Munich Shuffle Volume III: January 1943 - January 1944

As 1943 began the tide of the war had firmly turned against the Axis powers. Preparations were gathering pace In Britain for Operation Millenium, the amphibious assault against the beaches of Normandy that would either set the Western Allies on the road to Berlin or leave the fate of Europe to be settled on the battlefields of the Eastern Front. Even with this looming threat in the west Adolf Hitler had not yet given up on his ambitions to destroy the USSR and he was intent on one more offensive against the Red Army, even as a cabal inside the Reich finally concluded that Germany could only survive if the Fuhrer were removed. Italy was stumbling towards civil war as its people turned on the Germans and each other. The noose was also tightening around Imperial Japan as the forces of the British Empire advanced across South East Asia and the American pushed on across the Pacific. Both were aiming to bring the war to the Japanese Home Islands, even as the two allies views of the future of Europe and Asia diverged ever more sharply.
The question that began to dominate thinking in Washington, Moscow and London was not if the war could be won, but who would shape the peace when it was over?