It's interesting that historians are still investigating and finding more details on WWII. I recall watching 'The Last Secrets of the Nazis' on the history channel and they showed how the Germans were over in Japan helping them build their arms and fighter jets shortly after WWI.
Some of the last film footage and letters gathered from various sources were compiled and shown on PBS as "The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in color" The film is available at the store section of
www.pbs.org or by calling 1-800-PLAY PBS. It doesn't cover all the battles, but it certainly gave a good overall view of what was happening in America before and during the war. One thing that I especially learned that I didn't know from many other WWII books is how the Germans held a secret deal with the Russians to help them invade Poland and share the "spoils".
A bit of info from other history authors that I've kept books on:
-Relations between Japan and America were bad in the 1930's and they were worsened when the Japanese sank an American warship, the "Panay", on the Yangtze River in 1937. This was clear violation of treaties and an outright act of war. Following this action, Roosevelt began to ban exports to Japan of certain goods that eventually included gasoline, scrap iron, and oil. It was in July of 1941, after the Japanese invaded French Indochina, that Roosevelt froze Japan's assets in the USA, halting trade and cutting off Japanese oil supplies. That particular action was later cited by the Japanese as a cause for attacking the USA.
(German and Italian assets in the USA were already frozen and their consulates were ordered closed by Roosevelt in June of 1941...a response to the sinking of an American merchant ship by a U-boat near Brazil in May of 1941)
-In October of 1941, two US Destroyers were torpedoed by U-boats leaving 111 Americans dead. At this point Hitler knows that war with the USA is inevitable.
-By late in 1941, it was more than apparent that war was coming with Japan. American and foreign diplomats in Japan dispatched frequent warnings about the Japanese mood. The Japanese diplmatic code had been broken by American Intelligence. Almost all messages between Tokyo and its embassy in Washington were being intercepted and understood by Washington.
-There is no longer any doubt that some Americans knew that "Zero Hour", as the Japanese Ambassador to Washington called the planned attack, was scheduled for December 7. They even knew it would come at Pearl Harbor. According to John Toland's account of Pearl Harbor, 'Infamy', Americans had not only broken the Japanese code, but the Dutch had done so as well, and their warnings had been passed on to Washington. A British double agent code-named Tricycle had also sent explicit warnings to the United States.
-The Yalta Conference established which countries would remain under the which allied powers. Churchill and General Patton urged for their armies to push further eastward to avoid the Russians controlling lands they were occupying, but Eisenhower and Roosevelt decided to let the lands fall to the Soviet "liberators".
In 1945, Churchill gave his speech telling the world "An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent, allowing 'police governments' to rule Eastern Europe. One war over and the next--The Cold War--was under way.
Certainly when Hitler turned on Russia, it gave Roosevelt the war he wanted. I still don't know why my relatives that fought on the European front said they would prefer to surrender to the Germans over the Russians if they had a choice. I just remember one uncle talking about the horrors of the Russian gulags.
I often wonder if the USA had taken action against the Japanese after their attack in 1937. If we had been prepared and struck back at that early time, it may have scared the Germans and Italians enough to give them serious doubts about messing around enough to rattle the USA. Tens of millions of lives could have been saved.
I've read some about the millions that lost their lives in the Ukraine, but I don't remember the details. I do recall reading articles that the USA media's foreign reporters were negligent to report it when it was happening.