Historian Paul Woodadge https://www.ddayhistorian.com is the author of two books on WWII. His second book World War II Battlefields: Battle Sites Today was published in May of 2022.

With the expectation of delivering a fair and honest review, I received an ARC of this book through https://www.netgalley.com. I categorize this book as G. The book contains 160 photos from WWII battlefields around the globe. Many locations are depicted both during the war and today. The book gives a high-level look at WWII.

I enjoyed the 3+ hours I spent reading this 224-page photo history. The photos were very nice, but I didn’t really learn anything new. The one thing I would have liked to have seen added was maps. I would say that this is a coffee-table-book. I give this book a rating of 3.3 out of 5.

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Please don't blame me for not knowing what to expect from this book. The publishers concerned have a fine line in military databases, especially where aircraft and suchlike are concerned. They also have a wonderful spread of photo books more easily found on the coffee table of old, where a mere sentence of caption is added to double-page photo after double-page photo to drop factoids and information onto us, but very little else. A bonus point then if you saw the answer to the question 'which type of book would this one be?' was going to be 'halfway in the middle'.

This very readably takes us through World War Two, beginning (on account of it being British) with the action in Europe. Major attacks, campaigns and movements get a separate section of this chapter, but nothing is really much longer than a couple of hundred words, and the sections can end many pages after they began due to the other element here – the photographic one. Oh, and the fact the captions are humongous where this house's past style is concerned – these are much more academic and detailed. Some grainy black and white scenes are given, but on the whole these images are modern ones of the ruins, the rotting defensive lines and the landscape scars that are what we would see today on a battlefield tour, along with the statuary and memorials we pay respect with.

There's a slight awkwardness in that the switches of subject for the visuals don't end bang on time with the chunks in writing; I got round that by reading the chronology of each theatre of war and then flicking back to pore over the photos and gen up with the small-print captions. This then, despite surely needing to be an awkward-seeming mix of visual record of battle sites, seventy years on, and historical detail for the more scholarly enthusiast, seemed to me to hit both targets with aplomb. It's slightly unusual in being a WW2 history book which leaves out things you'll have heard of (there's no River Kwai or Nuremberg Rally here, at least), but this is still highly educational. I'm of the age when my primary school headteacher lived through the war, and yet still this managed to tell me more of the combat in North Africa and the Pacific than I'd been privy to. This, then, is an attractive volume, and one that many a random browser will have to agree is more useful and interesting than they'd have predicted. Four and a half stars.

World War II Battlefields shows contemporary photos (in color) often along side photos taken near the same area in WWII. Narratively it takes the reader from the Blitzkrieg and Battle of Britain through other major offensives of WWII. The book is broken into sections: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, The Mediterranean and Asia and the Pacific. There are the famous sights you expect such as Pearl Harbor and the sacred ground of Normandy. Other places I was less familiar with particularity in eastern Europe. While some places have been left as a memorial to the war other have been entirely built over as if war was never there. I was more interested in places that I’ve visited. I’ve walked the footpaths around ground bomb divots to climb through artillery bunkers at Normandy. I’ve toured cities like London, Berlin and St. Petersburg that are rebuilt and visited their memorials to the war. I was also interested in things I didn’t know still exist like u-boat pens. This doesn’t claim to cover every battle or scrimmage but is a nice overview and historical documentation. I think anyone with an interest in World War II would enjoy this book. Or a traveler interested in visiting battle locations. (This is not a travel guide so specifics on visiting wold need to be found elsewhere.) I think the focus is on the photos with some narrative which I enjoy. Thank you to NetGalley and Amber Books Ltd. for a temporary eARC in exchange for an honest review. (4.5 stars)

4.5 Stars. This book takes readers on a journey across the present and the past showing both iconic and lesser known locations that played a role in WWII. The book provides a roughly chronological narrative through the European and Asian theaters of the war in addition to photo captions that give more specific information about the location. The photos are large and the contemporary pictures are in color. Most of the photos are accompanied by photos taken of the or near the same area during WWII. It was fascinating to see how some places bear deep scars from the war while others show no sign of ever having seen conflict. I was particularly interested in the locations I have visited on my travels. My only issue with the book was that there were several instances where a sentence would cut off mid clause and there would be six of seven pages of photos before finishing the sentence. This meant that several times I had to flip back several pages to reread the start of the sentence and continue the description. Overall this book would make a great gift for anyone who loves World War II history, but you don't have to be a WWII buff to enjoy the book and its pictures.

I enjoyed reading this book it is a great read, very educational and interesting to read about what happened.