Inferno : the world at war, 1939-1945
/ Max Hastings
- 1st. U.S. ed.
- New York : Alfred A. Knopf , 2011.
- xx, 729 p., [48] p. of plates : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Originally published: London : HarperPress, 2011.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 691-699) and index.
An indelible account of what World War II was like for the people who experienced it, from soldiers at the front to civilians both near and far from the fighting, to the generals and political leaders making the decisions that affected the lives of millions. Inferno is unique in its portrait of everyday people--of American and British housewives, Soviet infantrymen, Indian peasants, and Luftwaffe crew. But the larger context is here, too: Hastings widens his focus to explain the geopolitics and larger strategic considerations of the war, from Hitler's refusal to retreat in Russia until it was too late, to Stalin's ruthlessness in using his greater population to wear down the Germans, to Churchill's leadership in the dark days of 1940 and 1941, to Roosevelt's steady leadership before and after the United States entered the war.