An excellent read for the WWII buff

books:

	• The Second World War: A Complete History Martin Gilbert Holt Paperbacks, 2004 - 928 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

My Boyfriend LOVES it !!!

I bought the book as a gift for my boyfriend who loves WWII almost as much as he loves me and he absolutely loves the book he told me that it is the best book that he has ever read on the subject so my boyfriend strongly recommends this book to all the women out there that have boyfriends or husbands that are WWII buffs.

The Second World War

An extremely well written history of all of the war. This was not a history of selected parts of the conflict, but a history of the complete war.

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Incomparable history

This is one of the most amazing history books I have ever read. I can also say that is was the most painful I have ever read. Martin Gilbert makes it very clear that the point of the book is to show the war from day one until the aftermath. With all due respect to a reader like Michael Spertus, there is no historical background because that is not within the book's scope. The book would have to be twice as long if it were to have all the background. The book instead plunges us into the action.

Countless books have been written about the war but no other does such an amazing job at showing the loss of life and in particular the horrors inflicted on 'the nameless millions' who lost their lives. Some pages do read like a list of numbers who died during his or that battle because their names have been lost to history. The lists shouldn't be seen as 'plodding' but should make us pause and really reflect. When we stop to think that in a single day in Russia 20,000 people could have died and in the Pacific another 10,000 were lost, the numbers start to mean something- human beings whose potential will never be known, deaths on a terrible scale.

The parts that were difficult for me involved the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people and other groups like the Roma, as well as the murder of prisoners of war by the Japanese. This book does not go into the 'why' of these events except to use the words of the evil perpetrators like Hitler, Himmel, Goebbels. Racial hatred which leads to killing children, experimenting medically on innocent human beings is inexplicable. There are many stories and examples that left me shocked.

One reason to read this book is to see it as a testament to all those lost lives and to be grateful for the sacrifice of soldiers who risked all to end this war, but another is to be warned that racial and ethnic hatred can still lead to these kinds of atrocities. Ordinary people do atrocious things to other people - see Darfur today , the ethnic violence among Serbs and Croats a decade ago, the ways the Roma continue to be vilified, including in our United States.

I hated this book in the sense that I wish it never had to be written but I thank Mr. Gilbert for showing us what happened. It's really a remarkable and scholarly book that spoke to me on a very deep level.

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An excellent read for the WWII buff

First off, I must say the best thing about this book is the way its written. Each chapter is broke down as each phase of the war played out. Concise, accurate, and very informative. As a WWII history buff, I couldn't have found a better book to read. I highly recommend.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

It began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. By the time it came to an end on V-J Day--August 14, 1945--it had involved every major power and become global in its reach. In the final accounting, it would turn out to be, in both human terms and material resources, the costliest war in history, taking the lives of forty million people. In this complete one-volume account of the war, Gilbert weaves together political, military, diplomatic, and civilian elements to provide a global perspective on the war, creating a work that is both a treasure trove of information and a dramatic narrative.

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