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Max Hastings’s review (subscriber protected) of Andrew Roberts’s new book Masters and Commanders: The Military Geniuses Who Led the West to Victory in World War IIrams home the true nature of the Second World War. We think of it as a national triumph - and of course it was. Yet victory was only made possible by the immense sacrifice of Soviet troops. Four out of every five Germans killed in action died on the Eastern front. Russian losses were much higher.

A key tactical moment in the course of the war was the decision by Roosevelt and Churchill to pursue the Mediterranean strategy, attacking targets in North Africa rather than in continental Europe. Hastings writes:

Marshall admitted after the war that he and his colleagues did not understand, as did Roosevelt and Churchill, the importance of military theater: of commitments that might not be strategically decisive or even relevant, but that sustained a semblance of momentum in the Western Allied war effort.

Irrelevant victories to sustain momentum? Battles of perception? It is incredible how, on closer examination, even the bloodiest combats begin to look like confidence wars.

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