"Magnificent. . . . Seldom has a study of the past combined such erudition with such exuberance." —The Guardian
"No-one with an interest in the Second World War should be without this book; and indeed nor should anyone who cares about how our world has come about." —The Daily Telegraph
Pre-eminent WWII historian Michael Burleigh delivers a brilliant new examination of the day-to-day moral crises underpinning the momentous conflicts of the Second World War. A magisterial counterpart to his award-winning and internationally bestselling The Third Reich, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize, Moral Combat offers a unique and riveting look at, in the words of The Times (London), "not just the war planners faced with the prospect of bombing Dresden or the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the individuals working at the coalface of war, killing or murdering, resisting or collaborating."
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Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II
"Magnificent. . . . Seldom has a study of the past combined such erudition with such exuberance." —The Guardian
"No-one with an interest in the Second World War should be without this book; and indeed nor should anyone who cares about how our world has come about." —The Daily Telegraph
Pre-eminent WWII historian Michael Burleigh delivers a brilliant new examination of the day-to-day moral crises underpinning the momentous conflicts of the Second World War. A magisterial counterpart to his award-winning and internationally bestselling The Third Reich, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize, Moral Combat offers a unique and riveting look at, in the words of The Times (London), "not just the war planners faced with the prospect of bombing Dresden or the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the individuals working at the coalface of war, killing or murdering, resisting or collaborating."
"Magnificent. . . . Seldom has a study of the past combined such erudition with such exuberance." —The Guardian
"No-one with an interest in the Second World War should be without this book; and indeed nor should anyone who cares about how our world has come about." —The Daily Telegraph
Pre-eminent WWII historian Michael Burleigh delivers a brilliant new examination of the day-to-day moral crises underpinning the momentous conflicts of the Second World War. A magisterial counterpart to his award-winning and internationally bestselling The Third Reich, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize, Moral Combat offers a unique and riveting look at, in the words of The Times (London), "not just the war planners faced with the prospect of bombing Dresden or the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also the individuals working at the coalface of war, killing or murdering, resisting or collaborating."
Michael Burleigh is the author of Earthly Powers, Sacred Causes, and The Third Reich: A New History, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. He is married and lives in London.
Read an Excerpt
It seems like a throwback to a bygone epoch to talk about good and evil in history….Michael Burleigh succeeds in avoiding easy, snap judgments. Instead, he has written an insightful, often moving account of the war's players, great and small, and the principles that guided them. Burleigh succeeds in finding new insights into almost every major event of the war, on both sides, as often by sharp counter-questioning as by logistical and political analysis. Burleigh examines many of the most ethically complicated parts of the conflict to unravel the values and visions they embody. The result is extremely satisfying.
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgement vii
Maps xiii
1 The Predators 1
2 Appeasement 35
3 Brotherly Enemies 76
4 The Rape of Poland 115
5 Trampling the Remains 134
6 Not Losing: Churchill's Britain 158
7 Under the Swastika: Nazi Occupied Europe 190
8 Barbarossa 221
9 Global War 253
10 The Resistance 268
11 Moral Calculus 287
12 Beneath the Mask of Command 311
13 Antagonistic Allies 334
14 'We were Savages': Combat Soldiers 360
15 Massacring the Innocents 394
16 Journeys through Night 419
17 Observing an Avalanche 443
18 Tenuous Altruism 463
19 'The King's Thunderbolts are Righteous': RAP Bomber Command 478