Witness to war - Richard J. Aldrich

Compelling private diaries offer a fresh perspective on the experience of ordinary individuals during the Second World War.

In this first of two anthologies, the eye-opening retelling of the war experience through private diary entries kept by people from all walks of life and from many countries, is a record of war at first hand described in the most immediate terms. As early as spring 1938, city-dwellers across Europe expected destruction on an epic scale. Men, women and children, most of whom had never kept a diary before, began to chronicle their own responses to what they knew would be a unique moment in world history.

The cast of characters in these diaries
over three hundred in number
ranges from politicians, soldiers and spies to ordinary citizens and housewives, from a London schoolboy watching V-1 doodlebugs from his bedroom window to an interned German refugee robbed and beaten by British troops. The collection also includes rare material from famous figures including Joseph Goebbels, Joyce Grenfell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Evelyn Waugh and Noel Coward. It also contains the insights of many who were close to Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

More than half a century after the war, these hidden treasures
the voices of the past
are still being unearthed. Many languish unread in scholarly archives around the world. Aldrich has provided a brilliant chronicle of personal experiences and an invaluable new perspective on the Second World War.