WORLD WAR II

Why did every major offensive in World War II eventually grind to a halt? Not at an impenetrable line of defence, but at the hard boundary of logistics.

The Reach rewrites our understanding of the Second World War by anchoring every campaign-from Barbarossa and the Atlantic U-boat wolf packs to the strategic air offensive and the final push into Germany-in the unglamorous, inescapable arithmetic of tonnage, fuel consumption, railway gauges, and port capacity.

German "Blitzkrieg" was an improvised gambler's throw; the mighty German army walked and pulled its artillery with 600,000 horses; Soviet railways required physical conversion gauge by gauge; and American industrial might crossed oceans not just with tanks, but with hundreds of thousands of lorries and portable coral-lagoon fleet bases.

Stripping away nationalist myth, post-war apologism, and technological fetishism, Cornelis van Houte demonstrates a single governing rule of the twentieth century: Production only counts where it arrives.

• 100 concise, evidence-driven facts cutting through conventional historical narratives.
• Redefines strategy: Why logistics is the numerator and denominator of military power.
• Reevaluates turning points: From the real cause of the freeze outside Moscow to the bookkeeping reality of the "Speer miracle," the U-boat air gap, and the true cost of strategic bombing.