W. W. Norton & Company Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

Excelentemente documentado, aunque puede cansar su lectura , porque las batallas de esos últimos años son casi una repetición de la anterior

Le livre est mal édité. Il manque une trentaine de pages. Très frustrant!

Detalhado, com documentação e testemunho de participantes do Staff e Comandos Militares de ambos os lados. Único senão foi a não imersão num tópico, sem dúvida muito sensível, mas relevante, que foi o tratamento aos prisioneiros de guerra aliados. Itém que

We have all had a meal that was so good we did not want it to end. Or child with an ice lolly or ice cream wishing it were never ending. That is exactly how I felt about volume three of Ian Toll’s masterly study of the naval war in the pacific: The Twilight of The Gods. The book covers the period from the summer of 1944 to August/September 1945 in almost 800 compelling pages. I liken the book to a bobsleigh ride on the Cresta run; once you are on you cannot get off, hurtling down at increasing speed to a devastating climax. I have read a great many books about the war in the Pacific and Burma and believe me it was brutal. I have read the ‘Marines in World War II Commemorative Series’ booklets which recount the exploits of the US Marine Corps as they fought from island to island (I was truly fortunate to receive the copies courtesy of the USMC). I am thus fully seized of the ferocity of the action in the jungles of countless islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. Toll’s books emphasise the centrality of the naval war to victory, simply put if the USN did not wrest command of the Pacific from the IJN then victory over Japan may have eluded the Allies (the British Pacific Fleet played a supporting role after the defeat of Germany). Toll covers all aspects of the conflict from the American and Japanese home fronts to the highest offices of Government. The extent of the inter-service conflicts among the America and Japanese armed forces is quite extraordinary; Douglas MacArthur’s long running dispute with the senior officers of the USN for example. The rivalry between the Japanese army and navy was almost certainly responsible for speeding their defeat. As we know them the kamikaze were a terrifying phenomenon, but I did not fully grasp just how serious a threat they were to US warships. And while most Japanese pilots did volunteer to dash themselves and their aircraft again US warships a significant number were resentful and some contrived to abort their mission. Toll reminds the reader the USN was fighting everyday from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the surrender in August 1945 while the US Army and USAAF (sic) had a slow start. Toll does also cover the ground war in significant detail. The author goes into considerable detail about the deliberation of the Japanese government in the aftermath of the raids upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Incredibly some senior figures wanted to continue the war clinging desperately to the banzai ethos. I cannot recommend this book and its two companion volumes too highly. I suspect this three-volume study will become the seminal work about the naval war in the Pacific.

A meticulously researched history of World War 2 in the Pacific, Not just told from the perspective of the US Navy, but incorporating the Japanese aspect and the political interactions and maneuverings in the USA and Japan. I sincerely commend this excellent War History Trilogy to any who want a comprehensive accurate account of the Pacific War, riveting reading for the military history enthusiast, a must read, which I believe could well become the definitive history of this critical time in World and American History. I was somewhat bemused by the selection of the title, especially as that title had been previously used by Thorolf Hillblad, about the Waffen SS, and it also has Wagnerian connotations, a "Götterdämmerung' which is Nordic in origin.. Perhaps, James. Hornfischer beat him to the "Fleet at Flood Tide" which would have been a logical follow on from the title of Part 2, The Conquering Tide"