WWII reconsidered

Adam Kirsch: "Americans who learn about the war in Europe from a book like Stephen Ambrose’s 'Band of Brothers' (1992), for instance, could be forgiven for thinking of the defeat of Germany as the work of doughty G.I.’s. Yet in 'No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945' (2007), the British historian Norman Davies begins from the premise that 'the war effort of the Western powers' was 'something of a sideshow.' America lost 143,000 soldiers in the fight against Germany, Davies points out, while the Soviet Union lost 11 million. And if the main show was a war between Hitler and Stalin, he wonders, wasn’t World War II a clash of nearly equivalent evils?"