THE PERIOD of the war covered in the present volume (June 1941-August 1942) is the last in which the enemy enjoyed the initiative; it is the first in which the means of victory, in men and materials, were assured to the Allies. The book begins with the German invasion of Russia and includes the entry into the war of Japan and the United States. By its close the Japanese expansion had been checked by the American victories in the Pacific; the Axis attack on Egypt had been held west of the Delta, and an Allied descent on French North Africa was impending; the German armies had failed to secure the oilfields of South Russia and were soon to meet disaster at Stalingrad. But in the meantime vast areas and important cities of the Soviet Union had been overrun; the Western Allies had paid heavy penalties for their unpreparedness in the Far East; in the Atlantic the submarine threat had not been mastered. The British bombing offensive was beginning to show results but was not yet seriously interfering with the German war effort. The volume describes the creation of an Anglo-American organization for the central direction of the war and the emergence of an Allied strategy. It shows how this strategy was based on the decision to make the defeat of Germany its first object; how it was affected by the determination to maintain the resistance of Russia, whose early collapse was held to be more than possible; and how the British and Americans at length agreed after protracted controversy on the field of their major effort in 1942.