A Conversation With: Author Antony Beevor

Since 1998, the British military historian Antony Beevor has written six books on the Second World War –“Crete,” “Berlin,” “Stalingrad,” “D-Day,” “Paris” and “The Second World War,” — in which he re-creates the military strategies and the on-the-ground military conflict. At the Jaipur Literature Festival over the weekend, Mr. Beevor talked to India Ink about how he wrote his 2012 book, “The Second World War,” the treatment of the conflict’s gruesome aspects and why the war still interests readers.

Before writing “The Second World War,” you wrote about specific battles that took place during the war such as “Stalingrad” and “Berlin.” Was it a challenge writing about the whole war, rather than specific battles?

Having done separate books about the battles, in particular the “D-Day” book, that I hadn’t really appreciated the knock-on effect of what’s happening on the Russian front, what’s happening in Normandy, and so it was terribly important to understand how the whole thing fitted together, how events in the Pacific affected events in Europe and vice versa.

To begin with, it started off all very fine, and then I panicked. I really felt I’d taken on more than I could cope with because you can be overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of material. The important thing is you’ve got to keep your nerve at that particular stage, and eventually it all falls into place and you feel less panicky....