In the First World War many battles of the Western Front had lasted many weeks or several months. All too often battles had degenerated into glacial and indecisive campaigns of national attrition. By the 1930s, however, military science had recreated the possibility of a decisive battle. An unprecedented rate of technological change meant that a stream of new inventions were readily at hand for military innovators to exploit.

Aircraft, armoured vehicles and new forms of motorised transport became available to make possible a fresh style of offensive warfare when the next European war began in 1939. A belief in the importance of effective war fighting was vital to the Nazi vision of Germany's future. Nazi Germany's political and military leaders aimed for rapid and decisive victory in battle. From 1939-45 new ideologies and new machines of war carried destruction across the globe.

In World War II: A Military History Alan Warren chronicles the sixteen most decisive battles of the Second World War from the Blitzkrieg in Poland to the fall of Berlin.

ALAN WARREN is the author of the critically acclaimed Singapore 1942: Britain's Greatest Defeat. He has been a fellow of the State Library of Victoria and has lectured in history at Monash University.