Nigel Jones

War of the world

Of the writing of books on the Second World War, and the reading public’s appetite for them, seemingly, there is no end. And the past few months have seen a particularly rich crop from some of our finest and most senior historians of the conflict; their books representing the considered summation of their thoughts on the worst disaster humankind has yet to experience.
 
Of the quartet under review, David Edgerton’s Britain’s War Machine offers the boldest revisionist argument that seeks to overturn some of our most treasured assumptions about Britain’s role in the war. Until Edgerton detonated his grenade our lazy assumption was that Britain — particularly in that annus mirabilis 1940 — was the plucky little underdog standing alone against the German juggernaut that had conquered the rest of Europe.
 
The truth, remorselessly revealed by Edgerton, an economic historian with an army of marshalled facts and figures at his fingertips, is that the plucky little pipsqueak was a global superpower, still commanding an unconquered empire that embraced around a quarter of the world.



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