For those familiar with Kershaw primarily through his definitive two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, 'Fateful Choices' might seem, at first glance, like a comparatively light-weight book with a 'what-if' gimmick at its core: what if England had sought a negotiated peace with Germany, what if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, etc. But Kershaw is not a light-weight historian, and he uses the book's structure as a series of teaching moments about key turning points in the course of the war. His discussion of the debates inside Churchill's war cabinet are fascinating reading for those familiar only with Churchill's public pronouncements that England would never back down: Kershaw weighs in on the various arguments of the participants and even gives a fair hearing to the reasoning of those who were ultimately on the wrong side of history. The book also brings up less well known but equally fascinating turns of events such as Italy's unilateral decision to invade Greece, which opened up yet another front in an already sprawling world conflict. This book is probably best read by people who already have a certain familiarity with the major events and figures of the period, but it would also be highly recommended for students enrolled in college courses on modern European history, where outcomes are all too often presented as fait accompli. Kershaw shows that history frequently turns on individual decisions made by individual people, and he does so with vigor, authority, and grace.

I have read many WWII military history books, and this was a nice complement in that it provides some of the background that led to the action in WWII. Well-written and researched.

This is a book which looks at ten decisions taken between 1940 and 1941 which affected the course of the Second World War. Rather than an alternative history it looks at each decision and the logic for it. It is worthwhile looking at one example to see the books method.

For instance Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in retrospect seems outrageous folly. Look at what happened to Charles XII of Sweden and Napoleon. Both led armies into the depth of Russia and were defeated by "General Winter." The size of the Soviet Union made landing a knock out blow impossible and Germany was drawn into a war of attrition which it lost just like Charles and Napoleon.

The genius of this book is to show how in the context of 1941 things looked different. Germany had defeated France in 1940 and occupied its north. Britain although undefeated was not able to put an army on European soil which could match Germany's. Germany (which had absorbed Austria) had as allies Italy, Hungary, Romania and Finland. In the First World War Germany with the support of the Austrian Empire had been able to defeat Imperial Russia whilst it had the majority of its army on the Western Front. It now could devote the majority of its army to the Russian operation and had more allies plus the resources of Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Balkans, France and Denmark. Thus in 1941 Germany looked back on the victory in 1917 knowing that it was infinity stronger being able to put an army of 3 million into the field. Germany also felt that its army was highly trained and operationally streets ahead of the Soviets who had struggled to defeat tiny Finland.

In fact the conventional wisdom in 1941 was that the Soviets would be defeated quickly and that Germany would then have a vast new colonial empire that could be used to build up its air force and navy to defeat Britain to ward off America.

Kershaw shoes how Hitler grappled with the problem of what to do after the defeat of France. To invade England was well nigh impossible because of its naval strength. If the Germans could get an army ashore there would be no way to supply it and it would be defeated. To build up naval superiority if possible would take years. To wage a Mediterranean strategy was also difficult. The logical first step would be to seize Gibraltar so that Britain could be denied access to the Mediterranean and Egypt would be isolated. This would also give some chance for uniting the Italian and German Fleets. The problem was how to make up a coalition of forces? Spain would only enter the war if it got the French colonial possessions in North Africa. This would alienate the Vichy Regime and possibly the French Fleet would join the British. All in all, although it now seems weird to Hitler the invasion of the Soviet Union was the easiest strategy and the most likely to lead to victory.

In a similar way Britains decision to fight on in 1940 seems to be an act of gallant folly. One that was good for the world and reflective of Churchillian bravery. Yet in the context of the time there was some discussion about seeking terms. The reality was that any terms were likely to simply weaken Britain's military position and lead not to peace but an eventual subjugation to Germany. Fighting on was the only real option.

The brilliance of this book is that it is able to put each of these 10 decisions into the context of the time and to show the mind set of those who made the decision. It is not only a powerful work but also something of a page turner.

One of the very best books I have read on these fateful years, in a true Kershaw tradition. Very well researched and highly recommended.

Kershaw examines ten choices that changed the world between the spring of 1940 and the end of 1941. Each of them could have been different (though Kershaw shows that the alternatives, usually lengthily and therefore somewhat repetitively rehearsed, were not very appealing, and sometimes not even sensible), and had they been different, the history of the Second World War and of the world following it would of course have been very different, too.

The first choice Kershaw examines is that of Britain refusing to negotiate with Hitler after the fall of France. The decision to fight on alone was taken by the inner war cabinet of only five men. Among them only the Foreign Minister, Lord Halifax, argued strongly for exploring possible peace terms. The others (and the members of the outer cabinet whom Churchill briefly addressed rather than consulted) were won over by the new prime minister's charisma.

The British refusal to negotiate surprised Hitler. He believed that the British were holding out only because they hoped that the United States would eventually come into the war (which Hitler also believed) and that the Soviet Union might act against Hitler. The second of the choices was Hitler's conclusion that therefore he needed swiftly to attack and defeat the Soviet Union (which he thought would be `child's play') before he could force Britain to make peace and thereby also prevent US intervention. Kershaw stresses that Hitler had no cabinet meetings after February 1938, and all major decisions were essentially his own, often in defiance of even his military advisers. The plans of the German navy to force Britain to make peace by attacks in the Mediterranean were briefly considered by Hitler as a supplement, but not as an alternative, to the invasion of Russia. Kershaw believes that from Hitler's point of view, the attack on Russia was logical.

There is a fascinating chapter on the choices made by Mussolini: to enter the war in 1940 against the pessimistic warnings of the military, of his foreign minister Count Ciano, and of the king; followed by the even more fateful decision to attack Greece in 1941, this time egged on by Ciano who wanted to extend his quasi-fiefdom in Albania, but against the advice of the military and against German attempts to restrain him. Three times as many men were sent to Greece as were then in the Italian army in Libya. Had they been sent to Libya instead, the outcome of the African campaign might have been dramatically different.

Then there are the fateful choices made by Stalin: the emasculation of his armed forces in the purges of 1937; his pact with Hitler in 1939; and his refusal to the very last moment to act on intelligence information that Hitler would attack in 1941 rather than, as Stalin had anticipated, in 1942 at the earliest. Here again Kershaw is careful to examine alternative choices that could have been made, concluding that actually Stalin's choices narrowed greatly after the Purge.

Two chapters plot in great detail the slow but steady involvement of the United States in helping Britain with Lend-Lease, underlining Roosevelt's anxiety to do everything short of war to support Britain, even though Lend-Lease was likely to make American entry into the war almost unavoidable. Although public and congressional opinion supported these measures, Roosevelt dared not ask Congress for a declaration of war, fearing that at worst he would be defeated there, or at best that he would take a divided nation into the war. In all the other chapters decisions were made essentially by one man (in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union) or by a small elite (in Japan - though with much debate within that elite -, and, in the first chapter, by Britain). Roosevelt was the only leader whose scope of action was restricted by democratic institutions. Only Pearl Harbour and Hitler's declaration of war on the United States resolved this dilemma for him.

Two chapters trace the choices was made by the Japanese. The first had been to attack China. China was too big a morsel to swallow whole, but enough to set Japan on a collision course with the United States. The second choice was to take advantage of the defeat of France and the expected defeat of Britain by planning for an expansion towards the south, deliberately running the risk that this was likely to bring the United States into the war. The debate inside the Japanese armed forces about this policy will be unfamiliar to most readers, and continued almost up to Pearl Harbour.

Immediately after Pearl Harbour, Hitler chose to declare war on the United States. Kershaw finds that decision more explicable than most other historians do, on the assumption that, sooner rather than later, the United States would have declared war on Germany even while at war with Japan. It seems to this reviewer the least convincing argument in the book.

The last `choice' Kershaw examines is the destruction of the Jews of Europe. This had always been in Hitler's mind, especially since he saw the Jews as responsible for Germany's defeat in the First World War and as steering the policies of Germany's two main enemies, the United States and Bolshevik Russia in the Second. The only question was how this destruction was to be accomplished. Hitler's choice was of course fateful for the Jews; but, unlike all the decisions described in the other chapters, it did not affect the outcome of the war; and the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, which sanctioned the `Final Solution', also falls just outside the period in the book's subtitle.

Only this last chapter lacks that tension of decision-making which gives the rest of the book such compelling quality.

Ian Kershaw, a leading historian of Nazi Germany. He has written a fascinating study of the German people's support of the regime and of the Fuhrer (The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich) and a two-volume, definitive biography of Hitler ( Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris and Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis). Following the biography, Kershaw cast his gaze elsewhere, producing a brilliant book about British Appeaser Lord Londonderry and the strategic dilemmas Hitler posed to Britain (Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War). Now he offers a study of the essential turning points for all main WW2 players between May 1940 and December 1941 - 19 months that changed the world.

In May 1940, two simultaneous but unrelated wars took place: an `old fashioned' European War: Britain and France against Germany, and a Japanese Occupation and attempted subjugation of China. By January 1942, the struggles have evolved into the greatest War in history. The war pitted most of the world's countries against each other, with unprecedented brutalities, including the Holocaust.

Kershaw examines the decisions taken by the leaders of the major players during this critical period. But because Kershaw offers the background to the crisis, the book doubles as a history of the origin and early stages of World War 2, as seen through the eyes of the main belligerents.

I found two things striking in the narrative: First, the dramatic effect the Fall of France had in the early stages of the war. In Tokyo and London, Rome and Midland America, the conviction after Hitler's victory was that Nazism's triumph was all but assured. History seemed to have cast its verdict, outlining a new World Order.

In the Far East, Japan felt that the European landscape had changed forever, and that the impending fall the Great Britain meant that Japan now had a "golden opportunity" to create an empire. In America, public opinion for the first and only time believed that Europe was lost; In Italy, Hitler's victory overwhelmed the opposition for war, convincing Italians that they should jump on the wagon before it was too late. Even in London, the collapse of its major allay made the future look bleak.

The other striking thing is the vast difference in the quality of decision making between democracies and dictatorships. Reading history often leads me to despair about the knowledge and wisdom of our leaders (I'm thinking particularly of A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East which is a strong indictment against WWI era British policymakers), but Kershaw brings good news for friends of democracies everywhere: Democracies make essentially sound decisions; Dictatorships produce profoundly bad ones.

Britain's dilemma was whether to pursue an accommodation with Fascism or to fight on. But there were no real alternatives to war: Hitler was unlikely to agree to terms Great Britain would have found reasonable, and a policy of outwardly pursuing peace would have been bad for moral. After quiet deliberations among the highest echelons of the Cabinet, the `Peace' option, pressed by Lord Halifax, was rejected by all of his colleagues.

The Roosevelt administration had to deal with a growing Nazi threat and an American public strongly against US entry to the war. Roosevelt's solution was to proceed slowly, set by step, edging towards the brink. Critics (e.g. biographer James Burns in Roosevelt (The Soldier of Freedom: 1940-1945)) argue that he could have moved faster. Kershaw disagrees. In any event, the basic policy was sound.

Surprisingly Kershaw pays scant attention to Roosevelt's Japan policy, and especially to the decision to stop oil exportation to Japan. Could a war against Japan have been postponed with more careful statesmanship?

Decision-making among non-Democracies were much inferior. The best was Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union. Hitler knew that the Soviet Union was unprepared for war, and that invading Britain was impractical. Given that the might of the United States was gathering, he hoped to destroy Russia in a Blitzkrieg, and then turn back and face the English Speaking powers. It was a gigantic risk, but Hitler's successes stemmed from high stake gambling. It was not patently irrational.

Stalin's decision, on the other hand, was. Stalin's error had been wishful thinking. After having decimated the USSR's military capacity in purges, Stalin knew his state was utterly unprepared for war in 1941. So he preferred to believe Hitler wouldn't attack that year, ignoring all intelligence warnings to the contrary and avoiding provocation by a pursuing a policy of appeasement long after that policy had been discredit in everyone else's eyes. But for Stalin's shutting his eyes from reality, the German invasion might have been less disastrous.

The most suicidal decision was Japan's. Trapped in an unwinnable war in China, the Japanese dreamed of a colonial empire, euphemistically called the "Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere". Pursuing this dream has put Japan on a collision course with America, leading to increased tensions and to a US fuel embargo. The embargo and the rapid arming of America meant that as Admiral Nagano, chief of the Navy General stuff, stated "A better time for war will not come later!" (p.361). That was true but irrelevant; What was relevant were the chances of Japan to win a war against the US at any time, which were nil. The Japanese seemed to have shut their eyes to that reality, either because, as US ambassador Grew thought "Japanese sanity cannot be measured by American standards of Logic" (p.366), or because the peculiarities of the Japanese decision making structure allowed everyone to avoid personal responsibility (Japanese leaders were extremely fatalistic, repeatedly stating that the war was `inevitable') and because the Japanese were so wedded to their imperialistic dreams they could not bear giving it up.

By December 1941, the path of the war had been set. With hindsight, Allied victory and Nazi defeat were assured. Churchill said it best: "[by 1941] We had won the War. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force" (p. 427 n).

Ian Kershaw, a leading historian of Nazi Germany. His wrote a fascinating study of the German people's support of the regime and of the Fuhrer (The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich) and a two-volume, definitive biography of Hitler ( Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris and Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis). Following the biography, Kershaw cast his gaze elsewhere, producing a brilliant book about British Appeaser Lord Londonderry and the strategic dilemmas Hitler posed to Britain (Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War). Now he offers a study of the essential turning points for all main WW2 players between May 1940 and December 1941 - 19 months that changed the world.

In May 1940, two simultaneous but unrelated wars took place: an `old fashioned' European War: Britain and France against Germany, and a Japanese Occupation and attempted subjugation of China. By January 1942, the struggles have evolved into the greatest War in history. The war pitted most of the world's countries against each other, with unprecedented brutalities, including the Holocaust.

Kershaw examines the decisions taken by the leaders of the major players during this critical period. But because Kershaw offers the background to the crisis, the book doubles as a history of the origin and early stages of World War 2, as seen through the eyes of the main belligerents.

I found two things striking in the narrative: First, the dramatic effect the Fall of France had in the early stages of the war. In Tokyo and London, Rome and Midland America, the conviction after Hitler's victory was that Nazism's triumph was all but assured. History seemed to have cast its verdict, outlining a new World Order.

In the Far East, Japan felt that the European landscaped had changed forever, and that the impending fall the Great Britain meant that Japan now had a "golden opportunity" to create an empire. In America, public opinion for the first and only time believed that Europe was lost; In Italy, Hitler's victory overwhelmed the opposition for war, convincing Italians that they should jump on the wagon before it was too late. Even in London, the collapse of its major allay made the future look bleak.

The other striking thing is the vast difference in the quality of decision making between democracies and dictatorships. Reading history often leads me to despair about the knowledge and wisdom of our leaders (I'm thinking particularly of A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East which is a strong indictment against WWI era British policymakers), but Kershaw brings good news for friends of democracies everywhere: Democracies make essentially sound decisions; Dictatorships produce profoundly bad ones.

Britain's dilemma was whether to pursue an accommodation with Fascism or to fight on. But there were no real alternatives to war: Hitler was unlikely to agree to terms Great Britain would have found reasonable, and a policy of outwardly pursuing peace would have been bad for moral. After quiet deliberations among the highest echelons of the Cabinet, the `Peace' option, pressed by Lord Halifax, was rejected by all of his colleagues.

The Roosevelt administration had to deal with a growing Nazi threat and an American public strongly against US entry to the war. Roosevelt's solution was to proceed slowly, set by step, edging towards the brink. Critics (e.g. biographer James Burns Roosevelt (The Soldier of Freedom: 1940-1945)) argue that he could have moved faster. Kershaw disagrees. In any event, the basic policy was sound.

Kershaw pays scant attention to Roosevelt's Japan policy, and especially to the decision to stop oil exportation to Japan. Could a war against Japan have been postponed with more careful statesmanship?

Decision-making among non-Democracies were much inferior. The best was Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union. Hitler knew that the Soviet Union was unprepared for war, and that invading Britain was impractical. Given that the might of the United States was gathering, he hoped to destroy Russia in a Blitzkrieg, and then turn back and face the English Speaking powers. It was a gigantic risk, but Hitler's successes stemmed from high stake gambling. It was not patently irrational.

Stalin's decision, on the other hand, was. Stalin's error had been wishful thinking. After having decimated the USSR's military capacity in purges, Stalin knew his state was utterly unprepared to war in 1941. So he preferred to believe Hitler wouldn't attack that year, ignoring all intelligence warning to the contrary and avoiding provocation by a pursuing a policy of appeasement long after that policy had been long discredit in everyone else's eyes. But for Stalin's shutting his eyes from reality, the German invasion might have been less disastrous.

The most suicidal decision was Japan's. Trapped in an unwinnable war in China, the Japanese dreamed of a colonial empire, euphemistically called the "Greater East Asian Co Prosperity Sphere". Pursuing this dream has put Japan on a collision course with America, leading to increased tensions and to a US fuel embargo. The embargo and the rapid arming of America meant that as Admiral Nagano, chief of the Navy General stuff, stated "A better time for war will not come later!" (p.361). That was true but irrelevant; What was relevance were the chances of Japan to win a war against the US at any time, which were nil. The Japanese seemed to have shut their eyes to that reality, either because, as US ambassador Grew thought "Japanese sanity cannot be measured by American standards of Logic" (p.366), or because the peculiarities of the Japanese decision making structure allowed everyone to avoid personal responsibility (Japanese leaders were extremely fatalistic, repeatedly stating that the war was `inevitable') and because the Japanese were so wedded to their imperialistic dreams they could not bear giving it up.

By December 1941, the path of the war had been set. With hindsight, Allied victory and Nazi defeat were assured. Churchill said it best: "[by 1941] We had won the War. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force" (p. 427 n).

This marvelous book reaffirms the benefit of using a new plough on old ground; Kershaw is a painstaking historian who offers new light and fresh insight to some old and familiar topics.

As with President George Bush in March 2003, the 10 critical decisions were risky but seemed to be the best available options at the time. Kershaw presents his astute analysis of the decision-making methods of the relevant leaders plus the fundamental natures of the different governments. It's very timely; the world is still plagued by leaders who think diplomacy is a sign of weakness and military force upholds their manhood.

The more recent mythological "weapons of mass destruction" offer a parallel to the presumed invincibility of the Stukas, which had to be withdrawn from the Battle of Britain within the first week. Such is the beauty of good history; a great book such as this provides enough basics in the facts that subsequent parallels become glaringly obvious. There is no "end of history"; all too often it's a broken record that keeps repeating the same old tired tune.

The weakness, in my opinion, is Kershaw's failure to compare industrial strengths and war production in the various countries. For example -- German aircraft production was roughly half the rate of British production during the Battle of Britain; overall, German war production was lacklustre until Albert Speer took command. This glaring failure crippled most decisions made by Hitler; consider the impact if Germany had launched a wartime economy in 1939 instead of 1943.

Thus, and perhaps this issue belongs in another book, what if Hitler had imposed a unilateral truce with Britain after Dunkirk? When Hitler decided on July 30, 1940, to invade Russia in the spring of 1941, all attacks on Britain became virtually meaningless. Had Hitler imposed a de facto truce against England on July 30, 1940, declaring "peace in Europe for all time", it would have seriously undercut Churchill's tenure as prime minister.

Hitler's principal goal was destruction of "Jewish Bolshevism". At least part of his failure is because he was sidetracked by too many macho alternatives including an expected easy air victory over Britain, the invasion of Greece to rescue Mussolini's blunders, the aerial conquest of Crete, and the North African campaign. Had he concentrated on Russia, had he a single objective in mind, his war against Russia might conceivably have drawn American support to defeat communism, just as Finland received such support in 1939.

However, this option -- if valid -- cannot be understood without the basics in this book. Perhaps an emphasis on Russia was infeasible due to ambitions and bumbling of leaders in Italy and Japan. The first step in considering such alternatives is learning the basics, and this book presents the realities of real decisions in detail. It's old material, but it's very much alive when presented by a fresh and highly skilled intellect.

Maybe someday Kershaw will analyze the potential impact had Hitler not been subject to a fatal "attention deficit disorder". Unlike me, Kershaw deals in facts, not fantasies. But, once grounded in this delightful collection of facts masterfully compiled by a superb historian, any intelligent reader may come up with their own "What if?" scenario.

Author Kershaw looks through a microscope at 10 key decisions that resulted in practically the whole world becoming engaged in war. The unique aspect of this book is to combine the fateful decisions made by five world leaders (and one imbecile) during the years 1940 and 1941.

Other reviewers have spelled out the ten decisions so I won't repeat them. First of all I will explain what I mean by saying one member of this group is an imbecile. I'm talking about Mussolini, and at the end of a chapter on him Mr. Kershaw, in frustration, calls him that name. Indeed the chapter on Mussolini can almost be considered, tragically of course, a bit of comic relief. Mussolini was like a puppy dog trying to tag along with his master, Hitler, and get some glory for himself. What should he do in the midst of victory after victory by Germany. He decides why not invade Greece. He sits down with his marginally competent general staff, and in an hour and a half discussion they decide to invade. That's it. No long term, detailed plans, just that short chat. Italy is almost bankrupt, does not have a well trained army, lacks sophisticated equipment yet invades Greece within weeks of that meeting, and gets, well, stuck in the mud so to speak.

What's interesting about the other fateful decisions is that each leader was well out on a limb when his country decided to ease or jump into war. At that time, for example, the United States had an army about the size of the Dutch army. All of the countries faced economic problems, and most of them had not learned an awful lot from their experiences in WWI.

Roosevelt's task was to ease the country toward helping Britain by gradually coaxing the public and congress along toward that end. Japan's leaders vacillated about entering a war with the U.S., but felt they had to do just that following America's embargo on scrap iron and oil shipments. Stalin was deluded into thinking that Germany would not invade Russia until 1942, and tended to disregard all evidence that indicated the attack would be in 1941. When the invasion took place he was so shaken that he could not function for several days. Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini were prompted by maintaining national prestige. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill were trying to keep their world from collapsing. Hitler declared war on the U.S. without consulting with any of his advisors.

This is a fascinating book that ties together all of the elements that led our world leaders into the worst war of all time. I might point out that for some WWII buffs certain chapters may not provide new information to the reader. There are other books, such as biographies of Hitler, Roosevelt and Stalin, that cover one of these chapters in even greater detail, but this may be the only book that examines all the major world leaders during the time period 1940-1941. The only thing that frustrated me is that each chapter usually ends at a momentous decision point, and you think "more, more, don't stop here." Well the thing to do is just get more books that do go on from there.

This book takes an interesting approach to World War II history - focuses on ten decisions made by world leaders between roughly May of 1940 to the end of 1941, and explain how they affected the trajectory of world events. The author takes the perspective of behind the world leader's desk (Hitler, Roosevelt, etc.) and tries to explain the background behind the decision, what was going on at the time and what the leader knew, and then explains how that leader took that information (or ignored) and made the decision. Taken from a perspective of over 60 years ago, some of these decisions seem very poor, and the author does not defend the decision makers (the chapter on Stalin's mistrust of the UK is illuminating). The book carefully limits the "what if" speculation to a paragraph or two. Masterfully done study on the transformation of WW2 from a regional to world conflict.

I found this most interesting and lerned a lot from it. I just keep asking myself as I'm sure many others did WOW "What IF" The world would be a really different place. Then I found myself thinking of events in history that I beleive had they been different would of made a much different out come in the world today i.e. What would of happened if the French hadn't come to our aid when the did during the Revaloutation. Just think. Thank God for Franklin & LaFayette.

This is quite a thought provoking read. It provides insight and background into a series of events most people in their post 60s have lived through as children and acquired knowledge of indirectly. It was an era legends are made of and this book bares much of what is relevant.

I actually got this book as the result of an error: I confused the author Ian Kershaw with Alex Kershaw, who has written several accounts of WWII battles (for example, The Few. Having read several of Alex Kershaw's books, I was surprised by the depth of this work . . . and only then realized my error.

I'm glad for the error since it has now introduced me to Ian Kershaw whose work is, to put it mildly, very impressive.

Here, Kershaw has chosen ten decisions made in the 19 months between May, 1940 and December, 1941 that Kershaw claims "reshaped" human destiny.

Even the unadorned list is worthy of consideration:

1. The British War Cabinet debating whether to fight on, even as France was being defeated, the British army being evacuated without its heavy equipment and a rising clamor for negotiated settlement in the face of seeming German invincibility. (Few realize just how much is owed to Churchill's will alone in preventing British surrender with the result being a vastly different - and far worse - world than the one we inhabit today.)

2. Hitler decides to attack the Soviet Union. It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. No reasonable observer would have believed that the Soviet Union would just a few short years later dominate Eastern Europe, having defeated the Germans on the Eastern Front.

3. Japan decides to seize the colonial empires of countries that have fallen to Hitler. Another apparently logical decision that focused on current reality instead of what might be.

4. Mussolini decides to join the war on Hitler's side. Truly a dumb move by a dumb dictator.

5. Roosevelt decides to lend a helping hand to England. Actually Roosevelt was dangerously in front of public opinion and took a great gamble. But, along with Churchill, Roosevelt became immortal with this decision.

6. Stalin decides to ignore warnings of German invasion. Even with the truth in hand, Stalin chose to ignore it with disastrous consequences.

7. Roosevelt decides to wage undeclared war. Again Roosevelt was ahead of public opinion and we can all be thankful for that today.

8. Japan decides to go to war against the United States. Another decision that appeared, on the basis of known factors, to be relatively safe. Difficult to believe today, but understandable then from the Japanese perspective - and a decision that led them to disaster and then, amazingly, to redemption.

9. Hitler decides to declare war on the USA. Turned out not to be a wise move.

10. Hitler decides to kill the Jews of Europe.

Some of these decisions were very complex and were the results of decades of argument. One of them, the decision by the Germans to exterminate the Jews, was the product of centuries, culminating in a months long process that, in the end, was taken in a shockingly light way. The decision of the British War Cabinet, on the other hand, was the result of just three days of argument under enormous pressures.

Kershaw is painfully detailed. The book is slow reading. While it is interesting and Kershaw's writing style is happily comfortable, this is simply not a page-turner. It will require dedication to make it all the way through. Kershaw's bibliography and list of titles cited runs well over a hundred pages.

For those with an interest in the history of WWII, this book is in its own way required reading. Others have written of these same decisions, either individually or collectively. Kershaw brings his own viewpoint to each of them along with truly massive scholarship. It's an excellent and informative read for those who can make it all the way through.

Jerry

I actually got this book as the result of an error: I confused the author Ian Kershaw with Alex Kershaw, who has written several accounts of WWII battles (for example, The Few. Having read several of Alex Kershaw's books, I was surprised by the depth of this work . . . and only then realized my error.

I'm glad for the error since it has now introduced me to Ian Kershaw whose work is, to put it mildly, very impressive.

Here, Kershaw has chosen ten decisions made in the 19 months between May, 1940 and December, 1941 that Kershaw claims "reshaped" human destiny.

Even the unadorned list is worthy of consideration:

1. The British War Cabinet debating whether to fight on, even as France was being defeated, the British army being evacuated without its heavy equipment and a rising clamor for negotiated settlement in the face of seeming German invincibility. (Few realize just how much is owed to Churchill's will alone in preventing British surrender with the result being a vastly different - and far worse - world than the one we inhabit today.)

2. Hitler decides to attack the Soviet Union. It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. No reasonable observer would have believed that the Soviet Union would just a few short years later dominate Eastern Europe, having defeated the Germans on the Eastern Front.

3. Japan decides to seize the colonial empires of countries that have fallen to Hitler. Another apparently logical decision that focused on current reality instead of what might be.

4. Mussolini decides to join the war on Hitler's side. Truly a dumb move by a dumb dictator.

5. Roosevelt decides to lend a helping hand to England. Actually Roosevelt was dangerously in front of public opinion and took a great gamble. But, along with Churchill, Roosevelt became immortal with this decision.

6. Stalin decides to ignore warnings of German invasion. Even with the truth in hand, Stalin chose to ignore it with disastrous consequences.

7. Roosevelt decides to wage undeclared war. Again Roosevelt was ahead of public opinion and we can all be thankful for that today.

8. Japan decides to go to war against the United States. Another decision that appeared, on the basis of known factors, to be relatively safe. Difficult to believe today, but understandable then from the Japanese perspective - and a decision that led them to disaster and then, amazingly, to redemption.

9. Hitler decides to declare war on the USA. Turned out not to be a wise move.

10. Hitler decides to kill the Jews of Europe.

Some of these decisions were very complex and were the results of decades of argument. One of them, the decision by the Germans to exterminate the Jews, was the product of centuries, culminating in a months long process that, in the end, was taken in a shockingly light way. The decision of the British War Cabinet, on the other hand, was the result of just three days of argument under enormous pressures.

Kershaw is painfully detailed. The book is slow reading. While it is interesting and Kershaw's writing style is happily comfortable, this is simply not a page-turner. It will require dedication to make it all the way through. Kershaw's bibliography and list of titles cited runs well over a hundred pages.

For those with an interest in the history of WWII, this book is in its own way required reading. Others have written of these same decisions, either individually or collectively. Kershaw brings his own viewpoint to each of them along with truly massive scholarship. It's an excellent and informative read for those who can make it all the way through.

Jerry

Kershaw has"objectively" captured all the machinations of all the "key" players in WW2.His book should be on the compulsory reading list of every history and political science student and promotional exam of every militaryy officer in any country.

No easy stuff to read. However, if you like to know how crucial decisions are cooked, I suggest you buy this book. Although it deals with the second world war, it contains a series of lessons applicable today. Orwell's 1984 as it actually happened. Hitler as a rational decision maker, Roosevelt as manipulator of the american public, Hiroito as a peace loving emperor ??? You will be surprised and learn a lot.

This is a wonderful book. Mostly I like the way it ties in arbitrary choices to make an outcome occur. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and this book proves it. You will enjoy this book greatly if you give it time.

According to Ian Kershaw the main decisons made by the Axis and Allied powers were not planned in advance but improvised as battlefield successes and failures changed. This book needs to be read alongside Hew Strachan's new book about Clausewitz's "On War," because according to Strachan's interpretation of Clausewitz, tactical successes or failures ulitimately shape strategy. This was seen in Kershaw's view of why Hitler choose to attack the Soviet Union. Kershaw states that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union because he could not defeat Britain during the Battle of Britain, and by overthrowing the Soviet regime maybe the English would plead for a settlement. Meanwhile the Japanese attacked the United States due to the German victories in Europe and their own defeat to the Soviet Union in 1939. The Japanese military successes in Asia persuaded Hitler to declare war against the United States because he thought that the Americans would be too distracted in the Far East.
Kershaw disagrees with the think tank strategist of the fifties and sixties who believed that democracy hindered the decision making process. Mussolini,Hitler,and the Japanese military leaders led their nations to defeat because they failed to hear conflicting advice. But Churchill had a unified front because he had the support of the cabinet and Roosevelt's sensitivity towards public opinion prevented him from making any rash decisions that were detrimental to the Allied effort. The only weakness of this book is that in his section about Stalin, Kersahaw ignored traditional Russian and later Soviet suspicions of England, that made Stalin ignore British intelligence warnings that Hitler was going to attack the Soviet Union. Also Kershaw does not write about how Hitler's strategic decisions reflected his Austrian upringing as mentioned by Martin Van Creveld.

is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product". Eric Hoffer

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940 - 1941" is an elegantly-written masterful work of history. In "Fateful Choices" Kershaw cast a critical eye over ten decisions (listed in a Comment below this review) during a 19-month period at the beginning of the Second World War that, according to Kershaw, determined not just the outcome of the war but also (in good part) the structure of the post-war world.

Taken as a whole, the greatest value in Kershaw's book is to be found in his comparison of the decision-making process engaged in by the five nations involved. Three of those nations (Germany, Italy, and the USSR) were totalitarian states where decisions were invariably made by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin with little input other than sycophancy from those around them. Collective decision-making was the norm in the United States and Britain. Both Roosevelt and Churchill (more so during the early months of Churchill's leadership) had cabinet members who were not afraid to speak up and challenge their President or Prime Minister's approach to a specific issue. Japan's decision-making process was also a group process but Kershaw does an excellent job of explaining how the dominance of Japan's military created a very different decision making dynamic than that found in the U.S. and Britain. Kershaw advances a compelling argument that the dysfunctional decision-making methodology found in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR led to some disastrous choices.

In each chapter, Kershaw starts with the decision in question then leads the reader back to a logical starting point and then through the series of events leading up to that decision. Kershaw adroitly shows how previous events have a way of narrowing ones options so that what may in retrospect look like an irrational choice is, however, one of the few options left at the time. What Kershaw has also done, and done very well, is to examine these decisions in the context of the times and on the basis of the information available at the time rather than through the prism of knowledge gained by historians after the fact.

Taken individually, Kershaw's examination of these ten decisions provides the reader with a wealth of information. For example, Kershaw's examination of the British War Cabinet decision taken after deiberations from May 25 - May 28, 1940 to stay in the war and not seek a settlement with Hitler was very informative. Churchill had only been PM for two weeks and had no real power base. His War Cabinet included former PM Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, two of the architects of Britain's policy of appeasement. It is no small bit of irony that it was Chamberlain who eventually sided with Churchill's argument to stay in the war and that Chamberlain's decision caused Halifax to make the vote unanimous.

I was also struck by Kershaw's look at Mussolini's unilateral decision to invade Greece. As Kershaw notes, the resulting conflagration in Greece in the Balkans caused Hitler to delay his invasion of the USSR by five weeks. Kershaw does not adhere to the argument (advanced by Hitler as the war came tumbling back on his head) that this delay may have cost Hitler victory on the Eastern Front. However, Kershaw than moves on to the discussion of the Japanese government's decision to turn its interest towards southern Asia (including Indochina, Indonesia, and Singapore) rather than advance its claims against eastern Russia in the north. This decision allowed Stalin to relocate troops and munitions from its positions in the Far East to help mount the Red Army's first real counterattack as the Russian winter began to slow the advancing German armies. Those two decisions certainly had to have had an impact on the outcome of the war on the eastern front.

Kershaw devotes two chapters to Roosevelt's relationship with Britain in the months before the U.S. entered the war. Kershaw does an exemplary job with this discussion. I also very much appreciated his examination of Japan's decision-making before the war. Most of my reading on the war has focused on Europe and Kershaw discussion of Japan's deliberations provided a lot of information in a concise and eminently readable way.

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices" is a compelling book. It is a book that manages to combine excellent academic research and first-rate thinking with a writing style that makes this book accessible to any reader with an interest in the period.

Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product". Eric Hoffer

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940 - 1941" is an elegantly-written masterful work of history. In "Fateful Choices" Kershaw cast a critical eye over ten decisions (listed in a Comment below this review) during a 19-month period at the beginning of the Second World War that, according to Kershaw, determined not just the outcome of the war but also (in good part) the structure of the post-war world.

Taken as a whole, the greatest value in Kershaw's book is to be found in his comparison of the decision-making process engaged in by the five nations involved. Three of those nations (Germany, Italy, and the USSR) were totalitarian states where decisions were invariably made by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin with little input other than sycophancy from those around them. Collective decision-making was the norm in the United States and Britain. Both Roosevelt and Churchill (more so during the early months of Churchill's leadership) had cabinet members who were not afraid to speak up and challenge their President of PM's approach to a specific issue. Japan's decision-making process was also a group process but Kershaw does an excellent job of explaining how the dominance of Japan's military created a very different decision making dynamic than that found in the U.S. and Britain. Kershaw advances a compelling argument that the dysfunctional decision-making methodology found in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR led to some disastrous choices.

In each chapter, Kershaw starts with the decision in question but leads the reader back to a logical starting point and then through the series of events leading up to that decision. It seems axiomatic, but Kershaw adroitly shows how previous events have a way of narrowing ones options so that what may in retrospect look like an irrational choice is, however, one of the few options left at the time. What Kershaw has also done, and done very well, is to examine these decisions in the context of the times and on the basis of the information available at the time rather than through the prism of knowledge gained by historians after the fact.

Taken individually, Kershaw's examination of these ten decisions provides the reader with a wealth of information. For example, Kershaw's examination of the British war cabinet in May, 1940 to stay in the war and not seek a settlement with Hitler was very informative. Churchill had only been PM for two weeks and had no real power base. His war cabinet included former PM Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, two of the architects of Britain's policy of appeasement. It is no small bit of irony that it was Chamberlain who eventually sided with Churchill's argument to stay in the war and that Chamberlain's decision caused Halifax to make the vote unanimous.

I was also struck by Kershaw's look at Mussolini's unilateral decision to invade Greece. As Kershaw notes, the resulting conflagration in Greece in the Balkans caused Hitler to delay his invasion of the USSR by five weeks. Kershaw does not adhere to the argument (advanced by Hitler as the war came tumbling back on his head) that this delay may have cost Hitler victory on the Eastern Front. However, Kershaw than moves on to the discussion of the Japanese government's decision to turn its interest towards southern Asia (including Indochina, Indonesia, and Singapore) rather than advance its claims against eastern Russia in the north. This decision allowed Stalin to relocate troops and munitions from its positions in the Far East to help mount the Red Army's first real counterattack as the Russian winter began to slow the advancing German armies. Those two decisions certainly had to have had an impact on the outcome of the war on the eastern front.

Kershaw devotes two chapters to Roosevelt's relationship with Britain in the months before the U.S. entered the war. Kershaw does an exemplary job with this discussion. I also very much appreciated his examination of Japan's decision-making before the war. Most of my reading on the war has focused on Europe and Kershaw provides a lot of information in a concise and eminently readable way.

Ian Kershaw's "Fateful Choices" is a compelling book. It is a book that manages to combine excellent academic research and first-rate thinking with a writing style that makes this book accessible to any reader with an interest in the period.

Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

The hinge of fate was about to open on the most horrible war in human history. Millions would die in gas chambers, on the battlefied, under the sea and the cities of the world. This outstanding work of seminal history from the pen of the eminent British historian Ian Kershaw (famed for his two volume work on Adolf Hitler: "Nemesis" and "Hubris") carefully examines the following ten decisions made by men in power:
1. The English government under new Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill
decides to fight on after the fall of France. Churchill took office on May 10, 1941 following the fall of the weak Neville Chamberlin's premiership. In three days of discussion it was Churchill who insisted and persuaded the government to never surrender. If England had made a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany the war would have taken a much different course. Kudos for Churchill!
2. Hitler made the decision to invade his erstwhile ally the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The result was a two front war; disaster for the Reich and victory for the Allies. This is one of history's all time worst mistakes made by a national leader at the helm during war.Hitler thought he could defeat England in time to concentrate on the Soviet Union but he was fatally wrong!
3. Japan made the wrong decision to go southward into Indochina and refusing to launch an attack against Russia. This horrible decision would lead to total defeat meted out by the US Navy in the Pacific. Tojo and his militaristic/expansionistic government would lead Japan to total defeat.
4. Mussolini decided to launch his weak Italian legions against Greece hoping to capitalize on German victory in France. He wanted to hitch his horse to a winning team but as a result Italy lost the war and he was forced out of office by an officer coup. The Greeks were tougher foes than he had faced in weak Ethiopia. Hitler had to divert needed troops from the Russian front to Greece. A total fiasco for the Axis powers.
5. The consummate ability of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to maneuver the isolatistic waters of pre-war America led to his devising the lend-lease program of aid to Great Britain. Only a politician and statesmen of FDR's fabled stature could have pulled this miracle off in the political atmosphere of the USA in the late 1930's and 1940.
6. Stalin made the worst mistake of his infamous career when he failed to prepare the Soviet Union for the June, 1941 of the legions of Hitler. Due to his cruel purges of the military his armies were weak; his nation was not prepared for defensive warfare and over 20 millions Soviet military and civilian casualties would take place.
7. FDR and the American Congress allowed undeclared war to take place in the North Atlantic as America shipped needed weapons, fuel and food to Great Britain in its hour of greatest need in 1940-41. The US was doing everthying it could to help the Brits short of war which was not declared until the attack on Pearl Harbor on Decembner. 7, 1941.
8. Japan ruled by a military elite decides to launch the Pearl Harbor attack on the United States in a bold move to win the war.
9. Hitler demands the Reichstag approve his decision to go to war against the USA on December 13, 1941 supporting his Axis ally Japan. Hitler was ignorant of American power. The result would be a descent by German into the abyss of hellish defeat.
10. Over six million Jews died in concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany overseen by the SS head Himmler. Kershaw traces the terrible history of antisemitism in Germany and in Europe.
This is an outstanding book in which the reader feels as if he/she were at the desk of the leaders who are profiled. The history of the second world war could have turned out differently if different decisions had been made.
Kershaw has written an excellent history which could be utilized with profit in college courses dealing with World War II. The chapters are sure to provoke discussion.

Historian Sir Ian Kershaw is perhaps best known for his recent, monumental two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler. His latest effort, Fateful Choices, is a bit far afield from his studies of various aspects of Nazi Germany published in the last 20-30 years. This new book has a much broader focus as it examines, in the order they occurred, ten fateful decisions that changed the course, if not the outcome, of World War II. These decisions all took place in an 18-month period from May 1940 to December 1941.

These decisions were:
1. Britain's agreeing to fight on after the defeat of France.
2. Germany's deciding to wage war on the Soviet Union.
3. Japan's appropriating the colonies of countries at war with, or already defeated by, Germany, and allying itself with Germany and Italy.
4. Italy's deciding to invade Greece.
5. America's providing aid to England.
6. The Soviet Union's ignoring all signs that Germany was about to invade it.
7. America's intensifying its assistance to Britain by an "undeclared war" on Germany.
8. Japan's attacking the U.S.
9. Germany's declaring war against the U.S.
10. Germany's putting into operation the Final Solution.

Many of these decisions, in retrospect, seem strange, if not bizarre, or illogical, if not plain idiotic, amoral, or perverse.

The author's approach is to examine each of these these decisions by those primarily responsible for making them. (For example, Britain's heroic decision to soldier on is examined from the perspective of Churchill, and the War Cabinet.) In so doing, he demonstrates that each of these decisions was not automatic, or even axiomatic, but that they were reflective of the type of political system that produced them and were influenced deeply by the major personalities involved (i.e., Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt; the Japanese had no single dominant personality, despite Allied propaganda to the contrary, and engaged in a sort of collective decision-making process).

He also demonstrates that although each decision had a sort of logic to it (based on national, political, or military objectives), there were also countervailing logical arguments in play at the time these decisions were made which, if followed, would have produced a different outcome and perhaps changed the outcome of the war. (The author does provide an examination of what the other outcomes could have been had the countervailing logic been followed but that is completely secondary to the examination of "why" each decision was made.)

In exploring the background of how each decison was made, the author posits that there was no single meeting in which any of these decisions were made; instead each was the result of an accretion of thoughts and ideas. (Interestingly, the only country in which public opinion and perception apparently mattered in coming to these decisions was the U.S., however, this appears to discount the author's own findings in his work, The Hitler Myth, which is an examination of the opinion sampling by the Nazi Party, and others, in the Nazi era.)

The ten decisions analyzed in this book coalesced to forge many localized conflicts into a global inferno of death and destruction.

The lesson learned by examining how each was made may not be that earth-shattering: Democracies work best at reaching the decisions with the best outcome because even if a forceful personality is at the helm, there are usually many opportunities for opposing viewpoints to be heard and assayed; totalitarian dictatorshops are the worst at reaching decisions because a supreme leader can either ignore opposing viewpoints (or even opposing evidence) at his whim or is not provided opposing viewpoints because those surrounding him are too obeisant or too fearful to contradict his presumptions and conclusions.

Nonetheless, the book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the process by which the Second World War turned into a global conflict, including the reasons why both Germany and Japan made decisions that were huge risks and appear almost suicidal to the outsider but made sense to those in power and further explains why these nations did not, and could not, just give up when the war turned inexorably against them.

The cast of characters involved in these ten fateful decisions in six countries spanning the entire globe is a bit daunting for those who are not full-time or long-time students of the Second World War. This drawback is alleviated by the inclusion of an handy "dramatis personae", providing essential background information on the players.

In sum, the book is a fascinating and well-written account of these ten epochal choices.