The War in the West. Vol. 1: The Rise of Germany, 1939–1941

Holland's (Dam Busters; The Battle of Britain) goal in this first volume of a projected trilogy is to incorporate a generation of academic research about World War II and make it accessible for a general audience. The author adopts the revisionist argument that Germany's war effort was hindered by a variety of strategic weaknesses, especially in raw materials, while the Allies had greater access to natural resources and populations. Allied defeat cannot be understood merely as the result of a mechanized Wehrmacht blitzing across Europe until stopped at the gates of Moscow; defeat was the result of strategic and operational mistakes, and for France, the lack of political will. While Holland is almost certainly correct that the old interpretation of the war is still commonly accepted in popular culture, a quick survey of recent literature on the war reveals that a number of popular authors have also challenged the old paradigm.