MARCH 23, 2023 – A few posts ago I mentioned Inferno, a brilliant survey of WW II by the British journalist and military historian, Max Hastings. I’m now several hundred pages deeper into the conflict and to borrow a phrase that George W. Bush deployed in hubris when we invaded Iraq 20 years ago this month, I’m in . . . “shock and awe.”
I always thought WW II had been bad for the human race, but that impression was based on what I knew about the Holocaust, the Blitzkrieg in Poland, the Battle of Stalingrad, the seizure of Iwo Jima, the fire-bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, and of course, the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’d read countess books, seen numberless movies, watched a stream of documentaries. But I’d never before read such a detailed and comprehensive, round-the-world military history of the conflict, end-to-end, from Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 to Japan’s official surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945.
Throughout his compelling narrative, Hastings provides a spirited critique of decisions, detailed description of outcomes and jaw-dropping accounts of dumb luck, both good and bad—in some cases, with grand strategic consequences, in others, with tragic personal results. By statistics, he imparts perspective (e.g. In England, more people were injured by accident during the blackouts than by Luftwaffe bombings; more Soviets troops (300,000) are believed to have been shot by their commanders than the total number of British troops killed in the entire war; on average between June 1941 and May 1944, 60,000 German soldiers died every month fighting in Russia—numbers exceeded by Russian deaths); by reliance on personal accounts (letters; diaries; memorialized oral statements), Hastings renders impressions as unforgettably graphic as the visual images created by a brilliant filmmaker.
The book is as much a “must read” for someone uninterested in WW II as for a reader with insatiable curiosity about it; by no measure is Inferno for insomniacs. Substantial overlap exists among the book’s three primary impacts.
First, in scale and nature of human suffering, no conflict rivals the horrors of WW II—not even the dumbest of all wars, the “Great War for Civilization,” as WW I was called euphemistically by the U.S. Army after Armistice Day.
Second, the brutality of German, Japanese and Russian forces arose out of the darkest, deepest recesses of evil. Yet ample acts of horror could be found among other belligerents. Barbarity begets depravity. None of this is news, unfortunately, but dimensions of cruelty in WW II make comprehension of our wickedness an impossible task. I say “our wickedness” in recognition that in the ultimate analysis and from a million miles out in space (a pittance of distance), we all are members of a single species.
Third, lest we despair about the devil among the better angels of our nature, we must seize upon the great takeaway from the horrific record of WW II: human resilience. Miraculously, some of civilization’s best days have been since that war, however clouded our prospects now might seem.
The deeper I wade into Inferno the more likely I’ll be compelled to post again about the insights it yields. Keep your radios tuned to this station for further broadcasts.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
