The Second World War was the first modern conflict in which millions more civilians died than soldiers. As economic production became essential to military success, civilians were conscripted into factories—and suddenly became fair game.

In Total War, eyewitnesses from Britain, Germany, Russia, Korea, Japan, and the United States tell the story of the civilians—children, sisters, brothers—who suffered and died in the Second World War. Residents of Plymouth, Tokyo, and Hamburg remember the air raids; Russian peasants recall the siege of Leningrad; Japanese soldiers and Korean slave-laborers describe the brutality of war in Asia. Throughout, interviewees remember the extraordinary suffering of a people's war like none before.

The people remember: Rosie the Riveter, shipbuilding, Pearl Harbor, air raids, the Blitz, the Siege of Leningrad, the atom bomb.