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Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin
In a unique combination of innovative style and thorough scholarship, Warlords tells the story of World War II through the lives of the four great war Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. While their nations fought battles with weapons, the four warlords of the twentieth century fought a war of the mind. Structured along the lines of a cinematic thriller, rapidly cutting from one man to the next, the book takes us blow by blow as they try to outthink and outfight each other. These encounters are told on a day-by-day, even hour-by-hour basis, affording unparalleled insights into parallel actions. Though there have been many single, and some dual, biographies, no previous book has put these four great figures together in this exciting and popularly appealing way. Moving from Whitehall and Washington to the Wolf's Lair and the Kremlin, Warlords documents the psychological battles among the leaders and shows how their thoughts and actions changed history.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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211 people want to read
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February 2, 2024
"...These four men stood at the head of the 20th century’s dominant ideologies as they collided in the Second World War: totalitarianism of right and left, liberal democracy, social democracy, European colonialism and economic imperialism. In the war between these ideologies tens of millions of people fought and died. This book is about the heart of that conflict: the ever-changing relationships of the four warlords and their war of the mind..."
Warlords was an interesting book that looks at WW2 through a different lens. I enjoy reading about WW2, and this one sounded like it could be a bit of an unorthodox take. The author drops the quote above in the book's intro.
Author Simon Berthon is a novelist, historian and BAFTA-winning documentary producer. His latest thriller, A Time to Lie, was published in paperback in June 2021. He has written two previous thrillers and three works of non-fiction, as well as screenplays commissioned by Granada TV and the BBC.
Simon Berthon:
As it's subtitle implies, the book is a broad-bassed examination of the major events of the war as seen through the eyes of its most influential leaders; Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin.
The author writes in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact manner that shouldn't have trouble holding the reader's attention. The plot is also told here in a no-frills fashion. Unlike many other history books I've read, the writing here is mostly story, and very little filler.
The narrative flows in a chronological manner; and bounces between each of the 4 leaders. Each chapter is broken up to cover a different period of the war. The book is heavily notated, with source material taken from speeches, diaries, and other public records. This could have been hit or miss, but fortunately, I felt that this narrative style worked here.
The book covers all the major events of the war, but pays a premium on the relationship between the 3 Allied leaders, and their adversarial relationship with Hilter and his Third Reich. Hitler's talks with Joseph Goebbels are also talked about often here.
Of course, the incredibly complicated and vast nature of the ~5-year-long World War makes writing about it effectively no easy task. The war would engulf dozens of the world's countries, hundreds of millions of people; both civilian and military, and spanned through multiple theaters of combat.
Fortunately, Berthon did a decent job of summarizing many of the pivotal events of the war, and relating them back to the 4 leaders.
********************
Warlords was a decent read that should be on the shelf of every armchair WW2 historian. I would recommend it to anyone interested.
4 stars.
Warlords was an interesting book that looks at WW2 through a different lens. I enjoy reading about WW2, and this one sounded like it could be a bit of an unorthodox take. The author drops the quote above in the book's intro.
Author Simon Berthon is a novelist, historian and BAFTA-winning documentary producer. His latest thriller, A Time to Lie, was published in paperback in June 2021. He has written two previous thrillers and three works of non-fiction, as well as screenplays commissioned by Granada TV and the BBC.
Simon Berthon:
As it's subtitle implies, the book is a broad-bassed examination of the major events of the war as seen through the eyes of its most influential leaders; Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin.
The author writes in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact manner that shouldn't have trouble holding the reader's attention. The plot is also told here in a no-frills fashion. Unlike many other history books I've read, the writing here is mostly story, and very little filler.
The narrative flows in a chronological manner; and bounces between each of the 4 leaders. Each chapter is broken up to cover a different period of the war. The book is heavily notated, with source material taken from speeches, diaries, and other public records. This could have been hit or miss, but fortunately, I felt that this narrative style worked here.
The book covers all the major events of the war, but pays a premium on the relationship between the 3 Allied leaders, and their adversarial relationship with Hilter and his Third Reich. Hitler's talks with Joseph Goebbels are also talked about often here.
Of course, the incredibly complicated and vast nature of the ~5-year-long World War makes writing about it effectively no easy task. The war would engulf dozens of the world's countries, hundreds of millions of people; both civilian and military, and spanned through multiple theaters of combat.
Fortunately, Berthon did a decent job of summarizing many of the pivotal events of the war, and relating them back to the 4 leaders.
********************
Warlords was a decent read that should be on the shelf of every armchair WW2 historian. I would recommend it to anyone interested.
4 stars.
April 10, 2023
3.5*
Reasonably interesting account describing the 4 heads of state, some aspects of the roles they played, their different styles of power and so on.
The top down, “Great Man” theory of history, yes, one that I, too happen to subscribe to (but seemingly fallen from fashion these days) is in full display here.
The authors have done their homework, but fail to recreate the visceral verisimilitude required by these major actors and longed for by this reader. Events that happened are described, you know what seemed to have happened, but are left to scratch for something more. The style of writing, the method that the authors choose to use to render their stories generates more questions than answers.
Doesn’t live up to the hype, but nevertheless a good read for history buffs interested in the subject area.
Reasonably interesting account describing the 4 heads of state, some aspects of the roles they played, their different styles of power and so on.
The top down, “Great Man” theory of history, yes, one that I, too happen to subscribe to (but seemingly fallen from fashion these days) is in full display here.
The authors have done their homework, but fail to recreate the visceral verisimilitude required by these major actors and longed for by this reader. Events that happened are described, you know what seemed to have happened, but are left to scratch for something more. The style of writing, the method that the authors choose to use to render their stories generates more questions than answers.
Doesn’t live up to the hype, but nevertheless a good read for history buffs interested in the subject area.
November 30, 2022
Historians long debated the Great Man Theory of History attributed to the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle in 1840. As we have come to understand the contrasting views on either side of the question, some insist that the course of history is set by the ideas and actions of “great men.” Others assert that the currents of their time carry along even these extraordinary leaders, who are merely actors on the stage of history. We hear little of that debate these days, since today we accept that history is shaped both from above and from below. But a close look at World War II might cause us to reexamine that conclusion. Then, four exceptional men—Hitler, Churchill, FDR, and Stalin—played oversized roles in determining the course of history. And that question rises to the surface in Warlords, an intimate examination of the relationships—and the misunderstandings—among the four.
LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS FILLED WITH CONFLICT
These were largely long-distance relationships. Hitler never met any one of the other three men. FDR encountered Stalin only twice, at conferences in Tehran (December 1943) and Yalta (February 1945) in Churchill’s company. Churchill also met the Soviet leader alone in Moscow in 1942. Only Churchill and FDR developed a face-to-face relationship, meeting eleven times in the course of the war (and once previously in World War I). In Berthon and Potts’ telling, the interaction among the four leaders was even more contentious than most histories suggest. All four possessed giant egos, so conflict was inevitable. The divergent national interests of the countries they led ensured that conflict would be intense. And, understandably, the shifting fortunes of war at times unsettled even the most stable of them.
MISJUDGMENTS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS WERE RIFE
The authors make cleat that one or another of the four displayed unusually perceptive views of the others from time to time. But misunderstanding was more common.
FDR AND STALIN
For example, FDR consistently misjudged Stalin, naively believing he could take what he said as trustworthy. Far too late, when close to death, Roosevelt came to understand how wrong he had been once Stalin proved he had had no intention of fulfilling the promises he’d made at Yalta.
STALIN AND HITLER
Stalin long insisted that Hitler was a rational actor and would never break the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Only when more than three million Nazi troops swarmed over the Soviet border on June 22, 1941, did he come to face reality. In fact, the invasion so shocked him that he holed up in his dacha for days, refusing to deal with his generals.
HITLER AND STALIN ON CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT
Hitler grossly underestimated both Churchill and Roosevelt, thinking them weak and unable to sustain their commitment to the war. He persisted in this delusional belief until shortly before his own suicide on April 30, 1945. And Stalin thought them both captives of “international capital,” deeply distrusting—to the point of full-blown paranoia—their assurances to support the Soviet war effort. This persisted even after the Western Allies opened up the “second front” in 1944.
FDR AND CHURCHILL
The differences between FDR and Churchill were typically less intense. But they started off poorly when the Prime Minister approached the President soon after taking office in May 1940 in hopes of persuading him to steer the United States into the war. FDR had met Churchill once previously, in July 1918, when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy and visiting Great Britain in the closing months of World War I. “At a dinner I attended he acted like a stinker,” Roosevelt recalled. To make matters worse, Churchill later failed to recall this first meeting. “Is he a drunk?” FDR asked Harry Hopkins when the aide returned from a fact-finding mission to Britain in February 1941, Nearly a year passed before FDR warmed to the Briton.
More fundamental, and longer-lasting, was Churchill’s failure to understand “that nothing Roosevelt said could be taken at face value; nor, despite his surface charm and affability, how impenetrable and elusive the President really was.” Pinning him down was “very much like chasing a vagrant beam of sunshine around a vacant room,” as Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary.
Far more consequential was the intense argument that raged from 1942 to 1945 between FDR and Churchill over military strategy. FDR consistently sided with his War Department in pushing for a cross-channel invasion of France. Churchill, fearing another catastrophic failure from an amphibious operation like those at Gallipoli in 1915-16 and Dieppe in 1942, never warmed to the idea. Instead, he insisted on attacking Germany through the “underbelly of the Axis” (a phrase usually misquoted as “the soft underbelly of Europe“).
CHURCHILL’S BALKAN STRATEGY
Although the two Allies reached a compromise with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Churchill advocated instead—both before and after the Italian campaign—an attack on the Balkans. Initially, he saw that strategy as far preferable to sending tens of thousands of soldiers to die on the beaches of northern France. He also viewed Britain’s control of the Mediterranean as vital to preserving its empire in the Middle East and India—while FDR hoped the war would put an end to the British Empire. “Roosevelt was not fighting Churchill’s war but his own; and the two men had very different long-term objectives,” Berthon writes.
Later, as V-E Day approached, the Prime Minister argued so aggressively with FDR that the President lost patience with him. Relations then came close to the breaking point. Churchill was adamant because he wanted the Allies to drive north from Greece to cut off advancing Soviet troops and prevent Stalin from seizing at least some of Eastern Europe. FDR then still labored under the illusion that Stalin was an honest man (and, in fairness, American military strategists thought Churchill’s proposed plan unworkable). Of course, for what little it may be worth, Churchill’s fear that Stalin would seize nearly all of Eastern Europe proved to be the case.
AN ADMIRABLE EXAMPLE OF INTENSIVE RESEARCH
As Simon Bethon notes in a foreword, “This book unashamedly takes the view that, in the war of 1939-45, the personal decisions of the four titans at the heart also dictated its outbreak, its course and its consequences.” In the nearly 400 pages that follow, he makes the case. The eleven-page bibliography and list of published sources that are appended to the text is extensive, clearly reflecting an intense research effort, undertaken primarily by Berthon’s coauthor, Joanna Potts. The book is lucidly written and adds depth to our understanding of the conduct of the most cataclysmic conflict in history.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SIMON BERTHON
Simon Berthon worked for nearly four decades in the British television industry as a producer, director and writer, winning multiple awards in the process. He turned to writing thrillers in recent years, continuing his work in TV as a freelance executive producer and consultant. To date Berthon has written three nonfiction books that tie in with his television productions as well as three thrillers. He divides his time between London, Cambridge and Wiltshire.
JOANNA POTTS
Joanna Potts is a British historian and researcher who has collaborated with Simon Berthon on several nonfiction books. She is a graduate of the University of Bristol. Like him, she works in the television industry, having undertaken projects for Channel Four and the BBC.
LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIPS FILLED WITH CONFLICT
These were largely long-distance relationships. Hitler never met any one of the other three men. FDR encountered Stalin only twice, at conferences in Tehran (December 1943) and Yalta (February 1945) in Churchill’s company. Churchill also met the Soviet leader alone in Moscow in 1942. Only Churchill and FDR developed a face-to-face relationship, meeting eleven times in the course of the war (and once previously in World War I). In Berthon and Potts’ telling, the interaction among the four leaders was even more contentious than most histories suggest. All four possessed giant egos, so conflict was inevitable. The divergent national interests of the countries they led ensured that conflict would be intense. And, understandably, the shifting fortunes of war at times unsettled even the most stable of them.
MISJUDGMENTS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS WERE RIFE
The authors make cleat that one or another of the four displayed unusually perceptive views of the others from time to time. But misunderstanding was more common.
FDR AND STALIN
For example, FDR consistently misjudged Stalin, naively believing he could take what he said as trustworthy. Far too late, when close to death, Roosevelt came to understand how wrong he had been once Stalin proved he had had no intention of fulfilling the promises he’d made at Yalta.
STALIN AND HITLER
Stalin long insisted that Hitler was a rational actor and would never break the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Only when more than three million Nazi troops swarmed over the Soviet border on June 22, 1941, did he come to face reality. In fact, the invasion so shocked him that he holed up in his dacha for days, refusing to deal with his generals.
HITLER AND STALIN ON CHURCHILL AND ROOSEVELT
Hitler grossly underestimated both Churchill and Roosevelt, thinking them weak and unable to sustain their commitment to the war. He persisted in this delusional belief until shortly before his own suicide on April 30, 1945. And Stalin thought them both captives of “international capital,” deeply distrusting—to the point of full-blown paranoia—their assurances to support the Soviet war effort. This persisted even after the Western Allies opened up the “second front” in 1944.
FDR AND CHURCHILL
The differences between FDR and Churchill were typically less intense. But they started off poorly when the Prime Minister approached the President soon after taking office in May 1940 in hopes of persuading him to steer the United States into the war. FDR had met Churchill once previously, in July 1918, when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy and visiting Great Britain in the closing months of World War I. “At a dinner I attended he acted like a stinker,” Roosevelt recalled. To make matters worse, Churchill later failed to recall this first meeting. “Is he a drunk?” FDR asked Harry Hopkins when the aide returned from a fact-finding mission to Britain in February 1941, Nearly a year passed before FDR warmed to the Briton.
More fundamental, and longer-lasting, was Churchill’s failure to understand “that nothing Roosevelt said could be taken at face value; nor, despite his surface charm and affability, how impenetrable and elusive the President really was.” Pinning him down was “very much like chasing a vagrant beam of sunshine around a vacant room,” as Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary.
Far more consequential was the intense argument that raged from 1942 to 1945 between FDR and Churchill over military strategy. FDR consistently sided with his War Department in pushing for a cross-channel invasion of France. Churchill, fearing another catastrophic failure from an amphibious operation like those at Gallipoli in 1915-16 and Dieppe in 1942, never warmed to the idea. Instead, he insisted on attacking Germany through the “underbelly of the Axis” (a phrase usually misquoted as “the soft underbelly of Europe“).
CHURCHILL’S BALKAN STRATEGY
Although the two Allies reached a compromise with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Churchill advocated instead—both before and after the Italian campaign—an attack on the Balkans. Initially, he saw that strategy as far preferable to sending tens of thousands of soldiers to die on the beaches of northern France. He also viewed Britain’s control of the Mediterranean as vital to preserving its empire in the Middle East and India—while FDR hoped the war would put an end to the British Empire. “Roosevelt was not fighting Churchill’s war but his own; and the two men had very different long-term objectives,” Berthon writes.
Later, as V-E Day approached, the Prime Minister argued so aggressively with FDR that the President lost patience with him. Relations then came close to the breaking point. Churchill was adamant because he wanted the Allies to drive north from Greece to cut off advancing Soviet troops and prevent Stalin from seizing at least some of Eastern Europe. FDR then still labored under the illusion that Stalin was an honest man (and, in fairness, American military strategists thought Churchill’s proposed plan unworkable). Of course, for what little it may be worth, Churchill’s fear that Stalin would seize nearly all of Eastern Europe proved to be the case.
AN ADMIRABLE EXAMPLE OF INTENSIVE RESEARCH
As Simon Bethon notes in a foreword, “This book unashamedly takes the view that, in the war of 1939-45, the personal decisions of the four titans at the heart also dictated its outbreak, its course and its consequences.” In the nearly 400 pages that follow, he makes the case. The eleven-page bibliography and list of published sources that are appended to the text is extensive, clearly reflecting an intense research effort, undertaken primarily by Berthon’s coauthor, Joanna Potts. The book is lucidly written and adds depth to our understanding of the conduct of the most cataclysmic conflict in history.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
SIMON BERTHON
Simon Berthon worked for nearly four decades in the British television industry as a producer, director and writer, winning multiple awards in the process. He turned to writing thrillers in recent years, continuing his work in TV as a freelance executive producer and consultant. To date Berthon has written three nonfiction books that tie in with his television productions as well as three thrillers. He divides his time between London, Cambridge and Wiltshire.
JOANNA POTTS
Joanna Potts is a British historian and researcher who has collaborated with Simon Berthon on several nonfiction books. She is a graduate of the University of Bristol. Like him, she works in the television industry, having undertaken projects for Channel Four and the BBC.
December 7, 2009
Amazing book, the authors use diaries and writings of people closest to Hitler, F D Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin to describe what they were doing, saying publicly and privately during World War II. It is a chronology of day to day events--while Roosevelt and Churchill were sending telegrams to each other, Hitler was describing their relationship to associates. It expresses the personalities and weaknesses of all four leaders. It is a chronology of Hitler's mental abilities from shrewd analyst to paranoia and delusional. Why was Roosevelt so trusting of Stalin? Why did he ignore Churchill's advice? How did it happen that Stalin was our ally and was enabled after the war to take over eastern Europe? These questions are answered.
September 30, 2016
This book follows the course of WWII from May, 1940 until the death of FDR. It follows the actions,aims and interactions of the leaders of the four major participants. While the actions and beliefs of Hitler are followed, the main emphasis is on FDR, Churchill and Stalin. The relationship between FDR and Churchill begins to show strain with the entrance of Stalin into the Allied cause. Stalin was extremely paranoid and his main focus was on the second front. The constant delays made the situation worse. Churchill wanted to open the second front through Italy and into the Balkans. He distrusted Stalin and his designs on dominating Eastern Europe. FDR felt that he could charm Stalin and that they could work together.
The big topics to me are: was Churchill that attuned to the motives of Stalin or just trying to preserve the empire, and why FDR was so convinced that Stalin was reasonable and that he could charm him. The focus of the dynamics of these conflicting aims and actions came to a head over the fate of Poland. He final question that comes to mind for me was why both FDR and Churchill were both willing to forget the pledge they propounded in the Atlantic Charter of self-determination for people to choose their form of government.
The big topics to me are: was Churchill that attuned to the motives of Stalin or just trying to preserve the empire, and why FDR was so convinced that Stalin was reasonable and that he could charm him. The focus of the dynamics of these conflicting aims and actions came to a head over the fate of Poland. He final question that comes to mind for me was why both FDR and Churchill were both willing to forget the pledge they propounded in the Atlantic Charter of self-determination for people to choose their form of government.
April 19, 2011
An interesting and well executed blow-by-blow account of the motivations and strategies of WWII's European theater leaders. The story is told through journal entries and private diplomatic cables and the personalities of each of these men are captured well. Hitler: the malignant narcissus whose arrogance and poor military strategies doomed Germany. Churchill: the drunken imperialist who will do whatever it takes to defeat the Nazi menace. Roosevelt: the constant politician who is reluctant to drag his country into war. Stalin: the most ruthless of all, whose only real allegiance is to his own self-interest. I actually learned quite a bit about Stalin from this, particularly about his treatment of liberated Poland in 1945 and his communist land grab into eastern Europe as the war wound down that set the stage for the cold war. Great intro book on this subject, highly recommended!
May 15, 2017
Warlords by Simon Berthon is a refreshing history of the detailed accounts of the main players of World War II. Information housed within the in the book Berthon refers to as an "obsession" is certainly unique and equally as interesting. Unfortunately, the book leaves out the first hand accounts of other main players, such as the emperor of Japan and Mousallini, who are very briefly mentioned in the book but not as thoroughly scrutinized. Warlords is a very detailed look into the day to day interactions of the Axis powers without being drowned in minutia of every last little interaction. From this first taste of Simon Berthon's writing style, I would highly recommend him as a fine historical author and will most certainly seek out his other works.
January 3, 2018
Interesting perspective on WWII leadership, especially with new documents from Russia and England. Ultimately, this book is a British book and suggests, somehow, that Churchill and his generals could have saved us from the cold war if we had only switched out military strategy. The book is quite fascinating in its profiles of Churchill and Stalin.....but it relies on Nazi propaganda for its "insights" into Hitler, and an odd, patronizing view of Roosevelt and no real insight there...so Americans need to put up with that.
December 16, 2013
Very interesting to see how the leaders of these four nations (especially the Allies) shaped the war and beyond. My conclusion? World War II had one real victor: Joseph Stalin. Hitler was the paranoid genius, Churchill was the sole reason why Germany DIDN'T win the war, Roosevelt was the optimistic politician obsessed with public opinion - probably why he won 4 elections - but STALIN won the war.
November 23, 2017
Well, I must say, after reading this book, any respect I had for Roosevelt has ended. Churchill on the other hand, I still have great respect for. Stalin basically bamboozled Roosevelt and took what he wanted. Roosevelt was so afraid of aggravating Stalin, he let Stalin have his way. We know how that ended.
September 22, 2021
Historia II wojny swiatowej przedstawiona z ciekawej perspektywy glownych wodzow kofliktu. Dla mnie, jako osoby, ktora z historia wojny miala stycznosc tylko w szkole, lata temu, bardzo interesujaca i wciagajaca lektura. Dzieki ksiazce poznalem lepiej przebieg wojny, nie tylko w Europie, ale rowniez na innych kontynentach.
November 15, 2015
Anyone who wants to know WWII history should read this book. Another book I enjoyed reading and discovered so much we don't know about each leader. Very informative, excellent research and written in a manner that made it easy to read without compromising facts.
May 29, 2013
Interesting.. a pity the authors didn't check their geography and, amazingly enough, they completely forgot about the 5th warlord (Emperor Hiroito).
September 29, 2023
I liked this book it was very informational it showed what was going on with the main four leaders of World War Two. The genre is history it was very detailed. I thought this book did a good job of explaining what was going on during the war at that time and what each leader was doing. The book starts in May of 1940 and goes until fdrs death. It switches between each person.
August 7, 2022
Excellent book, that tries to take the reader through world war two through the eyes of the four world leaders navigating it (Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin).
April 28, 2014
Very good book; easy to follow although it jumped from one "warlord" to another. Lots of interesting detail. I found myself wanting to slap FDR over and over as he gave in to Stalin, thinking they were two of a kind. This book helped show how Stalin got control of Eastern Europe easily. I had no idea FDR was such an Anti- imperialist...that certainly made a difference in his relations with Churchill.
August 22, 2011
Dense, but the book gives a ton of insight into FDR, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler via internal memos, letters and diary entries. It was a phenomenal read, though I did slog through it at times (I think it really took me about 4 months to read).
August 21, 2007
Interesting day-by-day account of the four great figures of WWII.
October 12, 2013
A very thorough account of WW2 through the eyes of the warlords.
June 16, 2014
Rigtig godt indblik i de tre allierede lederes forhold.
June 29, 2021
Some of the views of the authors appear biased. And more sources are available from the same Churchill's memoirs, for example, his stay at Stalin's dacha. Despite this the work is excellent
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews