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    The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War
    The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War
    The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War
    Audiobook28 hours

    The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War

    Written by Andrew Roberts

    Narrated by Christian Rodska

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The Second World War lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion, and claimed the lives of more than 50 million people. What were the factors that affected the war's outcome? Why did the Axis lose? And could they, with a different strategy, have won? Andrew Roberts's acclaimed new history has been hailed as the finest single-volume account of this epic conflict. From the western front to North Africa, from the Baltic to the Far East, he tells the story of the war—the grand strategy and the individual experience, the cruelty and the heroism—as never before.



    In researching this magnificently vivid history, Roberts walked many of the key battlefields and wartimes sites in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, and the Far East, and drew on a number of never-before-published documents, such as a letter from Hitler's director of military operations explaining the reasoning behind the Führer's order to halt the Panzers outside Dunkirk—a delay that enabled British forces to evacuate. Roberts illuminates the principal actors on both sides and analyzes how they reached critical decisions. He also presents the tales of many little-known individuals whose experiences form a panoply of the extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, as well as the terrible depravity and cruelty, of the Second World War.



    Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Storm of War gives a dramatic account of this momentous event and shows in remarkable detail why the war took the course it did.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 26, 2011
    ISBN9781452674032
    Author

    Andrew Roberts

    Andrew Roberts is a biographer and historian whose books include the New York Times bestsellers Churchill: Walking With Destinyand Napoleon: A Life (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Masters and Commanders, The Storm of Warand Salisbury: Victorian Titan(winner of the Wolfson Prize for History), among others. His most recent book, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III,was published in November 2021. Roberts is a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Literature and the Royal Historical Society, and a Trustee of the International Churchill Society. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, and the Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

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    Reviews for The Storm of War

    4.5/5

    32 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Throughout the most comprehensive statistical and strategic accounting of all aspects of World War Two; the global sacrifices made to defeat the fascist and imperial Axis regimes is exemplary at the highest literary achievement. Eighty million people died in WWII; no one was left untouched by this total global war. The elegance of the moderator's narrative written in explicitly detailed facts is by far the optimally portrayed in accuracy historical documentary unabashedly encapsulating all perspectives and outcomes of war battles (including genocide) whether successfully or horrendously executed. Foremost the ultimate take away is that Hitler was not a great leader but a murderous psychopath demanding servile loyalty and race annilation comparable to the Divine Emperor of Japan's no surrender blood bath cause. Neither were a just cause-as was the Allies defiance not to allow the inhumane atrocities committed by the Axis leaders to dominate the world's future. No one truly wins a war. This tome is an indisputable testament to the immeasurable suffering inflicted on the untold numbers of the military sacrifices, innocence masses slaughter, and the individual bravery to deny such a heinous crime upon humanity when hatred and violence are unbelievably unbridled by condoning regimes. I can't say I "loved it" as much as I learned so much to dispatch a clearer grasp of what caused and eventually defeated the Axis aggression by giving this author's unquestionable and foremost researched account a five star rating to encourage all present and future generations to use this book as a guideline in learning and attaining a vital comprehension of the traits and motivations of political party's leaders by discerning their presence of mind as to whether conviction of policy is bent on preventing another event of equal if not a worse demise when causal prejudice and malicious beliefs eventually unleashes inhumane bestial behavior propagandised as a necessary evil disguised behind nationalism or agitated patriotism. Whether Democracy was preserved by the sacrifice of the Allied forces can only be determined by our present day government embodied by the people's committed enforcement of accountability to the rule of law as forged by our Constitution's check and balances - which protects equal rights of cultural diversity and the common welfare for a thriving ecomony; rather than elitist hegemony that embroils disparagingly class warfare. Reading this book is reliving what we inherited as part of our heritage: the horrific reality of war-yet gaining the vital insight of triumph over tradegy. Never never ever again should this scourge of wonton violence be unleashed by fancy of preempted global power. Peace is foremost the noble cause of global enterprise.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      a detailed, in-depth, comprehensive - and very readable - telling of the horrific story of the second world war. insightful and educated. the sheer number of men who lost their lives makes one wonder how the human race managed to continue. and the horrors perpetrated by the nazis upon everyone- not just jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally ill but also upon their own people is jaw dropping. anyone who has any interest in this this chapter of history must read this book. brilliant.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A fairly detailed coverage of WWII, both western and Pacific fronts, with a very HEAVY concentration on armaments, manpower, battle strategies, equipment comparisons, military leaders, etc. Not much detail on the political, personal sacrifice. The number of casualties fit in with the mm size of artillery and the loss of tonnage on the seas. The closing comments, though, leaves you with the chilling thought that Hitler could possibly have won and that the world would be in a much different place.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I found this book slow, meticulous, detailed, and much more thorough than I expected or was prepared for. I think it would be hard to present so much information in a way that is any more exciting, but I still wouldn't recommend this to anybody who isn't already very well versed with the specifics.
    • 2/5
      It’s clear from this book that Andrew Roberts is a fan of recycling, as this book is little more than a rehashing of the war as covered by others. Contrary to the subtitle, there is little that is “new” here; instead the reader gets a fairly standard interpretation of the war that is largely dependent on the work of others. Worse, his account concentrates heavily on the ground war involving Germany; the war against Japan in Asia is covered in only three of the book’s eighteen chapters, while the air and naval campaign in the West is crammed into a fourth. Roberts’s readable writing style will make this a good introduction for readers new to the conflict, but to someone already familiar with the war this book will be a reworking of what they have already read elsewhere.
    • 5/5
      I read the author's masterful work, Masters and Commanders, on Dec 3, 2010, with much appreciation. So this book said some of the same things as that book--no doubt why I felt I was trodding ground I had trod before. But Roberts is, I think, very fair, and has less pro-British bias than some English authors. He does a good job cataloging Hitler's big mistakes such as letting the Dunkirk evasion happen, invading Russia before he conquered Britain, declaring war on the U.S., and of course his stupid policy against the Jews and its horrible consequences. This is a well-written and finely nuanced account telling well the story of the main event of my lifetime. The final chapter is full of opinions which I think are convincingly shown in the book to be right.
    • 5/5
      There’s no lack of books about World War II, but Andrew Roberts’s readable, relatively concise, generally disinterested overview of the entire war is a valuable contribution to the field. At 600 pages, this is of course not a short book, but there is simply no way to do justice to the now almost-unimaginable breadth and depth of WWII in a truly compact form. There were too many fronts, too many battles, too many causes and effects, too many acts of heroism and sacrifice, too many blunders that may have turned the tide of the war . . . .Roberts is particularly strong in balancing coverage of the western and eastern fronts. It’s inevitable that historians of the war find writing about ‘their end’ of Europe more congenial; Roberts, an Englishman, does not shortchange his coverage of the western front and Africa, but he shines in bringing out the enormity of the war in Russia – something it’s easy for those of us in the west to overlook.Another strength is the close coverage and analysis of how Hitler and his generals interacted and made decisions. If Roberts can be said to have a thesis or ‘angle’ on the war, it is that Hitler lost it because of his ideological blinders. I also appreciated Roberts's willingness to discuss dispassionately the allied bombings of Germany, and the US atomic bombs dropped on Japan. I happen to agree with his conclusions on these acts' moral justification, but even those who disagree should be able to appreciate Roberts's efforts to portray the cultural and moral context of the desperate times in which they were carried out.So does Roberts cut any corners in keeping his account to such a reasonable length? Those interested primarily in the war in the Pacific may find The Storm of War lacking. The chapters on both the Japanese conquests and the US/allied reconquests are brief, and go into detail only sporadically.On the whole, however, this is a well-written, generally excellent account of the 20th century’s signature event. It would make a superb university text, and is to be recommended to anyone looking for a ‘big picture’ account of the war.
    • 5/5
      This is the best WW2 material I have ever read.
    • 3/5
      Primarily a military history of all of the different fronts of the Second World War. I found the statistics hard going at times, but I see how they're an important part of the story.

      Near the end, you get the standard defense of the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (many more lives would have been lost had the bombs not been used). This is obviously controversial.

      You also get a catalog of all of Hitler's mistakes with the conclusion that Hitler's military thinking would have been so much better if only he hadn't been a Nazi!

      I appreciate the British point of view of the author, and my understanding of what went on in the world from 1939 to 1945 is greatly improved.