The Second World Wars cover art

The Second World Wars

How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Second World Wars

By: Victor Davis Hanson
Narrated by: Bob Souer
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £29.99

Buy Now for £29.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian.

World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war 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.

The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory.

An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars, offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.

©2017 Victor Davis Hanson (P)2018 Tantor 20th Century Military Modern War Interwar Period Imperialism Royalty Winston Churchill Submarine Prisoners of War King Holocaust Air Force Franklin D Roosevelt Hungary World History

Listeners also enjoyed...

 A War Like No Other cover art
The Dying Citizen cover art
How the War Was Won cover art
Why the Allies Won cover art
American Heritage History of World War II cover art
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789 cover art
The Luftwaffe: The History of Nazi Germany's Air Force during World War II cover art
The Napoleonic Wars cover art
The Imperial German Army: The History and Legacy of Germany’s Armed Forces During World War I cover art
Engineers of Victory cover art
The Nazis cover art
Hell to Pay cover art
Aerial Warfare cover art
33 Strategies of War cover art
This Kind of War cover art
An Army at Dawn cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
This book combines global breadth and depth of historical comparisons into an analytic perspective that keeps both the human and the material dimensions of the War continuously in view. I now feel the need to read it as well as to listen. My only critism of the reading is that brief pauses between paragraphs would have made for easier listening. Otherwise, excellent.

Comprehensive and analytic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Simply brilliant, written with such clarity and excellence and it completely changed my views of WW2 and how and why the Allies won. I will definitely purchase more Victor Davis Hansen books.

The Best History Book I Have Ever Read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A well narrated breakdown of WW2, dividing the conflicts into theatres (air, sea, land) and geographies (East/West Europe, N Africa, Pacific) with a strategic lens, using empirical data and contemporary commentary on topics such as the effectiveness of weapons from machine guns to airplanes, logistical support, technological innovation, leadership, and ideologies to make judgements on how the war proceeded and concluded as it did. Victor Davis Hanson also attempts to answer questions on what was inevitable and what wasn’t as well as philosophical questions what exactly was won and lost. At no point did a I find listening to this book dry, as can be found with other non-fiction topics.

A methodological breakdown of the conflict

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Professor Hanson has produced an engossing world war history, with very detailed information and thoroughly researched personal accounts.

A great war history

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book's structure alone justifies a purchase. Comparisons of military blunders, inappropriate strategies, eg a focus on naval tonnage and not actual versatility, and the economic and decision-making differences between totalitarian and capitalist societies are very telling. Indeed on both sides the current Ukraine conflict reflects many of the same mistakes.

Wide ranging scope and production

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I checked the author in Wiki before I began & when I read he was a Conservative hawk I didn't expect much. But I was pleasantly surprised due to what were mostly objective overviews providing plenty of insights although one handicap of audiobooks is that one has no way of knowing whether the author's claims are based on state-of-the-art research. Despite being a Conservative hawk, Hanson states that the Soviet system was very efficient both in producing the best tanks (T34s) and plenty of them despite the Commandist economic system. And the author is very complimentary about the often underestimated UK contribution which has been criticised by e.g. Colonel Robert Forczyk and Max Hastings (Audible has such books).
I would describe the approach as classicist, geographical. Hanson's original discipline is classics, and he makes many interesting comparisons with Ancient History especially Latin & Greek. Geographical in his comparative overviews of technological breakthroughs (e.g. re materiel) and their interaction with physical & economic geography.
Of course there are mistakes: e.g. he states Attlee was an Appeaser which would be deadly for his reputation if he were. Hanson doesn't know that by 1937 Labour had abandoned its pacifist position. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee#Leader_of_the_Opposition) And V.D.H. ignores the fact that the US 'Arsenal of Democracy' stance was strictly cash up front forcing the UK to sell ALL its US holdings at fire-sale prices which is now accepted as the pump-priming that brought the US economy out of the post-Depression doldrums.
The reading is somewhat monotonous i.e. an impassive (good) bass US voice which does not distract from the message.

Mostly objective & insightful f/ Cold Warrior

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am a self confessed WW2 geek. I like the details, the facts, the anecdotes- I really do. But oh my good gravy this was hard going, due mostly to the narrator. But the real "nail in the coffin" were the big gulps of air, chomps and lip smacks he did all the way through!! AI is in top spot as the most irritating narration of a book, due to its complete lack of personality. However, sounding like grandpa sucking a Werthers original surely comes a close second.

Dull monotony interspersed with big intakes of breath.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Honestly one of the most uninteresting WW2 books I've gone through. It lacks any explanatory depth as to why events were happening, instead it's just a constant stream of numbers. The author loves to talk about how this and that general was 'incompetent' and 'ignorant' whenever something didn't go according to plan. Like he says the Japanese were ignorant of the possibility of carriers not being docked at pearl harbor. Obviously the attack was a high risk move and didn't pay off quite as they hoped, that is a part of gambling, plans often don't work out exactly as expected. So the author appears very full of himself.

Sleep inducing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Overall a massive undertaking, attempting an overview of all major issues, causes and events of World War Two, it succeeds in the most part. However, this is a very American centric perspective. Also the continuous references to Ancient Roman and Greek military history is time consuming and for the most part irrelevant. The performance wasn’t that enjoyable, audible breathing, lip smacking and other noises were distracting to say the least. This coupled this with the mispronunciation many of the names spoiled the listen somewhat.

Plenty of detail but a little biased.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.