Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5425
EAN: 9780307263513
ISBN: 0307263517
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 656
Publication Date: 2008-03-18
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2008-03-18
Studio: Knopf

Hailed in Britain as “Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful” (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph), a riveting, impeccably informed chronicle of the final year of the Pacific war. In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.

By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan’s utter devastation—was acted out across the vast stage of Asia, with massive clashes of naval and air forces, fighting through jungles, and barbarities by an apparently incomprehensible foe. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theater’s key figures—MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors—American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese—caught in some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.

With unprecedented insight, Hastings discusses Japan’s war against China, now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthur’s follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—which, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day.

Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A must have for any World War II enthusiast
Comment: Max Hastings has presented the perfect companion for his previous book "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45". Of the 300+ books on World War II in my personal library, there are few that stand out as distinctly as "Retribution".

One would ordinarily think that a comprehensive view of the final year of the Pacific theatre would be a tedious, multi-volume effort to read, but Hastings has provided a wonderful alternative. Chock full of details and personal accounts, Hastings takes a fresh look at the major events as well as the forgotten or ignored aspects of the Pacific war.

As with "Armageddon", "Retribution" de-sterilizes the myth that World War II was "the good war" as well as debunking the common belief that Allied commanders were as competent as American history preaches. What Hastings does is expose the gritty truth as to how the Allies achieved victory, warts and all (and there are plenty of warts). I never knew how hated McArthur was ... or how the Japanese army advanced, without opposition, in China until the end of the war. The continuous ineptitude of Allied leadership is a constant issue throughout the book ... as are the horrors of war experienced by individuals (civilians and military alike). The fireboming dilemma, the POW experience, the wasteful Phillipines campaign, allied atrocities, the politics, naval, ground and air ... it's all there.

The research is thorough and the presentation is superb. "Retribution" is an engrossing read that is NEVER dull; I highly recommend it to anyone interested in World War II or history ... I cannot imagine anyone not learning something from this terrific book.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Professional historian here,
Comment: though must admit that Hastings writes, thinks, and analyzes far better than most PhD's. I'm appalled that the Washington Post review was posted as Amazon's only assessment of the book.

The reviewer was a exceptionally vicious partisan in the museum factional disputes over the bomb, trading off his Pulitzer as status symbol but not as a qualification to render judgment. But that does not excuse him from examining counter-evidence, candidly characterizing the debate, or indeed acknowledging that serious people disagree and showing how, why, and concerning what. In plainer words, the reviewer, if he knew enough to write about the issue, would know he was dishonest. More charitably, the reviewer has a simplistic single-cause-single-effect view of a complex issue that I trust would get him a C in any of my department's courses.

Note that I'm not making the case for the bomb: as a historian I'm more interested in assessing arguments than in pronouncing, as Bird does, The Final Truth. I'm responding rather because the Washington Post has given column inches to an unserious, partisan, and superficial reviewer. Amazon should take this down: controversy is good, but a good review editor should never permits writers to assert as truths presuppositions that are fiercely debated.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Very well done
Comment: Hastings has done a fine job with this one. Our battles with Japan were vicious and costly. History will long remember Adms. Nimitz, Halsey and Gen. Lemay. I also loved Arvy Geurin's Walking Through Fire, An Iwo Jima Survivor's Remembrance

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Rich in anecdotes, fairly good analysis
Comment: If you are looking for a book that gives you a real-life picture of what combat was like in the WWII Pacific theater, this book is a real find. It shows the perspective from multiple sides: British and Amercian, Japanese, Chinese, and a range of others. The book's strength is based on its interviews with many people who were there, and not just the noteworthy names familiar to us all; the common foot soldier and his counterpart in the navy and air forces, is well-represented.

The author persuasively demonstrates the desperate condition of Japan and its people in the last year of war; less compelling is his analysis that what happened--the mass firebombings, the use of nuclear weapons in densely populated urban centers--was inevitable. He attributes this neither to political expediency nor to bloody-mindedness, but to the inertia of technology; the idea here is that when weapons are made available, the exigencies of a major military struggle will compell their use. It's a bit more complicated than this--he discusses how nukes were not used later, e.g., in the Korean conflict--but the core of his argument is centered on the technology. "You couldn't do nothing," and the something that was available...was The Bomb. The firebombings get a more critical view, as he does not softpedal their terrorist intent and effect. It's a mark of how depraved war is that all major combatants in the Second World War explicitly aimed their weapons of mass destruction at civilians.

This book is well-written and equally well-documented. It is an excellent presentation of what war is really like, as distinct from the glorified lies with which we are presented too often.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: well written
Comment: this book was worth the purchase
written well
gave many interesting facts

---