Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

by Max Hastings

“These are strange times,” wrote an anonymous Berlin woman on 22 April 1945 in one of the great diaries of the war, “history experienced first hand, the stuff of tales yet untold and songs unsung. But seen close-up, history is much more troublesome—nothing but burdens and fears. Tomorrow I’ll go and look for nettles and get some coal.”

farmer’s daughter, wrote sadly in her diary: “The war goes on like a great big weight which gets a bit heavier every day.”

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“Sometimes I get caught up in a kind of puzzled wonder at things and think of all the work and effort and unlimited money that is used today to ‘destroy’ and not so long ago there was no money or work and it seems so wrong somehow … [that] money and effort could always be found to pull down and destroy rather than build up.”

Nothing went right for the Italian war effort. Mussolini’s propaganda department in Rome made a film designed to demonstrate the superiority of fascist manhood. To this end, a fight was staged between former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera and Kay Masaki, a black South African taken prisoner in the desert. Masaki had never entered a boxing ring in his life, and was knocked down when the cameras began to roll. He picked himself up, however, and struck Carnera a blow that rendered him unconscious.

“I believed that Russia would collapse from within and that we could then create an order in that region which would present no danger to us. But nothing of this is to be noticed: far behind the front Russian soldiers are fighting on, and so are peasants and workers; it is exactly as in China. We have touched something terrible and it will cost many victims.”

“One thing seems certain to me in any case: between now and 1st April next year more people will perish miserably between the Urals and Portugal than ever before in the history of the world. And this seed will sprout. Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind, but after such a wind as this what will the whirlwind be like?”

“Any personal balance sheet gets lost in the shadow of war. Its terrible presence is the first reality. Then somewhere, far away, forgotten by us, are we ourselves, with our faded, diminished, lethargic life, as we wait to emerge from sleep and start living again.”