The Winds of War by Herman Wouk (PDF)

Description

Like no other masterpiece of historical fiction, Herman Wouk’s sweeping epic of World War II is the great novel of America’s Greatest Generation.Wouk’s spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events, as well as all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II, as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war’s maelstrom.The Winds of War and its sequel War and Remembrance stand as the crowning achievement of one of America’s most celebrated storytellers.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐“Winds of War” (WW) is a Big Book, literally and figuratively. Published in 1971 and written by Herman Wouk, it registers 886 pages on my Kindle, and considerably more depending on which printed version you might pick up, so the equivalent of up to three novels. But there’s more! Wouk saw WW as a prologue to the follow-up “War and Remembrance” (WR) which Amazon lists at 1396 pages. The story begins with the invasion of Poland in September, 1939, and concludes with the bombing of Hiroshima; the breakpoint for the two volumes is at the attack on Pearl Harbor. But wait, there’s more…. In February, 1983, ABC-TV presented a big budget WW series, shown on eight consecutive nights and totaling fourteen hours and forty minutes (there was a similar series of WR five years later). The two series were masterpieces, and won a number of awards and in my humble opinion, were a critically successful forerunner for the hundreds of series available on TV today. When I decided to “re-read” WW after all these years, it was partly triggered by the recent passing of Wouk ten days before his 104th birthday, and partly recollection of fond memories reading the books and watching the series more than thirty years ago. As I was about halfway through WW, it dawned on me that I had never read it before. Rather my introduction to WW/WR had been watching the WW series, then reading WR to see how the whole story played out, and finally watching the WR TV series.The books have a huge cast of characters but focus on one Navy family, that of Victor “Pug” Henry. Pug is a Naval Attache steaming across the Atlantic with wife Rhoda to his new assignment in Berlin. Pug is a bit short, a former Navy Academy football player, a tough to bring down halfback, bulldoggish in many ways, hence “Pug”. The Henrys have three kids – Warren a Navy flyer, a soon to be submarine officer Byron, aka Briny (I think of him as Whiney), and Madeleine who has completed one year of college and is ready to tackle New York City doing what she does not know. On the ship the Henrys meet and befriend a Brit journalist, Talky Tudsbury and his 28 year old daughter Pamela.Over the next 860 pages, there are chapters following the lives of these main characters. Many of the chapters are very interesting, depicting critical WWll events along with little known bits of historical fact. There are action scenes, and there are romantic scenes. Some characters are a lot more interesting than others. To break up the monotony, Wouk occasionally introduces historical characters who interface with members of the Henry family on occasion. For example, early on in his new assignment, Pug speculates on the possibility of a German-Russian Pact, and when it comes to be he is invited to fly back to DC and meet with FDR in person to share other insights. Some chapters are not so great – early on Briny develops a relationship with Natalie, a Jewish woman, niece of a famous author. As time passes she and uncle find it impossible to escape from Italy despite many, many pages describing their attempts to get immigration paperwork in order. But the great chapters, especially the Pug-Pamela ones, far outnumber the not so great ones and hence my rating for WW is 4 ½ stars.I have a yellowed copy of WR and Wouk has written some interesting comments about his two books. He saw WW as a prologue, and that it need not be read before reading WR. He says WR is “the main tale I had to tell”. He describes the books as romance (but not as a love story). I strongly recommend reading both – I will re-read WR next year since I’m not crazy about reading 1000+ page books back to back.There are two additional points I would like to make to enhance your reading of these books, possibly. The first has to do with the television production, specifically the cast. Pug Henry is played by Robert Mitchum. I recall to this day that there was a lot of criticism about this choice, mainly concerning Mitchum’s age. And perhaps rightly so. Many scenes worked anyway, but not all of them. And I make that comment noting that WR is released five years later. But Mitchum’s height certainly played much better than Wouk’s descriptions. As I read through WW, I watched a number of scenes of the 1983 TV presentation, courtesy of YouTube, and I strongly suggest you consider doing the same. It was much nicer watching Victoria Tennant as Pamela instead of conjuring up my own image. But there are drawbacks. When anyone mentions FDR these days, I get a mental picture of Ralph Bellamy ! Secondly, the TV series was produced in the days of video tape, long before digital. DVDs did subsequently come out but there are few “new” ones available and the prices are outrageous since there is very limited supply. Buyer beware – too often in situations like this quality is less than expected and/or the product may not include the entire telecast!

⭐Love everything about it! The auido book left me a little confused. Didn’t emphasize a change in narrator enough for me to understand whose point of view I was listening to. But great book!

⭐I enjoyed getting a better sense of the war as it was seen at the time – the fact that victory seemed anything but assured. Very much worth the read.

⭐What an incredible book – the story and the characters. I couldn’t stop reading it and can’t wait for book 2.

⭐Having read multiple WWII books of the more academic context, this historical novel was very good with its storylines and characters. When it was written, the holocaust was not as prominent in our American culture as it is today and the author may have been trying to bring more attention the what the Final Solution looked like from those that suffered.

⭐I watched the mini series in the 80s but it wasn’t until now that I was able to read the book, I can tell that I was missing a lot

⭐THE WINDS OF WAR is one of few novels that I’ve re-read. l first read the novel when it was published in the early 70’s. I also watched the excellent TV mini-series when it was first broadcasted. Even though it’s been 40+ years, I still remembered some of the novel and TV mini-series.I recently re-watched the TV mini-series which prompted me to re-read the novel. I should have first re-read the novel before watching the TV mini-series. The TV mini-series faithfully follows the novel so re-reading the novel was like re-reading yesterday’s newspaper. I sometimes got bored with the novel since the TV mini-series was so fresh in my memory.WW2 historical fictions are one of my favorite genre and THE WINDS OF WAR is the reason for it. There are better WW2 historical fictions, but THE WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE are excellent stories about love, war, atrocities, politics, race, religion, faith, etc. during the time when the world came to brink of total destruction. It’s the individual stories of the Henry family that make them seem to be real and, as a reader, you become invested in them.THE WINDS OF WAR did have something that I did not recall when I first read the novel; nor was it part of the TV mini-series. Throughout the novel, author Herman Wouk included chapters from a post-war memoir by fictional German General Armin von Roon entitled “World Empire Lost”. The fictional German General Roon is a character from THE WINDS OF WAR.The fictional German General Roon defends Nazi Germany’s political and military conquest as part of a New World Order. He downplays the genocide committed against the Jews as similar to what the US committed against its Native Americans; Spain’s genocide against the Aztecs and Incas; and the British against the people of India. General Roon defends Hitler’s decision to attack Russia and to fight a two-front war. He blames the outbreak of WW2 on the British and faults the US (specifically FDR) for emboldening Britain and Russia to fight on as the US waits on the sideline; then the US swoops in and claims victory after everyone else is battered and beaten. Because Britain and the US were allies with Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, General Roon blames them for unleashing Bolshevism on post-war Europe and the rest of the world.I read the Kindle version of THE WINDS OF WAR. As with most early novels converted to digital, there are some typographical errors, e.g., Victor Henry’s first name is occasional spelled “Victory” Henry. The typographical errors are not that numerous or significant that it would drive the Kindle reader to become a crazed proofreading critic.

⭐Nice excursion into WWII History with some family fiction interwoven. Diving into sequel as we speak. Enjoying imaging career as naval officer as son of an Army one.

⭐I’m still reading this – a great book if, like me, you enjoy a really long novel. Actually, for me, this is a re-read, as I originally bought the book in the early 1980s, after watching the TV mini-series, which starred Robert Mitchum as the central character. I was pleased that Herman Wouk’s writing style has stood the test of time in the thirty-plus intervening years. The length of the novel aside, it’s not a demanding read but an engaging narrative, cleverly inter-woven with historical detail but, more importantly, the reader becomes emotionally immersed in a series of ‘iconic’ moments of WW2, eg the devastating destruction of Warsaw in the Nazi blitzkrieg. The story takes in the period leading up to the War’s outbreak in Sept 1939 and ending with America’s entry to the hostilities, following Pearl Harbor. Some of the story’s characters are Jews living in Poland and Italy and, while this period is, essentially, pre-Holocaust, the author brilliantly winds up the tension and foreboding, as the Nazi anti-Semitic policies morph terrifyingly from persecution to intended genocide. [For those interested, Herman Wouk’s companion novel, titled War and Remembrance, continues the story to the War’s nuclear conclusion in August 1945.]

⭐People will harp on how accurate the book and mini series is. But that is not what either is about. IT is a good engaging trip through a history that many of us know nothing about. It is dated in how it depicts women but that just how it was. IT was written by a male from a male perspective. If you do not read from a modern era perspective, you will enjoy the book

⭐On first glance, The Winds of War is an overwhelming book. At 885 pages / 365,879 words and taking place between March 1939 and December 1941, it’s both dense in size and in scope. As a comparison, George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones is 835 pages / 292,727 words. And yet, I read it in three days.Essentially a tale of one familys involvment in the leadup to the US entering WWII, The Winds of War is also a close look at the historical events in Europe, the US and in part, the Pacific that culiminated in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.The Henrys are a Navy family – Victor ‘Pug’ Henry is naval attache to Berlin and his wife Rhoda travels with him to Berlin. His grown children, sons Warren and Byron and daughter Madeline, are off making their own way in the world, and Pug finds himself drawn into the war in Europe when he sends a report predicting the Nazi-Soviet non-agression pact which comes to the attention of President Roosevelt.Although The Winds of War is a dense, intense book, I found myself quickly addicted to the story. The characters were realistic and the writing very true to the era – not in a way that dates the story, but in a way that made me feel as if I was really there.This book also helped me to understand more of the politicial, as well as historical aspects of the early part of WWII, particularly in Europe. There are sections of the book which contain reports from a German officer, which is translated and examined by Pug Henry, but I confess I didn’t find them relevant to the story, and quite dry reading so I did skip them (after attempting to read the first section).Part history, part family saga, I truly enjoyed The Winds of War. Despite the fact that I now have an aching wrist from holding this monster for three days, I’m already 300 pages into the next book, War and Remembrance. So if you’re feeling brave, and love good historical fiction, The Winds of War is well worth the investment.

⭐A Brilliant adult read that’s adds a new dimension to the excellent DVD TV movie of the same name, but more importantly sheds a light into events around the early period of ww2 and what life could have been like for millions of people over Europe, Russia or the pacific caught in hostile lands, persecuted for being non Arron, or facing the the wrong end of Germans war machine all at the will of a mad tyrant. And what, ultimately ended in the horrific death of millions. This is one book where it’s not hard to feel an emotional entanglement of it’s well crafted characters. And the event of day to day life as well as the personal relationships they formed, This is one book you will want to read time and again

⭐The Winds of War

⭐This book along with the sequel (War and Remembrance)is a ‘must read’ experience for anyone who likes to get caught up in a book and is interested in this period of world history. Herman Wouk is an expert at intertwining factual events with the fictional characters who move through the story… he never puts a foot wrong with historical or technical accuracy and displays one of the most conscientious approaches to his work that I have ever had the priviledge to read. Rather than even attempt to precis the tale I will just say do read War and Remembrance after this one as so much more is offered… both novels apparently took 16 years to write and the result is a masterpiece

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