Churchill's "The Gathering Storm" covers pre-World War II events from the end of World War I to the ascension of Churchill to Prime Minister in 1940. Watt's "How War Came" focuses from the time of the Munich agreement (Sept. 30, 1938) to the time that both Britain and France declare war (Sept. 3, 1939). But despite its narrower focus of time, the information is more in depth.
624 pages of chronological narrative include many anecdotes and a horde of diplomatic characters with photos of many, though not all. The conscientious reader will take advantage of the good index. Most of the important characters are listed with a brief note of their positions. Political cartoons of the era add occasional color. The maps are welcome, though many locations noted in the narrative are not on them. Readers demanding sources of information will be pleased with fifty-one pages of footnotes and thirty-two pages of bibliography and credits.
Maybe what pleased me most was Professor Watt's unabashed criticisms of the characters. The Prime Minister of Britain, the President of the U.S., the Tyrant of Nazi Germany and his subordinates - all get a good whacking. But Watt is capable of commendation too.
About twenty years have passed since my reading of "The Gathering Storm", but I remember it as more exciting than "How War Came". For two reasons:
1) Regarding the diplomatic maneuverings preceding World War II, Watt's book probably gives more information than any other single source. Much of it is interesting. Unfortunately much of it is barely interesting, or uninteresting.
2) What drags Watt's book down to a three-star rating is his addiction to long sentences, which are sometimes too hard to understand. I did much rereading.
To get to the book's more interesting parts, and to trudge through the less-interesting parts and the long sentences, the reader will need to flex his reading muscles.
Here is an example of Watt's poor sentences (take a deep breath before diving in):
British society retained a sense of national identity, a grasp of the priorities necessary for the maintenance of national unity, a common set of symbols of that unity--king, parliament, flag--and a consciousness of Englishness, Welshness, Scottishness reinforced by more local ties of identification; these were to give Britain a sense of social cohesion, a level of social discipline, a feeling of singleminded purpose which were to make possible a degree of mobilization of the national resources in manpower and money which, for all the technological backwardness, out-dated managerial and labour practices and grievances that historians now maintain accompanied this mobilization in Britain, Germany was only to achieve after D-Day.
May 19, 2010:
I have just finished re-reading Winston Churchill's "The Gathering Storm." I have written an amazon review of it that compares it with "How War Came."
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Prof DBG Heuser
The definitive work on the short-term causes of World War II
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Great quality, at Cheap price.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 5, 2017
