America and World War II: Critical Issues (review)

This book had its genesis as a replacement for an earlier compilation of readings for an undergraduate course on World War II at the University of Kansas. These documents clearly reflect the strategic, military, diplomatic, economic, political, social, and personal dimensions of the American war effort. Included are documents highlighting official and unofficial American, British, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Saudi, and Soviet (just to name a few) views on a wide range of events and topics. The medley of primary sources includes official documents, treaties, press releases, speeches, minutes of meetings, after action reports, decrees, letters, recollections, organizational histories, memoranda, tests, pamphlets, oral history excerpts, and many other types of information.

The structure of the book follows a similar pattern. Each chapter opens with a short thematic overview by the editor followed by specific context for each document or excerpt provided. The chapters and their themes include the following: contrasting reasons and rationales for fighting; theory and practice of total war; grand strategy; descriptions of war; the home front(s); war crimes; conflict termination and postwar legacies, among other topics.

By its very nature, any compendium such as this reflects the editor's viewpoints. Given the vast array of information which is now available about World War II, making choices about what to include and what to exclude can result in a very discriminating, or very discriminatory, selection. As the author indicates, this collection was made to complement his college course. It is hard to evaluate without the benefit of his lecture notes and commentary. Nonetheless, this book is an interesting collection that serves to remind any specialist of the many, many fascinating and frightening aspects of World War II. The book can serve as a smorgasbord leading to further study in other sources.

Besides the sheer volume of discrete documents, a recurrent weakness of the work is typographical errors. These vary from merely annoying to shocking. For example, it is distinctly distressing to see in the overview to "America's Drift Toward War" the comment "7 December 1948," referring to Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. These mistakes may have been the result of any number of reasons, including poor typing by original authors or unfortunate mistakes by students transcribing excerpts from other documents. Nonetheless, they detract from the value of reading this work.