From the disastrous treaty of Versailles to the surrender of Japan, Leckie looks at the people and people of the Second World War.

Part I : 1919-1938 : 1919 : Versailles -- The League of Nations -- Benito Mussolini -- Adolf Hitler -- America before Roosevelt -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- The rise of fascism -- Germany expands -- Joseph Stalin -- The German-Russian nonaggression pact -- Part II : 1939 : September 1939 : the invasion of Poland -- Fall 1939 : Nuclear fission, Scapa Flow, Graf Spee, Finland -- Part III : 1940 : The phony war -- April-June 1940 : Norway and Denmark -- Winston Churchill -- May 1940 : Blitzkrieg in Holland, Belgium, and France -- May 1940 : Enigma and Dunkirk -- The fall of France -- Charles de Gaulle -- June 1940: Hitler enters Paris -- Summer 1940 : The U.S. Arms, Operation Sea Lion, the French fleet, the Battle of Britain -- Fall 1940 : the U-Boat peril, Italy invades the Balkans -- September 1940-January 1941 : The desert war -- Part IV : 1941 : January 1941 : Libya -- Spring 1941 : The Balkans, Greece, Crete -- Spring 1941 : The Middle East -- Erwin Rommel -- The battle of Hellfire Pass -- Rudolf Hess and Operation Barbarossa -- Hitler drives for Moscow -- The birth of the atom bomb -- Operation Crusader : duel in the desert -- The siege of Leningrad begins -- August 1941 : Hitler drives southeast -- The rise of modern Japan -- Hideki Tojo -- Isoroku Yamamoto and the planning for Pearl Harbor -- Douglas MacArthur -- December 1941 : 'Honolulu sleeps' -- Tora! Tora! Tora! -- Death of a fleet -- America joins the war -- Dwight David Eisenhower.