It certainly isn't a primer on the war, that's for sure, in the fashion of John Keegan's one-volume history. It is divided into subject-matter sections that are within themselves chronological but overall, the book isn't. VDH had a little fun with some of the titles - four of them are Earth (infantry and army matters), Air (the air war), Water (naval matters), and Fire (new weapons technology), after the classical Elements. Some of his observations are commonplace but take on a new significance under scrutiny, for example, that the Axis never really did act as if they were allied to one another, no overall strategies or shared campaign plans, and when the Germans did act to save Mussolini's African campaigns they did so at the expense of resources that would have gone into the Barbarossa campaign, whose success it cost them, and it may have cost them the war. Or that Hitler quixotically declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor without securing any guarantee from the Japanese that they would hold the Soviet armies on the Manchurian border, which armies ended up sealing 6th Army's fate at Stalingrad. Or that even while the Germans were in death-grips with the Red Army their Japanese allies were allowing American Lend-Lease supplies to reach the Soviets through Vladivostok unmolested (50% of them if VDH's sources are correct) through the entire war, even when they themselves were being ground up by the U.S. Navy.
Great stuff, great resource book, and food for a lot of thought. Highly recommended.
Agreed. Started reading it and am just into "From Poland to the Pacific".
The only quibble I have with him is that if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the U.S. would have stayed out. Everything I have read about that time was that Japan worried that if they didn't take out the American fleet, their flank would be open to attack when they went into the Dutch East Indies. They felt they HAD to attack, counting on quick victories and then a negotiated peace giving them hegemony over the area.
Then they screwed up their timing of the Declaration of War.