ABSTRACT
In 1945 Germany suffered the complete military collapse and occupation by foreign armies that it had avoided in 1918. Thus ended its career as the major revisionist among the great powers after a second and much more destructive world war. In the process of its ultimate defeat, the Germany army had nonetheless achieved military feats recently deemed unimaginable. Its combined-arms operations transformed the prosecution of war on land, due to reforms in doctrine and weaponry adopted between the wars. Germany’s bombing campaign against Britain, however, was defeated by the extraordinarily effective innovations British governments had made in air defence. This air defence kept Britain in the war and enabled it to contest German control of Europe with limited offensive operations, even as it fought a defensive battle against German submarines. In the Pacific, meanwhile, the revolutionary changes to naval air power made by the United States and Japan made the war an especially dynamic naval and maritime conflict. Once the United States entered the war in Europe, the close cooperation of the political and military leadership of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States ended in the complete destruction of their adversaries.
