This major work transcends the conventional sub-cultures of academic history by bringing economic, social, military, and diplomatic history back together where they belong.

Allies at War represents a collaborative effort among British, American, and Russian scholars - with the Russian contributions being among the first fruits of access to Soviet archives - in which all the historians have attempted to set aside the accumulation of patriotic myth and political ideology that have characterized many Cold War studies of World War II.

Strategy, economy, the home front, and foreign policy are each studied "nationally" and in the context of the other members of the alliance. Allies at War therefore represents a pioneering attempt to see the wartime alliance as both "national" and "international" history.