Germany and the Second World War

These two superb volumes from Oxford University Press ... The Companion is quite an extraordinary achievement ... it provides an indispensable guide ... But the range and intellectual energy of the latter will make it an invaluable work of reference for undergraduate and researchers. Together, these two books provide as valuable a commemoration of the war as any.

• Part 1 Political and military developments inthe mediterranean area, 1939-1941, Gerhard Schreiber: Mussolini's "non-belligerence; Italy's entry into the war; the strategic dilemma of the summer and autumn of 1940 - an alternativr or interim strategy?; ideas of German ruling circles concerning a colonial empire. Part 2 Germany, Italy and South-East Europe - from political and economic hegemony to military aggression, Gerhard Schreiber: unequal heirs of World War I; German and Italian policy towards the states of South-East Europe; Mussolini's invasion of Greece - the beginning of the end of Italy's great-power status. Part 3 German intervention in the Balkans, Detlef Vogel: Germany's Balkan policy in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941; from the coup in Yugoslavia to the outbreak of war on 6 April 1941; the German attack on Yugoslavia and Greece; the capture of Crete. Part 4 Politics and warfare in 1941, Gerhard Schreiber: the Anglo-American association and its consequences for British strategy; Hitler's strategic deliberations in connection with the attack on the Soviet Union. Part 5 The Italo-German conduct of the war in the Mediterranean and North Africa, Bernd Stegemann: the British take the offensive in North and East Africa; German intervention and its effects on the naval and air war in the Mediterranean; the reconquest of Cyrenaica and the failure of the attacks on Tobruk; the fighting on the Sollum front; the naval and air war in the Mediterranean and supplies for the North African theatre; Operation Crusader.