The Battle For History: Re-Fighting World War Two by John Keegan.
Title: The Battle For History: Re-Fighting World War Two.
Author: John Keegan.
Genre: Non-fiction, war, WWII, history, books on books.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1995.
Summary: With erudition, discernment, and crisp prose, Keegan surveys the literature of World War II, identifying the works he finds most important and illuminating, while examining the sometimes savage controversies raised by two generations of the war's historians.
My rating: 8/10.
My Review:
♥ The history of the Second World War has not yet been written. Perhaps in the next century it will be. Today, though fifty years have elapsed since it ended, the passions it aroused still run too high, the wounds it inflicted still cut too deep, and the unresolved problems it left still bulk too large for any one historian to strike an objective balance.
♥ The Second World War was truly a world war, including all existing states and empires; only those too utterly remote to participate or too harshly marked by recent internal wars of their own making remained aloof.
♥ Yet, though [Chester Wilmot] wrote only one book, it was enough, at least for me. He had depicted how military history in general, that of the Second World War in particular, might, and perhaps ought to be, written: rigorously by vigorously, with emotional passion but intellectual dispassion, from the widest possible perspective and variety of sources and never, never without remembrance that the drama of war is tragedy for those touched by its fatal consequences.
♥ Wars are won by good leaders but fought by their brave and often anonymous underlings.