"The Second World War surpassed all previous wars in the sheer cost of many millions of lives, the majority of them civilian. It left a world reeling from physical destruction on a scale never experience before or since, and from the psychological traumas of loss, of imprisonment and genocide, and permanent exile from home.".

"In this short book, Joanna Bourke turns an unblinking eye on the events and outcomes in the vast number of places where the war was fought: throughout Western and Central Europe, on the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union, in the Pacific, in Africa, in Asia. She shows where the strategic decisions came from and how they were implemented. In addition to the facts of this global conflict, she details the human, individual cost.

Through diary entries and recorded oral history, we experience how ordinary people felt when they witnessed or heard of events, from the declaration of war on the radio to the mass murders carried out by Nazi soldiers in Russian villages." "Our understanding of the past conflict and our own age of violence and human atrocity into which the Second World War thrust us will be greatly enhanced by the scope and detail of this book."--BOOK JACKET.