Publisher's Synopsis
By 1945, few people on our planet remained unknowing and untouched by the maelstrom swirling around Europe and East Asia. The two stories, that of total war and that of the impact of global war, must be seen as linked in order to make sense of the many separate wartime episodes.;This history of World War II acts as an introduction for those who have no memory of the war and whose impressions are formed only by the disparate references to the war encountered in the media and daily conversation. This book attempts to relate the connections between the story of the conflicting armies and fleets with the life of the factory worker on the home front, the aspirations of colonial peoples, the victims of the concentration camps, the collaborator's illusions and opportunism, or guerilla fighter's desperate gamble.
