British

The crushing defeats the Allies suffered since 1939 were beginning to take their toll on Allied morale. Even though the Battle of Britain had staved off German victory, little success had happened since then.

With the fall of Poland, thousands of POWs were taken by the German Army, and millions more before the war was over. The question of what to do with those POWs would lead to some of the worst atrocities of the war.

As the Battle of France progressed, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked fighter command for more aircraft to send to the continent. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, recognizing that nothing could be done for France, refused.

In their failed attempt to invade Greece, the Italians were driven out of Santi Quaranta, which Mussolini had renamed Proto Edda after his oldest daughter. Mussolini, embarrassed, had to ask Hitler to help his forces. In a fast moving campaign, the British were driven out of Greece and the Germans occupied Athens on April 27.

The Fall of Paris on August 25, 1944 ended the Normandy campaign, but the Allies were still dependent on the port of Cherbourg for supplies. This caused a reevaluation of the “broad front” strategy that Eisenhower followed, advancing everywhere, rather than Montgomery’s advocacy for narrow thrusts through weak points in the German lines.

Huge numbers of Allied POWs were captured by the Japanese between December 1941 and May 1942.

Deep racial hatred, led many Allied soldiers to prefer death to capture. But the large numbers of soldiers surrendered by their commanders in the Philippines and Singapore did not have much choice. They entered captivity at the start of the war, and only about half of them would leave the POW camps alive.

World War I had seen some air raids over England and Germany, but the technology was not yet available to wreak total havoc on the civilian population. The very idea of targeting a civilian population in a time of war was anathema to most of the world’s leaders.

When Italy declared war on June 10, 1940 against Britain and France, The British position in North Africa seemed hopelessly outmatched. UK Army General Percival Wavell commanded 40,000 Dominion soldiers caught between 200,000 Italian troops in Libya and 250,000 to the south in Ethiopia and Somaliland.

The rapid advance of the Japanese stunned even them. Their advance - formed by superior equipment, training, tactics, and in some cases, numbers - left the Allies confused and in disarray.