Taking into consideration the state of Germany's military forces on land, air and sea, as well as the fragile state of the German populace after three years of steady bombardment, this 1944 NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE article concluded that Germany's end was nigh - really, really nigh:
From Amazon:
 
"Thus on the face of it, Germany's situation is desperate. She is encircled by powerful nations that are allied against her. Her chance of creating dissension to split those allies is gone. She is being beaten on every front and in every phase of the fighting. Her last chance to win has disappeared."
Germany would fight on for another sixteen months.
"The Yank is not expert at deception, but he can change his plans rapidly. He is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed."
- so wrote one of the bewildered Japanese Army generals concerning his experiences with the American military in the Pacific. Reporting by radio from the city of Moscow, the celebrated Russian poet Vera Inber (1890 - 1972) gave an account of the difficult life lived by the civilians of Leningrad when the Nazi war machine laid siege to that city between September 8, 1941 through January 27, 1944:
"I will never forget the winter of 1941 - 42, when the bread ration was 4.4 ounces daily - and nothing else but bread was issued. In those days, we would bury our dead in long ditches - common graves. To bury your dead in separate graves, you needed fourteen ounces of bread for the gravedigger and your own shovel. Otherwise, you would have to wait your turn for days and days. Children's sleighs served as hearses to the cemetery." "At the beginning of World War II, our army was a mixture of callow boys and and domesticated men. The older men were homesick for wives and children...There were plenty of lonely wives, too, and it soon became evident that a fair number of them were committed to the belief that continence was bad for women."
Marriage vows were one of the unsung casualties of the Second World War: by 1944 many married women who hadn't seen their drafted husbands in years began producing babies; you can read about that here...
In 1943 a woman on the home front introduced a sexual component that she believed would bring an end to the problem of industrial absenteeism - click here to read about her idea...
"A mob of French-Canadian youths surged through Montreal with skull-and-crossbones sign [that read]: "Are We Cannon fodder? Do We Want Conscription? No!" Quebec province seethed with rage at Prime Minister Mackenzie King's decision to send draftees overseas."
Their father's resisted the draft some twenty years earlier...
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