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A War to be Won: Fighting the Second World War. By Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-674-00163-X. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Notes. Appendixes. Index. Pp. 656. $35.00.
Murray and Millett's long-anticipated history of the Second World War has been well worth the wait. A War to be Won is the result of years of research and writing by two eminent military historians who have combined their vast knowledge to produce a book of remarkable and compelling originality that examines the war in the context of its military operations.
The book opens with an important and useful analysis of the interwar period in which the authors trace the rise of Hitler and Germany's growing militarism, "while the democracies pursued idle dreams. Yet even the German military could not perceive the magnitude of the war their leader would unleash in 1939" (p. 18). The rise of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and the deliberate destruction of the...