All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945

All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945
Sir Max Hastings

Maps best viewed on a tablet.A magisterial history of the greatest and most terrible event in history, from one of the finest historians of the Second World War. A book which shows the impact of war upon hundreds of millions of people around the world – soldiers, sailors and airmen; housewives, farm workers and children.‘Unquestionably the best single-volume history of the war ever written’ SUNDAY TIMES.All Hell Let Loose reflects Max Hastings’s thirty-five years of research on World War II, and describes not just the course of events, but an epic tale of human experience, from campaign to campaign, continent to continent.This magisterial book ranges across a vast canvas, from the Russian front, where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate, to the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion, and the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least a million people died under British rule – and British neglect. Some of Hastings’s insights and judgements will surprise students of the conflict, while there are vivid descriptions of the tragedies and triumphs of a host of ordinary people, in uniform and out of it.This is ‘everyman’s story’, an attempt to answer the question: ‘What was the Second World War like?’, and also an overview of the big picture. Max Hastings employs the technique which has made many of his previous books best-sellers, combining top-down analysis and bottom-up testimony to explore the meaning of this vast conflict both for its participants and for posterity.

Max Hastings

All Hell Let Loose

The World at War 1939–45

Copyright

WilliamCollins

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London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.co.uk (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2011

ALL HELL LET LOOSE. Copyright © Max Hastings 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Max Hastings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007338092

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007338122

Version: 2018-07-17

Dedication

TO MICHAEL SISSONS,

for thirty years a princely agent,

counsellor and friend

Contents

Cover (#ulink_cdad4d21-7184-5f0b-816c-8ec2d50319d5)

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Maps

Introduction

1 Poland Betrayed

2 No Peace, Little War

3 Blitzkriegs in the West

1 (#ulink_9287ddcf-bea7-5380-93ec-17eb279c8e18) Norway

2 (#ulink_c8ebdef9-2a93-5b44-9090-437736318393) The Fall of France

4 Britain Alone

5 The Mediterranean

1 Mussolini Gambles

2 A Greek Tragedy

3 Sandstorms

6 Barbarossa

7 Moscow Saved, Leningrad Starved

8 America Embattled

9 Japan’s Season of Triumph

1 ‘I Suppose you’ll Shove the Little Men Off’

2 The ‘White Route’ from Burma

10 Swings of Fortune

1 Bataan

2 The Coral Sea and Midway

3 Guadalcanal and New Guinea

11 The British at Sea

1 The Atlantic

2 Arctic Convoys

3 The Ordeal of Pedestal

12 The Furnace: Russia in 1942

13 Living with War

1 Warriors

2 Home Fronts

3 A Woman’s Place