All Features

Were There Really Two Opposing Alliances? As we noted, from June 25, 1940, to December 7, 1941, there were not formal “Allies.” The British-Western European alliance, such as it had been, disappeared with the fall of France in June 1940 and the appeasement or absorption of all of Western Europe. True, Britain encouraged and aided

Was Britain Really the Weak Allied Partner? Wars are not always just conflicts of men and materiel; will and principles weigh in as well. In this context, the moral leadership of Britain during World War II proved invaluable to the Allied cause, even if it was often guided at times by imperial concerns. Britain was

Did the Soviet Union Really “win” the war? There is something amoral in even posing such a question given the horrendous loss of Russian life resisting Nazi aggression. Superlatives are exhausted when describing the four-year-long Eastern Front between June 22, 1941 and the surrender of Nazi forces to the Soviets on May 9, 1945. While

How Did Germany Lose a War It Had Won? At the dawn of 1941, there was no expectation in Moscow that Germany would violate the tense but still very much viable August 23, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or that the U.S. would intervene on Britain’s side. The U.S.S.R. was eager to stay out of any second