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The destruction of Panzer Armee Afrika left the United Kingdom Eighth Army and the American Seventh Army without a mission. Even before the final surrender of Axis Forces in North Africa, there was much discussion of where the Allies should strike next. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had quietly withstood Stalin’s blistering demands for a second front, pushed to delay an invasion of France by the end of 1943. The British believed the American war machine required more time to build up Allied forces to insure victory.

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Japanese light tanks are no match for heavier American ones on Saipan. June 1944. Movie

The 1943 plan for the defensive perimeter around the Japanese Home Islands stopped at Saipan in the Marianas. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who had been leading the cabinet since 1941, was optimistic in his hopes for a successful defense of the island.

As part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, a secret protocol was enacted that gave the Nazis the Balkans as their sphere of influence. Earlier in the year, Britain and France had tried to guarantee Romania’s borders, but Romania’s refusal to allow the Red Army to cross its borders kept Russia out of the pact, and the guarantee fell apart.

Allied planners had seriously underestimated the strength and effectiveness of Japanese Forces. Allied opinion held that they could not shoot straight, since many Japanese were nearsighted. Despite reports in China, and then in late 1941 the arrival of the American Volunteer Group, it was still believed that the Western aircraft were superior to their Japanese counterparts.

After the Battle of the Bulge, Germany herself was the next target. It was clear to everyone but the most fanatical Nazis, including Hitler, that Germany was finished. The war was over except for the final body count.

From the time of Hitler’s appointment to Chancellor, men and women lived and died resisting German occupation. Resistance groups sprang up in every occupied country, and several organizations in Germany herself. Their members succeeded and failed in all sorts of activities against the Third Reich.

The prospect of Communist Russia terrified the Western democracies in 1918. Britain, France and America sent troops to occupy Russian ports and remained until the defeat of the White Russians in 1920. They left a country that was forming a government that many leftists hailed around the world.

As Japan was opened by the Admiral Perry in 1853, the United States was a nation of contradictions. As Perry’s black ships were landing in Edo Bay, his nation was growing bitterly divided over the issue of state’s rights versus national interests. Japan seemed very far off, especially to a nation that was centered on the Atlantic.