Strategy and the Second World War

Strategy and the Second World War by Jeremy Black offers a concise, accessible account of strategy during the Second World War. It explores how the war was both won and lost.

In 1941, the Second World War expanded into a global conflict when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and Germany declared war on the United States.

This timely book fills a significant gap by engaging with the strategic issues of the era, as they developed chronologically and interacted with each other. It also relates these strategies to subsequent debates about the choices made, revealing their lasting political implications.

Beginning with Appeasement and the Soviet-German pact as key strategic elements, Jeremy Black examines the impact of France's fall on the strategies of all the powers involved. He demonstrates how Allied strategy-making was more effective at the Anglo-American level compared to that with the Soviet Union, not only for ideological and political reasons but also because the Americans and British possessed a better understanding of the global dimension.

The book explores how German and Japanese strategies evolved as the war progressed unfavourably for the Axis powers. It discusses the extent to which efforts to shape the post-war world influenced Allied strategic choices from 1943 onwards and the role these played in post-war politics, particularly during the Cold War.

Strategy was not only a crucial tool for conducting the war; it remains essential for understanding it today.