Customer Reviews

A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

One Big History of the World War

I have been reading books about the World War for nearly 50 years. This book is one of a kind. But it's not written for everyone. First I will point out some limitations of this book. Then I will list some of the strengths that make this book unique.

Limitations.

Weinberg is a clear writer, but not flashy. The material is carefully organized but it moves at a deliberate pace. Put simply, this is not exciting reading, especially at 900 pages!
If you loved Ambrose, McCullough, or D'Este, you may dislike Weinberg.

Weinberg believes in a form of historical writing that downplays the role of individuals. Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, Rommel, Churchill, Mussolini, Chang Kai Shek, Hirohito are all in attendance, but their personalities, their quirks, and their
habits , hardly enter into the story. Instead, these men represent movements, states, ideologies, etc.

Weinberg never uses direct, pithy quotes. That takes something out, compared to other popular history.

Weinberg doesn't say anything he can't back up. Many chapters contain 200 footnotes or more. Those footnotes
could drive you crazy.

Weinberg does not present the War as simply a clash of Good versus Evil. He sees a much more complex picture of motives and actions at play. Few parties to the conflict emerge with their honor wholly intact.

Weinberg does not write much about leaders, battles, etc.
Don't get me wrong. The leaders and battles are there, but
W is only interested in the big picture aspects of battles, not
in leaders, heroes, clever tactics, etc.

I don't see these limitations as very important. A reader can
get all that exciting stuff from popular books. Instead, Weinberg has produced a book that mainly appeals to World War addicts and scholars. I'm not sure I would recommend this book to readers who don't already have a good general grasp of the War.

Now the strengths:

Weinberg organized his material in such a way as to show the War in an integrated whole. He covers the whole World, Asia,
Europe, Mediterranean, even Africa and South America. In doing so he shows many interconnections that I had never previously considered. For instance, the book shows the close relationship between Japan and Germany.

His writing is very tight. He discusses his topics systematically, thoroughly, and logically. He likes to set out lists of considerations, or reasons that I find illuminating.
For example, why did Hitler consistently reject offers of additional collaboration from Vichy France?

Weinberg is realistic in his judgments. Although his overall viewpoint about the morality of the War is rather conventional, he's unafraid of making harsh judgments. For instance, W shows how the neutrals; Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, etc acted in greedy and self-interested ways, looking for war profits, wanting territorial gains, desparate to keep their independence.

W is not given to moralizing. As I stated, his own views are clear, not hidden. But he does NOT find many instances where moral or ethical considerations carried much weight with the combatants or occupied nations. He's a believer in "RealPolitik" like Kissinger.

W is not a military man, but he's writing about military operations. His grasp of those operations is satisfactory, although he must avoid details. He's excellent at showing how military operations relate to the larger war situation. For example, he shows how Germany sent 200,000 troops to Tunisia just when Germany needed them more at Stalingrad.

Weinberg reaches some controversial conclusions about perennial "hot" issues:

· Most Germans supported Hitler straight through. It's not
realistic to talk about a German resistance.
· Many adult Germans knew enough about the treatment of Jews, captives, and slave labor to understand the horrific nature of their government. They acquiesced.
· Hitler's overall plans for the future of Europe were much
more radical than most people understand -- even today.
· With a few exceptions, populations in the occupied countries did not mount serious resistance efforts. They willingly collaborated. (ex. Yugoslavia, Poland, USSR).
· The Wehrmacht knew fully about the Jews, the slave
labor, the crimes against occupied countries. It's no good
to argue that "we didn't know."
· The Western Allies knew about the Genocide by 1942. They did not act because there was little they could do, and, in the US especially, the government did not want to get into a political situation where the opposition could label it "A War to Save Jews." Anti-Semitism was still strong in US.

etc etc etc.

To sum up, this book represents a terrific achievement. It represents a huge body of research. He must have taken 10 years to write it, with the help of 10 assistants. None of the other books to take on the Whole Enchilada come close. It will probably stand as the "standard" treatment for 50 years, until many more closed archives are finally opened.

This is truly the most comprehensive monograph written as an overview of the war as an ongoing event in world history. Time and again Weinberg amazes us with his grasp and understanding of the connections and influences within and among the many theaters of war. This, then, is a massively documented and carefully researched one volume comprehensive history of World War Two as a world war quite unlike the one that preceded it. He traces its origins in the events and consequences flowing from the first world war, and then demonstrates quite handily that the political fate and will of one man, Adolph Hitler, literally forced the war into being. He analyzes the events professionally and dispassionately, and ties together the events in all their horror to the nature of the world conflict. While one can certainly argue that most of what he says is not new, it is also the case that he links the observations of others with his own insights in a way that is much more learned, better organized, and comprehensive in its results. Some of the statistics tying the various theaters of conflict together are dizzying, such as the fact that the numbers of divisions (over two hundred) deployed by Hitler on the eastern front, for example, both dwarf and doom the troops (just fifty divisions)available for the defense of the western wall of Europe. He estimates the total number of deaths due directly to the war at over sixty million, and cites the various sources for such a catastrophic figure. Likewise, you see how the Japanese situation of being overextended in Asia fighting defensive struggles against the Chinese, British, Australians, etc from India to Burma has consequences for its sumultaneous defense against assembled naval activities and the island-by-island hopping and isolation strategy of the Allied forces. This book is immensely readable, but is so literally packed with details and connections, so is often difficult to read both because of its subject matter and the details he includes. His overview, for example, of Hitler's criuel and inhumane eugenics activities against his own people, especially the mentally ill, defective, and the infirm even before the war is both nauseating and revealing. Likewise, his argument that the "Final Solution" of total extermination of all European Jews was more the result of desperation, logistics, and the rush of historical circumstance than a long-standing and well-thought out policy decision is quite interesting to read. It was only after the massive displacements of Polish Jews into a single sector that feeding and maintaining this large population clearly became the chief argument for the mass extermination of all Jews. On the other hand, the war against the Russians was always intended to be a war of extermination, one in which the armies and occupants of the areas conquered were to be savagely and brutally used for slave labor and then eliminated. This is truly a masterwork in the sense of being the single best attempt to date to write the complete overview of the Second World War as an event in world history. Buy it, read it slowly, and enjoy!

Gerhard Weinberg's A World at Arms is a must possession for every World War 2 buff. Even as a reference work never read continuously its beautifully complete index will page you in on every significant event in a conflict that Weinberg sees and treats as a storm that enveloped every country in the world; even Uruguay and Mexico are indexed.

After I had begun the book, some confusion that arose from viewing a documentary about the battle of Leyte Gulf was promptly cleared up by reading Weinberg's account with the relevant maps. I have been waiting for this book for a long time and recommend it highly for those readers whose sophistication about these events demands references when they read that Douglas McArthur received a great deal of money from Filipino President Manuel Quezon when they departed for safety on 11 March 1942. This is not a book for those who want a quickly readable survey of American involvement in the conflict.

Details is what this book is about--stupendously documented details, mainly to do with shifting alliances within the Axis and Allied responses; there are, for example, eight indexed references to Sir John Dill, the man who more than any other was responsible for smoothing out the prickles in the Anglo-American alliance. Details, however, do not always make for easy reading. An academic historian whose expertise stems from his intimate knowledge of the relevant documentary archives, Weinberg writes academic prose. Few of his sentences would pass the Fleischman criteria for readibility. Even a reader used to this kind of prose will find that one sentence in ten requires re-reading. And sometimes we wish that the author had chosen a different way of putting his point. And the publisher could have seen to it that the maps in the appendix of such an important book were of a quality equal to the thought behind this great work. Nonetheless, any complaints here are mere quibbles; @ 3 cents per page this book is a bargain by any one's accounting. Thank you Dr. Weinberg and Cambridge University Press!

Certainly the premier one-volume work on the Send World War, this tome by Professor Weinberg sets a daunting standard by which to judge other such works. But caution! This is a book covering the political, diplomatic and high-level aspect of the war, not the military part (although it is included as necessary.)

So why only four stars? Several reasons:

Although the author makes extensive use of end notes, they support his facts, not his opinions or generalizations from analysis. These remain his own. Statements such as, "As it became increasingly obvious to the Germans ... they..." are hardly scholarly. What Germans? Who are "they?" Hitler? OKW? OKH?

Weinberg also makes very controversial statements such as, "The American President hoped to avoid open warfare with Germany altogether." His support for that contention is weak, and the proof offered by using the Enigma intercepts to avoid German submarines is hardly convincing. Roosevelt knew full well that American anti-submarine capabilities were less than adaquate at the time, and indeed heavy losses were incurred in 1942. On the contrary, Roosevelt tightened the screws on the Japanese coincident with the German invasion of Russia, and he became increasingly desperate to bring the US into the war while the Soviet Union was still a viable ally. When the Wehrmacht approached Moscow in November, 1941, Roosevelt literally forced Japan to take action of some kind knowing that such action would commit a reluctant US population to entering the war and motivate it to win a long term conflict. In fact, this is the type of global approach and analysis that has made Weinberg famous, but here it is lacking.

Even some of the comments that Weinberg backs up with end notes are questionable. An example would be his statement, "Unlike the Germans,... ...the Americans had a real appreciation for the quality of Soviet armor." This statement was based on the Sherman Miles memorandum of June 19, 1941 as given in the end notes. Nice to find that buried in the files, but the Americans were hardly that prescient. The US produced a woefully inadaquate tank in 1942 (the Sherman), and had the Miles memo been taken seriously, one would assume that a heavier and more capable tank would have been produced. In addition, Miles did not know what advances the Germans had made since defeating France in 1940 in either tanks, anti-tank guns or tactics to truly estimate the capabilities of Soviet armor against the Germans. It was left to the battlefield for clarification to occur.

Other reviewers have noted what they feel is an anti-British bias in Weinberg's writing. I disagree here since it is well documented that British leaders (other than Churchill) arrogantly looked down on American generals and especially American troops as inferior. The British had an unfortunate habit of winning battles only when given overwhelming resources from the Americans and when using British Empire troops in the assault phases when casualties were likely to be heaviest. Alamein was a perfect example of this. It is important to note some of these aspects of the British leadership and is hardly bias.

With respect to an anti-German bias being present, I must reluctantly agree. German Field-Marshals and Generals were not bribed as the author claimed, but were motivated mainly by the sense of doing their duty. In fact, that was the overwhelming reason for German men at all levels to fight so well (it was their duty), a factor that was not present in American or British armies to the same degree. I must recommend the reader turn to the 10 volume series "Das Deutsche Reich Und Der Zweite Weltkrieg," now fully available, for the comprehensive presentation of the German side. It also features a high-level political, diplomatic, economic and global treatise like Weinberg.

In short, this is the best available one-volume work to my knowledge in the English language. However, it must be supplemented by materials from the German and Soviet side that have become recently available, and much research needs to be conducted by the specialist on many individual assertions by Weinberg before forming an opinion on many of his points, either agreeing or disagreeing. I would caution the reader from too often taking Weinberg's generalizations at face value and running with them.

Gerhard Weinberg combines massive archival research in three countries with exhaustive use of secondary sources and a steady supply of trenchant observations in order to create what simply has to be acknowledged as the single best one-volume history of World War II.

Its flaws should be acknowledged--overemphasis on diplomatic history, underemphasis on the Pacific--but its flaws in no way denigrate from the incredible accomplishment. Even the endnotes are a pleasure to read.

Although praise rarely falls so readily from my lips, I simply have to emphasize that this is a must-read for any student of World War II.

Gerhard L. Weinberg has brought forth a thoughtful history of World War II, distinguished by its comprehensive scope and coherent organization. The broad sweep of the war is organized around the foreign policies of the combatants, which clarifies the causes of the war and its development within the strategic rationale of the contestants. This approach also reveals the tensions within each of the alliances. For the Allies, the reader sees the particular controversies that were subsumed to the greater goal of defeating the Axis, but which in some ways presaged the antagonisms of the Cold War. For the Axis, it was not so much the tensions, but rather the mutual disregard for each other's aims that was determinative, exemplified by Japan's blunder of attacking Pearl Harbor and Germany's unwillingness to reach an accord with the USSR as German military power waned. A history such as this is especially useful for reacquainting us with the challenges of multilateralism as the anomalous international system of the Cold War recedes. In this regard, I also favor Dean Acheson's memoirs, "Present at the Creation."

Hitler's essential focus on gaining the agricultural and industrial resources of the Ukraine provides rationality to German actions, and explains why the USSR faced such a tremendous burden, with staggering human cost, holding the Eastern Front. Japan's own ambitions are similar in that it hoped to secure natural resources through dominance of the western Pacific. Distinctly irrational for both countries, however, was the systematic savagery that was integral to their operations. In Germany's case, these activities were an extension of its racial purity policies of the 1930s, culminating in the Holocaust, as well as its intent to cleanse ethnically the Soviet territory it occupied in preparation for relocating Germans into these areas.

Weinberg starkly describes the utter darkness that fell across the world at the start of the war: Germany's ejection of British forces from Europe and Greece; the capitulation of France; the encirclement of Soviet forces by the hundreds of thousands; Japan's sweep throughout the western Pacific; and the near-total isolationism of the United States. As the war proceeded, strategic misjudgments by the Axis provided an opportunity for the Allies to rally. Britain passed the trial of the Battle of Britain, the United States was drawn in to the war by Pearl Harbor, and the USSR, if not without tragic waste, developed the highly effective force that was to be the bulwark and eventually the bludgeon against the Wehrmacht. At the same time, the Axis passed its high watermarks of the war with strategic defeats at Midway and Stalingrad. Weinberg's history appreciates these events not only with respect to their diplomatic and military ramifications, but also the technological, economic, and demographic forces at work. While key engagements are dealt with in their strategic and operational context, a history like this will probably not be of tremendous interest to students of particular battles, or of anecdotal combat experiences. Also, despite the current focus on combating terrorism, Weinberg's description of the reordering of global relations in the aftermath of the war remains relevant today.

This book draws on historical source material that became available in the early 1990s. Graduate students in history take note: Weinberg offers numerous ideas for thesis research. Another contemporary history, "A War to be Won" by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, would probably also be worth reading in conjunction with Weinberg.

As much as I favor this book, I have to admit that it was a cumbersome read. Not that it was poorly written, but the scope of the subject demands much from the reader. Still, determination yields an edifying read, and this authoritative history, with its absence of axe-grinding and hobby-horsing, is worthy of one's serious attention. Afterwards, one major impression I was left with is that although the international system failed to thwart the ambitions of fascist nations, contributing to the causation of the war, during the war a combination of diverse forces permitted the Allies to rally from profound defeat and eventually renew the international system in victory.

The maps, which are hidden between the bibliographic notes and index, are minimally useful, and I highly recommend "The Times Atlas of the Second World War" (out of print, unfortunately and inexplicably) in order to appreciate Weinberg's descriptions of the campaigns as they unfold.

Gerhard L. Weinberg's single-volume history of WW II is truly remarkable in that it presents not merely an account of the battles and major events of the war, but the politics and diplomacy that were truly as important and as essential as what happened on the battlefield. Too many histories of wars are written by historians who are fixated on battles, and the development of wartime technology, and bombing campaigns, and tactics on the field. Weinberg does not neglect these expects of the war, but he knows that these other aspects are in large part an outgrowth of other factors: industrial output, the cooperation between allies in sharing ideas, goals, and materials as well as coordinating battle plans, and the personalities driving each country.

In short, this is a comprehensive history of World War Two, and not merely an account of its military campaigns. Not only this, but Weinberg successfully addresses the greatest fault of most Anglo-European histories of the war: to focus too much on the European Western front and the Pacific campaign, ignoring the fact that by far the greatest amount of fighting--both in terms of men deployed and in casualties suffered and inflicted--came on the long and decision Russian front. Although the Germans deployed far more of their military along their Eastern front, in the West we constantly tend to forgot this. Unquestionably, this is in part a function of the natural myopia all human beings are subject, as we tend to focus more closely on those aspects of an affair that more directly involve us. But in the West it is also a lingering offshoot of the Cold War, during which time Americans and Europeans unquestionably minimized and even ignored the massive Soviet contributions to the war. No nation gave more of its lifeblood in the winning of World War Two, and Weinberg is to be praised for writing accurately about it.

Despite being only one volume, this is truly a massive book. Weinberg deals with every imaginable aspect of the war, some that I have already noted. It is a weighty, thick book, replete with extensive bibliography and footnotes. There are no illustrations, a decision that was probably made because there are thousands of other books that visualize the war in every imaginable fashion. My complaint concerns the paucity of maps. There are a group of maps contained at the end of the volume, but I think the text would have been far more useful with a series of additional and smaller maps that would have more precisely located geographically where major events were taking place. But this is a minor point. A more substantial criticism is that the book leaves out almost entirely the social aspect of the war and does not deal as extensively with what was happening on the homefront, on how the war was changing and altering the nations participating. For instance, the war exerted massive influence on the United States, having dramatic effects on politics, race, gender, and economic matters. These topics are almost completely left alone. In a one-volume history, one must make decisions about what to leave in and out, and Weinberg focuses on the fighting and the geopolitical aspects.

There is a wealth of other one-volume histories of World War Two available, but this is, I believe, clearly the one for anyone wanting to learn more about the war in depth to read. I would, however, argue that any event the magnitude of WW II requires the serious student to approach it from several points of view. No single volume could ever do the trick.

A World at Arms is the best single-volume history of WWII I've read. The book's strengths are in analyzing the global strategy (or lack thereof) of the various participants and the interrelationship of various theaters. Weinberg does a great job of weaving developments on obscure fronts (Finland, Sub-Saharan Africa, India) and the behavior of neutrals (Sweden, Turkey, Portugal) into the general narrative. He is particularly good on Soviet-Japanese relations and his use of Japanese diplomatic sources commenting on the war in Europe is fascinating.

In general the tone is dispassionate, although there are occasional flashes of well-deserved scorn for the Axis and their apologists. Once Weinberg has made such a point, however, he often can't resist making it again and again. For example, he repeatedly derides the supposed "success" of Germany's aerial rearmament in the 1930s, by pointing out that Germany was eventually bombed to bits--a marginal argument and not one that needs to be repeated in each summary of developments in the air war.

The book sticks mostly to grand strategy and doesn't try to recreate the experience of the war, either on the battlefield or the home front. It also eschews biographical sketches of the major figures, perhaps assuming that they are already sufficiently familiar. Use of memorable quotations (such as Churchill's matchless oratory) would have lent more color and spark to the narrative.

My biggest quibble with the book is maps. The publisher has generally produced a very handsome volume, but the maps are tucked into the back rather than interspersed with the text. Moreover, they are few in number, difficult to read, and lacking in detail.

Nevertheless, the book is an excellent introduction to the subject as well as a valuable synthesis of recent research.

Weinberg's massive, masterful book deserves all the praise heaped upon it in these Amazon reviews, despite the fact that its prose is maddeningly clumsy, requiring one to read many of his sentences several times to figure out their meaning. (What a shame that such impressive scholarship was not matched by a more graceful writing style!) I admired the book so much that, when the current "New Edition" came out, I bought it, intending to replace the old one. But I've done a cursory comparison, and to my annoyance, while this edition sports a new preface and may contain some "corrections" that Weinberg alludes to, in almost every respect it seems identical to the old: same page numbers, exact same words beginning and ending every page... It certainly isn't the updated, revised work that the label implies. In fact, I was unable to find a single word that had been changed.

For the past decade Gerhard Weinberg's "A World at Arms" has stood as the best single-volume history of the Second World War. Encyclopedic in its scope and sure in its many judgements, it is a breathtaking work that reflects the considerable erudition of its author, who has spent decades studying the conflict. Yet Weinberg's book was bound to suffer from the passage of time, especially in a field as heavily researched as that of World War II. When I discovered that a new edition was due to be published, I looked forward to reading it and seeing how the revelations of the past decade has altered a book for which I have developed such respect.

Having read the book, my reaction is one of disappointment. While Weinberg has included a new nine-page preface that examines the work that has been done since the publication of the first edition, no great changes have been made to the rest of the work itself. The bulk of the book is simply a page-for-page reprinting of the original edition, with no notable editions either to the text or the notes. Because of this, some statements that were sound in 1994 are now dated; his lamentation for a reliable edition of Field Marshal Alanbrooke's diaries, for example, fails to take into account the publication of Alex Danchev's superb edition in 1998. This is the only reason why I give the new edition four stars instead of five, and I hope that readers take this into account when deciding whether or not to pay the not-inconsiderable amount for the new edition, especially if they have what is essentially the same book in their collection already.