n this, the first of the anthologies focusing on the war in Europe, these diaries are intended to capture the Second World War as a global event, using diary material from many different countries and with the voices of children, civilians, ordinary soldiers, commanders, statesmen and spies. istorian Richard J Aldrich has spent two decades collating the information from diaries such as these to produce two anthologies which, recounted in the first person, are as close to the living experience of the Second World War as we are ever likely to come. They became a means of preserving human life in some form at least, often recording experiences within minutes or hours of their occurrence. The devastation wreaked upon the lives of hundreds of thousands of people during the Second World War left a sense of transience and frailty that encouraged diaries to be kept on a regular basis.
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