View source for World War Two: Under the Shadow of the Swastika (Campfire Graphic Novels) by Lewis Helfand and Lalit Kumar Sharma

{{infobox1
|title=World War Two: Under the Shadow of the Swastika (Campfire Graphic Novels)
|author=Lewis Helfand and Lalit Kumar Sharma
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|summary=Very awkwardly written, and not brilliantly drawn, this book is still well worth considering for how detailed it is about the full War story.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=148
|publisher=Campfire
|date=January 2016
|isbn=9789381182147
|cover=9381182140
|aznuk=9381182140
|aznus=9381182140
}}

One of the most common subjects at primary school, getting on for three generations since it happened, is of course World War Two.  It has the impact that sixty million dead people deserve – but only if it's taught correctly.  One of the ways to present it is this book, which comes from a slightly surprising place – an Indian publisher completely new to me – but succeeds in being remarkably competent, complete and really quite readable. 

It's not perfect, but I'll get to that.  What it does have going for it is how comprehensive it is.  Here is the very faked attack by the Nazis pretending to be Poles on their own radio transmitter array, and that's several pages in, seeing as we started with the beginnings of Hitler's power.  Here is the under-acknowledged detail that the Normandy landings were not the first mass re-invasion the Allies succeeded in, with that on North Africa (and to some extent, Sicily) being just as important.  Here is a quite unusual bias towards detailing Danish resistance and Jew-smuggling.  There is nothing on these pages that seems inaccurate, what's more, meaning this would be a brilliant book for a school reference work. 

But does that mean it's a great read – one the child will take home and pore over?  That is a little more debatable, for the script is pretty awkward at times.  The whole thing is an info-dump, even when dialogue and characters are made up.  Witness the Nazi tank commander explaining the ''Blitzkrieg'' warfare to his colleagues, mid-charge.  This is a book lumbered with conversation such as ''You've already been arrested once'' – 'no, really?  I didn't realise!'  Hitler's voice bubbles about the end of Mussolini are quite embarrassing, but they don't deserve to be singled out, because too much else is. 

The book as a result really should never touch a fiction shelf – when a character does return many pages after a prior appearance, I think many young readers will miss it.  But that's not the reason for this – it is a salient, conclusive lesson to all about this War and of course all war as a result.  The imagery is quite standard – I wouldn't rave over the artwork at all, particularly, with the soldiers' sides impossible to differentiate, and only a few splash pages have the impact the details deserve.  The use of reference photos as base for many pictures hasn't stopped Coventry being given a broad, sweeping river.  I do have to include a little warning that while the simplicity of the telling might make the young pick this up, they will see a chap apparently suffering bullet wounds to the knee, and a naked female in the death camp 'showers' mauled by a Nazi dog. 

That could take me back to my opening comments, of course – that the truth of these pages is testimony and remembrance to some of the sixty million dead.  Some will think a bright and colourful comic (well, graphic novel – but I think the former term is more accurate on this occasion) not really a suitable legacy of the victims.  But I have to admire this book for how much detail and info it did manage to dump on me, and the clarity and educational level of everything here is really quite superb – one of the better lessons to be had, then. 

I must thank the publishers for my review copy. 

[[Tony Robinson's Weird World of Wonders - World War II by Tony Robinson]] is a different approach to the same times. 

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[[Category:Graphic Novels]]
[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Lewis Helfand]]
[[Category:Lalit Kumar Sharma]]