The Allies Strike Back, 1941-1943 (The War in the West)

Following The Rise of Germany, the acclaimed first volume in his War in the West trilogy, James Holland has crafted a masterful and gripping narrative of the events that ultimately determined the outcome of World War II. By June 1941, Germany’s war machine looked unstoppable. The Nazi blitzkrieg had taken Poland, France, and the Netherlands with shocking speed. The Luftwaffe had bombed London, while German U-boats wrought havoc on Allied shipping on the Atlantic. And yet, as Holland shows in The Allies Strike Back, cracks were already appearing in Germany’s apparent invincibility. When the Americans entered the war in the west, Hitler was bogged down with a savage war of attrition as he attempted to invade the Soviet Union. The Allies soon stormed to victory in North Africa and escalated the bombing of Germany, fatefully turning the tides of the war and threatening the morale of the Third Reich.

With a wealth of characters from across the western theater of World War II, Holland tells a captivating story while calling on new research that challenges our assumptions and reframes our understanding of this momentous conflict.