Forgotten Voices Of The Second World War

Sep 21, 2024 7:05 AM

Author:Max Arthur

The Imperial War Museum holds a vast archive of interviews with soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians of most nationalities who saw action during WW2. As in the highly-acclaimed Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Max Arthur and his team of researchers spent hundreds of hours digging deep into this unique archive, uncovering tapes, many of which have not been listened to since they were created in the early 1970s. The result will be the first complete oral history of World War 2.

We hear at first from British, German and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians. Accounts of the impact of U.S. involvement after Pearl Harbour and the major effects it had on the war in Europe and the Far East is chronicled in startling detail, including compelling interviews from U.S. and British troops who fought against the Japanese. Continuing through from D-Day, to the Rhine Crossing and the dropping of the Atom Bomb in August 1945, this book is a unique testimony to one of the world's most dreadful conflicts. One of the hallmarks of Max Arthur's work is the way he involves those left behind on the home front as well as those working in factories or essential services. Their voices will not be neglected.

Reviews

These stories are so harrowing, their witness so precise and devastating

—— The Times

With the rawness and immediacy that only this kind of oral history can provide

—— Sunday Times

An extraordinary and immensely moving book

—— Stephen Fry

A unique collection of personal testimonies ... a timely reminder of the sacrifices and horrors of war

—— Sunday Express

The sound of real human voices: bewildered, sad, often angry, sometimes bitter, but for the most part remarkable ... a shattered relay-race of narrative gives the book a ghostly, choric poetry

—— Telegraph

...Breathe a sense of immediacy, of being there on the spot; and the spot is, only too often, a place of horror...thoroughly readable by anyone who wants to know what it felt like to be engaged in a world war....That war is horrible, no sensible reader can doubt; that this war was worth fighting, to get rid of barbaric regimes, comes across well

—— Spectator

As powerful and authoritative an account of the battle for Normandy as we are likely to get in this generation

—— Max Hastings , Sunday Times

A brilliantly co-ordinated and almost overwhelmingly upsetting history. Beevor is singularly expert at homing in on those telltale human details that reveal just what it would have been like to be in Normandy in the summer of 1944

—— Craig Brown , Mail on Sunday

No writer can surpass Beevor in making sense of a crowded battlefield and in balancing the explanation of tactical manoeuvres with poignant flashes of human detail

—— Christopher Silvester , Daily Express

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