No Simple Victory

World War II in Europe, 1939-1945

By: Norman Davies

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 20 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

If history really belongs to the victor, what happens when there's more than one side declaring victory? That's the conundrum Norman Davies unravels in his groundbreaking book No Simple Victory. Far from being a revisionist history, No Simple Victory instead offers a clear-eyed reappraisal, untangling and setting right the disparate claims made by America, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union in order to get at the startling truth.

In detailing the clash of political philosophies that drove the war's savage engine, Davies also examines how factors as diverse as technology, economics, and morale played dynamic roles in shaping battles, along with the unsung yet vital help of Poland, Greece, and Ukraine (which suffered the highest number of casualties). And while the Allies resorted to bombing enemy civilians to sow terror, the most damning condemnation is saved for the Soviet Union, whose glossed-over war crimes against British soldiers and its own people prove that Communism and Nazism were two sides of the same brutal coin.

No Simple Victory is an unparalleled work that will fascinate not only history buffs but anyone who is interested in discovering the reality behind what Davies refers to as "the frozen perspective of the winners' history".

©2007 Norman Davies (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Enormously readable....This will explode all your ideas about the 'Good War.' " (Details)
"This is a self-consciously contrary book, cutting against the grain of much self-congratulatory Western writing since 1945." (London Sunday Telegraph)
"Davies' topical approach judiciously surveys the military, economic and political aspects of the war....His interpretations rest on solid scholarly work." (Publishers Weekly)

Fantastic

this is a very refreshing take on war in general and of course world war two specifically.

however when during the battle of Stalingrad, "the temperature had dropped to twenty degrees Celsius" I think it's missing some minuses.

Overall, very good

This is a massive effort to provide an overview of an extremely complex topic. I think Davies did an admirable, if imperfect, job. The book seems to jump around a bit, but organizing the large volume of information and presenting it in a coherent manner, was undoubtedly a challenge.

I agree with the majority of Davies observations about how people view WW2 history through their narrow lenses, but he does seem to fixate on US myopia, especially in Hollywood. I think he forgets that Hollywood has never produced history, they produce entertainment for a profit.

Despite my criticisms, I very much enjoyed this book. It presents material and perspectives not found in your average US history text and challenges us to look beyond some of the patriotic myths created by our respective countries.

Duh.

The narration is amazing, because this is an insanely long book that says almost nothing interesting but one finds oneself listening anyway and learning a little trivia along the way.
The premise of this book is that it's busting some big myths of what happened in WWII. But its big thing is that the Germans had a terrible time on the Eastern Front . Who doesn't know that even if all your WWII history is from watching Hogan's Heroes? The other big shocker is that Stalin killed millions of his own citizens. Again, the scale may have been up for debate immediately post-war but even in the 1950s, it was well understood in the West that the Stalinist totalitarian regime was guilty of terrible atrocities.
The little "discoveries" are things like that the Germans had war heroes too, that they weren't all evil coward Nazis.
I understand that the propaganda during the war may have been that all Germans are evil and that Uncle Joe Stalin was our benevolent friend, but I find it hard to believe that the standard history textbooks all repeat this as fact today. Maybe they do, but if so, then that's the story.

A book that defeats itself

Any additional comments?

There are probably a good set of sermons here, but No Simple Victory is a labor to read. More of a collection of moralizing essays than a history, the author’s main points about the suffering on the Eastern front and the lack of Allied appreciation of the evil of the Soviet Union and Stalin, gets lost in the author’s obsession for assigning guilt to the western allies for crimes they had no real knowledge of and no control over.

The most serious problem is the author’s use of historical hindsight which he not so subtly uses to attribute knowledge of events and outcomes that the Allies simply did not possess. For example, he passes judgment on the Western bombing campaign against Germany as morally unjustified because it didn’t achieve all of the goals the Allies hoped it would. For example the Allies hoped that the bombing campaign would break the will of the German people to continue fighting. This obviously didn’t happen to the degree that the Allies hoped for, but they had no idea at the time how the bombing was effecting the German war effort.

I couldn’t escape the feeling while I was reading, that the author’s absolutely justifiable moral outrage over what happened on the Eastern Front (and especially Poland), had simply boiled over into a rage and the author was lashing out at any and all participants in an attempt to vent his anger. The author repeatedly returns to statistics about the suffering on the Eastern Front in a macabre dialog that basically amounts to “my pain is worse than your pain”.

Taken together, the unhistorical methods and selective remembering of events the author uses consistently combined with the accusative tone used by the author towards the reader make this a book that started with a noble purpose that degenerated into a long accusative diatribe that makes the reader want to stop reading.

Interesting thesis, but not so interesting book

I enjoy books on history, but this one left me checking how much time was left. Having grown up during the cold war, it was interesting to hear the ideas people had of Russia during WWII. Some of the raw figures from the East vs. West were staggering. But most of what was interesting could have been said in about a third of the space. The rest felt like filler and might be better as a reference book. This was like trying to listen to a text book.

Good general overview I guess...

if you are starting from a very basic knowledge of the war. If you're beyond that already it'll just seem like the usual cliched topics always mentioned and you'll wonder why you bought it.