There had never before been a war on the scale of World War II. The sheer size of the conflict and the immense scope of a single battlefield, multiplied the effects of both brilliant and bad decisions. When millions of men are attacking in a Russian offensive or thousands of aircraft are dueling in the skies over Europe, every key decision had dramatic, and often disastrous, results. The author of How to Lose a Battle and How to Lose a War introduces the catastrophic missteps, including: Poland's lack of preparation for the Nazi invasion; Germany's failure to take Britain out of the war at Dunkirk; Russia playing Goliath to Finland's David; allied forces getting trapped for four months on the beaches of Anzio; and, Germany wasting its costly development of jet power.