I just finished reading a book that works pretty well as a follow on to "War of the World" by Niall Ferguson: "No Simple Victory" by Norman Davies. He does a good job of deconstructing some common ideas about WWII:

• The thought that it was "The Good War" - a simple matter of good vs. evil
• The thought that the Western Allies did the heavy lifting

It's become pretty clear that the USSR did the yeoman's work of defeating the Nazis in Europe - less clear to most people is that the USSR was an equally evil entity. Before, during, and after the war, the USSR engaged in its own set of killing fields, and Davies makes all of that plain - along with how the West willfully looked the other way for much of that time. The point being that the West allied with one evil to defeat another. Which is not to say it was the wrong choice; it's simply to acknowledge that reality is more complicated than the template we were brought up with.

It's a bracing read, but well worth it if you have a strong stomach.

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