Two Books About The Same Subject: Upsides, Downsides and Commonalities
With the 80th anniversary of D-Day almost upon us, I wanted to write a review of my favorite book about World War II. As the most momentous conflict in human history, the stories are nearly limitless. Yet as World War II recedes further and further into the past, younger readers might understand less about the war. This is not just because older family members are too young to remember, but also because the explosion of books, movies, tv shows, and now video games can overwhelm even the most enthusiastic history-lover.
Coincidentally, I also wanted to do something novel: compare two books on the same subject back-to-back. I believe this is a useful exercise in spotting one writer’s biases and a good way to deepen one’s understanding.
So today’s review will tackle both objectives at one: I will compare two books about World War II back-to-back. Those books were The Storm of War by Andrew Roberts and The Second World War by Antony Beevor.
Where They’re Similar
Both books deliver what they promise: one-volume histories of the entire Second World War. Their prose is clear and their narratives straightforward. Given the subject, what seems like a small compliment is in fact huge praise. One irritating reality about military history is often writers try to marry the descriptive history of the battle under study with the personal history of the heroes who partook in said battles. Unfortunately, such an approach does a disservice to both the heroes and the battle because the personal history of individual soldiers takes up space that should be devoted to explaining how the soldiers wound up in that battle in the first place. This means many learned books about the most famous battles in history—Dunkirk, Midway, Overlord, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa to name just a few—can be slow, arduous reads that leave little understanding in their wake.
Beevor and Roberts thankfully eschewed this traditional military history template. Instead, they limited themselves to describing the events as they happened, and how key military and political leaders responded. 20/20 hindsight is unobtrusively employed by both authors to keep strict context. Additionally, neither authors inserts contemporary opinions about certain aspects of World War II into their text, which went a long way to earning my trust. Therefore, all readers will walk away with a firm understanding of what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. Needless to say, both books earn a five-star rating.
Readers should purchase both and they should quickly read both because the differences between the two books are just as revealing as their similarities.
Different Intentions
The largest divider between The Storm of War and The Second World War is each author’s intention when covering their subject. This abstract concept matters when reading any book because what the author sets out to do shapes the reader’s experience just as much as the story on offer. Furthermore, if the author is corrupted by an agenda, they will do demonstrable harm to the reader; an author putting their ideological perspective before their subject will give the reader a wholly false view of the world. Reading two books about the same subject unmasks this otherwise obscure inequality between author and reader because the identical subject matters acts like a control in a scientific experiment. If the subject is held constant, the intention of the author is the only remaining variable. Thankfully, both Beevor and Roberts are eminent historians with many years of practice, so their differing intentions are ultimately benign.
With that out of the way, what is each author’s intention?
In The Second World War, Beevor’s intention is simple: cover everything that happened in World War II beginning from June 1939 when the first scuffles between the Soviets and the Japanese (a battle I never learned about) snowballed into a world war and ending in September 1945 with the surrender of Japan. In chronological order, all theatres of the conflict are described in a book of 750 pages. Beevor’s personal opinions are confined to the Introduction and Conclusion while editorial sprinkles join together otherwise unconnected events. The final result is a book that reads like a narrator’s script for a World War II documentary series. Modern historians do not make an appearance in Beevor’s text, giving the reader an unobstructed view of the events and the full range of emotions they evoke.
By contrast, Andrew Roberts comes to The Storm of War with an altogether different mission: to demonstrate how Germany lost a potentially winnable war because of Hitler’s Nazi ideology. The Germans, corrupted by National Socialism, made so many ludicrous military decisions that the stupidity staggers the imagination even today. Ostensibly, this intention seems like Roberts is playing with a less favorable hand compared to Beevor. Wouldn’t proving a thesis contradict the book’s subtitle (‘A New History of The Second World War’)? The answer is no because Roberts’ central idea emerges from the evidence on offer rather than him concocting a harebrained theory and then distorting the evidence to prove it. Readers can see this for themselves when Roberts outlines the entirety of the conflict while subtly highlighting the instances where his thesis becomes self-evident fact. In my opinion, this is a historian’s foremost job responsibility: to spot patterns in history to provide deeper understanding. The Storm of War is a first rate example of a historian fulfilling said job description.
Though these intentions are clearly different, they both serve their respective text. Nevertheless, trade-offs to each author’s intention are made apparent by reading the other work. Beevor’s book leaves no corner of the conflict untouched and resolutely moves its narrative forward. The downside is there’s also no room for him to spot a pattern other historians might’ve missed or to focus extensively any one part of the conflict. His intention also constricts his writer’s voice to that of an omniscient narrator, which isn’t the most exciting narrative device.
On the other hand, Roberts’ book solves some of the aforementioned downsides because he’s highlighting a particular through-line of the full history. Why the war started in 1939 as opposed to 1943 or some other date, for example, can be traced back to Hitler’s neurotic worldview and pathological impatience. Furthermore, Roberts arriving with something to say means his author voice has more room to express itself, the pleasant byproduct being his book is much wittier. But, and there’s always a but, Roberts having a central thesis at all means some parts of the conflict are squeezed out of his field of vision. Nearly all battles occurring east of Istanbul is given one full chapter at best while the European theatre is comprehensively covered.
Conclusion
The Second World War and The Storm of War are masterpieces written by two of Britain’s foremost historians. Two lifetimes of scholarship are available to anyone with the fifty dollars to pay for them.
No doubt other books attempting the same mission exist and are of comparable quality. Yet whether someone reads these two books or another twenty World War II books, what matters is the author’s intention. What an author sets out to do directly affects one’s reading experience. In this case, both intentions were good and I benefited enormously as a result.