PositiveThe GuardianThe best diaries of the second world war were written by women, and this is no paradox. Their observation and analysis of events around them deepened with the idea that they were living through a crucial moment in history that they felt a duty to record ... As Lucy Hughes-Hallett points out in her excellent introduction to this volume, Iris Origo, with typical modesty, referred in her memoirs to her \'little war diary\' in no more than a passing subordinate clause. In fact War in the Val d’Orcia, first published in 1947, was immediately hailed as one of the great diaries of the 20th century. It described the chaos and suffering of Italian civilians caught between the Allies and the Germans in 1943 and 1944.
Norman Ohler
PositiveThe New York Review of BooksAlthough Ohler’s book does not fundamentally change the history of the Third Reich, it is an account that makes us look at this densely studied period rather differently ... Ohler is on less certain ground when he ascribes Hitler’s famous order to halt the tanks short of Dunkirk to Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s morphine dependency ... Ohler’s book may well irritate some historians; he makes flippant remarks and uses chapter titles such as 'Sieg High!' and 'High Hitler.' But as Ian Kershaw, the great biographer of Hitler, has recognized, he has written 'a serious piece of scholarship,' and one that is very well researched.
Max Hastings
RaveThe New York Review of Books...we badly needed a reliable reassessment to put the secret war in perspective, and this Max Hastings accomplishes with fine judgment in his new book ... Hastings also reminds us forcefully that however accurate the intelligence obtained, it is worthless if sufficient forces are not available to make use of it ... Nobody can accuse Max Hastings of patriotic bias. He is well known for his scathing criticism of the British Army’s inadequacies. In The Secret War Hastings gives short shrift to the myths. He brilliantly depicts the byzantine world of intelligence agencies, with dry humor and perception.
