In most treatments of World War II, attention is centered on Germany and Japan for the early stages of the conflict, and then attention shifts to the Allies as they strove for victory in the second half of the war. From a perspective which looks backward rather than forward, the choices of the Germans and the Japanese in the latter portion of the war are seen as purely defensive. In fact, one might be tempted to think that the Germans and Japanese were fighting in the last two years of the war as if they had nothing better to do. There appears to be a general assumption that Germany, the focus of attention here, was continuing to fight because, unlike its European allies like Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland, its leadership had no objective at all: the others all tried to get out of the war, only Germany seemed determined to go down in flames.

This perspective on the last stages of the war in Europe is excessively tainted with hindsight. On the one hand, it assumes that all was settled and sealed with the turning of the tide in 1943; on the other, it not only assumes that the Allied coalition was bound to hold together and that the Germans were bereft of all prospects of victory but also that the latter actually so saw themselves, having no concepts of their own but the simple – and terrible one – of fighting on to the bitter end.