The liberation of Europe and defeat of the Third Reich is an epic story of courage and calamity, of miscalculation and enduring triumph. Sixty years after America joined the struggle, Atkinson shows why no modern reader can understand the Allied victory without a grasp of what unfolded in North Africa in 1942-943, where American officers learned how to lead, soldiers learned how to hate, and an army learned what it takes to vanquish a formidable enemy.