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Description of All Hell Let Loose

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. Reflecting Max Hastings's thirty-five years of research on World War II, All Hell Let Loose describes the course of events, but focuses chiefly upon human experience, which varied immensely from campaign to campaign, continent to continent. The author emphasises the Russian front, where more than 90% of all German soldiers who perished met their fate. He argues that, while Hitler's army often fought its battles brilliantly well, the Nazis conducted their war effort with 'stunning incompetence'. He suggests that the Royal Navy and US Navy were their countries' outstanding fighting services, while the industrial contribution of the United States was much more important to allied victory than that of the US Army. The book ranges across a vast canvas, from the agony of Poland amid the September 1939 Nazi invasion, to the 1943 Bengal famine, in which at least a million people died under British rule- and British neglect. Among many vignettes, there are the RAF's legendary raid on the Ruhr dams, the horrors of Arctic convoys, desert tank combat, jungle clashes. 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. 'The cliche is profoundly true', he says. 'The world between 1939 and 1945 saw some human beings plumb the depths of baseness, while others scaled the heights of courage and nobility'. 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.

Title Information

ISBN:

9780007338092

Pages:

848 pages

Format:

Hardback

Product Code:

842984

Publisher:

HarperPress

Published:

29/09/2011

Press and Industry Reviews

'A fast-moving, highly readable survey of the entire war!Hastings combines a mastery of the military events with invariably sound judgment and a sharp eye for unusual telling detail!.this is military history at its most gripping. Of all Max Hastings's valuable books, this is possibly his best -- a veritable tour de force' Ian Kershaw, Evening Standard 'All Hell Let Loose attempts to tell the whole story in a single volume, and succeeds triumphantly, combining fluid narrative with some piercing insights and unsentimental judgments!Threaded through the personal accounts is a narrative which, by an impressive feat of organisation, manages to connect all the theatres of what was the closest the world has come to a truly global conflict!. This enthralling book shows, in the right hands, the study of the war!can generate an endless stream of new meanings and insights" Patrick Bishop, Standpoint 'All Hell Let Loose is a masterpiece or reportage!..Hastings's book is!!.the best available for those seeking to understand what the experience of war was like' Vernon Bogdanor, New Statesman 'Often fascinating!profoundly moving!his judgments, crisp, dogmatic and sweeping, add greatly to the interest of his book and make it highly readable!.Max Hastings writes with verve and elegance. His range is truly impressive. All Hell Let Loose has a remarkable global range". Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator



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About Sir Max Hastings

Max Hastings studied at Charterhouse and Oxford and became a foreign correspondent, reporting from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard. He has won many awards for his journalism. Among his best-selling books 'Bomber Command' won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both 'Overlord' and 'Battle for the Falklands' won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize. After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he was knighted in 2002. He now lives in Berkshire.