1942: Crux of War was worth reading. He broke the year down by month, and in each month went over what was happening in each theater (including the economic). He gives the big picture of the war during that pivotal year.
Turns out there was a lot I didn't know, and I'd not seen how it all laid out together before, and how the parts tied together.
Some alternate history buffs have suggested "What if the Germans chose X instead of Y" -- it's a popular pastime. Parshall points out several such instances, and fills in the parts that show "oh, that wouldn't really have worked either." By the time Manstein was in position to almost relieve Paulus at Stalingrad, the 6th army wasn't capable of breaking out to meet him anyway. Some seemingly crazy decisions were born of necessities you don't see unless you look at the big picture. And some were just crazy – almost anything Hitler had a hand in, for instance.
If you have any interest in WW-II, read it.
China doesn't make many appearances, but Parshall says their contribution in tying down Japanese armies was significant, even if they had little or nothing in the way of victories of their own. The British in southern Asia were unbelievably incompetent. And somehow I'd never realized that the Germans were reading American naval codes.
1 comment:
That book resembles a dictionary.
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