Translations of The Second World War 

I‘m work­ing on an arti­cle and need to know: (1) Into how many lan­guages were Churchill’s Sec­ond World War mem­oirs trans­lat­ed? (2) Into how many lan­guages was his 1959 abridged one-vol­ume edi­tion trans­lat­ed? —G.A., Bil­bao, Spain

(Updat­ed from 2012.) Accord­ing to Ronald I. Cohen’s Bib­li­og­ra­phy of the Writ­ings of Sir Win­ston Churchill (Lon­don: Con­tin­u­um, 2006, 3 vols., I: 729-30), The Sec­ond World War was trans­lat­ed into nine­teen lan­guages: Czech, Croa­t­ian, Dan­ish, Dutch, French, Ger­man, Greek, Hebrew, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Kore­an, Nor­we­gian, Pol­ish, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Ser­bian, Span­ish, Swedish and Turkish.

Not all of these com­prised the com­plete six vol­umes. The Turk­ish edi­tion con­tained only the first two vol­umes. Wendy Reves, wife of Churchill’s lit­er­ary agent, Emery Reves, told me that the pub­lish­ers refused to pay for the rest! The first Russ­ian edi­tion (1956-58) con­tained only the first three vol­umes, though Ronald Cohen also lists a lat­er, com­plete Russ­ian edi­tion pub­lished in 1997-98.

On the one-vol­ume abridged edi­tion (1959), Mr. Cohen lists eight trans­la­tions: Ara­bic, Cata­lan, Ger­man, Ital­ian, Japan­ese, Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, and Slovene.

Official histories

Does Great Britain have an offi­cial His­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, like the Amer­i­can “Green Books”? Where might I find them?  —L.L., Raleigh, N.C.

Yes: sev­er­al spe­cial­ized mul­ti-vol­ume series, under the umbrel­la title His­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War, were pub­lished by HMSO (Her Majesty’s Sta­tionery Office). Since 2006, HMSO has been part of the Office of Pub­lic Sec­tor Infor­ma­tion with­in the British Nation­al Archives, for­mer­ly the Pub­lic Records Office.

There are five sub-series, for exam­ple, Llewellyn Wood­ward, British For­eign Pol­i­cy in the Sec­ond World War (five vol­umes, 1970). Oth­er series were Mil­i­tary, Civ­il, Intel­li­gence and Med­ical. HMSO also pub­lished indi­vid­ual col­lec­tions of papers and documents.

The scope is colos­sal. For exam­ple, the Mil­i­tary Series alone com­pris­es thir­ty-two vol­umes. There are nine group­ings: Grand Strat­e­gy, The War at Sea, The Strate­gic Air Offen­sive Against Ger­many, Home Defence, Vic­to­ry in the West, The War Against Japan, Mediter­ranean and Mid­dle East, and Civ­il Affairs & Mil­i­tary Gov­ern­ment. Some of these also appeared as abridged one-vol­ume editions.

There are dis­claimers in the vol­umes stat­ing that the opin­ions are those of the authors. Their qual­i­ty var­ied, and some were con­tro­ver­sial. Cap­tain Stephen Roskill, who wrote all three vol­umes of The War at Sea, was one of Churchill’s strongest crit­ics. Books were sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished by pro-Churchill naval author­i­ties which dis­put­ed Roskill’s conclusions.

You can search for indi­vid­ual titles on Book­find­er, but major libraries should have them; they may also have been digitalized.

Related reading

“Win­ston Churchill’s World War Accounts: His­to­ry or Mem­oirs?,” 2023

”Churchill and the Avoid­able War: Book Out­line,” 2017.

“Hills­dale Col­lege Acquires Cohen Churchill Record­ings Col­lec­tion,” 2018.

“Churchill’s War Mem­oirs: Aside from the Sto­ry, Sim­ply Great Writ­ing,” 20223.

“Grand Alliance: A Way Out of the Sec­ond World War?” 2021.