The History of World War II

French historian De La Croix makes his English-language debut with a sweeping if uneven graphic history drawn by Spanish cartoonist Cifuentes (H.G. Wells: The War of the Worlds) that surveys the war to end all wars from within the smoke-filled-rooms of participating heads of state. The perspective focuses on the leaders who initiated the war (Hitler), happily joined in (Mussolini), made doomed deals to halt it (Chamberlain), sacrificed millions of lives not to lose it (Stalin), and, relatively late in the game, united to end it (Churchill and Roosevelt). The creators synthesize vast historical details (alliances, advancements, motivations, conflicting national interests) into a brisk narrative without getting bogged down in minutia. The text is admirably streamlined, and the pointedly unflashy and occasionally stiff art convincingly renders these leaders in meeting after meeting. Meanwhile, the consequences of their decisions are glimpsed in vivid splash images of bombings, troop landings, massacres, and, as the war grinds on, devastated cities. Inevitably, some epochal events get rushed through. Rather than dramatize life and death in Hitler’s concentration camps, for example, the creators invite readers to gape at the obscene opulence of the rooms in which Nazi brass plotted the murder of millions of Jews. Despite a few flaws, it’s a noble and accessible approach to history. (Sept.)