Shelia B. Cassidy 2008-09-30

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Niall Ferguson has given us a new way of looking at International conflict, not only in the 20th Century, but as we embark in the 21st Century. We see the borders of major powers in a new way, as a fault zone requiring much more thought and analysis. As World War I was started by the pressure on the meeting of the borders of the three empires of that time, Ottoman Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and Russia, we now face a similar situation as the US pushes the boundaries of NATO closer to Russia. When I started to read this book I wondered why so many young men would go to war for nationalism in what was a more enlightened time. That question was pretty well answered, as were so many more. There are so many myths that have been exploded by Mr. Ferguson in this book that it is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand why we keep doing the same things over and over again. In the end, it is a very cautionary account. Only by such an education will we be able to resist those among us who continually want to go to war against the "next Hitler."

Todd Stockslager 2008-09-10

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Ferguson uses H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" as a pattern for the 20th Century "War of the World"--the period of world-wide violence that spanned approximately the first 50 years of the century. The causes: ethnic assimilation of closely allied ethnic groups and increasing economic volatility (both positive and negative) in a world of shrinking empires.

He uses demographic, historical, and cultural data to show that, contrary to what many take as a given, Germany in the 1930s was a country with a small but well-assimilated Jewish population and a growing economy, and shows how these facts were causes and not inhibitors of Hitler's rise and success.

Interestingly, this book was originally intended to be a sequel to Ferguson's history of the First World War, but in researching the origins of the Second, he was led back to his data and the conclusion which he draws from it. This is not, then, a traditional history of WWII, or even of the origins of WWII, but in fact traces the descent of Western democracies into world-wide conflicts.

Ferguson in the final chapter brings history forward to the end of the century by showing how the dynamics of his formula continued beyond WWII into the "Third World's War": war by proxy, often bloody civil war, that was anything but Cold War. He considers the possibilities for tension in the 21st Century as Western Europe, during a period of rapid economic growth, is demographically shifting toward a Muslim majority, that is (mostly) well assimilated--for now.

Not light reading, but fascinating in its use of a broad range of data beyond the usual political and battlefield reports of military history to draw sound and profound conclusions.

Declan Trott 2008-08-25

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

From Chapter One: "The hundred years after 1900 were without question the bloodiest century in human history, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era."

From the Appendix: "This statement is by no means beyond dispute". (Mentions the Taiping and Lushan rebellions in China, the European conquest of the Americas, and rates of violent death in Stone Age societies.)

Then what the #*%! were the intervening eight hundred pages about?!

Even on the more limited subject of the causes of war in the last century, this book fails to say anything useful. Ferguson claims that technology, economic crisis, and ideology are not sufficient, instead proposing his own trinity of ethnic hatred, the decline of empires, and economic volatility. In other words, when one bunch of people doesn't like another, when a big power is becoming weaker (which since power is measured in relative terms is happening all the time), and when the economy is doing either better or worse than average. That should cover pretty much any imaginable contingency.

His argument that the Cuban missile crisis showed the inadequacy of MAD is also flawed. It is true that Curtis LeMay and Fidel Castro were willing to court nuclear holocaust, but it is equally true (and far more significant) that they were overruled by Kennedy and Kruschev. Can he really believe that it was the different ethnic, imperial or economic situation in 1962, rather than the simple fear of the mushroom cloud, that caused both sides to step back (unlike in both world wars)? Similar comments would apply to the lack of escalation in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and Afghanistan: would such proxy wars have stayed as proxies in any previous era? Would the USA and USSR have admitted defeat by such weak countries without them being, in the final analysis, under nuclear protection from the other superpower?

It is almost impossible to read a book this length without learning something new and interesting, such as the similarity of Hitler's and Roosevelt's speeches on the economic situation when they came to power. But you could say the same about a random walk through Wikipedia. And on the details, Ferguson is less reliable than Wikipedia. In one memorably bad paragraph, he misidentifies the P-39 fighter as a "tankbuster" (presumably confusing it with the Il-2 Sturmovik), lauds the IS-1 heavy tank (an early model of which barely 100 were produced, armed with the same 85mm gun as late T-34s) as a match for the Tiger and Panther, and makes erroneous claims about the superiority of the T-34 over the Sherman. Elsewhere, he gives the ridiculously low figure of 8000 deaths for British Commonwealth prisoners at Japanese hands, a figure that would barely cover Australians alone.

This is more than just a bad book. It is dishonest. Ferguson's MO is to make a bold, provocative statement, inundate the reader with oceans of irrelevant and dubious detail, then quietly back away from his most outrageous claims, hoping no one notices that there is really nothing left. He has followed a similar pattern in other books (Empire, The Cash Nexus) but never quite so blatantly.

Matthew Gerrish 2008-07-18

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Overall, Ferguson's book is an entertaining read. However, he starts by asserting that bloodshed in the 20th century was a result of economic volatility which was the trigger mechanism for ethnic persecution, then in the appendix he claims that it is impossible to compare the 20th century to others due to undependable resources in the past. The book has many interesting moments, but is riddled with boring economic explanations that would only interest an economist. Ferguson also seems to really fast forward the final two chapters after WWII and spends little time on the Cold War and what he calls 'The Third World's War'. While I agree with much of his points, I could only find it in my heart to give this book 3 stars.

brad c. 2008-06-26

8 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

Ferguson should move to an island where he can set up his utopia of fair war since the USA is such a vile place.
I'm glad we bombed Hiroshima, Dresden and couldn't give a wit's care about what we did.
Ferguson couldn't hold the chin strap of one of the Rangers that went over the cliffs at Point Du Hoc nor any of the thousands of B-17 crews that never made it to Dresden.
War is hell, Mr. Ferguson but we didn't start it and we sure as heck found a way to end it sooner.
In Mr. Ferguson's world, we should have stopped bombing and sacrificed another 100,000 on the beaches and rice paddies of Japan just to satisfy the "fairness" of our tactics.
It is this revisionist thinking that is the primary reason that we home-school and will continue to refer to that group of young soldiers, airmen, rivet-drivers and victory garden growers as the "The GREATEST GENERATION."