With the distance afforded by history, it may seem like the Allied win in World War II was a done deal. But, at the time — or, at least, in the earliest years of the war — things were not so certain. Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany who became the nation's chancellor in 1933, sure seemed to be on the rise. With his loudly proclaimed notions of racial purity and stated desire to gain ever more land for the German people, he set about invading neighboring nations and engaging in a campaign of European domination, as well as enabling the genocide known as the Holocaust.
Eventually, even those separated from the Nazis by great landmasses or oceans began to worry. Would Hitler make a grab for Britain ? The Soviet Union? Yes, if attacks like the Blitz and the ill-fated Operation