The Legacy of the Second World War

by John Lukacs

Sixty-five years after the conclusion of World War II, its consequences are still with us. In this probing book, the acclaimed historian John Lukacs raises perplexing questions about World War II that have yet to be explored. In a work that brilliantly argues for World War II’s central place in the history of the twentieth century, Lukacs applies his singular expertise toward addressing the war’s most persistent enigmas. The Second World War was Hitler’s war. Yet questions about Hitler’s thoughts and his decisions still remain. How did the divisions of Europe—and, consequently, the Cold War—come about? What were the true reasons for Werner Heisenberg’s mission to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in September 1941? What led to “Rainbow Five,” the American decision to make the war against Germany an American priority even in the event of a two-ocean world war? Was the Cold War unavoidable? In this work, which offers both an accessible primer for students and challenging new theses for scholars, Lukacs addresses these and other riddles, revealing the ways in which the war and its legacy still touch our lives today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II

208 pages, Hardcover

Published March 9, 2010

About the author

Lukacs was born in Budapest to a Roman Catholic father and Jewish mother. His parents divorced before the Second World War. During the Second World War he was forced to serve in a Hungarian labour battalion for Jews. During the German occupation of Hungary in 1944-45 he evaded deportation to the death camps, and survived the siege of Budapest. In 1946, as it became clear that Hungary was going to be a repressive Communist regime, he fled to the United States. In the early 1950s however, Lukacs wrote several articles in Commonweal criticizing the approach taken by Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom he described as a vulgar demagogue.[1]

Lukacs sees populism as the greatest threat to civilization. By his own description, he considers himself to be a reactionary. He claims that populism is the essence of both National Socialism and Communism. He denies that there is such a thing as generic fascism, noting for example that the differences between the political regimes of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy are greater than their similarities.[2]

A major theme in Lukacs's writing is his agreement with the assertion by the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville that aristocratic elites have been replaced by democratic elites, which obtain power via an appeal to the masses. In his 2002 book, At the End of an Age, Lukacs argued that the modern/bourgeois age, which began around the time of the Renaissance, is coming to an end.[3] The rise of populism and the decline of elitism is the theme of his experimental work, A Thread of Years (1998), a series of vignettes set in each year of the 20th century from 1900 to 1998, tracing the abandonment of gentlemanly conduct and the rise of vulgarity in American culture. Lukacs defends traditional Western civilization against what he sees as the leveling and debasing effects of mass culture.

By his own admission a dedicated Anglophile, Lukacs’s favorite historical figure is Winston Churchill, whom he considers to be the greatest statesman of the 20th century, and the savior of not only Great Britain, but also of Western civilization. A recurring theme in his writing is the duel between Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler for mastery of the world. The struggle between them, whom Lukacs sees as the archetypical reactionary and the archetypical revolutionary, is the major theme of The Last European War (1976), The Duel (1991), Five Days in London (1999) and 2008's Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat, a book about Churchill’s first major speech as Prime Minister. Lukacs argues that Great Britain (and by extension the British Empire) could not defeat Germany by itself, winning required the entry of the United States and the Soviet Union, but he contends that Churchill, by ensuring that Germany failed to win the war in 1940, laid the groundwork for an Allied victory.

Lukacs holds strong isolationist beliefs, and unusually for an anti-Communist émigré, "airs surprisingly critical views of the Cold War from a unique conservative perspective."[4] Lukacs claims that the Soviet Union was a feeble power on the verge of collapse, and contended that the Cold War was an unnecessary waste of American treasure and life. Likewise, Lukacs has also condemned the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In his 1997 book, George F. Kennan and the Origins of Containment, 1944-1946, a collection of letters between Lukacs and his close friend George F. Kennan exchanged in 1994-1995, Lukacs and Kennan criticized the New Left claim that the Cold War was caused by the United States. Lukacs argued however that although it was Joseph Stalin who was largely responsible for the beginning of the Cold War, the administration of Dwight Eisenhower missed a chance for ending the Cold War in 1953 after Stalin's death, and as a consequence the Cold War went on for many more decades.

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though always interested in and reading history, I came to John Lukacs late. Recently I'd read his Five Days in London, May 1940. That was fresh material for me. It impressed me by convincingly explaining how close Germany came to winning the war at that time. This new study, The Legacy of the Second World War, is concerned with 6 issues: whether or not the war was inevitable, how Europe came to be divided after the war, why there would have been no war had Hitler not come to power, the development of atomic weapons, why the Allied strategy focused on Germany first, and the origins of the Cold War. Although this is a short book, he writes thoroughly as well as learnedly about these subjects. I'm familiar with the events and personalities of the war and the ripples they created, but Lukacs surprised me several times with new perspectives. One complaint might be that he seems compelled to flesh out his important points in order to give insight to the darts of his thinking. In so doing he often repeats himself, so that in 2 separate chapters he states that the Kursk Offensive in Russia and the Ardennes Offensive in Belgium a year and a half later were attempts to cause rifts between the Allies. What's invaluable for me, repetition or not, is that while I understand the importance of trying to separate members of a coalition, I'd never before understood it was an element of German wartime strategy. Some of his treatment doesn't offer anything new. He centers the attention of the atomic weapons chapter on the famous 1941 meeting of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. I think he covers again what we understand the purpose of the meeting to be and what was said. But at the end of the chapter he interprets the reasons for the meeting as bound up in the sense the German government and indirectly the German people had that they were fighting 2 wars, a regrettable one against the western democracies with whom they might deal and a war for national survival against Soviet communism. The book is full of lightning bolts of insight such as this standing out in the clouds of general knowledge. This book and the earlier Five Days in London, May 1940 are influential books for me. I can never back away from the ideas he's planted here.

[Mikey B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although well-written I did not find much that was new in this book – aside from the chapter on the two physicists – Heisenberg and Bohr.

Mr. Lukacs brings up the Yalta dilemma and blames Roosevelt for giving away Eastern Europe (Poland especially); other historians blame Churchill. The real culprit is Stalin for not living up to the Yalta agreements. Given the fact that the Soviet Union had five million troops in Eastern Europe what really could be done?

I felt somewhat deceived by the word “Legacy” in the title. I expected more of a discussion on how the Second World War still permeates our lives today – there were more discussions on the prelude of the war. The Cold War was brought up but nothing particularly illuminating. Hitler was discussed as well, but this seemed more of a rehash of the author’s “The Hitler of History”.

The best line of the book (page 57): “by 1933 pan Europeanism disappeared melting away like a small pat of butter in the sizzling skillets of nationalism.”

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Lukacs is one of the more interesting historians of the Second World War, a subject he has repeatedly examined over the course of his long career – The Last European War (1976); 1945: Year Zero (1978); The Duel (1991); Five Days in London (1999) – to name a few – plus comparative studies of Hitler, Churchill and Stalin. I've been a faithful reader of his books ever since the summer of 1976 when I picked up the first of these from a table in a Georgetown bookstore – and that book is still one of my favorites out of a whole library of books on World War II.

Lukacs, I think it's fair to say, does not so much write history as reflections on history, particularly on this subject. One reads him not so much to understand what happened as to understand why and how it happened. This book sets out to examine some obvious questions (How did the division of Europe come about? Was the Cold War unavoidable?) and some more eccentric (Why did Heisenberg visit Bohr in Sept 1941? What led to "Rainbow Five" – the war plan that prioritized victory over Germany first?).

I doubt any reader will conclude that Lukacs has added much to the sum of knowledge (or wisdom) with this book. It has the feel of a postscript to a long career, not a work of individual substance. Yet that's not to say it's not worth reading: Lukacs has a perspective that sets him apart from any other historian I know and he's a fine writer as well, an essayist in the European mold. He's still publishing books well into his 80s, and if he publishes another I'll probably buy it without a second thought.

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Six essays on the Second World War by a celebrated Hungarian-American historian of this war. Why did Hitler let the British Army escape at Dunkirk? We don't know; perhaps he was expecting an attack on his rear; perhaps he trusted the Luftwaffe to maintain air superiority over the English Channel and not let the British escape, which it failed to do. If he had captured the British soldiers and released them in exchange for Britain leaving the war, he would have won the war. Why did Hitler declare war on the United States? We don't know either; perhaps he realized that as both Britain and the Soviet Union were still undefeated, the war will eventually be lost, and he wanted Germany to go down with him. Was Heisenberg sabotaging the German atomic bomb effort? Some evidence points this way, and some doesn't. Some Germans thought that they were fighting two wars at once, a good one in the East against the subhuman Slavs and Communists, and a bad one in the West against their Anglo-American racial brethren; they expected the alliance of the Soviets and the Anglo-Americans to fall apart, and the former allies to start fighting each other; they did, but already after they defeated Germany together. Was the postwar division of Europe avoidable? Maybe, if the Allied invasion of Italy had been more successful or the invasion of France had come earlier, or if Churchill had complied with Stalin's September 1941 request of 25 British divisions fighting in Russia. One assertion that made me go "Huh?" is that the question of who murdered more people, Hitler or Stalin, is irrelevant because "Hitler came to be the accepted leader of the then perhaps the most educated people of the world; Stalin of one of the least educated people of the white race." The Balkan peoples are not Negroes, and in the interwar period they produced far fewer intellectual accomplishments than did the Russians. It is also not true that all of Stalin's modern admirers hail from Russia, while many of Hitler's from countries other than Germany and Austria. There are many young ethnic Russian neo-Stalinists from the Baltic countries and from Ukraine; they want back Stalin's empire, in which not they but their hosts will be a discriminated-against minority. There are also many young neo-Nazis throughout Europe; they want back Hitler's empire, in which they will be the master race, and immigrants from the Third World and their descendants the servant race. I think that the two groups are rather similar.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

World War II has dominated the second half of the twentieth century and interest in it has never waned. John Lukacs is a prominent historian in contemporary history and has published more than thirty books, many of which deal with the war. The Legacy of the Second World War is not an academic history of the war or a particular aspect of the war. Instead, it is a culmination of his career studying the history. His mission in Legacy is to place the war in a proper historical context, instead of allowing it to overshadow the entire century. "...Many people see something in the Second World War as if it had been a War against Evil--which is its simplified categorization." (2) Lukacs' goal is to discuss the "inevitability" (13) of the war, and its immediate aftermath. He argues that nothing in history is inevitable, that a historian must "constantly put himself in the past at which the human factors still seem to permit different outcomes." (14)

Lukas strove to make objective observations, stripping the portrayal of Hitler of its one-dimensional evil nature and replacing it with a contradictory leader who was the "most extraordinary figure in the history of an entire century." (88) He stated unequivocally that without Hitler, there would have been no Second World War. He was not especially concerned with politically correct statements, arguing that "nationalism is the illegitimate of patriotism with a habitual inferiority complex." (11) Lukas sought to eliminate the untruths regarding the Second World War, and to some extent, he was successful. The book, however, didn't lay much controversy to rest but rather opened areas of discussion not previously considered by the general public. World War II will continue to be a source of extensive interest, and this book is an intriguing addition to its continually evolving history.

[Bob Mobley · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Lukacs has again written a fine history that examines the legacies coming out of the Second World War in a most probing and brilliantly argued study. Lukacs looks at the Second World War from the perspective of what it means and how it has and continues to influence decisions, events and actions in the 21st century. This book is thought provoking and makes you step back and think about the outcomes from events, not just the near term results. It is an intellectually challenging study that is multi-leveled in its examination of leadership, decision-making, and "tribalism." I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be attuned to where we may be heading as power shifts westward and southward across the globe.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the work of a scholar but it is not a work of scholarship. It succeeds as a brief if repetitive narrative of the origins and consequences of the second world war, but is marred by Lukacs' idiosyncratic views about Hitler's motives. Most scholarship would not support the view that Germany invaded the Soviet Union to deprive Britain-- Hitler's ultimate objective-- of an ally. Nor does this book persuade this reader that the Nazis sought domination of much of Eastern Europe but not Russia itself.

Presumably the reader must turn to other of Lukacs' works for evidence on these points. He won't get it here.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written exploration of the Second World War, its place in history, and the early Cold War. My biggest complaint about this book is that its title is something of a misnomer; the book concentrates almost entirely on the war and has little to say about its aftermath. The author concentrates on trying to explain the Germans' reasoning in the conduct of the war, and overall, the book focuses on cultural and philosophical factors current at the time. Therefore, the book is different from most histories of the period, since the author focuses on giving the reader a feel for the time period rather than providing detailed, documented analysis of each point.

[Steve. g · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm. Quite a big interesting subject that. You'd think. He's a good author and I really enjoyed his 5 days in May, but this just feels like a re-heated selection of notes from a different book. Lots of topics are broached but then put to one side as not being the primary point of the book (its only 185 pges) and yet the primary point, the 'legacy', is not really un-packed. There is some fascinating details and very thought provoking passages in there but it all felt like it was a bit of a chore....for reader and the writer.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers some interesting theories and new perspectives on the Second World War. Overall an enjoyable read, although some topics were discussed a bit too much in detail for my taste (e.g. the US military plans) and the importance of others escaped me a bit (e.g. the story about Bohr and Heisenberg).

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

He presents his views on six important questions related to the Second World War. It's short, and it was interesting, but I think you have to know a lot more about the war to really learn from it. Also, there are a shocking number of typos and small errors like missing words.

[Patricrk patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important questions, but superficial for those who have read a lot of history and speculation about the war.

[Richard Strasser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book with some provocative insights. Could have been a bit more focussed in places, though.