From 1937 to 1945 the world witnessed a succession of savage military policies, innovations, and actions on the field, in the water, and in the skies that resulted in the butchery of over fifty million people. The military history of the Second World War involves heroism and evil, effective and
hopeless strategies, bold and pointless operations, calculation and luck, politics and diplomacy, and production and attrition. This study incorporates recent scholarship on the military history of the Second World War to examine both chronologically and in a comprehensive geographic way the most
destructive event in recorded human history. Annihilation argues that World War II evolved into a war of annihilation - a total war - that engulfed militaries and civilians alike, and spared no country either destruction or blame for the carnage. The book questions the adopted intention of the "good
war" thesis by wielding the "strategy of annihilation" on all sides as an architectural framework. Readers will find global coverage linking together all theaters of the conflict in a narrative that advances from the beginning to end of the war. This is the first study of the World War II that
allows instructors to assign chapters of the book according to time periods or by place.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Origins and Outbreak, 1919-1939
1. Europe Unsettled
2. Democracies in Crisis
3. Militarism in Asia
4. Phony and European War
Part II: Axix Advance, 1939-1942
5. German Expansion, North and West
6.
Blitzkrieg and Blitz
7. America and the Atlantic
8. Battle for the Mediterranean
9. Attack on the Soviet Union
10. Expansion of Imperial Japan
Part III: Turning Points, 1942-1943
11. Japan in Triumph and Stalemate
12. Cataclysm on the Eastern Front
13. Shifting
Fortunes in the Mediterranean
14. War of Words, the Sea, and the Air
15. Allied Offensives in Asia and the Pacific
Part IV: Grinding Rollback, 1943-1944
16. Penetrating Japan's Defenses
17. Costly Italy
18. Soviet Rout
19. Western European Front
20.
Island-Hopping in the Pacific
Part V: Annihiliation, 1944-1945
21. German Resistance in the West
22. Red Army Sweep
23. Shrinking the Japanese Empire
24. Fall of the Third Reich
25. The Inner Ring
Conclusion
References
Bibliography
Index
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Tom Zeiler is a Professor of History and International Affairs, and former chair, at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he also directs the Global Studies Residential Academic Program. He serves as the executive editor of Diplomatic History and as the editor-in-chief of American
Foreign Relations Since 1600: A Guide to the Literature, as well as on SHAFR's Teaching Committee and governing Council. A member of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee, Tom has lived in Buenos Aires and Tokyo as a Senior Fulbright Scholar. He is the author of six books, including one
on the last half of the Pacific War, and several articles.
The World in Flames - Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee
Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones
