he territory it had gained in the blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41 and most of its Russian conquests of 1941-42. It also retained its foothold on the coast of North Africa, acquired when it had gone to the aid of Italy in 1941. The Russian counteroffensives at Stalingrad and Kursk had pushed back the perimeter of Hitlers Europe in the east. Germany or its allies still controlled the whole of mainland Europe, except for neutral Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden. The Nazi war economy, though overshadowed by the growing of Americas, outmatched both that of Britain and that of the Soviet Union except in the key areas of tank and aircraft production. Without direct intervention by the western Allies on the continent, an intervention that would center on the western Allies commitment of a large American army, Hitler could count on prolonging his military dominance for years to come. Since 1942, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been pressing his allies; U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to mount a second front in the west but the circumstances would not permit it. Americas army was still forming, and the landing craft necessary to bring such an army across the English Channel had not yet been built. Britain had begun to prepare theoretical plans for a return to the continental mainland soon after the retreat from Dunkirk, France, in 1940. The Americans started to frame their own timetable immediately after Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Less inhibited than the British by perceived technical difficulties, the Americans pressed from the start for an early invasion, desirably in 1943, perhaps even in 1942. To that end, George C. Marshall, Roosevelts chief of staff, appointed a protg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the U.S. Armys war plans division in December 1941 and commissioned him to design an operational scheme for Allied victory. Eisenhower convinced President R...
