Why the Axis Lost

Why the Axis Lost PDF Author: John Arquilla
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476674523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The factors leading to the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II have been debated for decades. One prevalent view is that overwhelming Allied superiority in materials and manpower doomed the Axis. Another holds that key strategic and tactical blunders lost the war--from Hitler halting his panzers outside Dunkirk, allowing more than 300,000 trapped Allied soldiers to escape, to Admiral Yamamoto falling into the trap set by the U.S. Navy at Midway. Providing a fresh perspective on the war, this study challenges both views and offers an alternative explanation: the Germans, Japanese and Italians made poor design choices in ships, planes, tanks and information security--before and during the war--that forced them to fight with weapons and systems that were too soon outmatched by the Allies. The unprecedented arms race of World War II posed a fundamental "design challenge" the Axis powers sometimes met but never mastered.

Why the Axis Lost

Why the Axis Lost PDF Author: John Arquilla
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476674523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The factors leading to the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II have been debated for decades. One prevalent view is that overwhelming Allied superiority in materials and manpower doomed the Axis. Another holds that key strategic and tactical blunders lost the war--from Hitler halting his panzers outside Dunkirk, allowing more than 300,000 trapped Allied soldiers to escape, to Admiral Yamamoto falling into the trap set by the U.S. Navy at Midway. Providing a fresh perspective on the war, this study challenges both views and offers an alternative explanation: the Germans, Japanese and Italians made poor design choices in ships, planes, tanks and information security--before and during the war--that forced them to fight with weapons and systems that were too soon outmatched by the Allies. The unprecedented arms race of World War II posed a fundamental "design challenge" the Axis powers sometimes met but never mastered.

Ends, Means, Ideology, and Pride

Ends, Means, Ideology, and Pride PDF Author: Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Alpha Edition
ISBN: 9789387513976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
Why did the Axis Powers lose World War II, and what can we learn from its defeat? The Axis seemed on top of the world until 1941, when it added to its list of enemies the United States and the Soviet Union. The entry of Russia and America into the war decisively tipped the balance against Germany, Italy, and Japan. Resource-rich Russia and the United States were prepared for protracted conflict, whereas the Axis was not. From Pearl Harbor onward, it is difficult to imagine how the Axis could have avoided the fate that befell it, short of Stalin's defection from the Allied side. Material weakness should have imposed strategic discipline on Axis territorial ambitions, but none of the three major Axis states seemed to recognize the limits of their power. Imperial ambitions, fueled by extreme ideologies, held sway over a realistic grasp of what was possible and what was not. An examination of World War II's outcome reveals three lessons. First, numbers still matter. The best strategy is to be strong. The strong sometimes lose, but the weak lose more often. Second, ideology can distort sound strategic thinking. Both Germany and Japan were victimized by extreme racial ideologies that prompted them to overestimate their own fighting power and underestimate that of their enemies. Third, operational and tactical superiority cannot redeem a faulty strategy. Throughout the war, Germany outperformed its enemies on the battlefield; however, it was still crushed strategically.

How the War Was Won

How the War Was Won PDF Author: Phillips Payson O'Brien
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107014751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description
An important new history of air and sea power in World War II and its decisive role in Allied victory.

Human Rights after Hitler

Human Rights after Hitler PDF Author: Dan Plesch
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1626164339
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Human Rights after Hitler reveals thousands of forgotten US and Allied war crimes prosecutions against Hitler and other Axis war criminals based on a popular movement for justice that stretched from Poland to the Pacific. These cases provide a great foundation for twenty-first-century human rights and accompany the achievements of the Nuremberg trials and postwar conventions. They include indictments of perpetrators of the Holocaust made while the death camps were still operating, which confounds the conventional wisdom that there was no official Allied response to the Holocaust at the time. This history also brings long overdue credit to the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), which operated during and after World War II. From the 1940s until a recent lobbying effort by Plesch and colleagues, the UNWCC’s files were kept out of public view in the UN archives under pressure from the US government. The book answers why the commission and its files were closed and reveals that the lost precedents set by these cases have enormous practical utility for prosecuting war crimes today. They cover US and Allied prosecutions of torture, including “water treatment,” wartime sexual assault, and crimes by foot soldiers who were “just following orders.” Plesch’s book will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of the Second World War as well as provide ground-breaking revelations for historians and human rights practitioners alike.

The Second World Wars

The Second World Wars PDF Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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Book Description
A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian. World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, bestselling author Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory. An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.

Why the Axis Lost

Why the Axis Lost PDF Author: John Arquilla
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476639523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The factors leading to the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II have been debated for decades. One prevalent view is that overwhelming Allied superiority in materials and manpower doomed the Axis. Another holds that key strategic and tactical blunders lost the war--from Hitler halting his panzers outside Dunkirk, allowing more than 300,000 trapped Allied soldiers to escape, to Admiral Yamamoto falling into the trap set by the U.S. Navy at Midway. Providing a fresh perspective on the war, this study challenges both views and offers an alternative explanation: the Germans, Japanese and Italians made poor design choices in ships, planes, tanks and information security--before and during the war--that forced them to fight with weapons and systems that were too soon outmatched by the Allies. The unprecedented arms race of World War II posed a fundamental "design challenge" the Axis powers sometimes met but never mastered.

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"

Churchill, Hitler, and Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307405168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

If the Allies Had Fallen

If the Allies Had Fallen PDF Author: Dennis E. Showalter
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1616085460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Leading historians suggest what might have been if key events during World War II had the war gone differently.

Why the Allies Won

Why the Allies Won PDF Author: R. J. Overy
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393316193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
"Overy has written a masterpiece of analytical history, posing and answering one of the great questions of the century."--Sunday Times (London)

The Wehrmacht's Last Stand

The Wehrmacht's Last Stand PDF Author: Robert M. Citino
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700630384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 632

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Book Description
By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. Three quarters of a century later, the question persists: What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world’s leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this gripping account of German military campaigns during the final phase of World War II, Citino charts the inevitable path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a “war of movement,” inexorably led to Nazi Germany’s defeat. The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand analyzes the German Totenritt, or “death ride,” from January 1944—with simultaneous Allied offensives at Anzio and Ukraine—until May 1945, the collapse of the Wehrmacht in the field, and the Soviet storming of Berlin. In clear and compelling prose, and bringing extensive reading of the German-language literature to bear, Citino focuses on the German view of these campaigns. Often very different from the Allied perspective, this approach allows for a more nuanced and far-reaching understanding of the last battles of the Wehrmacht than any now available. With Citino’s previous volumes, Death of the Wehrmacht and The Wehrmacht Retreats, The Wehrmacht’s Last Stand completes a uniquely comprehensive picture of the German army’s strategy, operations, and performance against the Allies in World War II.