Let’s begin with Paul Kennedy.
Paul, on our previous podcast on WW2 we ended the discussion in 1943. You argued that 1943 was the most important year of the war because the allies won the Battle of the Atlantic, Italy surrendered, and the Americans produced sufficient naval forces to crush the Japanese in the Pacific. Today, let’s discuss the battles of 1944 and what actions led to the ultimate Allied victories. Please set the stage for what the war looked like at the beginning of 1944.
Paul Kennedy
Topic: The Allied Conquest of Japan
Bio: Author and historian at Yale University
Reading: Victory at Sea is here
Opening Remarks:
Nineteen forty-four was when the three great allied movements against the axis all took place. On the Eastern front, there was the largest ever Red Army offensive called Operation Bagration, which buckled the Nazi held front in Eastern Europe. In 1944, the allied navies had chiefly pulled out of the Mediterranean, apart from bombarding around the Angio landings, because they were preparing to put all of their amphibious assets into the D-Day operation in Normandy in June 1944. In the Pacific under Nimitz, moving towards a big showdown with the Japanese Navy at the great Battle of the Philippines Sea, which we sometimes call the great Mariana's Turkey shoot because of the losses there.
