World War II: 1939-1942

In this book, renowned historian Martin Gilbert, relying on thousands of documents and testimonies, has created a comprehensive chronicle of the most destructive war in human history. With the outbreak of war, European conflicts rapidly escalated into a global catastrophe: the invasion of Poland, the fall of Paris, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Battle of Moscow. The author does not limit himself to describing the movement of armies on the map, showing how the "blitzkrieg" ground the fates of millions of people—from soldiers in the trenches to civilians under the bombings of London and Leningrad.

What diplomatic miscalculations by European leaders made global conflict unavoidable? What price did Britain have to pay to stand alone against the full power of the Luftwaffe? Why did Operation Barbarossa fail where German command expected an easy victory?

This is the story of how the world gradually sank into the chaos of total confrontation.