Can you imagine an 1,100-pound unexploded bomb being unearthed by construction crews breaking ground on a Manhattan skyscraper? In Germany, it’s no big deal.

Waves crashing. Cicadas singing. And always the burble of cricket on the radio, unifying summers and people with its gentle pleasures for an uncertain world

From the Italian Alps to northern Germany, to London, New York, Washington and Tokyo, Victory ’45 tells the story of the extraordinary summer when the greatest conflagration the world had ever known f...