Book of the Month Recon Report
Foreword by: Jonathan Fenby
By Jean Lopez, Vincent Bernard, Nicolas Aubin and Nicolas Guillerat
IT IS often said that war is a numbers game, and in a conflict on the astonishing scale of World War Two, the numbers involved can be mind-boggling.
In a war involving at least 50 nations, more than 6% of the world population – some 130 million men – was in some way mobilised for service. A quarter of Britain’s strength in fighting-age men were called up or volunteered and this proportion was grossly higher in Germany or the USSR with those two states alone mobilising some 50 million people. A colossal national effort was required to move, equip, feed, fuel and provide anything needed to sustain and grow a large military force as the fighting arms swelled.
