Beevor's account is just wonderful and is the best general account of the war yet written.
Beevor is in the British tradition of Edward Gibbon and Thomas Macaulay. His acclaimed histories include Stalingrad and Berlin. He is highly critical and cynical. Gibbon at least had two heroes in the millennium-plus period he covered - the Prophet Mohammed and the apostate Emperor Julian - but Beevor appears to have no heroes at all. What a hatchet job he does on the politicians and generals/admirals/air marshals.
But it is brilliantly written, so readable it is impossible to put down despite the horrible, ghastly details.
World War 2 in terms of its fatalities was the greatest catastrophe to have overtaken the human race. There will never be agreement over the numbers that died; somewhere between 50 and 100 million.
This 860-page history cannot help but sear the reader. Nonetheless, what it says is so important that it should be very widely read.
Perhaps it is in the nature of evil to provide endless fascination.
Moral choice is the fundamental element of human drama. No other period of history offers so rich a study of individual and mass tragedy, the corruption of power, ideological hypocrisy, the egomania of commanders and political leaders, betrayal, perversity, self-sacrifice, unbelievable sadism, and compassion.
It is possible to disagree with Beevor's emphases. For example, more space is devoted to the Russian siege of the Germans in Budapest, which lasted only weeks, than to the campaign of the British and Indian armies against Japan in Burma, which lasted three and a-half years.
It is also possible to disagree with important conclusions. For example, Beevor claims that Russia stopped at the Elbe instead of overrunning western Europe because of the atom bomb; that was a factor but the main reasons were that Stalin knew his armies had run out of steam, he needed to strip eastern Europe of its wealth, and he wanted to impose his military dictatorship over what became the Soviet Bloc.
The book is centred on the accounts of the German, Russian and Japanese leaders and armies.
Fair enough, considering the astronomical numbers involved. It also focuses on the performance of the United States as the US bankrolled the Allied efforts.
Britain by the end of the war was no longer a major player. Without Britain, however, the war would not have been available still for the winning. Britain's contribution mirrors what Napoleon said - that the only thing he admired about the English was that they didn't know when they were beaten. If Hitler ever had that drawn to his attention he would have agreed. Everyone knew the English were beaten except themselves.
Not much space is given to Italy, which was only in the war because of the increasing megalomania of Mussolini. Italy paid a very high price. So many other countries were involved and devastated through no fault of their own. Russia, Germany and Japan all showed absolutely unrestrained, conscienceless violence because their political systems imposed no restraints on their revolting leaderships.
Roosevelt comes across as self-obsessed. He was not able to control his generals and admirals; they were more interested in fighting each other than their enemies. The US paid a very high price because he was unwilling to make decisions that would make his life uncomfortable.
Churchill is now known to have been bipolar. He provided leadership, without which Britain would not have survived. He was also an emotional bully who distracted those around him from doing their duty with his erratic ideas. Lord Mountbatten and General Slim were able to tell their men in Burma to disabuse themselves that they were "the Forgotten Army", as they liked to call themselves, because no-one had ever heard of them. Slim was a successful general because he didn't meet Churchill until the war was virtually over. But at least people can identify with Roosevelt and Churchill as real human beings. You would need a Roget's Thesaurus to find all the words required to describe the leaders of Japan, Russia and Germany, and Stalin and Hitler in particular.
It is on that aspect of war that Beevor is so good. The details of the damage these men did to the world would beggar belief if we did not know it was all absolutely true.
When word of Germany's "Final Solution" for the Jews and Japan's treatment of prisoners of war leaked out, it was not believed. The Russians believed it because the Germans were there. When its troops reached territory peopled by Germans, the Russians paid them back in kind. We were so lucky in New Zealand that the war physically never got here.
Perhaps above all, Beevor writes extremely well. Nowhere are those clunky sections so often encountered in military history. He meets the ideal expressed by Macaulay that "history, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy". It is that good.
• Oliver Riddell is a Wellington writer.
