Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders

This is a excellent work, fully up to Weinberg's usual standard. It is clearly intended for the general reader, and puts an interesting slant on World War II by which one can better understand why the main actors in World War II did what they did. In the vast literature of World War II the goals of the political leaders are usually assumed or left in simplistic terms that are of little use. This work fills the void left by those works. In this work one will learn: That Hitler didn't take the US seriously as a factor until March of 1945, and would have been willing to negotiate an armistice after his failure to defeat the Soviet Union in 1941. He planned to split the Soviet Union with Japan, bring the Scandinavians into his realm as pseudo-aryans, allow Italy hegemony in the Mediterranean, take over central Africa as a colony, and probably govern Britain and France harshly. In the East, the Germans would be the masters overseeing the use of the Slavs as slave laborers. A meritocracy would be built in the Nazi Party replacing the previous ruling class, and three classes would result -- the ruling Nazi Party, the bulk of the Germans as warriors and child-bearers, and the slave or almost slave laborers of sub-humans. Eventually he would build a New World Order to be governed by his meritocracy and policed by German power. Although Weinberg states that Hitler's dreams were not realized in any sense, his general formulation of ruling power formed through public-provate partnerships and an elite meritocracy is clearly making great strides under the guiding hand of the Bilderbergs today. Only Hitler's racial component is missing and the US is the policeman rather than Germany. Mussolini was hopelessly a 19th century imperialist who envisioned Italy as building a greater empire around the Mediterranean than in Roman times. Unlike Hitler, Mussolini was bound to the past. Tojo's aspirations included the eventual control of the entire Western Hemisphere as well as the Pacific and the Far East. Amusingly, islands in the Caribbean like Cuba were to be included in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and Hawaii, ALaska, Western Canada and the state of Washington were to become Japanese as were Australia and New Zealand. Chiang Kai-shek was perhaps the most realistic, simply wanting to unite all of China including Manchuria and Formosa under the Kuomintang and eliminate all foreign concessions such as Hong Kong. Korea was to be independent, and the Japanese severely punished for their crimes against the Chinese people. Josef Stalin saw the Soviet Union as the primary power in Asia and Europe with substantial territory acquisitions coming out of the war. Almost all of those acquisitions were realized. Only the gaining of territory in Iran and control of the Bosporus through bases in the Aegean eluded him. Stalin's future intentions were clearly indicated by the fact that he devoted greater resources to s

Excellent overview of WW II leaders & their global perspectives & objectives by a renown Univ. of NC historian.

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.

From reading this book, I would have to say that the visions of the major war leaders of the second world war of a post-war world that the book puts forth is very intresting and in some cases(Hitler in particular) very frightening. It was also good to see how those hopes were or weren't realized in the actual post-war world with Franklin Roosevelt's being the closest to actually come to fruition. This is a very intresting book and I would definitely recommend it.

I envy anyone who studies under Gerhard Weinberg. As someone who studied under Stanley Payne, another great scholar of World War II, I appreciate Weinberg's intellectual rigor, his ability to balance objectivity without in the least abandoning his morality (a surprisingly rare feat in modern academia) and his clear and compelling prose. This book examines a subject which has not, surprisingly, been examined before in much detail: what the ideal post-war would have looked like to eight of the principal war leaders. It is a fast, exciting read. Suffice it to say that everyone in the world is better off that the war ended the way it did. I think Professor Weinberg is too charitable toward FDR (Stewart Alsop, who was a cousin of FDR, once said that FDR would have been disturbed to see the erosion of WASP control of America and that is reinforced here by his vision of the UK remaining a superpower after the loss of its colonies), but one can disagree with the good professor's conclusions precisely because he is so scrupulously honest and thorough.