Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, American ground troops saw virtually no action for almost a year.  It was not because President Roosevelt or the American public were unw...

Seizing Vichy controlled Morocco and Algeria had provided the American war effort with a safe start.  But the greater reward and the greater risk lay in taking Tunis.  It was only 100 mil...

Roosevelt had launched America’s war effort with an invasion of North Africa because it offered an easy, safe start.  Critics had argued that it committed the US to a broader war strategy—...

With North Africa secured and Sicily—the stepping stone to Italy—conquered, the Allied forces launched their invasion of Italy on 3 September 1943.  It began with British forces skipping a...

For two and a half years, the Russians had begged for a second front, a cross-channel invasion into France.  For just as long, the Allied forces had delayed.  First, the priority had been...

The Allied breakthrough at St. Lô turned the slugfest into a foot race.  The Allied armies, especially General George Patton’s Third United States Army, moved at breakneck speed across the...

During the summer of 1944, while British and American troops stormed through France toward the German border, Soviet armies swept just as rapidly toward Germany from the east. Between June and Augu...