In 1944 Panzer Lehr was one of the most powerful divisions in the German army. It was completely mechanized and had twice the number of AFV of a normal panzer division. Having been created from the best instructors in the German panzer corps, Panzer Lehr was made up of 60 percent veterans of Russia and North Africa, with the rest eager recruits, so that the average age of a soldier in the division was only 21.5 years old. Not only that, it was one of the few units in the German army with a large complement of motorized flak vehicles. At full force, its fighting strength was reckoned to be equal to that of four standard panzer divisions.

Panzer Lehr was to be one of the key German units in the defense of France against the expected Allied invasion. General Heinz Guderian told the commander of Panzer Lehr, Fritz Bayerlein, that the division “alone must hurl the English back into the Channel. Your goal is not the coast; it is the sea.” However, until May 1, because of fear of air attack, the division was based near Budapest. When it was thereupon moved to France, it was stationed near the town of Nogent-le-Rotrou, about halfway between Le Mans and Chartres, only 80–90 miles from the town of Caen which lay just behind the Normandy beaches. On June 6, as soon as the first reports came in about Allied airborne troops landing in Normandy, Panzer Lehr was ordered to concentrate near Caen and drive the invasion into the sea. Such a journey would normally take a motorized division a few hours. However, Panzer Lehr had to fight its way along the roads of Normandy against constant air attack. Because it was desperately needed if the Germans were to have any chance of victory, Panzer Lehr couldn't take the precaution of moving only at night. The result was that it had to crawl along slowly by day, watching out for and receiving constant attacks from Anglo-American aircraft.

Chugi Kawamura was the luckiest unlucky man in World War II. He had the most dangerous job in any theater of the war, except for perhaps a kamikaze pilot. He was the captain of a Japanese oil tanker. On December 31, 1944 he set sail from Japan in the San Diego Maru bound for Singapore to bring back a load of desperately needed oil for the faltering Japanese war machine. It was a select convoy of ten merchant ships, most of them tankers, with a very large escort of eight anti-submarine vessels. The convoy, because it was made up of such prized vessels, was also able to travel at a high speed of 12 knots, a pace which had shown itself to be of great value in the Battle of the Atlantic.

For safety, the convoy hugged the Chinese coast. Upon reaching Shanghai, it was routed to Formosa. It was on this leg of the journey that the first tanker was sunk, torpedoed by a US submarine. The convoy then took refuge in the port of Takao, but it was spotted by American carrier aircraft and three more of the precious ships were destroyed on January 9. Three hundred carrier aircraft attacked in four waves, diving low so that they were only 200 yards above the huddling ships. At least ten bombs dropped close to the San Diego Maru, some only feet away, and another vessel nearby was sunk. Kawamura himself manned the anti-aircraft guns which were now standard equipment on all Japanese tankers, and he believed that he and the other gunners were responsible for shooting down a number of the American attackers. Miraculously, the San Diego Maru was not damaged.

SC 42 is one of the better-known convoys of World War II. Its story is told in many of the histories of the Battle of the Atlantic. SC were the code letters that the Admiralty assigned to convoys that were sent from Nova Scotia to the United Kingdom and 42 was the sequential number given to the convoy as it left port. SC 42 was therefore traveling on the most important trade route of the war during one of the most important times in the conflict, September 1941. It was a large convoy composed of sixty-four merchant ships with a combined total of 500,000 tons, many of which were old, slow bulk carriers carrying raw materials for Britain's factories, such as lumber, iron ore and phosphates. However, for such a large convoy it had a relatively small, if seasoned, escort force of one destroyer and three corvettes, all Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) vessels. There were also two other destroyers training in the North Atlantic at the same time which could conceivably be called upon if the convoy ran into trouble.

And run into trouble it did. As SC 42 had a top speed of only 7 knots, it was ideally suited for U-boat attacks. The importance of convoy speed had become well understood by the summer of 1941. U-boats of the Type VII class could only travel at 8 knots while submerged, so a convoy of this speed or lower could be hunted by German submarines which could remain hidden until the last possible moment. On September 9, 1941, as SC 42 was running very close to the east coast of Greenland, it crossed paths with a large U-boat wolfpack, codenamed Markgraf, at first composed of eight boats. On that evening, when the U-boats could operate on the ocean surface free from air attack and able to reach high speeds, Markgraf started to rip into SC 42’s flesh. Sometimes darting between the mostly helpless merchant ships, the U-boats sank seven vessels the first night.

The German state-sponsored histories of World War II, published in English translation as Germany and the Second World War, are remarkable achievements of scholarship. Fair-minded and detailed, they present a thorough picture of Germany at war. In one of the sections on war production the authors seemed surprised that Germany's economic effort was geared much more towards aircraft production than land armaments. They then pose a question:

It is a central question, but it is also misdirected in its assumptions. Instead of Germany spending a “conspicuously” small amount of effort on the land war, the Nazi state's efforts in this area were absolutely typical of all the major powers, with the exception of the Soviet Union. The economies of four of the five great industrial and technological powers that fought World War II were geared by large majorities towards the production of air and sea weapons. Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom (with the British Empire) and the United States all devoted between 65 percent and 80 percent of their economic output to the making and arming of aircraft, naval vessels and anti-aircraft equipment. In all cases aircraft were the single largest element of production, ranging from 30–35 percent of US munitions output to more than 50 percent in the case of the United Kingdom. When one adds the costs of developing and arming aircraft to the costs of constructing airframes and engines, these percentages jump to slightly below 50 percent for the United States and to more than half for Germany and the United Kingdom. In all, construction of air weapons also received first priority in the allocation of industrial workers and in being supplied with crucial raw materials such as aluminum. In many ways it is the allocation of aluminum that really shows the high priority given to the air war.

Adolf Hitler spent the last few weeks of his life deep underground in a very expensive complex of bunkers built to protect him from Anglo-American air attacks. (See Figure 99.) While entombed, he oscillated between episodes of rage and depression, with occasional bursts of fantastical bravado as he tried to persuade those around him, and maybe even himself, to keep up the useless struggle. On April 28, he had one of the last formal meetings that he would hold as dictator of the German state. He met with Luftwaffe Field Marshal Ritter von Greim. Hitler had just named Greim as the head of the German air force, replacing Hermann Goering who Hitler believed had tried to oust him as head of state. Greim, who remained a true believer to the end and would commit suicide not long after Germany's surrender, listened devotedly as Hitler analyzed the Luftwaffe's performance during the war. According to Greim, Hitler stated that the personnel of the Luftwaffe had fought with greater bravery than other members of the German armed forces, but they had simply been outclassed by the British and Americans. Although, or so Hitler claimed, many senior commanders had tried to hide the truth from him, he eventually realized that German aircraft and supporting technologies were simply not good enough to contend with those of the USAAF and RAF.

Two days later, Hitler shot himself.

Ernest King was a committed note-taker. He liked jotting down his impressions in almost stream of consciousness form as a way organizing his thoughts. In December 1942 he was planning for the momentous meeting of American and British grand strategists scheduled for January 1943 in Casablanca. As a note-taker, King had to be careful with his commander in chief, Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was wary about people writing down his statements in meetings and discouraged the habit. Therefore, King often recorded Roosevelt's opinions, and his own, after meeting with the President, which has left us with a fascinating record of American grand strategy that December.

On December 12, King produced a series of notes, somewhat random, certainly not pre-structured, which provides a tantalizing glimpse into his view of the Pacific war at the time and, crucially, some of Franklin Roosevelt's views. When it came to the President, he recorded one very interesting point – the amount of American effort that the President wanted sent to the Pacific war in the coming year.

This was an extremely important moment for King, as he was determined to make sure that the war against Japan received as much American production as possible. On the other hand, he was perfectly content to keep the British out of the region as much as possible. In 1942, as will be shown below, the war in the Pacific, surprisingly to some, had received the majority of American war construction. The political necessity of maintaining the American position in the region after Pearl Harbor and the great Japanese successes in early 1942 meant that the United States sent far more to the Pacific than it should theoretically have if it was truly fighting a policy of Germany-First. However, as 1942 was ending, King knew that the strategic thrust of the war was turning towards Europe.

In December 1940, after the most dramatic phase of the Battle of Britain had ended, Maurice Hankey wanted to discover just how much damage German bombing had done to British production. The long-time secretary to the Committee for Imperial Defence, Hankey had joined the War Cabinet when World War II commenced. In this role he had argued strongly, and increasingly unsuccessfully, in favor of a strategic bombing policy aimed at destroying Nazi Germany's access to oil. He also regularly argued against any bombing aimed at the destruction of German morale, viewing it as fruitless and counterproductive.

Not surprisingly, Hankey was eager to find out the precise damage that the Luftwaffe had inflicted on British industry. He asked the Ministry of Home Security to send him data on individual bomb hits on different sectors of the British economy. On December 11, the ministry replied. During the three most intense months of the Battle of Britain, when the United Kingdom was supposedly fighting for its very survival against the all-powerful and victorious Luftwaffe, exactly seventeen German bombs had caused “severe” damage (the highest damage rating) to Britain's aircraft and aero-engine production, electricity services, gas supplies, water industry, oil infrastructure and all food service industries –combined. Even more remarkably, the highest priority target of Luftwaffe bombers during the battle, Britain's docks and harbors, had not been hit by a single bomb that did “severe” damage.

When Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945, his closest wartime collaborator during the previous three years was devastated. He wrote in his private diary, beginning with a sentiment of general grief that could have been written in a mainstream newspaper. “This world tragedy deprives the Nation of its leader at a time when the war to preserve civilization is approaching its end with accelerated speed, and when a vital need for competent leadership in the making and preservation of world peace is at least seriously prejudiced by the passing of President Roosevelt who was a world figure of heroic proportions.”

Then Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, went in an entirely different direction, one that makes him stand out within the functioning of the American government, and the creation of American grand strategy, during the war. “His death is also a personal bereavement to me in the loss of a devoted friend whom I have known and admired for thirty-six years, since we first worked together in World War I.” Three days later, after Leahy had accompanied Roosevelt's body to its interment in Hyde Park, New York, the President's family estate, the admiral was once again overcome with grief. At the end of the burial he wrote about “a long day that was for me full of sad memories, and that also for me probably was my last visit to the home of my friend who will live in history as one of our greatest Presidents. He was a great gentleman and a true friend.”