US SOLDIERS USING FLAME-THROWERS AND
DYNAMITE TO BRING THE JAPANESE OUT OF THEIR COCONUT
LOG PILLBOXES, BOUGAINEVILLE ISLAND, DURING THE
BATTLE OF THE PACIFIC, 1943.
The Second World War remains the largest military conflict in history. Lasting for over six years, it involved soldiers and civilians from across five continents and resulted in the deaths of nearly fifty million people. It saw the rise and fall of empires and the breaking up of entire nations, the creation of new superpowers, the invention of awesome atomic weapons and attempted genocide on a scale never witnessed before or since.
It was a war fought on land, at sea and in the air, from western Europe to the steppes of Russia, from the deserts of North Africa to the jungles of South-East Asia, and across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. It was a war fought to defend democracy, in which the territorial ambitions of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan were opposed by a grand and unlikely alliance between the USA, Soviet Russia and the British Empire. It was a war that witnessed countless moments of incredible bravery and sacrifice alongside those of unspeakable cruelty and terror.
Most of all it was a war fought by millions of ordinary people, as entire nations were mobilised in a global life-or-death struggle. While enlisted men in huge mechanised armies endured terrible conditions at the front, people at home poured into the factories or risked their lives at sea transporting vital supplies to support the war effort. At the same time, the introduction of massive aerial bombing campaigns against towns and cities on both sides put civilians in the front line in a way that no war had ever done before. And in numerous occupied nations, resistance movements made up of people from all walks of life endured the appalling consequences of their refusal to surrender to the enemy.
For six years the world was engulfed by a single conflict. This book seeks to tell the story of those years.