The Second World War ended well over 60 million lives in six of the most horrific and brutal years in history. Today, we remember the war's beginning, exactly seventy years ago this September, mostly from the perspective of the German war machine's blitzkrieg across Poland. However, what is often forgotten is that even a tyrant such as Hitler still sought political cover for his war of expansion and extermination in Eastern Europe.

Following D-Day the Allied campaign to liberate France is often regarded as anticlimactic. What is often forgotten however, is that July of 1944 proved an anxious time for the Allied leadership. By July of 1944, enormous political pressure was mounting within the western democracies as the Allied military machine had bogged down in Normandy. Real fears regarding a return to the horrors of World War One style trench warfare swept through the Allied command.