Shipping constrains Allied Strategy

29th December 1942: Churchill writes to Stalin promising "to engage the enemy with the largest numbers in the shortest time" during 1943

Churchill is amused by a ‘German prisoner’ during a visit to an Intelligence Corps exercise in December 1942.

When Churchill had met Stalin earlier in 1942 he had promised that the Allies would open a ‘second front’ in Europe in 1943. Operation Roundup - a planned amphibious assault on France - was still on the table. But the more the planners looked at …