Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
Preface to the New Edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps
- Preface to the New Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 From one War to Another
- 2 From the German and Soviet Invasions of Poland to the German Attack in the West, September I, 1939 to May 10, 1940
- 3 The world Turned Upside Down
- 4 The Expanding Conflict, 1940-1941
- 5 The Eastern Front and a Changing War, June to December, 1941
- 6 Halting the Japanese Advance, Halting the German Advance; Keeping Them Apart and Shifting the Balance: December 1941 to November 1942
- 7 The War At Sea, 1942-1944, and the Blockade
- 8 The War in Europe and North Africa 1942-1943: to and from Stalingrad; to and from Tunis
- 9 The Home Front
- 10 Means of Warfare: Old and New
- 11 From the Spring of 1943 to Summer 1944
- 12 The Assault on Germany from All Sides
- 13 Tensions in Both Alliances
- 14 The Halt on the European Fronts
- 15 The Final Assault on Germany
- 16 The War in the Pacific: From Leyte to the Missouri
- Conclusions: the Cost and Impact of War
- Bibliographic Essay
- Notes
- Maps
- Index
Summary
In the decade since this book was published, kind readers have followed the request in the original Preface to send me corrections. I am most grateful to those who have taken the trouble to call to my attention errors that it has been possible to correct in subsequent printings. Reviewers of the book have been very kind to it. In the intervening decade, there have been important new materials made accessible to scholars and there has, in addition, been a continuous outpouring of scholarly works dealing with the greatest war of which we know. While there may be an opportunity to revise the book as a whole, in the meantime this is a good interval at which to point to some areas where either changes will be needed or new studies have reinforced the interpretation previously offered.
Certainly the original thesis that Germany deliberately initiated World War II on September I, 1939, by a procedure that drew on Adolf Hitler's “lesson” of Munich, namely that he would not be cheated of war again as had happened in 1938, has been confirmed by the detailed examination of the immediate origins of the war. An analysis of Soviet procedure in dealing with the German army in the 1939 Polish campaign by promptly and courteously returning all German prisoners of war captured by the Poles makes for an extraordinary contrast with the opposite handling of British and American prisoners held by the Germans in 1944-45.
The description of the German decision to attack the Soviet Union has been confirmed by the new materials that have surfaced from both German and Soviet archives as a result of the effort of some to convert the German invasion into a sort of preventive move designed to forestall a planned invasion by the Soviets invented by the advocates of this interpretation. From the German side we now have the project of the German army's chief of staff, General Franz Halder, for an invasion of the Soviet Union still in the fall of 1940 with orders and preparations starting on June 3, even before the armistice with France. When Hitler decided on July 31 that the fall of 1940 would not allow for enough time to prepare and carry through the invasion, but that preparations for an invasion in 1941 should start, the general staff was already working on that.
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- Information
- A World at ArmsA Global History of World War II, pp. xiii - xxiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005