This book offers a unique perspective for understanding how and why the Second World War in Europe ended as it did and why Germany, in attacking the Soviet Union, came far closer to winning the war than is often understood. Conventional wisdom explains German defeat during World War II as almost inevitable, primarily for reasons of economic or military brute force created when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and entered into a two-front war. Author Steven Mercatante challenges this in highlighting how the re-establishment of the traditional German art of war, updated to accommodate new weapons systems, paved the way for Germany to forge a considerable military edge over its much larger potential rivals by playing to its qualitative strengths as a continental power. These methodologies also created internal contradictions that undermined the same war machine and left it vulnerable to enemies with capacity to adapt and build on potent military traditions of their own. The book begins by examining methods by which German economy and military prepared for war, German military establishment's formidable strengths, and its weaknesses. The author then takes a new perspective on explaining the Second World War in Europe. He demonstrates how Germany, through its invasion of the Soviet Union, came within a whisker of cementing a European-based empire that would have allowed the Third Reich to challenge the Anglo-American alliance for global hegemony. The last section explores final year of the war and addresses how Germany was able to hang on against the world's most powerful nations working in concert to engineer its defeat. The author demonstrates how closely fought the war actually was and demolishes the long-standing myth that Germany's purportedly professional war machine would have won the war but for Hitler's incompetent leadership. He explains how the Mediterranean Theater of the War represented a crucial distraction and net drain on the primary German war effort in Eastern Europe and reveals why it was the combined arms panzer division as one key bolstering German army's renaissance, not the tank itself.

Includes maps of: Germany's Expansion, 1935-1939; German and Soviet Invasion of Poland, SEP 1939; German Invasion of Western Europe, MAY 1940; Operation Barbarossa, 22 JUN to 30 SEP 1941; Battle for Moscow; Soviet Winter Offensive, 1941-1942; Operation Blue and Drive into the Caucasus; Stalingrad; Operation Uranus; Soviet Winter Campaign, 1942-1943; Battle for Kharkov, MAR 1943; Battle of Gazala; El Alamein, 22 OCT 1942; Battle of Kasserine Pass; Battle of Kursk; Soviet Advance AUG to DEC 1943; Korsun Pocket; Operations in the Ukraine, JAN to MAY 1944; Bagration; D-Day and Breakout; Battle of the Bulge; Soviet Vistula to Oder Offensive; Assult on Berlin; Allied Drive across Germany.

The German War Machine on the Eve of War : Myth versus Reality -- The Third Reich Ascendant : The Reasons Why -- Comparing the World's First Military Superpowers on the Eve of War -- History's Bloodiest Conflict Begins -- An Inconvenient Decision Confronts Germany's Masters of War -- Another Roll of the Dice -- Stalingrad in Context -- The European War's Periphery -- Seizing the Initiative : The Sword versus the Shield -- A New Perspective for Explaining D-Day's Outcome -- Hitler's Greatest Defeat -- How the Third Reich Staved Off Total Defeat during the Summer of 1944 -- End Game.