Stalin’s War
Sean McMeekin
(allen lane, 848 PP, £40)
Tablet bookshop price £36 • tel 020 7799 4064

A number of gigantic, one-volume histories of the Second World War have appeared in recent years. The Storm of War (2009) by Andrew Roberts was a smoothly readable analysis which presented the standard British narrative of the war built round the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler (“a world-class know-all”). Max Hastings’ All Hell Let Loose (2011) concentrated on ordinary lives caught up in the war, while Antony Beevor’s The Second World War (2012) highlighted the significant yet often neglected Sino-Japanese conflict of 1937-45. If the European war was won and lost by Germany on the Eastern Front, the Japanese campaigns set the stage for the coming “total” war pursued by Hitler and Stalin.