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Zusatztext 71632719 Informationen zum Autor Max Hastings Klappentext Winner of the Pritzker Prize for Military HistoryA New York Times Notable BookFrom one of our finest military historians! a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences. For thirty-five years! Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now! for the first time! he gives us a magnificent! single-volume history of the entire conflict. Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people-of soldiers! sailors and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad-Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. Remarkably informed and wide-ranging! Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all! it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the twentieth century. On the outbreak of war: ‘ France, Britain and its dominions were the only major nations to enter World War II as an act of principle, rather than because they sought territorial gains or were themselves attacked. Their claims upon the moral high ground were injured, however, by the fact that they declared support for embattled Poland without any intention of giving this meaningful military effect’. On Stalin’s ‘devil’s bargain’ with Hitler: ‘If Stalin was not Hitler’s co-belligerent, Moscow’s deal with Berlin made him the co-beneficiary of Nazi aggression. From 23 August 1939 onwards, the world saw Germany and the Soviet Union acting in concert, twin faces of totalitarianism. Because of the manner in which the global struggle ended in 1945, with Russia in the allied camp, some historians have accepted the post-war Soviet Union’s classification of itself as a neutral power until 1941. This is mistaken. Though Stalin feared Hitler and expected eventually to have to fight him, in 1939 he made a historic decision to acquiesce in German aggression, in return for Nazi support for Moscow’s own programme of territorial aggrandisement. Whatever excuses the Soviet leader later offered, and although his armies never fought in partnership with the Wehrmacht, the Nazi-Soviet Pact established a collaboration which persisted until Hitler revealed his true purposes in Operation Barbarossa’ . On the Battle of Britain: ‘ The latter months of 1940 were decisive in determining the course of the war: the Nazis, stunned by the scale of their triumphs, allowed themselves to suffer a loss of momentum. By launching an air assault on Britain, Hitler adopted the worst possible strategic compromise. As master of the continent, he believed a modest further display of force would suffice to precipitate its surrender. Yet if, instead, he had left Churchill’s people to stew in their island, the prime minister would have faced great difficulties in sustaining national morale and a charade of strategic purpose. A small German contingent dispatched to support the Italian attack on Egypt that autumn would probably have sufficed to expel Britain from the Middle East; Malta could easily have been taken. Such humiliations would have dealt heavy blows to the credibility of Churchill’s policy of fighting on. As it was, however, the Luftwaffe’s clumsy offensive posed the one challenge which Britain was well-placed to repel. The British army and people were not obliged to confront the Wehrmacht on their beaches and in their fields- a clash which would probably have ended ignomiously. The prime minister merely required their acquiescence, while the country was defended by a few hundred RAF pilots and- more importantly though less conspicuously- by the formidable might of the Royal Navy’s ships at sea. The prime minister’s exalting leadership secured public suppo...
