Rating: 
Summary: Wow! What an amazing work of scholarship!
Review: I picked up this book at a secondhand store and can't imagine why anyone let it go. His synthesis of information, the breadth of his knowledge, the grasp he shows of the Big Picture is amazing. My only criticism is his lack of attention to the 'second string' players, (like Canada, India, the Gurkhas, etc.) but it is an impressive work nonetheless.
Rating: 
Summary: Monumental World War II Political History
Review: I share the opinion of the other reviews--this is a monumental, highly informative work. It is not a blow by blow review of World War II combat and campaigns, but a thoroughly researched account of the global, interrelated political dynamics of the war years. One of the author's central themes is that the Allies, despite frequent tensions, successfully developed complementary strategies to defeat the Axis. The latter, by contrast, seemed utterly incapable or unwilling to forge such efforts. Weinberg points out, for example, that Japan should have opened a strong second front in Soviet East Asia in 1941, complementing Germany's invasion of Russia. As an alternative, the Japanese might have plunged south and then west into the Indian Ocean in support of Germany's eastward moving North Africa campaign. Instead, Japan attacked eastward in the Pacific at Pearl Harbor, precipating the fateful entry of the U.S. into the war. But that's only part of the story, albeit a big one. Weinberg introduces a large cast of characters, including for example Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose, who openly sides with Germany and Japan, in hopes of securing independence for his homeland, a British colony of course. The book is also filled with highly interesting tidbits, such as the propensity of the U.S.-built Liberty (cargo) ships to split apart at the seams without a shot being fired at them, because of their rushed production. He also informs us that Hollywood starlet Hedy Lamarr shared a patent for a torpedo guidance system. Weinberg devotes (rightly in my opinion) much of his narrative to the action and political developments on the eastern front. He recounts how the Soviets, just a couple of months after their epic victory at Stalingrad, paradoxically sent unsuccessful peace feelers to the Germans. One might have thought that Moscow, with the momentum, was smelling blood and ready to go all out for total victory. But Weinberger points out that the Wehrmnacht had successfully counterattacked at Kharkov in March 1943, and he plausilby argues that the Russians, apparently impressed with the Germans' recuperative abilities, reasoned that a long bloody flight was still in the offing. They were right of course. I do have some nitpicks, however, that prevent me from giving the book the five star treatment. For openers, where are the photos? There are none. I for one would love to have seen what people like Bose and British Admiral John Dill, a key behind the scenes figure in the Allied alliance, looked like. Second, the author's prose is difficult--I frequently found myself having to reread entire paragraphs to get the message. Finally, and I realize this is a sensitive point, I grew weary of the author's frequent wisecracks and disparaging remarks against Axis leaders and personalities, such as questioning the sanity of German Foreign Minster Ribbentrop's pre-war business effort to market German champaign in France. These guys of course were among the most monstrous figures ever to walk the earth, but if they were as stupid and crazy as Weinberg frequently tries to indicate, then how, in the case of Germany, did they end up conquering and occupying most of Western Europe and a good chunk of the Soviet Union for several bitter years? These quibbles aside, I highly recommend this book for anyone seriously intersted in World War II history.
Rating:
Summary: Everything you would want to know about World War II
Review: I used to consider myself very knowledgable about World War II. I still do, but how much I didn't know was reinforced by reading this book. World at Arms contains almost everything you would want to know about the political and strategic situations of the war. It starts out with the underlying reasons for the war and goes on to cover the wide variety of situations in great detail. You won't find much on individual battles, but the book gives you great understanding in *why* those battles happened. What I found most interesting was how it covered all the interactions between nations. Never before had I seen such comprehensive information on how Germany and Japan related to each other. Most of the books I had read have covered one theater or the other, without really going into how one theater affected another. At 900+ pages, the book is not something that you will read while lying in bed (maybe sitting up in bed, but not lying in it). However, if you have any interest in World War II, especially the stories behind the war, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: This is one of the B E S T books about WWII ever written
Review: I've just started reading this book. So far I think it is great. Very informative. I recomend this book
Rating:
Summary: Wish I could give it six stars
Review: It is no coincidence that every reviewer (so far) has given this book the highest possible rating. It's strength is a tremendous ability to continuously maintain a global military and historical strategic vision that allows the reader to make sense of the dense array of well-chosen facts and information. If the book has a weakness, it is a failure to counterbalance the global strategic vision with an "on-the-ground" visceral description of the day-to-day experience of the war, making the presentation very slightly antiseptic. John Keegan's book on the First World War had a vivid chapter discussing the actual way the WWI was fought in the trenches, together with the lifestyles and attitudes of the soldiers and populace. I would have liked something similar here for WWII. I want to emphasize that the above paragraph is little more than nitpicking. If you just read this one book on WWII, you will probably have a better understanding than reading any ten other books on WWII combined. Wow!
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST
Review: JUst that: the best one-volume book about World War II. Amazing, unforgettable reading.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarly Comprehensive History of the Greatest Cataclysm!
Review: Mention WWII to many people and they will mention the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific. In reality, the war was vastly broader than that, truly fought over the entire face of the earth and invloving billions of people, killing scores of millions. It is difficult to comprehensively review the entire war in one volume but in this massive book, Gerhard Weinberg comes close to succeeding. Obviously he cannot touch on each and every aspect of the war in full detail in a single volume but each theatre is covered in some detail. Because of the difficulty of analyzing the war chronologically, Weinberg chooses to cover the war by subject. One of the good things about this book is that Weinberg covers the war from the persepctive of many of the different powers involved. For example, he devotes several chapters of the book to the war from the German perspective and from the Japanese perspective. This is something you don't see in every book on the war. The book covers all aspects of the war including military, political, social and economic. Weinberg's analysis is straightforward and traditional. His aim is not to shock but to inform. While some might quibble that this or that subject might not get the coverage it deserves, in my opinion a single volume could not be more comprehensive and detailed. The book is not light reading. Weinberg is a scholar. He is not Steven Ambrose or even Paul Johnson writing for popular audiences. This is not "Life Goes to War." For anyone with the time or inclination to really learn about the meat of this disaster in which perhaps fifty million people died, this book will be an indispensable tool and reference.
Rating:
Summary: The best one-volume treatment I ever expect to see
Review: My perfect one-volume history of World War II would combine Weinberg's lucid organization of the strategic concerns of the war and his unsurpassed breadth of scholarship (it's daunting even to read all the *titles* in his bibliography - let alone the books themselves!), John Keegan's vivid recreation of the operational and tactical levels of the fighting as well as his general narrative liveliness, and (since more died out of uniform than in) Martin Gilbert's much-needed attention to the horrifying scale of civilian suffering. Since that book doesn't exist (and would be as thick as an unabridged dictionary if it did), I would - by a narrow margin - pick Weingerg as my one book on the subject if I could have only one. There simply aren't two covers anywhere with as much of the whole vast story between them. Although Weinberg is more interested in the drag on Germany's industrial capacity from the cessation of Turkish exports of chromium than on a Leningrad mother hauling the frozen corpse of her starved child behind her on a sled (less a scholar's tunnel vision than a reasoned decision to do one thing well rather than many things poorly), no one I know of has given a fuller and clearer account of why everything happened the way it did. To address some of the criticisms of the book I've read here: I agree that the few maps provided are ludicrously inadequate - a shoddy afterthought that can only have raised the book's already considerable price. (At least they're tucked away in the back of the book where you can comfortably ignore them.) However, the prose - while not as spry as Keegan's admirable standard - should be perfectly intelligible to anyone intelligent enough to be tackling a book of this scope in the first place. Here's what I consider to be a representative sample: "Until access to the Soviet archives enables scholars to see more clearly into these murky episodes, this author will remain convinced that it was the shock of German military revival so soon after the great Soviet victory at Stalingrad which reinforced Stalin's inclinations during 1943 to contemplate the possibility of either a separate peace with Hitler's Germany or with some alternative German government." Not Clancy, but not Clausewitz either.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and easy to digest
Review: Nothing has probably been written about more than the Second World War. The titanic nature of the global conflict is daunting just to think about, but Mr. Weinberg has managed to lay out the fundamental structure of the war in an easy to follow and global review. The global perspective of this book is what sets it apart from almost all other histories of the second Great War. By tying together both the Pacific and European theaters of WWII, Mr. Weinberg, gives you a clearer, if not so detailed, view of how events in the Pacific and Europe could affect each other. As the author explains in the introduction to his book this is not a review of the methods and mechanics of waging war, but it is a review of the socio-political causes and consequences of waging a world war. Some information about the equipment and practices of the combatants are put into this book where they are necessary to explain the policies of the belligerents, but overall this is not a book for someone looking for technical details about mid-1900's warfare. However, if you are looking for a comprehensive study of how and why a second global conflagration occurred then you have found what you are looking for. The extensive research evident in Mr. Weinberg's work is so complete anyone looking for information about WWII could easily find everything they need either in the text or in the works sited. This is a book for everyone looking for a truly global perspective of the Second World War, and it is a treasure trove of information for anyone researching or studying this period in history.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and easy to digest
Review: Nothing has probably been written about more than the Second World War. The titanic nature of the global conflict is daunting just to think about, but Mr. Weinberg has managed to lay out the fundamental structure of the war in an easy to follow and global review. The global perspective of this book is what sets it apart from almost all other histories of the second Great War. By tying together both the Pacific and European theaters of WWII, Mr. Weinberg, gives you a clearer, if not so detailed, view of how events in the Pacific and Europe could affect each other. As the author explains in the introduction to his book this is not a review of the methods and mechanics of waging war, but it is a review of the socio-political causes and consequences of waging a world war. Some information about the equipment and practices of the combatants are put into this book where they are necessary to explain the policies of the belligerents, but overall this is not a book for someone looking for technical details about mid-1900's warfare. However, if you are looking for a comprehensive study of how and why a second global conflagration occurred then you have found what you are looking for. The extensive research evident in Mr. Weinberg's work is so complete anyone looking for information about WWII could easily find everything they need either in the text or in the works sited. This is a book for everyone looking for a truly global perspective of the Second World War, and it is a treasure trove of information for anyone researching or studying this period in history.
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