For the millions who lived through World War II on home or battle front, the realization alone that more than fifty years have passed since the war's beginningis startling, but to the postwar generation, this century's great war has remained singularly remote. TOTAL WAR is its first comprehensive history. Drawing on remembrance, personal experience, and a distinquished record of scholarship and journalism, the authors have skillfully sifted a massive body of accumulated fact and conflicting interpretation to sketch the background to the war, describe its military progress and political momentum, and examine its often surprising consequences. It was a war of civilians, of ideology, and of technology, as much as of military strength or economic resources, and important sections of TOTAL WAR deal with the international politics that shaped basic war aims, with the human drama that grew out of personal commitments to resistance or collaboration, and with the broader social and scientific changes which were wrought by or in spite of the war.
