Sarah Paine

In World War I, there were exactly two conferences trying to coordinate things among the Entente powers.

And they're the December 1915 and November 1916 Chantilly conferences.

And all they are are the military heads of

Well, the Russian Romanov dynasty is overthrown in early 1917.

It is too late.

What happened in World War I is the Germans focused on the Western Front in 1914, Eastern Front 1915, back to the Western Front in 1916.

Well...

In World War II, the idea is you want to squeeze them simultaneously from all fronts so they can't divert people back and forth.

And if you look at the coordination, it begins even before the United States is in the war with the ABC staff talks and then the Atlantic Conference, which yields the Atlantic Charter, which is talking about what war objectives are, unconditional surrender of Germany, and also what the post-war situation is going to look like.

And there's coordination not only among countries,

military leaders, but civil and military leaders as well.

There's a combined command of U.S.

and British forces.

We have offices in each other's capitals, but we're also coordinating with the Russians so that you're setting up not only also war termination and what post-war institutions are going to be like to hold the peace.

It's a completely different event from World War I,

When Russia falls out of the Entente because there are bread riots in St.

Petersburg and Russia could not supply its troops with adequate armaments, well, that's not going to happen in World War II.

Russia comes with a really large army.

Germany has another large army.

You've got to have a big army to deal with Germany's army.