The Second World War is one of the most assiduously studied events of world history, not just because its relatively recent vintage yields an abundance of material — official documents, newsreels, radio broadcasts, documentaries and reminiscences. That war also shaped global politics and personal lives in ways that still impact us. That is why the world may have witnessed longer wars since then — Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — but the flood of books on the Second World War rarely abates. The opening up of Soviet and Iron Curtain archives after 1991 provoked a spurt of “new” histories, (such as Andrew Roberts’s The Storm of War) though few have lived up to their promise.

><table width='100%' border=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 18px; FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: #0253B7;'>Cause & effect</td></tr><tr><tr><td style='FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11px; '>Antony Beevor attempts to demonstrate how the Second World War was an 

Cause & effect

Antony Beevor attempts to demonstrate how the Second World War was an amalgamation of conflicts

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Cause &amp; effect