Prior to World War II, no war had been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising, suggests Hanson in this revisionist look at the struggle, and he avers that although the Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.

"Lively and proactive, full of the kind of novel perceptions that can make a familiar subject interesting again."—NYTBR