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| Visions of Victory : The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders | 
 enlarge | Author: Gerhard L. Weinberg
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 1811882
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 316
ASIN: B000C4SVCS
Publication Date: April 11, 2005
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Product Description
Visions of Victory explores the views of eight war leaders of the major powers of World War II - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt - and compares their visions of the future assuming their side had emerged victorious. While the leaders primarily focused their attention on the strategy for fighting and winning the war, these very decisions were often shaped by their aspirations and hopes for the future. Weinberg assesses how subsequent events were impacted by these decisions and examines how these visions for the future changed and evolved throughout the war.
Book Description
Visions of Victory explores the views of eight war leaders of the major powers of World War II - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Chiang Kai-shek, Stalin, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt - and compares their visions of the future assuming their side had emerged victorious.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Good as far as it goes, but felt surprisingly lightweight November 19, 2008
This was, as I understand it, meant to be something of a supplement to the same author's A World At Arms (which I recommend highly), but is actually a surprising contrast to its larger cousin.
Somewhat more speculative than A World at Arms, this book discusses what we know, or the author surmises, about the war aims and postwar hopes of eight major World War II leaders - Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Tojo Hideki of Japan, Chaing Kai-Shek of China, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill of the UK, Charles de Gaulle of the Free French, and Franklin D Roosevelt of the USA. Eight chapters, one on each of these men, are followed by a ninth on the actual postwar world, and how little it resembled the visions of any of them, even the victors.
In addition to being much shorter by page count than A World at Arms, this book is in a larger typeface, making for a much quicker read than you might expect. It doesn't hurt that the often dense prose style of Weinberg's past work has here given way to a somewhat simpler and more readable one. But one gets the impression that these contrasts originate, at least in part, in the author just having a lot less to say here. While I learned something from nearly every page of A World at Arms, here Weinberg spends a great deal of time stating the obvious (Hitler would have been disappointed with the way Germany has gone since his death - you don't say!), and what in-depth analysis he does do is largely (though by no means entirely) repeated from A World at Arms.
The broad strokes of Weinberg's conclusions are nothing terribly new, even if some of the details are original to this book. In the short term, Stalin did the best of all the leaders discussed here; an antiquated colonialism coloured much of both Churchill and de Gaulle's thinking; the war was, unfortunately for Chiang, the best thing that ever happened to the Chinese Communist Party; and so on. Nothing that any serious student of the war doesn't already know. However, it is still well worth reading the book to see how Weinberg refines and adds nuance to these conclusions, and to read his refutations of some of the contrasting views that have on occasion been defended. And this book also has a strong human element that was sometimes lacking from its predecessor; in a book about some of the most cherished hopes of eight very specific individuals, one can't help but paint a picture of who they were as people, a luxury the sheer breadth of A World at Arms seldom allowed him.
This book will be an enjoyable read for anyone with an interest in the Second World War, even if it is only occasionally, rather than consistently, a thought-provoking one. But then again, perhaps it is a compliment to the characteristic clarity of Weinberg's analysis - or to the newfound clarity of his writing - that this book leaves one wanting more.
Visions of Victory October 23, 2008
Excellent overview of WW II leaders & their global perspectives & objectives by a renown Univ. of NC historian.
Too Descriptive on geographies.. March 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well..I purchased this book with expectattion that it would tell me in details about the great leaders at the time of II WW..however this book turned out to be something different..it concentrates only around the period of WW and the mindsets and plans of the leaders at that time..it doesnt talk about anything after the WW..thats pretty amusing to me..
However from the introduction point of view it provides short and crisp description about the leaders..but then its done..all over..lets jump to geographies and mindsets and what not..
Overall pretty informative..but not upto my expectations..
My favourite part was the story of China and Chinese leader..good one..
 A Different Perspective to understand the WW II January 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I like books that help to explain and understand the causes, the strategies and the reasoning behind the second world war. In this book the writer tries to explain the minds of the leaders, this is quite a difficult job, it is difficult to draw a line between facts and reasonable conclusions and just pure opinions of the author. I think Mr. Weinberg has done a fine job worth reading.
The way it presents the major leaders visions helps understand their strategies, their directives and the way they acted. Some concepts or strategies like Hitler's key concept of a series of wars, in which each one represented an acquisition of resources to be used in the next war, explains his behavior, his decisions. His ethics are clear, and acceptable only if you were with him, there is nothing for any one who cannot be part of his arian concept of superiority. Hitler clearly was rational in his decisions! (If I lived during that period of time I could not have another position, but be his enemy, I would have to enlist with Mr. Roosevelt, the one with a truly civilized and more universal view of power and political organization).
Stalin is another character that is very interesting to see his views, probably acceptable to any one who sponsors the communist ideology, and do not believe in the preciosity of an individual human life. The way he behaved, specially from 1939 to 1941 is something that becomes quite rational. It is important to understand that Stalin admired Hitler's way and decisions, for he was also an authoritarian ruler. The only problem he had to face was that Hitler also wanted the Russian territory.
Reading each one of the leaders chapter, can give a glimpse on how each leader saw his opportunities in history unfold and how they played their part. Unfortunately for some of the leaders, they did not command the amount of resources they needed to fulfill their views. Fortunately for most of the rest of us(men and women of the world) that was the way it happened.
Fine material undermined by poor format August 5, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The actual content of this work is solid. The author provides a description of each leader's 'vision' for the world. The degree of detail varies from leader to leader, depending on the amount of research material available and the scope of the leader's ideas, but that's to be expected. Where the work falls down for me is in the way the information is presented. It would benefit a *great* deal by the inclusion of more maps, especially where the author describes the sweeping changes planned by Hitler, for instance. The organisation of each entry also leaves a bit to be desired. Breaking up the text with sub-headings that call out specific regions or topics would really have helped for those who want to refer back to the book for specific details at a later date. At around 250 pages of fairly large font, the book is also a bit on the brief side for my tastes.
A decent introduction to the various leaders' objectives, but I was hoping for more 'meat' to this meal.
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