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Armageddon: The Second World War
This text provides a reassessment of World War II. The author avoids a conventionally chronological approach, as he analyses how and why the war spread from being a European conflict to becoming a global war, why countries were dragged into the fighting and how only a few neutrals escaped.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
388 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 16, 2013
It having been the world-historical episode which shaped the world I grew up in, a war which involved all senior members of the family, I have read scores of books about the second world war. In the past Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was the book I'd recommend to younger people interested in the Western theatres. Now, however, I'd recommend Ponting's Armageddon. Shirer's book is still worth the effort, but it is long, very detailed and very close to the events it describes. Pointing writes from a greater distance, covering all theatres with a thematic approach.
What comes across from this study is how amorally self-interested governments are. None come across as noble or honest. The most one can say is that some stood up for some of their citizens occasionally. Otherwise, while Nazi Germany still holds the record for intentional, industrialized genocide and murder, the moral gulf between them and "us", the Allied powers, is very narrow in this study.
Although I knew, being Norwegian myself, that the U.K. had violated Norwegian neutrality twice before Germany preemptively and reluctantly invaded it and Denmark, I had not known that the U.S.A. had invaded Iceland, then Greenland, over Danish protests. Nor had I known that we went on to grant Iceland independence in 1944, again without consulting the Danes. Although I knew that the war with the U.S.S.R. was bloodiest, I was staggered to learn that until 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge, over 90% of Germany military strength had been on the eastern front--the war in the west being a virtual sideshow.
As might be expected from any serious study of the war, economic factors are emphasized. That Germany and Japan--and the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. for that matter--aggressed was virtually inevitable, given their economic interests and capacities and given the reluctance of declining powers such as China, the U.K., the Dutch and the French to give up the benefits accrued during their own, earlier periods of growth.
What's lacking in this relatively short book is any analysis of class and class interests. A broad division is made, naturally, between the politicians who made the decisions and the citizens who suffered the consequences, but the usually enormous divide between their interests, while demonstrated repeatedly during and after the war, is not examined.
What comes across from this study is how amorally self-interested governments are. None come across as noble or honest. The most one can say is that some stood up for some of their citizens occasionally. Otherwise, while Nazi Germany still holds the record for intentional, industrialized genocide and murder, the moral gulf between them and "us", the Allied powers, is very narrow in this study.
Although I knew, being Norwegian myself, that the U.K. had violated Norwegian neutrality twice before Germany preemptively and reluctantly invaded it and Denmark, I had not known that the U.S.A. had invaded Iceland, then Greenland, over Danish protests. Nor had I known that we went on to grant Iceland independence in 1944, again without consulting the Danes. Although I knew that the war with the U.S.S.R. was bloodiest, I was staggered to learn that until 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge, over 90% of Germany military strength had been on the eastern front--the war in the west being a virtual sideshow.
As might be expected from any serious study of the war, economic factors are emphasized. That Germany and Japan--and the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. for that matter--aggressed was virtually inevitable, given their economic interests and capacities and given the reluctance of declining powers such as China, the U.K., the Dutch and the French to give up the benefits accrued during their own, earlier periods of growth.
What's lacking in this relatively short book is any analysis of class and class interests. A broad division is made, naturally, between the politicians who made the decisions and the citizens who suffered the consequences, but the usually enormous divide between their interests, while demonstrated repeatedly during and after the war, is not examined.
November 17, 2013
Yet another WWII history, but organized on a novel basis - topical versus the almost universal chronological model. Ponting's workmanlike job on an earlier book (1940 - Myth and Reality) made me look for this book.
As in "1990" the overall effect is to reveal many, mostly depressing truths about reality versus received wisdom/what the major alliances wanted to cause to be known.
An example of an extraordinary surprise surfaced by the author - units of the Japanese army were allowed to continue operations intact for a couple of years after August, 1945 to fight the Communist factions in China.
As in "1990" the overall effect is to reveal many, mostly depressing truths about reality versus received wisdom/what the major alliances wanted to cause to be known.
An example of an extraordinary surprise surfaced by the author - units of the Japanese army were allowed to continue operations intact for a couple of years after August, 1945 to fight the Communist factions in China.
October 11, 2019
It reads more like a collection of essays on different aspects of the war but by the same historian. Quite good for those who are already familiar with the outline of the events.
August 11, 2021
Sobering information as presented. But a WWII buff, this is nothing new to me and others I believe, so what is the authors point?
February 18, 2016
The book says that the Pacific war was a racial war. US soldiers were surveyed and 18% felt more like killing the Germans after actually seeing them, but about half felt that way about the Japanese.
An opinion poll of Americans at the end of 1944 revealed that one in every eight people wanted any Japanese left alive at the end of the war to be exterminated.
Admiral William Halsey described the Japanese as “low monkeys” and urged his men to kill as many as they could and make “monkey meat.”
The book is another of those that notes that skulls of Japanese were sent home by US soldiers, and gold teeth were taken from the skulls (and sometimes from the wounded).
In the battle for Okinawa, 12,500 US soldiers died. Over 100,000 Japanese soldiers died.
Segregation in the US military is discussed briefly. In Salina, Kansas, for example, a black soldier was refused service at a lunch counter even though German prisoners-of-war were being served. Before the war no blacks were allowed in the Marines. In the navy, blacks were limited to working in the mess and in the services branch. In the army there were small all-black units. (If Japan would have actually been invaded in the proposed operations, no blacks would have been involved at all.)
Black units were not used in combat until March of 1944. Blacks were not allowed to join the Army Air Corps (there was no actual Air Force yet) until 1940. By 1945 almost 140,000 blacks were in the armed forces, and almost all of them were involved in menial support roles.
No black could be superior in rank to a white in the same unit.
All recreational. Eating and health facilities were strictly segregated according to the book. This type of thing went so far that blood from blacks was kept separate from blood donated by whites.
It wasn't just the US, either. Britain asked the Americans not to send black troops to Britain, and Australia objected to black servicemen from the US being used as laborers in Australia.
So, in this war for democracy, blacks were still being treated like dirt, and persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast were treated like dirt and placed in internment camps, sometimes behind barbed wire with armed guards. Not exactly the best examples of democracy, to say the least.
The destruction of Japanese cities by area bombing was preceded by the destruction of German cities, this despite the fact that they did not have the “cottage industries” many of the Japanese cities had. This policy of terror bombing started in late July of 1943 with Operation Gomorrah on the south banks of the Elbe. About 40,000 were killed in the raids. In February of 1945 there was a similar attack on Dresden, and around 70,000 to 80,000 were killed. So, the concept of killing lots of civilians was already in use before the B-29's attacked Japanese cities.
In relation to the fire raids on Tokyo, one quote from the US Strategic Bombing Survey stated that “Probably more persons lost their lives by fire in Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man.”
In relation to the bombing of Hiroshima, the target committee wanted the aiming point to be at the center of the city and not on the outskirts where the industrial section was actually located. Thus, Truman's statement in his diary that the target would be a purely military one was nowhere near the truth.
About half the population was killed in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs.
An opinion poll of Americans at the end of 1944 revealed that one in every eight people wanted any Japanese left alive at the end of the war to be exterminated.
Admiral William Halsey described the Japanese as “low monkeys” and urged his men to kill as many as they could and make “monkey meat.”
The book is another of those that notes that skulls of Japanese were sent home by US soldiers, and gold teeth were taken from the skulls (and sometimes from the wounded).
In the battle for Okinawa, 12,500 US soldiers died. Over 100,000 Japanese soldiers died.
Segregation in the US military is discussed briefly. In Salina, Kansas, for example, a black soldier was refused service at a lunch counter even though German prisoners-of-war were being served. Before the war no blacks were allowed in the Marines. In the navy, blacks were limited to working in the mess and in the services branch. In the army there were small all-black units. (If Japan would have actually been invaded in the proposed operations, no blacks would have been involved at all.)
Black units were not used in combat until March of 1944. Blacks were not allowed to join the Army Air Corps (there was no actual Air Force yet) until 1940. By 1945 almost 140,000 blacks were in the armed forces, and almost all of them were involved in menial support roles.
No black could be superior in rank to a white in the same unit.
All recreational. Eating and health facilities were strictly segregated according to the book. This type of thing went so far that blood from blacks was kept separate from blood donated by whites.
It wasn't just the US, either. Britain asked the Americans not to send black troops to Britain, and Australia objected to black servicemen from the US being used as laborers in Australia.
So, in this war for democracy, blacks were still being treated like dirt, and persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast were treated like dirt and placed in internment camps, sometimes behind barbed wire with armed guards. Not exactly the best examples of democracy, to say the least.
The destruction of Japanese cities by area bombing was preceded by the destruction of German cities, this despite the fact that they did not have the “cottage industries” many of the Japanese cities had. This policy of terror bombing started in late July of 1943 with Operation Gomorrah on the south banks of the Elbe. About 40,000 were killed in the raids. In February of 1945 there was a similar attack on Dresden, and around 70,000 to 80,000 were killed. So, the concept of killing lots of civilians was already in use before the B-29's attacked Japanese cities.
In relation to the fire raids on Tokyo, one quote from the US Strategic Bombing Survey stated that “Probably more persons lost their lives by fire in Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man.”
In relation to the bombing of Hiroshima, the target committee wanted the aiming point to be at the center of the city and not on the outskirts where the industrial section was actually located. Thus, Truman's statement in his diary that the target would be a purely military one was nowhere near the truth.
About half the population was killed in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bombs.
January 6, 2014
ANOTHER SECOND WORLD WAR
Having spent my childhood immersed in 1:72 scale model aeroplanes, toy soldiers, Commando books and a immense variety of WW2 themed television from Dads Army to the excellent World at War, I approached adulthood suffering from WW2 fatigue. When I started reading history in a more serious away I tended to shy away from the vast mountains of material in existence and daily growing with regard to that conflict. It's not that I think that the War is unimportant or uninteresting it's just that I feel, unlike the schedulers of the average History channel on cable or satellite, there is more to the history of the World than WW2 despite its central role in the history of the last century.
Never the less I still read the odd gifted, lent or recommended book on the War and Clive Pontings "Armageddon: The Second World War" is one such book that I picked up in the Library not because its subject was WW2 but because its author was Clive Ponting, a historian whose other works such as "The Crimean War", "Breach of Promise: Labour in Power, 1964-70" and "A New Green History of the World" I have always found stimulating and interesting. His book on WW2 is not quite up with the best of his works, but is none the less a worthwhile read.
Avoiding the standard chronological approach, Ponting elects to divide the War into eleven concisely labelled topics (Origins, Neutrals, Allies, Mobilisation, Strategy, Technology, Combat, Civilians, Occupation, Liberation and Aftermath). A different organisation of the material may sound trivial, but it allows the author to present the War from a fresh angle. The result is a more comparative view of the experiences of the War, for example in the chapter on Civilians it considers the full spectrum of civilian experience of War from the prosperity of the U.S. to the Blitzed British, occupied Western Europe, German civilians during the strategic bombing of the wars second half, the brutal experiences of Poland squeezed between the Germans and the Russians, to eastern Europe and Russia under the Nazi invasion to that ultimate in horrors - the Holocaust of European Jews.
He is impartial throughout, stating the facts and by and large letting them speak for themselves. Published in 1995 no doubt some of the recent research and new interpretations, for example in "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy", supersede the research that Pontings synthesis was founded upon. But that asides, it is a book that should appeal to those who already have a reasonable amount of general knowledge of that War and are interested in a book that looks at the War in a fresh way. It can also be picked up 2nd hand reasonably cheap.
Having spent my childhood immersed in 1:72 scale model aeroplanes, toy soldiers, Commando books and a immense variety of WW2 themed television from Dads Army to the excellent World at War, I approached adulthood suffering from WW2 fatigue. When I started reading history in a more serious away I tended to shy away from the vast mountains of material in existence and daily growing with regard to that conflict. It's not that I think that the War is unimportant or uninteresting it's just that I feel, unlike the schedulers of the average History channel on cable or satellite, there is more to the history of the World than WW2 despite its central role in the history of the last century.
Never the less I still read the odd gifted, lent or recommended book on the War and Clive Pontings "Armageddon: The Second World War" is one such book that I picked up in the Library not because its subject was WW2 but because its author was Clive Ponting, a historian whose other works such as "The Crimean War", "Breach of Promise: Labour in Power, 1964-70" and "A New Green History of the World" I have always found stimulating and interesting. His book on WW2 is not quite up with the best of his works, but is none the less a worthwhile read.
Avoiding the standard chronological approach, Ponting elects to divide the War into eleven concisely labelled topics (Origins, Neutrals, Allies, Mobilisation, Strategy, Technology, Combat, Civilians, Occupation, Liberation and Aftermath). A different organisation of the material may sound trivial, but it allows the author to present the War from a fresh angle. The result is a more comparative view of the experiences of the War, for example in the chapter on Civilians it considers the full spectrum of civilian experience of War from the prosperity of the U.S. to the Blitzed British, occupied Western Europe, German civilians during the strategic bombing of the wars second half, the brutal experiences of Poland squeezed between the Germans and the Russians, to eastern Europe and Russia under the Nazi invasion to that ultimate in horrors - the Holocaust of European Jews.
He is impartial throughout, stating the facts and by and large letting them speak for themselves. Published in 1995 no doubt some of the recent research and new interpretations, for example in "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy", supersede the research that Pontings synthesis was founded upon. But that asides, it is a book that should appeal to those who already have a reasonable amount of general knowledge of that War and are interested in a book that looks at the War in a fresh way. It can also be picked up 2nd hand reasonably cheap.
Read
June 29, 2016Over the years I've read a lot of books about World War II, a lot of them, but even still this one provided new information and fascinating tidbits about how the Allie fought the war. This book is not about specific subjects, people or battles but more about the general conduct of the war and the messier side that history books have a tendency to whitewash or just ignore unless you find books that are topic specific.
Ponting covers several topics in a broad sense. This book doesn't get into the find details staying instead with the big picture and a grand overview.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in World War II. It is packed full of stories, facts and figures. The finally chapter on "Liberation" allow it worth the read showing that the Allies, including the US. were not exactly the paragons of high ideals they wanted the world to believe they were.
Ponting covers several topics in a broad sense. This book doesn't get into the find details staying instead with the big picture and a grand overview.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in World War II. It is packed full of stories, facts and figures. The finally chapter on "Liberation" allow it worth the read showing that the Allies, including the US. were not exactly the paragons of high ideals they wanted the world to believe they were.
December 4, 2013
The book was jam packed with information however not a single footnote or endnote to corroborate the author's claims. Ponting did out some of the actions of the United States particularly in protecting Nazi war criminals.
June 21, 2014
Hard to find now, Armageddon is meant to be read as a neutral history of World War II, as if being read 200 years in the future. The tone may put some readers off, but that's how history of events hundreds of years ago is written. Interesting look at the war, again if you can find a copy.
March 29, 2021
Anothet book that propagate the lie that the Soviet Union alone saved the word from Hitler.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews