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The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won Hardcover – Illustrated, October 17, 2017
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Print length720 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherBasic Books
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Publication dateOctober 17, 2017
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Dimensions6.38 x 1.5 x 9.63 inches
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ISBN-100465066984
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ISBN-13978-0465066988
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"An extraordinary array of facts and statistics, [The Second World Wars] offers an account of the fatalism of war."―New Yorker
"The Second World Wars is an outstanding work of historical interpretation. It is impossible to do justice to such a magnificent book in a short review. Given the vast quantities of ink expended on accounts of this great conflict, one would think that there was not much more left to say. Hanson proves that this belief is wrong. His fresh examination of World War II cements his reputation as a military historian of the first order."―National Review
"Lively and proactive, full of the kind of novel perceptions that can make a familiar subject interesting again."―New York Times Book Review
"[The Second World Wars] is written in an energetic and engaging style. Mr. Hanson provides more than enough interesting and original points to make this book essential reading. One thing becomes increasingly clear: The complex of conflicts between 1937 and 1945, because of their unprecedented reach and their death blow to colonialism, brought world history together for the first time."―Wall Street Journal
"Hopefully, [The Second World Wars] will become required reading for students at professional military schools as an introduction to war in the industrial age as well as to students studying how the 20th century shaped who we are today."―Washington Times
"In his exposition of this thesis, displaying a depth of knowledge of the period that is often simply astounding, Hanson has written what I consider to be the most important single-volume explanation of World War II since Richard Overy's Why the Allies Won (1996)-that is, for a generation."―Andrew Roberts, Claremont Review of Books
"Even if you feel like you've read everything and then some about World War II, you will find a huge amount in [The Second World Wars] that is new, fascinating, and enlightening. And more than that, you'll find a way of thinking about how the lowliest practicalities and logistical challenges of war are connected to the highest reaches of geopolitics that will change how you think about both. This is what a great, enduring work of military history looks like."―Yuval Levin, National Review
"[The Second World Wars] is a brilliant and very original and readable work by a great military historian and contemporary commentator."―New Criterion
"As I struggle in my office to capture Hanson's analytical tour de force in review, I can see the shelf full of books on World War II that I've read over the decades. After reading Wars, I believe I have a firmer grasp of the big picture--very big picture indeed--of how this conflict began, the various tortuous paths it took, and how it resolved the way it did than after digesting all of these other volumes. Reviewers are sometimes over-quick to label a book essential. For readers who wish to fully understand World War II, this book is."―American Spectator
"Dr. Hanson has written another well-researched and fascinating book. [He] does an excellent job of placing World War II in the historical context of global conflict."―New York Journal of Books
"In his latest work, noted military historian Victor Davis Hanson provides an utterly original account of what he terms the 'first true global conflict.'"―History Net
"Victor Davis Hanson's history is thematic. The war is dissected into its constituent parts, allowing the historian to examine at length aspects of the conflict that would be given short shrift in a narrative account. What is remarkable is that despite the absence of a traditional storyline the reader's attention never flags. Indeed, I have learned more in a few days with this dog-eared [book] than I have in a lifetime of interest in World War II."―Washington Free Beacon
"[Hanson's] unusual approach yields new insights about long-familiar events, making his experiments ingenious and successful."―America in WWII Magazine
"Perceptive and provocative."―American Greatness
"Let me simply say this: prepare yourself to be astonished. The more you know about WWII, the greater will be your astonishment. The Second World Wars demonstrates once again that VDH is a constantly renewing American national treasure who continues to go from strength to strength."―Claremont Review of Books
"Hansen provides a concise, readable and well-researched volume on World War II. It is an excellent starting point for those who know nothing about World War II, and a fresh look at the war for those knowledgeable about it."―Galveston County's The Daily News
"[Hanson's] insights into the international reach of the conflict are very much worth reading, and in this book as in all his others, the reading momentum never flags."―Open Letters Monthly
"I loved this book. Strongly recommended."―Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
"Hanson is a writer who crunches not only numbers but the text itself. He has a gift for brevity, exactness, and clarity. Invariably he brings the wisdom of a lifetime of scholarship, plus his natural intelligence, to bear on judgments about strategy, causes, leadership, and results. [The Second World Wars] is a fine book, rich in both facts and ideas. It is a triumph for an author/historian with a clear vision, the necessary imagination, and the intellect to explain the past to us on a vast canvas, with clarity, a sense of values, and common sense."―Omaha Dispatch
"[Hanson's] organizational approach allows him to isolate and highlight observations that may surprise even some well-read WWII enthusiasts."―Publishers Weekly
"An ingenious, always provocative analysis of history's most lethal war."―Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"The Second World Wars is a monumental, riveting, and illuminating reappraisal of the first - and hopefully the last - truly global conflict, full of exceptional insights from one of America's greatest living historians. Victor Davis Hanson's account provides an exceptional retrospective on the wars in which a staggering 60 million people perished before the Allies prevailed."―General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), former commander of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and coalition forces in Afghanistan and former Director of the CIA
"The Second World Wars offers an incisive tale for our age of globalization. Yet it is rooted in timeless truths. That is no surprise because Victor Davis Hanson is our greatest historian of western warfare from its origins in ancient Greece. Nobody writes military history like Hanson."―Barry Strauss, author of The Death of Caesar: The Story of History's Greatest Assassination
"Victor Hanson's comprehensive account of World War II is a wonder. Where others have supplied a narrative, he provides analysis. He explores the war's origins; the role played in its conduct by airpower, sea power, infantry, tanks, artillery, industry, and generalship; and the reasons why the Allies won and the Axis lost. This is an eye-opener and a page-turner."―Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College, author of The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge
"I couldn't put it down. It is rare to encounter a view of the war from the multiple perspectives of the six powers, three on each side, who were the prime combatants, in the elemental theaters of sea and air and land. The analysis is excellent. The Second World Wars is a major work of historical narrative and deserves to meet readers receptive to its riches."―David Lehman, author of Sinatra's Century
"Victor Davis Hanson has delivered another masterpiece-this time a monumental history of World War II, surpassing all prior attempts at a comprehensive accounting of that cataclysm. Ranging from the deserts of North Africa to the islands of the Pacific, Hanson brings to bear a massive arsenal of insights to illuminate how strategy, culture, industry, and leadership shaped battlefield events and doomed the Axis empires."―Mark Moyar, author of Oppose Any Foe: The Rise of America's Special Operations Forces
"If you think there is nothing more to be said about World War II, then you haven't read Victor Davis Hanson's The Second World Wars. Hanson displays an encyclopedic knowledge of every aspect of the conflict, ranging from land to sea to air, and from grand strategy to infantry tactics, to analyze what happened and why. Page after page, he produces dazzling insights informed by his deep knowledge of military history going all the way back to ancient Greece. The Second World Wars is compulsively readable."―Max Boot, author of Invisible Armies, War Made New and The Savage Wars of Peace
About the Author
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Product details
- Publisher : Basic Books; Illustrated edition (October 17, 2017)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 720 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0465066984
- ISBN-13 : 978-0465066988
- Item Weight : 2.13 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.38 x 1.5 x 9.63 inches
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Best Sellers Rank:
#82,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #625 in World War II History (Books)
- #922 in European History (Books)
- #2,692 in World History (Books)
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©2017 Victor Davis Hanson
a Book Report by Ron Housley
How did we learn about World War II in my generation, we who grew up in the 1950s? We sat through “Victory At Sea” on 1950s black-&-white TV, the war set to snappy Richard Rodgers melodies. We had Samuel Eliot Morrison’s tedious historical accounting of the war at sea, battle by battle. We had dinner-table conversations at home about the War and we had a large assortment of Hollywood offerings. And there was little more until the History Channel burst upon the scene decades later with a unending litany of World War II reporting, from every imaginable perspective --- well, so it seemed.
Not until Victor Davis Hanson did it occur to me that perspective was precisely what had been missing from all those other accounts. What we had before VDH amounted to dubious narratives along with never-ending examinations of isolated elements of the War.
There was little attempt to draw larger lessons in all these WW2 “histories;” there was little attempt to see the broad, centuries-long continuity wherein the puzzle-piece of World War II was to fit. And on top of that there had developed some accepted narratives about the War — like WW2 got us out of the Great Depression; like Hitler or Japan could actually have won; like it was in American self-interest to cooperate with Stalin; like Hitler’s holocaust being the worst mass-murder in history; like FDR provoked Japan into Pearl Harbor with his oil embargo — narratives riddled with misconception.
I’m not sure that I could have followed VDH’s contribution to WW2 history without a previously acquired corpus of the war’s essential parts. But for me, this current volume is the perfect summary and epilog to a lifetime immersion in WW2 facts.
THE INSIGHTS
After all these decades of documentaries and Hollywood depictions, I came away with five important new insights as the result of opening my eyes to Hanson’s new book.
[1]: INSIGHT ABOUT WHY THE AXIS LOST THE WAR
Why is it so preposterous to contend that Hitler and Tojo could have won, “if only…?” It turns out that there were no “if onlys” about it:
The Axis powers were unable to win (a)because of their own misguided strategic decisions, but mostly (b)because their chosen enemy was bigger and more powerful by nearly every metric: more people, more draftable citizens, more productive capacity, more technological inventiveness, all energized by a sense of righteous indignation that they had been surprise attacked.
a) no Axis power had a four-engine, long-range bomber to attack Detroit, or to cross the Urals to attack Soviet factories, or to even reach Manchester or Liverpool. Only the Allies had these bombers
b) no Axis power had a blue water Navy capable of challenging the Royal Navy at sea
c) no Axis power had aircraft carries that could support an attack on America’s west coast, or even support an attack on Suez
d) Hitler lorded over 170-million people and proposed to wage a war on an Allied total exceeding 400-million.
e) I was brought up to understand that the Germans and Japanese were “military machines,” much to be feared. But these countries were never able to invade or conquer America, to destroy its industrial strength (unlike today’s enemies with nuclear ICBMs).
Hitler’s entire plan was based on two arrogant presumptions: (1) that if he could successfully surprise-attack poorly defended border states, that he could therefore dominate over well-fortified, well-supplied and well-armed major powers further away from home base; and (2)that Britain would continue its appeasement and that the US would continue its isolationism.
But pre-emptive war against militarily weak neighbors ought not to have led a sane dictator to conclude that much stronger and larger nations could be similarly dispatched.
British appeasement and US isolationism had the effect of destroying the deterrence that the two powers should have projected, if they had wanted to stop Hitler in the first place. Let that be a lesson for the ages; let that be a lesson for today: when a country “makes nice” with an aggressive enemy (think: Nazi Germany; Iran; North Korea), the aggressive enemy is encouraged to wage war. The next Pearl Harbor could very well be an EMP attack destroying an entire national power grid.
The Axis powers, in short, declared war on the U.S. without any plan to actually win. They waged war totally unprepared; they had no idea of how to destroy their enemy’s ability to make war.
[2]: INSIGHT ABOUT ATOMIC BOMB CONTROVERSY
Even a casual reading of VDH puts to rest once and for all the decades-long contention that America’s use of the atomic bomb may have been a mistake, or even “immoral.”
When a country is forced to fight for its life in a struggle launched and sustained by ruthless barbarians, it is unseemly to condemn the victims for waging too vigorous a defense. All moral blame for civilian deaths, even if any were remotely innocent, lies entirely with the aggressor who initiated military force in the first place.
VDH reminds us that the firebombing of Tokyo was far more destructive of life and property than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
It has always struck me odd that an argument would ever be framed that moral judgments vary according to which method of killing is employed. Stop it!
[3]: INSIGHT ABOUT THE MAGNITUDE OF DEATH
Here are seven factual points, all knowable to me, but which I did NOT know until VDH’s quietly pointed them out.
(a): This is the first time anyone had done the arithmetic for me to divide the total war deaths by the number of war days and then report that WW2 killed over 27,000 people per day, every day, for over 6 years(!).
Somehow, 60-million deaths was just a number; but 27,000 deaths per day seemed more real. Contrast that to the 3-day long Battle of Gettysburg which left a total dead of only 3,155.
(b): I didn’t know that the losing side (the Axis) killed, or starved to death, 80% of the dead in WW2
(c): Hitler is notoriously blamed for the death of 6-million Jews in the holocaust; but contrast that with the 30-million Eastern Europeans killed on the Russian front.
(d): Of the 60-million WW2 deaths, nearly 80% were civilians
(e): The March 9, 1945 napalm attack on Tokyo was the single most destructive 24 hour period in military history; yet, the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 receive all the “moral” condemnations.
(f): There were 3 Great Holocausts in the 20th century:
1- Hitler killed 6-million Jews; 2- Stalin killed 10-million (prior to 1938); 3- Mao killed 40-70-million (1946-1970s)
These 3 great leaders exterminated most of these off the battlefield; note that their totals are more than the 60-million killed in WW2 itself.
(g): 50% of Allied bomber crews were killed (6,000 bombers and 40,000 airmen lost)
[4]: INSIGHT ABOUT WHY THE ALLIES WON
Throughout my years, I have been told that the Allies beat the Axis because the Allies were morally superior.
VDH tells us that the real reasons the Allies won include (a)the Allies had larger industrial capacity; (b)America produced more implements of war than all other combatants combined; (c)the Allies had “righteous indignation” over having been surprise attacked; (d)the Allies developed cryptological excellence and trusted one another; (e)the Axis were duplicitous with one another.
It turns out that the Allies erred on the side of serviceability and practicality and durability of its war implements, whereas the axis erred on the side of “gigantism:” building huge rail guns with limited use; building huge battleships with limited use; building huge tanks with limited use.
Sealing the explanation for the Allied victories are factors such as (a)Hitler never grasped that he had neither the airpower nor the navy to overwhelm the UK; (b)Hitler had no idea of Soviet industrial capacity; (c)Hitler and Mussolini knew combat, but had little capacity to administer a Master war effort.
[5]: INTERESTING FACTOIDS THAT I HADN’T KNOWN
___I did not know that the developing and building the B-29 was bigger than the entire Manhattan Project.
___I did not know that the Japanese were killing 20,000 per day when the decision was made to fire-bomb Tokyo. It probably would not have been more humane to allow the killing spree to continue.
___I did not know that Curtis LeMay was prepared to firebomb all of Japan. It’s not that the atomic bomb saved American lives, it’s that the atomic bomb saved all of Japan from being firebombed into oblivion.
___And much more!
So now that I’ve digested Victor Davis Hanson’s perspective on the War, I have a better sense about the moral propriety of the Dresden fire bombing, of the Tokyo fire bombing, of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing. These bombings were the free nations of the world responding to a new phenomenon: an industrial statist regime willing to systematically butcher tens of millions of people.
I have a better grasp of how strong nations lose the power of deterrence when they disengage, or when they appease a weaker enemy, or embrace Just War Theory’s call for proportionality.
I see with greater clarity how the goal of “a lasting peace” absolutely requires a democratic victor to occupy a statist enemy’s homeland. (Once Germany and Japan were occupied, only then was the ground prepared for a lasting peace and cooperation with the former enemy — unlike what happened at the end of World War I.)
What I do not understand is why none of these lessons or insights are taught today in the government schools, nor even in the military academies. And so it worries me that the stage is being set to repeat the whole thing over again.
WW2 was the biggest war ever in history; it was the most costly war ever in history. The History Channel, and even the success of Hanson’s new book, confirms that WW2 still has a hold on the American imagination. Yet we are not prepared to learn its lessons as we go forth into the future.
Unknown in the ranks of today’s generation is that the only way to end a war and to have lasting peace afterward is to utterly crush the enemy’s will to fight, and that necessitates taking the war to the homeland of the enemy to destroy his means of waging war. Today’s generation appears to favor making accommodations, deals, and appeasements.
In the final analysis, America was good in what it did in WW2, heroic. Elsewise, there would have been a world-wide holocaust.
My hope is that some of today’s generation might prepare for our security armed with just some of the lessons readily available from even a cursory study of Hanson’s “The Second World Wars.” — RWH
The author writes at a level which assumes the reader is knowledgeable of WW2 and has read at least some of the popular histories. This saves a great deal of time and text. The analysis concentrates on fundamentals of production ,logistics, time and distance while spending almost no space on battlefield sketches of individual actions. Mr Hanson is very good at avoiding the standard tropes and clichés , making his own reserved judgments. The Author has a firm grasp of basic Economics, essential to any serious History of this subject. Because I agree with much of what he writes, he sure seems insightful.
The best one volume History of WW2 to come along since a" A World at Arms". I recommend the Read.
Just single out two issues:
1)Hansen correctly emphasizes throughout the book the central role of Britain. The standard approach to this in most cases to to say well, yes, the British fought on alone for a year but with the entry of America and Russia Britain became a junior partner. In 1938 Britain was the only super power with the world's largest navy. Six years later she had the world's second largest navy as well as the largest mercantile marine. In the air British planes were preeminent throughout the war, particularly the Lancaster bomber and the Supermarine Spitfire and its engine installed in the P51.
As Hansen makes clear in depth, the war as won largely as a result of allied dominance on the seas and in the air. In this sense Britain was at the forefront as the only Allied power who fought the entire war from 1939 to 1945. Also, the British Empire was essential in defeating the Axis by giving the Allies a global reach. For example, without the bases in Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and Alexandria, North Africa and Italy would have been failed campaigns. The British army was smaller than Russia or the USA but that was not the deciding factor in the importance of Britain to the war effort. Britain's role in the Pacific is often slighted yet Britain had one million troops in Burma under General Bill Slim.
2) Another now standard ploy says that Russia won the war by breaking the back of the German army. And yet that would have been impossible without the many "second fronts" such as North Africa, Italy, the strategic bombing campaign, Normandy as well as massive material aid. The simple fact is that it took three superpowers six years to defeat the Axis, something which no two of them alone could have done.
Top reviews from other countries
I do not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a different slant in writing about the 2nd World War.










