political and economic might be (and of course they're pretty slippery). Fascism is a political system which, I suppose, is compatible with most economic systems. So while Stalinism, a political system, should be thought of along the lines of Fascism, also a political system, once you identify Stalinism with 'communism,' you're just mixing up two things which shouldn't be mixed.
Also, I love that the Kirkus Review's claim that Davies 'deconstructs' the foundations of World War II history. Can an author roll in his grave if he's still alive? ( )

This was extremely interesting and certainly casts a "new light" on interpretations of World War 2. The author puts forward the theory that the war was won on the Eastern front and that D-day etc were mere sideshows. He debunks the view of the "good" versus "evil Nazi " empire by suggesting that the Nazis and Soviets were both criminal enterprises led by 2 evil monsters Hitler and Stalin.Furthermore the end of the war brought misery and enslavement for Eastern Europe.He points out that huge injustices were meted out to the Poles in particular and prolonged suffering to many millions over Europe.This book is a masterpiece of Historical research and delivers a mighty punch. ( )

Norman Davies posits that the standard Western narrative of "how WWII was _won_" demands a closer look. Many, many mistakes were made in the West's approach, unnecessary and unconscionable death and destruction was visited upon many innocents, and the Wests motives were not as pure as standard history books would have one believe. ( )

Davies’ extensive history of WW2 is divided into five subject areas: military, politics, soldiers, civilians, and media. Each area is explored chronologically, so that we go back and forth, five times, sometimes over the same material.

Throughout, several themes predominate:

1. Western powers aggrandize their roles in WW2. To the contrary, the most important battles were in the East, and the 1945 victory in Europe was “above all” Stalin’s. These facts are obscured by “relentless Western publicity pursued to the greater glory of Western interests….”

2. Most histories of WW2, looking through Western conceptual lenses, see Hitler’s Germany as the “most” evil. America’s “war-time love affair with the USSR” put Soviet atrocities out of focus, and romanticized the role of “the Russians.”

3. The USSR was multinational, not just Russian; Ukrainians and Byelorussians suffered more than any other group;

4. Stalin was way more evil than westerners give him “credit” for; and

5. Poland got screwed by all parties (including the allies) big time.

These points are important and well-taken, but Davies tends to beat them to death in this extremely detailed overview.

Some of his observations are nicely crafted. E.g., in describing Britain’s situation after March 1941 when Lend-Lease started, he suggests that Britain became an “island aircraft carrier, to which U.S. military assets could be transferred as the need arose.”

Some of his observations are questionable. Hitler was “only human” if, albeit, “obnoxious”?!!! David Irving displayed “the wrong shade of opinion”?!!! Ariel Sharon “alleged” there were Jews who fought with the Allies?!!! Some 150,000 “Jews” fought with the Wehrmacht?!!! (N.B. This number actually represents the number of “mischlinge” or those who were designated as Jews only because of Hitler’s insistence in going back to the fourth generation past for racial purity. Most of these men were born and raised Christians and were ardent German patriots.)

Oddly, in spite of Davies’ anti-Soviet, anti-Stalin bias, he doesn’t make a strong statement about Roosevelt’s pandering to Stalin. He does opine that Roosevelt was much more wary of Churchill as an “old imperialist” than of Stalin. Yet later in the narrative he avers (speaking of the Tehran summit) “Roosevelt was inclined to humor Stalin.”

Davies’ world of the Gulag, the Katyn Forest, Sobibor and its ilk seems so alien from our current reality that it is hard to come away with useful lessons for the present. Tony Judt, in the May 1, 2008 New York Review of Books (writing about WW2 historical treatments generally), charges that “teaching the War through vectors of the suffering of particular groups” (as does Davies) only serves to make us feel separate from other groups’ sufferings. Thus we lose a sense of a shared past in favor of au courant atrocities. The underlying message is that these “Historical Horror way stations” are past us, and “we may now advance…into a different and better era.”

I’m afraid one of my biggest criticisms of this book is rather fuzzy: that is to say, in my opinion this book lacks “background music.” Davies’ long delineation of particulars is cold and lifeless, even with, and in spite of, the inclusion of many inspiring stories. As Saul Friedlander observes in “Reflections on Nazism,” language can establish emotional distance by “showing that all the chaos and horror is, after all, coherent and explainable.” Thus Davies evokes nothing with his recitation of numbers of war dead – not even understanding, since the numbers are beyond rational understanding. And of the cultures that were lost, there is not a word. I believe one can learn more about the pain and loss of WW2 from listening to the music of Kreisler than by reading Davies’ neutralized analyses.

My husband loved this book; but he would much prefer lists of tanks and planes to evocations of life and love. I would have preferred to see Davies advance his theories in a nice long article in The Atlantic or The New Yorker, rather than a 560-page book. I give this book three stars; he would give it five. His review follows....

(JAF)

This is a far better book than my wife gives it credit for being. It is as much a book of historiography as a work of history. It points out how both popular and scholarly works in both the West and East (Soviet) have skewed their perceptions to promote the political preconceptions of their audiences. Davies emphasizes how Western historians have poorly expressed the comparative magnitudes of the war in the East with the war in the West, in which only about one fifth of the troops were employed and only one tenth of the fatalities occurred. He also shows that both Eastern and Western historians have underestimated the criminality of the Soviet behavior in the war. The Germans were not the only barbarians who fought the war.

In his reassessment of the writing about the war, Davies observes that the Holocaust and the plight of the European Jews has had a large share of the ink spilled on the period. If this were the only book written about WWII, one would say that Davies greatly underestimated the enormity of the Nazi treatment of the Jews. But that is not his point. He is starting from a position in which there exists a considerable corpus of Holocaust literature, and remarkably little about the plight of the Serbs, the Gypsies, the Ukrainians, Bylorussians, and the entire Polish people. Moreover, little is written about the fate of 10 million Germans, mostly women and children, who were uprooted, many of whom were raped, and 2 million of whom perished during the Red Army's final thrust into the Reich.

Davies's choice of organization does cause some repetitive treatment of some events, as he analyzes them sequentially from the respective coigns of vantage of military, politics, soldiers, civilians, and media. Nonetheless, I think that is necessary since he makes some fairly controversial assertions, and he must martial his authority on each contentious point.

A sampling of Davies' observations and conclusions indicates how inaccurate was the general account of the war given by western media:

1. The first campaign of the war was a joint invasion of Poland by both Germany and the Soviet Union.
2. Russians composed barely more than 50% of the population of the Soviet Union. The Germans conquered only about 10% of the land mass of the Soviet Union, and most of the occupation covered the USSR's western republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, not Russia proper.
3. The countries of Western Europe had no intention of giving up the colonial empires they held before the war.
4. The communists "proved to be incompetent at almost everything except espionage, deception and war."
5. The western allies needed a coherent rallying message, but the best they could come up with (and still include the Soviets) was "anti-facism."
6. Roosevelt's entourage was riddled with fellow travelers who proved incapable of grasping the nature of Stalin's regime.
7. The Soviets maintained larger concentration camps with more inmates than the Germans did.
8. The Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 was as blatant as Germany's invasion of the USSR in 1941.
9. Forcible repatriation to the USSR involved millions who were being sent to their deaths or to long prison terms for the "crime" of not fighting to their deaths against the Germans.
10. The victory of the USA and Britain was at best only partial, leading to 45 years of the cold war, a military standoff with the co-victors and the imposition of a totalitarian tyranny in the Soviet zone of Europe.

The book may not thoroughly original, but it is one of the best comprehensive reevaluations of our perception of the most significant event of the twentieth century that I have encountered.

(JAB) ( )

Multi-faceted study of the war in Europe with a number of interesting observations. NOT a straight military history. Some facts may be in error but a worthwhile read for those interested in something other than a general history. ( )