Beschrijving

Introduces the catastrophic missteps in World War II, including: Poland’s lack of preparation for the Nazi invasion; Germany’s failure to take Britain out of the war at Dunkirk; Russia playing Goliath to Finland’s David; allied forces getting trapped for four months on the beaches of Anzio; and, Germany wasting its costly development of jet power.

An engrossing and fact-filled collection of the great screwups of the Great War

Never had there been a war on the scale of World War II—a global conflict so widespread and involving so many different military organizations from such a diverse pool of combatant countries that the consequences of every decision, both the brilliant and the bad, were multiplied one hundredfold. Bill Fawcett, popular chronicler of monumental military mistakes and truly boneheaded battlefield blunders now looks closely at the historic errors that ultimately determined the course of post-WWII history.

A cornucopia of catastrophic missteps, including:

• An unprepared Poland is caught napping as the Nazis storm in virtually unopposed
• Germany misses a golden opportunity to take Britain out of the war at Dunkirk
• Russia plays Goliath to Finland’s David
• Four valuable months are wasted as Allied forces sit trapped on the beaches of Anzio
• Germany squanders its costly development of jet power
• The secret 1942 battle Marshal Zhukov lost, along with half a million soldiers
• Battles lost that should have been won, including Moscow, Stalingrad, and D-Day

There had never before been a war on the scale of World War II. The sheer size of the conflict and the immense scope of a single battlefield, multiplied the effects of both brilliant and bad decisions. When millions of men are attacking in a Russian offensive or thousands of aircraft are dueling in the skies over Europe, every key decision had dramatic, and often disastrous, results. The author of \