Jeroen Vandenbossche's Reviews > To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949

To Hell and Back is a dense but well-written and accessible history of the first half of the twentieth century. It is a book I would happily recommend to anyone with an interest in the period. Be aware, however, that if you are looking for a compelling narrative that brings the past back to live by means of telling anecdotes and lively characterizations of the main protagonists, this book may not exactly be the one that you are looking for.

Sure enough, the book recounts the main events taking place in Europe between the outbreak of the First World War and 1949, but it does so rather summarily and in a somewhat dry, factual manner. Kershaw is not the greatest anecdotalist or storyteller (or he may very well be but it does not show in this book). His main interest clearly lies elsewhere, not with the story as such but with the main drivers of the historical events and their significance for the people affected by it.

Hence the frequent interruptions of the narrative flow to make room for questions and reflections of a more essayistic nature. Why did events unfold the way they did? Could history have taken a different a turn? What is the relative importance of the various factors that contributed to the course of history as we know it? Kershaw frequently throws up questions like these and provides short but insightful and nuanced answers.

Even more interesting are the sections in the book where the historian interrogates the meaning of past events for those that lived through them or had to deal with their legacy. The chapter on the significance of the Second World War for the various people that fought it and their offspring is a good example. It clearly demonstrates that the same events can acquire very different meanings depending on the point of view one takes and makes this book stand out among the various other single-volume histories of the twentieth century that I am familiar with.

I also appreciated the chapter about the continuities and longer-term trends which have not been fundamentally disrupted despite the massive damage caused by the two world wars. In it, Kershaw rightly recalls a number of facts which are often overlooked because of a too narrow focus on the more spectacular events: that the economies and socio-economic value systems of the various European people have been growing more like each other throughout the first 50 years of the twentieth century, that living standards rose quite significantly (at least for the majority of those whose lives were not ruined by the fighting), that Europe remained a predominantly Christian continent in which the main Catholic and Protestant denominations continued to exert a profound influence, etc.

Despite all the well-deserved praise it has received here and elsewhere, the book suffers from two minor flaws in my opinion.

I found that some sections or episodes were a bit too Western-European centric. This is the case, in particular, for the chapter on the First World War. It is true that the Great Powers very quickly following the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand turned their attention away from the Balkan and almost seemed to forget about why they declared war on each other in the first place. That does not mean, however, that the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and the developments in the region during the Great War itself did not merit more attention.

Secondly, I also very much regret the total absence of any footnotes and bibliographic references to support the arguments made in the text itself. This is a feature of the Penguin History of Europe series and, as such, beyond the control of the author but nonetheless unfortunate. Quite often I was left wondering about a specific claim or a quoted figure, asking myself on which sources the author based them or how it should be interpreted exactly. In the absence of endnotes, footnotes and references, though, it is very difficult to get a more complete picture about those things that strike you as a reader.

That said, the book is definitely worth four stars. As it happens, I am already half way through the sequel and enjoying it just as much.