Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
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I suppose that the publisher wrote the blurb, which said, "As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years?" At any rate, that opinion is surprising to me. I have never heard that viewpoint expressed before.
Germany declared war on the U.S. after Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and, I think, after the U.S. declared war on them on the next day, December 8, 1941 (interestingly, I learned just recently, that Germany had no agreement with Japan that they would do that if the U.S. declared war on Japan. Which makes you wonder why Hitler would have done it!). Perhaps the publisher had in mind December 11, when the U.S. declared war on Germany. The U.S.'s entry into the war ended up being a game changer, but at the time they were a third-rate military power in most respects and I doubt that many people thought that Allied victory in World War II was all but assured based on the U.S. joining in.
The only other possibility that I can think of is that the publisher was thinking about Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June, I think that it was, of 1941. The Soviets did eventually have a huge and effective military, but in 1941 it was far from it, at least as far as the "effective" part is concerned. All of the smart money at that time would have been bet on Germany defeating the Soviet Union and, in fact, throughout 1941 Germany conquered enormous parts of Soviet territory and looked unstoppable. Only in very early 1942 did some doubt about that arise, when Germany failed to take Moscow.
As far as why Germany continued the War when their loss was all but assured (in my opinion, probably no earlier than in 1943, with their defeat at Stalingrad and maybe as late as the Normandy invasion in 1944, when they had to start fighting a genuine two-front war) is concerned, remember that the people of Germany weren't in control. A jerk, Adolf Hitler, was and he ultimately didn't care if Germany went down with him.
Unrelated to that question, if you borrow the audiobook for a week, you're going to have to do a lot of listening fast--I noticed that the narration runs over 24 hours. If it was me, I'd put it on my wishlist--it is very highly rated. Then, I'd buy it sometime when I ran across a good deal on it.