Sins and Dreams: a Personal History of World War Ii
About This Novel
This is a shocking documentary work of war. The Second World War gradually devolved into a struggle between barbarism and civilization, and November 1942 witnessed the crux of this struggle. This was perhaps the most important month of the entire 20th century, when everything was still up in the air and the balance of victory was swinging back and forth. At the beginning of the month, Axis victory still seemed possible; by the end, everyone had an inkling that their defeat was only a matter of time. As in his previous writings, in this book, Peter Englund does not intend to provide us with another top-down military history, but to record a true history of human war experience. From the American and British landing campaign in North Africa to the Soviet encirclement of the German army in Stalingrad, from the front lines of the battlefield to the occupied areas in the rear, 39 ordinary people with different identities, classes, and camps were all involved in this war without exception. Among them are American pilots on Guadalcanal, Italian truck drivers in the North African desert, guerrillas in the forests of Belarus, a 12-year-old Jewish girl who fled Shanghai, a Chinese sailor who drifted alone for 133 days after a shipwreck, a German female college student who resisted the Nazi regime, and pro-German activists. The British rebels from fascism... Peter Engelen compiled their diaries, letters, manuscripts and memoirs from a massive amount of documentary records, recording their war experiences and mental changes - shock and anger, desire and madness, as well as the distortion and tearing of human nature in a cruel environment.
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