I've only just completed Inferno, and frankly do not yet feel prepared to write a proper review. That will have to wait for more reflection, and quite a bit of re-reading.
But I did want to immediately post something, both to provide another endorsement of this work (I'm kind of shocked that so far there are only 8 reviews) and to share a few very high level impressions.
The scope of the book is extraordinary. In retrospect I can't recall having read another book that covered the entirety of the war as opposed to a battle, a year, a campaign or a theater. Sir Max, in the attached video interview, claims that this is not truly a complete history, but rather a series of impressions and attempts to communicate the impact of the war on those affected. Fair enough, but the fact remains that the book does cover the entire history of the conflict, and this, for reasons I'll discuss below, was important to me.
Stylistically I'd point out two things. First, the author does not shy away from expressing opinions, or passing judgment on the important actors. Interestingly, I don't think this undercuts the authority of the reportage. These opinions are expressed directly, without hesitation, and you are free to agree or disagree. Sir Max does not bury these conclusions or hide competing narratives. He tells you what happened, and he tells you what he thinks about it. This 'point of view' elevated the book from a mere retelling of history to something greater and much more interesting.
Second, the writing sparkles. His prose is direct and mostly uncomplicated but it is elegant. I think it would be too much to compare on this level with Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but there is a literary fire behind the writing that both helps keep the reader engaged in the narrative, and is pleasurable in its own right.
As to my underlying hesitancy to write a more detailed review, and how that relates to the scope of this work. I am a 50 year old American man who became interested in the war in the Pacific as an adolescent. I don't know why I developed this interest -my father was far too young to have served and except for one uncle who was an Auschwitz survivor I had no particular connection to this period of history. Anyway, over time I've continued to read about and explore the war in a variety of ways.
Not surprisingly I suppose, I viewed the war very much through an American lenses. I think I also understood that this conceit left my perception of the conflict as a whole somewhat off, but so be it. Years ago my dad and I read the Ambrose books together and I found them fun, though even then I had the sense that the story being told was not just myopic, but also likely really misleading. Citizen Soldiers indeed! I say that whilst looking at a collection of medals received by my father in law and his brothers, all of whom served in the European theater, including one who was in the gliders in the 101st Airborne and whose map of Europe looks startling like that taken by Easy Company as portrayed in Band of Brother's.
Today is December 9, 2011 - just 2 days past the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the starting point of the war as far as most American's are concerned. But what I am chewing over is not just the importance of the war before our engagement (which of course I already knew before the book) but the truly minor role we played in Europe. Intellectually I've known for a long time the extent of the conflict between Germany and the USSR, but I'm a bit shaken by having to reconsider just how primary that was, and how what I had always viewed as the core of the conflict - Omaha Beach, the Buldge, etc. - were, if not side-shows, then supporting players at best
I've also been thinking a lot about the brutality displayed on all fields of battle. I believe that moral equivalence is a fool's game, and one can't fairly compare occasional excesses by western victors with the systematic evil of our enemies. But one can, and really must, compare our enemies with our allies. But for Hitler's specific focus on the Jews of Europe, was he worse, hell - was he nearly as bad as Stalin? What does it mean that we were allied with such vileness?
I don't' know. As I've said, my thoughts are at present molten and I probably sound naive or even incoherent. But my God, what a great book to put me in this state! I've read no less than 50 WW2 histories over the years and most have just been passing time. Inferno is a book that I will undoubtedly come back to over the coming years as I try to construct a sensible understanding of the war.
If I had one criticism for Sir Max, it would be that the closing chapters of the book - post VE and tracking the ultimate defeat of Japan, felt kind of tossed off and less well researched or considered than earlier parts of the book. Okinawa, the firebombing of Tokyo and Japan's other cities, and the nuclear detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki come and go much more rapidly than expected. While Sir Max makes it clear that encirclement rather than head-on assault in Okinawa may have been a better, if politically impossible - approach, he gives, imo, short shrift to the process, decisions, and ethical implications of the destruction of the Japanese homeland. I'd have liked more. I'd also have liked a greater discussion of the phenomenon of the Kamikaze. He does address that phase, and presents a different picture than standard (that many or most 'volunteers' were not as gung ho as we have been lead to believe) but I think this deserved greater analysis. If I recall he said that these attacks were 5x as accurate as traditional assaults. While he clearly believes that Japan lost the war with on December 7th (or that loss was inevitable) I do wonder about other scenarios including an early deployment of Kamikaze. It is interesting isn't it that so much of what took place 70 years ago seems unforgivably barbaric now (systematic rape, rampant genocide, summary executions, etc.) but of all things suicide bombing has become a central weapon in modern warfare.
Ok, this has turned into a very long, short review. Let me conclude by recommending Inferno in the strongest possible terms. And not just for WWII 'hobbyists' like myself. Reading a book of this magnitude is a commitment, but I think anyone with an interest in history - particularly those of us from the US, England and Canada - will find Inferno great reading and profoundly provocative.
Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 3,805 ratings
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Last update: 02-27-2025
About this item
From one of our finest military historians, a monumental work that shows us at once the truly global reach of World War II and its deeply personal consequences.
World War II involved tens of millions of soldiers and cost 60 million lives - an average of 27,000 a day. For 35 years, Max Hastings has researched and written about different aspects of the war. Now, for the first time, he gives us a magnificent, single-volume history of the entire war.
Through his strikingly detailed stories of everyday people - of soldiers, sailors, and airmen; British housewives and Indian peasants; SS killers and the citizens of Leningrad, some of whom resorted to cannibalism during the two-year siege; Japanese suicide pilots and American carrier crews - Hastings provides a singularly intimate portrait of the world at war. He simultaneously traces the major developments - Hitler’s refusal to retreat from the Soviet Union until it was too late; Stalin’s ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the German army; Churchill’s leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941; Roosevelt’s steady hand before and after the United States entered the war - and puts them in real human context.
Hastings also illuminates some of the darker and less explored regions under the war’s penumbra, including the conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, during which the Finns fiercely and surprisingly resisted Stalin’s invading Red Army; and the Bengal famine in 1943 and 1944, when at least one million people died in what turned out to be, in Nehru’s words, “the final epitaph of British rule” in India.
Remarkably informed and wide-ranging, Inferno is both elegantly written and cogently argued. Above all, it is a new and essential understanding of one of the greatest and bloodiest events of the 20th century.
Top reviews from the United States
H. Yellen5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book - One I Will Think About For A Long Time To Come
Eric C. Petersen5.0 out of 5 stars Max At His Best
A monumental undertaking, but most readable. Of the 60 million who perished in the conflict - a number that could be low by 10 million - 20 million were military, and a quarter of that number died in Russian, German or Japanese POW camps, mostly Russians and Poles. By subtraction, this leaves 40 (or 50) million civilians who perished. While the book devotes sufficient coverage to the war's major battles, the generally untold story of what befell the civilian population, often revealed though letters written at the time, tells a horrific tale of the "collateral damage" done to this population. As a few forinstances he notes, Vietnamese farmers were forced by the Japanese to grow cotton and jute for the Japanese war economy instead of rice. This, plus forced labor schemes, accounted for the deaths of perhaps 5 million in Southeast Asia. The Chinese Kuomingtang, viewed as the "good guys" by the USA, extracted rice taxes when farmers were reduced to eating tree bark. Chang's army never engaged the Japanese in any meaingful fashion, rather it roamed the countryside like a plague of locusts stripping the food supply. These actions, plus the savage acts of the Japanese military against the Chinese population, led to perhaps 15 million Chinese deaths, a number approached in Russia as first the Russian army laid waste to their lands to deny the Germans substanance, and the Germans did the same in their retreat. US and British area bombing of France killed 30% more civilians than the Blitz, and so on.
Hastings puts well-known battles in context with those now barely recalled: Montgomery's stupidity in Operation Market Garden is now well known - one doesn't launch a motorized and tank assault up a single lane road surrounded by water. At this juncture of the war the allied advance had stalled because the temporary unloading faclities established after D-Day were insufficient to move the needed material - gaining the Port of Antwerp and its approaches was the key, an offensive left to the First Canadian Army that was essentially unsuported by the Allied high command. The coverage here of the battle for the Scheldt Estuary is excellent. While popular coverage of the war generally features events like El Alamein and the crafty Desert Fox Rommel, left from discussion is what the heck were the Germans doing in North Africa - or Greece for that matter? Why did MacArthur invade the Philippines, a totally unnecesary conflict that led to the complete destruction of Manilla? The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have led to the deaths of 100,000 Japanse, but the March 9, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo that burned 14 square miles accounted for more casualties. Immediately after Nagasaki the US launched an 800-strong B-29 firestorm raid on yet another city with zero plane losses, incinerating the population. In the ten days post Nagasaki Russia launched a massive invasion of Manchuria using 5,500 tanks, capturing it and North Korea. Japanese battle deaths 80,000, plus 300,000 more that died in Russian prison camps. I only cite theses numbers as Hastings goes beyond the flag waving propaganda of the war to tally its true impact on humanity. This is a deeply moral work on the cost of war.
A final aspect of this book that's most interesting is that neither Japan nor Germany stood a prayer of winning their respective conflicts. The reasons are numerous and worth reading about, but, at its most simplistic, neither country had the industrial base to succeed; by November 1, 1941, after the assault on Moscow had been held up for a few weeks by the rains and mud of the Russian autumn, Fritz Todt, head of Germany's war production, told Hitler the war was lost. A similar conclusion should have been accepted by the Japanese early in the war. Why this horror show went on for years more to its inevitable conclusion makes most interesting reading. Finally, from just a military effectiveness point of view, the Wehrmacht was an incredible fighting force that far outclassed anything the allies could throw againt it; the allies just had a lot more to throw, including 11 million Soviet troops that went to their deaths.
As a postscript to this since I can't figure out how to respond to comments made about my review, "Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger - try reading the book first." 1. MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines WAS totally unnecesasry, whether "other sources" have said this or not, but Max makes a rather convincing case. 2. I made no value judgment about the a-bomb attacks on Japan, and personally feel they were not only necessary but were the most humane way to end the war. That the US sent 800 B-29s the day after the second a-bomb attack to fire bomb yet another city to ashes does seem like a bit much. The Japanese military hard-liners who wanted to continue the war did not "rule" or "control" Japan; any decision to continue the war rested soley with the emperor who, by the constitution, had to also consider the inputs of the political and civilian classes. He did, and ended the war, one the militarists wanted to continue. (His radio talk announcing the surrender to the Japanese public, the first time they had heard him speak, was rather a masterpiece of understatement: "The war situation has not developed necessarily to Japan's advantage.") 4. As to the fighting capabilities of the Wehrmact, I can't think of any military historian who would disagree with the conclsion I mentioned. This is not to say individual German soldiers were more suicidally devoted to their cause than the Japanese or the Russians (who were helped along with NKVD machine guns pointed at their backs), but as a fighting force definitely had superior communications nets, command and control organization, an in-depth and capable staff and combat officer and NCO corps, and used combined arms for maximum effect. (The French had more and better tanks than the Germans when invaded; the Germans had FM radios that ensured their tanks were better utilized while French tankers had to open their hatches and wave flags; the BEF was hopelessly organized and couldn't conduct operations beyond batallion size, and so on and so forth.) As for my speling, well, hopeless.
Hastings puts well-known battles in context with those now barely recalled: Montgomery's stupidity in Operation Market Garden is now well known - one doesn't launch a motorized and tank assault up a single lane road surrounded by water. At this juncture of the war the allied advance had stalled because the temporary unloading faclities established after D-Day were insufficient to move the needed material - gaining the Port of Antwerp and its approaches was the key, an offensive left to the First Canadian Army that was essentially unsuported by the Allied high command. The coverage here of the battle for the Scheldt Estuary is excellent. While popular coverage of the war generally features events like El Alamein and the crafty Desert Fox Rommel, left from discussion is what the heck were the Germans doing in North Africa - or Greece for that matter? Why did MacArthur invade the Philippines, a totally unnecesary conflict that led to the complete destruction of Manilla? The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have led to the deaths of 100,000 Japanse, but the March 9, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo that burned 14 square miles accounted for more casualties. Immediately after Nagasaki the US launched an 800-strong B-29 firestorm raid on yet another city with zero plane losses, incinerating the population. In the ten days post Nagasaki Russia launched a massive invasion of Manchuria using 5,500 tanks, capturing it and North Korea. Japanese battle deaths 80,000, plus 300,000 more that died in Russian prison camps. I only cite theses numbers as Hastings goes beyond the flag waving propaganda of the war to tally its true impact on humanity. This is a deeply moral work on the cost of war.
A final aspect of this book that's most interesting is that neither Japan nor Germany stood a prayer of winning their respective conflicts. The reasons are numerous and worth reading about, but, at its most simplistic, neither country had the industrial base to succeed; by November 1, 1941, after the assault on Moscow had been held up for a few weeks by the rains and mud of the Russian autumn, Fritz Todt, head of Germany's war production, told Hitler the war was lost. A similar conclusion should have been accepted by the Japanese early in the war. Why this horror show went on for years more to its inevitable conclusion makes most interesting reading. Finally, from just a military effectiveness point of view, the Wehrmacht was an incredible fighting force that far outclassed anything the allies could throw againt it; the allies just had a lot more to throw, including 11 million Soviet troops that went to their deaths.
As a postscript to this since I can't figure out how to respond to comments made about my review, "Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger - try reading the book first." 1. MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines WAS totally unnecesasry, whether "other sources" have said this or not, but Max makes a rather convincing case. 2. I made no value judgment about the a-bomb attacks on Japan, and personally feel they were not only necessary but were the most humane way to end the war. That the US sent 800 B-29s the day after the second a-bomb attack to fire bomb yet another city to ashes does seem like a bit much. The Japanese military hard-liners who wanted to continue the war did not "rule" or "control" Japan; any decision to continue the war rested soley with the emperor who, by the constitution, had to also consider the inputs of the political and civilian classes. He did, and ended the war, one the militarists wanted to continue. (His radio talk announcing the surrender to the Japanese public, the first time they had heard him speak, was rather a masterpiece of understatement: "The war situation has not developed necessarily to Japan's advantage.") 4. As to the fighting capabilities of the Wehrmact, I can't think of any military historian who would disagree with the conclsion I mentioned. This is not to say individual German soldiers were more suicidally devoted to their cause than the Japanese or the Russians (who were helped along with NKVD machine guns pointed at their backs), but as a fighting force definitely had superior communications nets, command and control organization, an in-depth and capable staff and combat officer and NCO corps, and used combined arms for maximum effect. (The French had more and better tanks than the Germans when invaded; the Germans had FM radios that ensured their tanks were better utilized while French tankers had to open their hatches and wave flags; the BEF was hopelessly organized and couldn't conduct operations beyond batallion size, and so on and so forth.) As for my speling, well, hopeless.