Three years ago, I set out to write a book about World War II, which is a bit like Christopher Columbus setting out to discover Portugal. Global bookshelves are filled with scholarly narratives of the war, and most are so thoroughly comprehensive they leave no stone unturned.
But therein lies their drawback. While such 700-page tomes are certainly well-suited for military history enthusiasts, they are beyond daunting for scores of other readers, particularly those keen to understand the broader brush strokes without esoteric analyses of Charlie Company’s assault on Hill 123 or the climbing speed of the Messerschmitt 109E.
The research for this work was painstaking, exhilarating, and far more enlightening than I expected.
To borrow a bit from Winston Churchill, never before has one person who thought he knew so much come to realize how little he actually knew. The unfathomable courage on the battlefields was little surprise, but other aspects of the war were a revelation, even to this self-described World War II junkie. I’ll save the larger storylines for the book, but among the countless pieces of history I learned on this journey, here are some fascinating snippets that merit a greater spotlight.
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