Operation Barbarossa

Unlike the United States Army, the German Wehrmacht had a long standing professional officer corps that had experience going back to the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. While many American career officers had seen action in World War I, the vast majority of Americans entered combat for the first time.

Benito Mussolini was the recognized leading dictator of Europe when Hitler was a still a local politician leading a group of thugs against the Weimar Republic. Mussolini had solidified his power across all of Italy through murder, blackmail, and slander campaigns against Italy's press, politicians, and leftists.

Adolf Hitler had convinced himself by December 1940 that England lay prostrate before German air power. November had seen the worst of the air attacks; acres of England’s cities were reduced to rubble. Hitler believed she would never rise again to threaten Germany.