Book Description

World War II Turning Points is an alternative history of mankind's most crucial military struggle. As such, it does not regurgitate the same, all-too-familiar versions of the past, consistently repeated by mainstream scholars since 1945. Instead, this unconventional revision is the result of newly-discovered and often neglected information about the sometimes obscure men, bizarre weapons, under-appreciated decisions, forgotten blunders and near misses that really determined the course and outcome of the Second World War. The author, a U.S. Department of Defense feature writer, whose published articles have appeared in military magazines here and abroad, combines a lifetime of research and world travels to offer an unprecedented panorama of the 20th Century's pivotal conflict. It opens with the war's single most fateful factor; namely, Allied success in breaking the Axis diplomatic and military codes. From the opening of hostilities in 1939 until the death of Reinhard Heydrich, more than three years later, Wehrmacht forces were everywhere victorious. But with the killing of their security chief, British cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, in southeast England, finally gained unrestrained access for all top secret transmissions in the Third Reich. Results were immediately forthcoming. These previously unknown events were the real if invisible turning points behind the more famous battles at places like Midway or Stalingrad. Accordingly, World War Two Turning Points shows how the international conflict was a contrast, even a struggle between Allied inevitabilities and Axis lost opportunities. Less of one or more of another by so much as a subtle degree could have decided hostilities different from their historic conclusion.