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Max Hastings has presented the perfect companion for his previous book "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45". Of the 300+ books on World War II in my personal library, there are few that stand out as distinctly as "Retribution".
One would ordinarily think that a comprehensive view of the final year of the Pacific theatre would be a tedious, multi-volume effort to read, but Hastings has provided a wonderful alternative. Chock full of details and personal accounts, Hastings takes a fresh look at the major events as well as the forgotten or ignored aspects of the Pacific war.
As with "Armageddon", "Retribution" de-sterilizes the myth that World War II was "the good war" as well as debunking the common belief that Allied commanders were as competent as American history preaches. What Hastings does is expose the gritty truth as to how the Allies achieved victory, warts and all (and there are plenty of warts). I never knew how hated McArthur was ... or how the Japanese army advanced, without opposition, in China until the end of the war. The continuous ineptitude of Allied leadership is a constant issue throughout the book ... as are the horrors of war experienced by individuals (civilians and military alike). The fireboming dilemma, the POW experience, the wasteful Phillipines campaign, allied atrocities, the politics, naval, ground and air ... it's all there.
The research is thorough and the presentation is superb. "Retribution" is an engrossing read that is NEVER dull; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in World War II or history ... I cannot imagine anyone not learning something from this terrific book.
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though must admit that Hastings writes, thinks, and analyzes far better than most PhD's. I'm appalled that the Washington Post review was posted as Amazon's only assessment of the book.
The reviewer was a exceptionally vicious partisan in the museum factional disputes over the bomb, trading off his Pulitzer as status symbol but not as a qualification to render judgment. But that does not excuse him from examining counter-evidence, candidly characterizing the debate, or indeed acknowledging that serious people disagree and showing how, why, and concerning what. In plainer words, the reviewer, if he knew enough to write about the issue, would know he was dishonest. More charitably, the reviewer has a simplistic single-cause-single-effect view of a complex issue that I trust would get him a C in any of my department's courses.
Note that I'm not making the case for the bomb: as a historian I'm more interested in assessing arguments than in pronouncing, as Bird does, The Final Truth. I'm responding rather because the Washington Post has given column inches to an unserious, partisan, and superficial reviewer. Amazon should take this down: controversy is good, but a good review editor should never permits writers to assert as truths presuppositions that are fiercely debated.
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Hastings has done a fine job with this one. Our battles with Japan were vicious and costly. History will long remember Adms. Nimitz, Halsey and Gen. Lemay. I also loved Arvy Geurin's Walking Through Fire, An Iwo Jima Survivor's Remembrance
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If you are looking for a book that gives you a real-life picture of what combat was like in the WWII Pacific theater, this book is a real find. It shows the perspective from multiple sides: British and Amercian, Japanese, Chinese, and a range of others. The book's strength is based on its interviews with many people who were there, and not just the noteworthy names familiar to us all; the common foot soldier and his counterpart in the navy and air forces, is well-represented.
The author persuasively demonstrates the desperate condition of Japan and its people in the last year of war; less compelling is his analysis that what happened--the mass firebombings, the use of nuclear weapons in densely populated urban centers--was inevitable. He attributes this neither to political expediency nor to bloody-mindedness, but to the inertia of technology; the idea here is that when weapons are made available, the exigencies of a major military struggle will compell their use. It's a bit more complicated than this--he discusses how nukes were not used later, e.g., in the Korean conflict--but the core of his argument is centered on the technology. "You couldn't do nothing," and the something that was available...was The Bomb. The firebombings get a more critical view, as he does not softpedal their terrorist intent and effect. It's a mark of how depraved war is that all major combatants in the Second World War explicitly aimed their weapons of mass destruction at civilians.
This book is well-written and equally well-documented. It is an excellent presentation of what war is really like, as distinct from the glorified lies with which we are presented too often.
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this book was worth the purchase
written well
gave many interesting facts