Forostar
Ancient Mariner
I was happy with the Norman Davies book Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory, but it did not have good maps. Davies criticizes the Allies (west and Soviets), so could be called biased(?), but not more biased than (North)American/Western history books that mainly tell the Allied/American (all good) story.
I felt the book was factual as well. At least, I am not aware of mistakes, and I felt I had a good impression of the campaigns, the importance (the impact) for the first time (2006 that is).
From wiki:
Published sixty years after World War II, Davies argues that a number of misconceptions about the war are still common and then sets out to address them. Two of his main claims are that, contrary to popular belief in the West, the dominant part of the conflict took place in Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian systems of the century - communism and fascism - and that Stalin's USSR was as bad as Hitler's Germany. The subtitle No Simple Victory does therefore not just refer to the losses and suffering the Allies had to endure in order to defeat the enemy, but also the difficult moral choice the Western democracies had to make when allying themselves with one criminal regime in order to defeat another.
I liked the different divisions in the book. It was not pure military, it also treats the civilian aspect. And the political and others (e.g. wartime movies / technology).
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/revi...9-1945-no-simple-victory-europe-east-and-west
The British-born historian Davies -- author of a best-selling history of Europe and several respected works on Poland -- has written two books to help compensate for what he sees as a parochial, Western view of European history. "Europe at War" is not just another survey but an opinionated, iconoclastic reassessment that relentlessly drives home the point that the greatest and most decisive developments of World War II took place on the Eastern Front. Davies hardly denies the importance of D-day or the Battle of El Alamein, but he wants his readers to know that the war's center of gravity was farther east -- and that Stalin's version of totalitarianism was no less evil than Hitler's. Davies' notion that most Americans and most British are unaware of this is a bit of a straw man. His own footnotes, after all, refer to widely read works by writers such as Anne Applebaum, Antony Beevor, Alan Bullock, Robert Conquest, and Richard Overy that address the horrors of the Eastern Front and shine a bright light on Stalin's crimes. But the evidence Davies amasses to justify focusing on the East is compelling. The German-Soviet war accounted for 406 million "man-months," compared with 16.5 million for the Western Front and 5 million for the North Africa campaign. The Soviet Union lost an estimated 11 million soldiers in the European theater, while the United States and the United Kingdom combined lost fewer than 300,000 there. Battle deaths in Operation Barbarossa (Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941) were over 1.5 million, compared with 132,000 for Operation Overlord (the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944). And Stalin's concentration camps killed more people than Hitler's. Davies' facts and opinions on everything from technology to wartime movies are stimulating, and even his hobbyhorses are entertaining.
Before I that, I always looked at this with "Western education" point of view. Not my view has broadened and I have a better idea of the proportions/scale of (the terror of) all that has happened.
I felt the book was factual as well. At least, I am not aware of mistakes, and I felt I had a good impression of the campaigns, the importance (the impact) for the first time (2006 that is).
From wiki:
Published sixty years after World War II, Davies argues that a number of misconceptions about the war are still common and then sets out to address them. Two of his main claims are that, contrary to popular belief in the West, the dominant part of the conflict took place in Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian systems of the century - communism and fascism - and that Stalin's USSR was as bad as Hitler's Germany. The subtitle No Simple Victory does therefore not just refer to the losses and suffering the Allies had to endure in order to defeat the enemy, but also the difficult moral choice the Western democracies had to make when allying themselves with one criminal regime in order to defeat another.
I liked the different divisions in the book. It was not pure military, it also treats the civilian aspect. And the political and others (e.g. wartime movies / technology).
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/revi...9-1945-no-simple-victory-europe-east-and-west
The British-born historian Davies -- author of a best-selling history of Europe and several respected works on Poland -- has written two books to help compensate for what he sees as a parochial, Western view of European history. "Europe at War" is not just another survey but an opinionated, iconoclastic reassessment that relentlessly drives home the point that the greatest and most decisive developments of World War II took place on the Eastern Front. Davies hardly denies the importance of D-day or the Battle of El Alamein, but he wants his readers to know that the war's center of gravity was farther east -- and that Stalin's version of totalitarianism was no less evil than Hitler's. Davies' notion that most Americans and most British are unaware of this is a bit of a straw man. His own footnotes, after all, refer to widely read works by writers such as Anne Applebaum, Antony Beevor, Alan Bullock, Robert Conquest, and Richard Overy that address the horrors of the Eastern Front and shine a bright light on Stalin's crimes. But the evidence Davies amasses to justify focusing on the East is compelling. The German-Soviet war accounted for 406 million "man-months," compared with 16.5 million for the Western Front and 5 million for the North Africa campaign. The Soviet Union lost an estimated 11 million soldiers in the European theater, while the United States and the United Kingdom combined lost fewer than 300,000 there. Battle deaths in Operation Barbarossa (Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941) were over 1.5 million, compared with 132,000 for Operation Overlord (the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944). And Stalin's concentration camps killed more people than Hitler's. Davies' facts and opinions on everything from technology to wartime movies are stimulating, and even his hobbyhorses are entertaining.
Before I that, I always looked at this with "Western education" point of view. Not my view has broadened and I have a better idea of the proportions/scale of (the terror of) all that has happened.
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The student meant scientific/medical advancements and infrastructure done under the Nazi regime. Cue 40 minute discussion on how NO ONE did "good things" during the early to mid 20th century. 
