Reviews of Books

Europe at War 1939-1945


The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known: after six years of brutal fighting on land, sea and in the air, the Allied Powers prevailed and the Nazi regime was defeated. But as in so many things, the truth is somewhat different.

Reviews - Europe at War 1939-1945

All trite on the Western Front

Wednesday 03 December 2003 The Observer, Jan Morris

Davies succeeds in making a historical whole of the two main elements of the European War - the war in the west, fought by Britain, America and a host of allies; the war in the east conducted by the Soviets with a multitude of ancillaries willing and unwilling.

The madness of myths

Tuesday 09 November 2004 The Economist

WHATEVER you think about the second world war is wrong, and this book will prove it.

War crimes and blunders

Friday 03 November 2006 The Independent, David Cesarini

Although the Second World War ended over 60 years ago, it still reverberates in culture and politics. The history shelves of bookshops sag under the weight of tomes chronicling all aspects of the 1939 to 1945 global conflict. Yet, as Norman Davies points out, there is still no single volume that gives a satisfactory overview of the war, encompassing every theatre, and giving due weight to each.

How Eastern Europe swapped one oppressor for another

Wednesday 29 November 2006 The Telegraph, Noel Malcolm

This is a self-consciously contrary book, cutting against the grain of much self-congratulatory Western writing since 1945. 

The clash of the armoured megalosaurs

Saturday 30 December 2006 Spectator Book Club, Victor Sebestyen

‘If ‘justice were done’, writes Norman Davies in this fascinating and infuriating work, ‘all books on the second world war in Europe would devote perhaps three quarters of their contents to the Eastern Front.’ In the real world, of course, the victors dispense the justice and write the history afterwards.

  • 1
  • 2