Guy Wint Bücher

For the millions who lived through World War II on home or battle front, the realization alone that more than fifty years have passed since the war's beginningis startling, but to the postwar generation, this century's great war has remained singularly remote. TOTAL WAR is its first comprehensive history. Drawing on remembrance, personal experience, and a distinquished record of scholarship and journalism, the authors have skillfully sifted a massive body of accumulated fact and conflicting interpretation to sketch the background to the war, describe its military progress and political momentum, and examine its often surprising consequences. It was a war of civilians, of ideology, and of technology, as much as of military strength or economic resources, and important sections of TOTAL WAR deal with the international politics that shaped basic war aims, with the human drama that grew out of personal commitments to resistance or collaboration, and with the broader social and scientific changes which were wrought by or in spite of the war.

First published in 1972 under the title TOTAL WAR, THE PENGUIN HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR was designed by its authors to show a rising generation why the Second World War happened and how it was conducted. In this bold feat of compression they give as much stress and space to political, social and moral forces (not to mention intelligence and other activities 'behind the line') as to the ensuing clashes of arms. This acclaimed analysis of the causes and courses of the Second World War has stood the tests of time and criticism.