Volume 41, Number 11 · June 9, 1994
The Misunderstood War
By Norman Davies
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
by Gerhard L. Weinberg
Cambridge University Press,, 1,178 pp., $34.95
Nineteen ninety-four, the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, has spawned a festival of what A.J.P. Taylor once called 'the Nuremberg Consensus.' Taylor was pointing to the fact that the history of World War II had largely been written by the victors, and that the moral and political assumptions of the victorious Allies had been largely left unchallenged. And he was right. Fifty years after the main fighting stopped, most British and Americans still imagine the war as defined by the aims of the Grand Alliance. Hitler is seen as the sole aggressor in Europe, as the Japanese were in the Pacific; Germany, and Germany's associates as 'the enemy.' The unconditional defeat of fascism was the prime objective. The solidarity of the Allied powers, expressed in the comradeship of 'The Big Three,' held paramount importance. The Allies were waging a heroic struggle for the Good. Freedom and democracy were identified with 'anti-fascism.' When it came to judging the crimes of war, and the crimes against humanity, the victors did not hesitate to fill the dock with enemy leaders, and with enemy leaders alone.
Review, 4076 words
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