Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945 [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Max Hastings (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 1, 2011

From 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.

World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost sixty million lives—an average of twenty-seven thousand a day. 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 war.

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, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews—Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments—Hitler’s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalin’s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchill’s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Roosevelt’s steady hand before and after the United States entered the war—and puts them in real human context.

Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war’s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin’s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru’s words, “the final epitaph of British rule” in India.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A new, original, necessary history, in many ways the crowning of a life’s work. A professional war correspondent who has personally witnessed armed conflict in Vietnam, the Falkland Islands and other danger zones, Hastings has a sober, unromantic and realistic view of battle that puts him into a different category from the armchair generals whose gung-ho, schoolboy attitude to war fills the pages of a great majority of military histories. He writes with grace, fluency and authority . . . Inferno is superb.”
—Richard J. Evans, The New York Times Book Review
 
“If there is a contemporary British historian who is the chronicler of World War II, it would be Max Hastings . . . [Inferno] is a true distillation of everything this historian has learned from a lifetime of scholarship—and more important, of real thought—on what he calls ‘the greatest and most terrible event in human history.’”
—Martin Rubin, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Compellingly different . . . a panoramic social history that not only recounts the military action with admirable thoroughness, crispness and energy but also tells the story of the people who suffered in the war, combatants and civilians alike.”
—Edward Kosner, The Wall Street Journal
 
“A relatively brief review can only begin to indicate the depth, breadth, complexity and pervasive humanity of this extraordinary book. The literature of World War II is, as Hastings notes at the beginning of his bibliography, so vast as almost to defy enumeration or comprehension, but “Inferno” immediately moves to the head of the list. It is in all ways a monumental achievement.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
 
“Inferno is a magnificent achievement, a one-volume history that should find favor among readers thoroughly immersed in World War II and those approaching the subject for the first time. As the years thin the ranks of those who fought in the war, Hastings’s balanced and elegantly written prose should help ensure that the bloodshed, bravery and brutality of that tragic conflict aren't forgotten.”
—Jerry Harkavy, Associated Press
 
“Oddly enough, good single-volume histories of the war are relatively rare. By and large, its sheer scope intimidates writers: while there are hundreds of books about individual episode, from the Battle of Britain to D-Day, surprisingly few historians have tried to pull all the threads together. But Hastings, as the author of several splendid volumes on various aspects of the conflict, is the ideal candidate to conquer this historiographical Everest.  His book is at once a ‘global portrait,’ emphasizing events in Asia as well as in Europe, and a ‘human story,’ saturated in the details of ordinary people’s experience . . . . Hastings has a terrific grasp of the grand sweep and military strategy of the war, showing how a combination of Russian blood, American industry and German incompetence made the allied victory inevitable. But what makes this book so compelling are the human stories . . . . This is the book he was born to write: a work of staggering scope and erudition, narrated with supreme fluency and insight, it is unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written.”
—Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times
 
“Though the Second World War has been the subject of immense historical research, Max Hastings here demonstrates how much there is still to know. Using the techniques that served him so well in his earlier books on various aspects of the war, he now offers a fast-moving, highly readable survey of the entire war, in all its phases and on all fronts . . . Above all, this is the story of the war as experienced by ordinary men and women. Hastings draws on eye-witness accounts and anecdotes from soldiers of all armies to show graphically what the war was like for the ordinary people who fought it, and, overwhelmingly, how terrible it was for the combatants. While many of the frontline commanders of each of the belligerent powers come in for some harsh treatment for their ineptitude or bungling, the valour, heroism and, above all, the extraordinary stoicism of their troops amid scarcely imaginable pain, suffering and losses are repeatedly highlighted. This is military history at its most gripping. Of all Max Hastings’s valuable books, this is possibly his best—a veritable tour de force.”
—Ian Kershaw, The Evening Standard
 
“This book is packed with fascinating and surprising statistics and facts . . . . Hastings has an extraordinary ability to throw a bucket into the ocean of wartime papers, diaries, letters and documents of every kind, and bring up something fascinating and worthwhile every time.”
—Andrew Roberts, Financial Times
 
“[A] huge, majestic book . . . . The Second World War took place in the skies, the oceans and the lands of five different continents. It encompassed fighting in Arctic blizzards, as well as in jungles and deserts. Any military history must encompass all of this and more. And at the same time it must reconcile the grand strategy of generals and politicians with the more violent experiences of ordinary soldiers . . . Hastings shapes all these stories, almost miraculously, into a coherent narrative. Overlaid upon this tapestry is an analysis of how the war brought out the best and the worst in people, how it could be won only through the use of astonishing brutality and how it changed society forever.”
—Keith Lowe, The Telegraph
 
“[Hastings’s] nine books on aspects of [World War II] have given him a claim to be our pre-eminent military historian. In All Hell Let Loose he attempts to tell the whole story in a single volume, and succeeds triumphantly, combining fluid narrative with some piercing insights and unsentimental judgments . . . As this enthralling book shows, in the right hands, the study of war – like the study of sacred text – can generate and endless stream of new meanings and insights, illuminating in their turn the wider mysteries of existence.”
—Patrick Bishop, Standpoint

About the Author

Max Hastings is the author of more than twenty books, most recently Winston’s War. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. He has received numerous British Press awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982 and Editor of the Year in 1988. He lives outside London.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 729 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Reprint edition (November 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307273598
• ISBN-13: 978-0307273598
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.8 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (154 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

281 of 294 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent ! November 1, 2011

By Paul Gelman

Format:Hardcover

What is the reason that the Second World War is still a magnet for readers, laymen or professional historians? According to Mr. Hastings, this is so because it was the most
disastrous event in the human history. Did you know, for example, that 27000 people perished daily between September 1939 and August 1945?
This book is mainly about the human experience, in what is called the bottom-up approach to history. Although the military theaters are not neglected at all, they appear here and are described through the lens of the common people or the soldiers who took part in the various scenes of this conflict. The main question posed by Mr. Hastings is: what was the Second World War all about? The answer is grim and, in the words of Arthur Schlesinger, it "concerned mainly stupidity, lies, arrogance and pomposity". Take into consideration the fact that 168000 Russian
Civilians were executed during the war because of cowardice or desertion. Many more thousands suffered the same fate without due process.
Hunger was rampant in many parts of the world, especially throughout the British Empire, where one million were to die in Bengal, and many other famines would break out in Kenya or Egypt. Cannibalism cases which happened in Russia are as well described and it is the author's conclusion that the German army lost because its aims were unrealistic and its forces overstretched. One Russian soldier, Stepan Kuznetsov, wrote that in during the Leningrad siege," all out soldiers on the front look like ghouls-emaciated by hunger and cold. They are in rags, filthy and very, very hungry".
The Wermacht's combat performance remained superior to that of the Red Army until the end of the war, in almost every local action the Germans inflicted more casualties than they received. But their tactical skills no longer sufficed to stem the Russian tide. Stalin was identifying good generals, building vast armires with formidable tank and artillery strength, and at last receiving large deliveries from the Western Allies, including food, vehicles and communications equipment. As Mr. Hastings writes, "the five million tons of American meat that eventually eached Russia amounted to half a pound of rations a day for every Soviet soldier".
There are some myths which are demolished by this book. One of them concerns the so-called exuberant enthusiasm of kamikaze pilots who fought the Americans. Another myth concerns the question-or reason-why the Allies did not bomb the concentration camps during the Holocaust. The guerrilla war against the Axis occupiers, promoted by Allied secret organizations, which has been romanticized in post-war literature, had small strategic impact and resistance groups were seldom homogeneous. Combatants fared better than civilian: around three-quarters of all those who died were unarmed victims rather than active participants in the struggle, and the peoples of western Europe escaped more lightly than those of eastern Europe. Unfortunately, only a fraction of those guilty of war crimes were ever indicted, partly because the victors "had no stomach for the scale of executions, numbering several hundreds of thousands, that would have been necessary had strict justice been enforced against every Axis murderer".
The US Navy found the experience of combating the kamikazes among the bloodiest and most painful of its war and Japanese airmen carried out almost 1700 sorties to Okinawa between 11 March and the end of June 1945. Again, only a limited number of Japanese war criminals were prosecuted.
This is a gem of a book, giving both a macroscopic and panoramic view of the major episodes of the war, and a microscopic examination of many instances of it. To a large extent, this is 'everyman's story'. You will enjoy each page of this long and fascinating book.

145 of 153 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars British historian Max Hasting's monumental one volume popular history of World War II is a great book! November 11, 2011

By C. M Mills TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Max Hastings has spent the past 35 years studying in depth the horrors of World War II (1939-1945). Among his bestselling volumes are Armageddon and Retribution. In Inferno the author gets personal. All of the major military campaigns are covered but the real strength of the book lies in the comments included in the text by participants in the war. We hear from Russian housewives, Werhmacht troops; American Marines; Japanese, Indian and Chinese persons. We feel as if we were there amid the horrors of the worst event in the history of humanity. Just consider the following horrible statistics:
a. Every day from 1939-45 over 27,000 men, women and children died as a result of the war.
b. Over 60 million persons lost their lives during the war due to battle, starvation, executions and disease.
c.90% of the over 7 million German soldiers who died in the war did so in the fight against Stalin's Soviet Union empire.
d. Japan and Germany were cruel dictatorships which treated their own people as cruelly as they did their enemies.
The chief mistakes made by Hitler leading to his downfall were:
a. The foolish attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941.
b. The failed plan to defeat England in a cross channel invasion which never transpired.
c.The declaration of war against the United States. America had unlimited wealth and might to produce the weapons of war which led to victory over the Axis powers
d. The holocaust killed over 6 million Jews and in addition 3 million Russians were murdered by the Nazi war machine. The slaves of the Nazis could have been better utiilized as workers for the Reich rather than being killed in senseless slaughter.
Germany was defeated by a two front war with the western allies attacking from the West and the Soviet hordes charging into Germany from the east. The Japanese were ill equipped to beat the better armed Americans. They failed to conquer China.
The book is 651 close typed pages which fascinate and shock. We Westerners have no idea how fortunate we are to live in demnocracies rather than in dictatorships ruled by such horrible monsters of evil as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Hirohito.
Anything written by Max Hastings is worth reading. This book is a sine qua non for anyone wanting a good one volume account of the war. Man's inhumanity to man is manifest in these grim pages of a worlwide tragedy of unprecedented proportions. Dante's inferno pales in horror before the real life inferno ignited by the fires of totalitarianism and racial hatred.
Inferno contains many maps which are included to aid understanding of the absorbing text. Hastings shows his research skills with an extensive bibliography. The author has mined little known sources to strengthen the narrative. Though the book is lengthy I found it to be engrossing. World War II was a horrible tragedy which has never been equalled for its cruelty and terror. May humankind never descend in such an abyss as transpired seventy years ago. Highly recommended for all World War II buffs and general readers seeking a good understanding of the war.

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sir Max Hastings - "War is all Hell" November 16, 2011

By Red on Black TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Do we really need another general history of World War II? In recent years we have seen new studies by Evan Mawdsley, Martin Gilbert and in particular Andrew Roberts excellent populist history "The Storm of War" to name but a few. The years 1939 to 1945 are a very crowded field for historians and yet there is always a warm welcome for an historian of the calibre of Sir Max Hastings, recent chronicler of Churchill as a wartime leader and political commentator. Hastings is a conservative historian but what is interesting about "All hell let loose - the World at War 1939-45" is that employs the approach of producing an history from below drawn from eyewitness accounts of events. Accounts which in turn demonstrate and confirm William Tecumseh Sherman's maxim "that war is all hell" since we see an overwhelming view of very brave participants who are nonetheless generally terrified, demoralized and often beaten into a fossilised torpor. One British solider reflected in a letter to his wife that `I am absolutely fed up with everything. The dirt and filth, the flies - I'm having a hideous time and I wonder why I'm alive'. Another British soldier William Chappell "never ceased to ache for the civilian world from which he had been torn. He missed his home and his friends and bemoaned the loss of his career. His feet hurt, he was `sick of khaki, and all the monotonous, slow, fiddle-de-dee of Army life.' The fatalistic will of Russian soldiers is particularly well described not least the experience of Private Ivanov, of the 70th Army, who wrote despairingly to his family. `I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless, is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this?'

Those who have read Hastings previously on World War II will detect the ongoing preoccupations which he has developed over many years that have gradually become historical orthodoxy. He maintains in all his works that the best troops throughout the course of hostilities were Germans who were nevertheless effectively outdone by the crazed ambitions of a totalitarian monster particularly in sheer lunatic ambition of the Eastern theatre. Even as the German Army swept all in front of it during Operation Barbarossa key Generals like Halder and Hoepner were unnervingly aware that a nation with an almost limitless supply of manpower was stirring. Thus the war was won and lost in Stalin's Russia which despite the unbelievable ineptitude of its own leader particularly in almost destroying the whole of his own officer corps in purges had the crucial element of numbers on its side. This fact was readily accepted by Churchill at the time which in turn and his relationship to "Uncle Joe" has recently been chronicled with great detail by another British historian David Reynolds. Perhaps the most brutal statistic in the whole book is the fact that 750,000 Russians were shot by their own comrades for cowardice, desertion or simply to maintain army discipline, as it turns out this exceeds the total number of British dead in the entire war. The brutality of the Soviet invasion has been captured in a range of books not least Anthony Beevor's epic "Stalingrad" and the central thesis of Hastings book is equally located in the Soviet Union with its "hierarchy of cruelty" elevated beyond all other conflicts.

That said other pivotal events are not skimped on. The sheer horror of the "Rape of Nanking" in 1937 is vividly captured with its terrifying litany of mass murder, genocide and war rape. The treatment of non combatants prefigured the latter outrages of the war and with estimates of nearly 200,000 Chinese killed by marauding Japanese soldiers. As such Hastings is right to see this as a kind of appalling racist overture to the main act. Unsurprisingly Hastings also uses more well worn sources like the great Eugene Sledge's "With the old breed" his visceral account of the Pacific War as a primary source. The sights and the smells of battle also infuse the book and the everyday acts of living are elevated into small horrors in their own right. As Hastings points out "Excretory processes became an obsession. In battlefield conditions, many never made it to a latrine. But as one soldier recalled: `No one said anything about how you smelt, because everyone smelled bad.'

At over 700 pages this is a long book and your reviewer deliberately avoided the Kindle edition because of this since there were pages of text that needed to be reread and referred to for continuity purposes. Hastings however has the gift of writing an often-complex story in clear and understandable prose. He also cares deeply about the participants in his history and that humanity and gift for narrative shines through this excellent book.