Photo: Stukas in formation in April 1940 ... Churchill decided to retaliate by bombing Berlin. Fear of aerial bombing had gripped 1930s Europe. In the spring of 1939, Whitehall predicted an ...

Red Army soldiers, locked in a mighty tank and infantry battle in the “Oder quadrilateral” (the big bend in the river near Frankfurt), could see the pall of smoke that hung over Berlin.

Moreover, the Battle of Britain started soon and it was immediately revealed that the RAF’s resources were drastically insufficient. By the middle of 1940 Britain had lost half of its front-line ...