The Second World War by Antony Beevor

In his book titled The Second World War, Antony Beevor brings history to life in a brilliantly researched work on the defining event of the 20th century. Beginning with Hitler's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and continuing through V-J Day on August 14, 1945 and beyond. In his book, Beevor describes the war and tells about its global reach.

The Second World War is the first single volume history about the war that gives a thorough account of this fascinating period in world and U.S. history. Beevor is a top military historian and multi award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers D-Day, The Fall of Berlin 1945 and Stalingrad. His books have sold more than four million copies worldwide and more than 325,000 copies in the U.S. alone.

Antony Beevor served as a regular officer in the 11th Hussars in Germany. He is also the author of Crete-The Battle and the Resistance, which won a Runciman Prize; Paris After the Liberation, 1944-1949 (written with his wife Artemis Cooper); Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History, and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature; Berlin-The Downfall, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees' Award; The Mystery of Olga Chekhova; and most recently, the bestseller, D-Day. He lives in London.

In his book, Beevor shares new and controversial points in his book such as:

Operation Mars in November 1942, (the deception to keep German troops away from the Stalingrad front as the Red Army launched its great counter-offensive there) was deliberately betrayed on Stalin's order to German intelligence. The Soviet armies involved were also deprived of artillery ammunition to support them. This ruthlessly cynical sacrifice produced 215,000 Soviet casualties, roughly the same as all the Allied casualties for D-Day and the whole of the Battle for Normandy.

The Tokyo War Crimes tribunal never brought any charges against Japanese officers for a deliberate policy of cannibalism. Across China and the Pacific, Allied prisoners of war and local people were kept alive to be butchered for their meat. This atrocity was suppressed for the very understandable reason that it would have traumatized the families of all those whose loved ones had perished in a prison camp, since they would never have known if they had been eaten or not.

The assassination of Admiral Darlan in Algiers in December 1942 and how officers from the British Special Operations Executive were closely involved in the assassination. American officers from the OSS also knew of the plot in advance, but neither informed their seniors.