Andrew Hitchon reviews four new books about war.

Armageddon: The Battle For Germany 1944-45 by Max Hastings (MacMillan, £25)

THE grim journey towards the end of the Second World War in Europe, whose 60th anniversary will be celebrated this year, takes veteran war correspondent Max Hastings down two different paths.

First he concentrates on the military side of its last year, on how, after the high hopes of summer 1944, the conflict went on so much longer and claimed so many more victims.

Hastings then turns to telling the stories of those caught up in the human misery caused when the great armies collided in the middle of Germany - a catalogue of horror which eventually becomes almost surreal.

The story is grim, but compelling, and an important reminder of how modern Europe was formed.

To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World by Arthur Herman (Hodder and Stoughton, £20);

The Habit Of Victory: The Story Of The Royal Navy 1545 To 1945 by Captain Peter Hore (Sidgwick and Jackson, £25)

The story of the Royal Navy has inspired two new volumes, covering the same events, but taking different approaches.

Herman argues that British sea power established a world where free trade could thrive - under the protection of the Royal Navy. British sea power was largely broken in two world wars, but American-based Herman says that the Royal Navy's successor was the US Fleet.

Hore also calls the Navy an institution "which has affected the course of history itself" but is less concerned with historical forces, preferring to focus on the individuals, including Drake, Nelson and Cunningham, who created the Navy's victorious tradition.

Both books are written in a lively rather than scholarly style, and if Herman's has the greater historical focus, Hore's work has the advantage of illustrations.

Out Of Harm's Way: The Wartime Evacuation Of Children From Britain by Jessica Mann (Headline, £20).

There were two types of evacuation for British youngsters in the Second World War. The first involved moving thousands of children from city areas to the country. The second involved getting them away from Britain altogether. It is the second upheaval that Mann, herself a wartime evacuee to Canada and then America, concentrates on - and emotional stuff it is, too.

The story involves separation of families - some youngsters were unable to recognise their parents when they returned - and small children being sent into strange lands, some to unhappiness and even abuse, others to hitherto unknown affluence and opportunity (think Elizabeth Taylor and Angela Lansbury).

The young evacuees were not immune from the shocks of war. The tragedy of the sinking of the SS Benares in September 1940, in which 84 children died, halted the overseas flow.

Updated: 08:39 Saturday, March 12, 2005