ABSTRACT
The Second World War marked two distinct breaks in the declared subject matter of this book. First, it was no longer (if it ever had been) realistic to consider Europe in isolation: the United States emerged as one of the two dominant arbitrators in European military affairs. Secondly, it finally became impossible to consider the operations of armies independently of those of air forces or even of navies. Both these trends were confirmed after 1945. Politically, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1949 tied America’s defence policy to that of Western Europe. Militarily, the challenge to the preeminence of armies by the theorists of strategic bombing seemed finally to have succeeded with the advent of nuclear weapons. A discussion of warfare that centred on European armies was in danger of deliberately excluding the major issue.
