This is a very good book, and it should be read by anyone who wishes to get a grip on the major outcrops of the war. Beevor is already the author of three books on World War II, two excellent tomes on the Eastern Front (Stalingrad and Berlin) and a less (in my view) satisfactory book on D-Day. What we have in Beevor is a populariser who knows his way around archives, who has made a significant contribution to the history of aspects of World War II, and who can write. There are popularists of quite another hue who can do none of these things, and if they find themselves short of documentary evidence, they make it up. History therefore morphs into fiction, and in the process becomes valueless. Alas, we can all think of recent examples of this kind of writing.

Beevor is therefore the best kind of populariser. Since I think well of this book, I will deal with my few areas of disagreement with it first, in order to finish on a positive note. Firstly, I think the ten-page Introduction would have been better omitted. Several statements about World War I – such as the fact that it was the Allied blockade that starved the German people in 1918 – are quite wrong (it was the wholesale acquisition of food by the German military that resulted in starvation in Germany at the end of the war). This example, and some others, might have been removed by a judicious editor without doing damage to the book.

Japanese bayonet Chinese prisoners in Nanking   MacArthur, Roosevelt, and Nimitz at Pearl Harbor, 26 July 1944

The second area of disagreement I have with Beevor is in his treatment of General Montgomery and with the performance of Allied troops in general. Beevor does not like Montgomery. This is quite acceptable; I suspect that ‘Monty’ was not a very likeable person. However, as a general he was careful with the lives of his troops (quite different from the generals of World War I, with whom I have spent many an unhappy hour). Montgomery also defeated the Germans he faced. Whether that took air power or superior industrial resources of one kind or another hardly matters. World wars are not won by small-group infantry tactics, and if the Germans performed at a higher level in this area than the Allies, ultimately it did them no good. What matters surely is that the right prevails, whether the right is presided over by nice guys or not. There is an alarming tendency in military writing these days to overlook these matters. It is odd to have to keep reminding oneself that the Anglo-American forces did prevail over their enemies.

Those criticisms made, there is much in this book that is agreeable. Beevor gives full weight to the war in the East. One of the surprises in this section is the emergence of Chiang Kai-shek as something more than the venal warlord portrayed in so many histories. Chiang’s armies clearly performed much better than they have been given credit for, and Beevor’s views are an interesting corrective to popular conceptions.

Beevor is also sound on the vexed question of the Mediterranean strategy in World War II. His view is that Britain did not pursue this course for imperialistic reasons, but because it was the only theatre of war (before 1944) where they could face the Germans on equal terms. The same point can be made on his chapters on strategic bombing. The British and the Americans bombed Germany between 1941 and 1945 not in pursuit of a strategy that would end the war without an invasion, but because it was one of the few ways they could inflict damage on Germany. Beevor is well aware that war is a nasty business and that damage is often inflicted on an enemy for its own sake, though the end result of that damage may not be decisive.

Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek smile for the cameras with General Stilwell

Every historian of World War II must confront the ghastly matter of the Holocaust. (This was once not the case; I have several histories of the war in which the Holocaust is not mentioned.) Beevor approaches this subject with some originality. His knowledge of the Russian archives has allowed him to use sources not often seen in the West. Vasily Grossman’s reflections on Treblinka are used to great effect and only add to the sense of depravity of the appalling project that lay at the centre of Nazi policy.

Nor is the frightfulness of the war in the East ignored. Many armies talk about fighting to the last man; the Japanese army was one of the few that actually did. After his exposition of the fighting on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, there is no need for Beevor to discuss at length the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Any weapon that would end the war quickly was obviously going to be used. Beevor’s conclusion that the bomb possibly saved Japanese as well as Allied lives is worth pondering.

If there is a hero in this book it is Churchill. Stalin is portrayed as the monster that he was, which is hardly a surprise. What is more unusual and, in my view, correct is the portrayal of Roosevelt as a very cold fish. The architect of the New Deal is shown to be often out of his depth in foreign policy. He thought nothing of the French, risked everything by not giving more support to Britain in 1940, and naïvely thought he had made a friend in Stalin. Lend-Lease is revealed as one of the more sordid deals in history, and the fact that Britain was (rightly) prepared to pay the price demanded by Roosevelt should not disguise this fact. Churchill comes across as a much more human figure. He cared about the restoration of West Europe, stuck with de Gaulle (admittedly at times between gritted teeth) when the Americans wished to dump him for a nonentity (Giraud), and at least tried to mitigate the effect of the Soviet occupation of East Europe when Roosevelt seemed blind to the fact that there would be any consequences, or uncaring as to what they might be.

This book should be read for the elegance of its prose and for the judicious nature of its conclusions. There are some who seem to envy Beevor his success in selling books on military history by the truckload. I am not among them. He helps popularise an area of history which is often burdened by myth and nationalism, both of which vices he avoids. Antony Beevor is good for military history. Full stop.