Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II

Already acclaimed as "one of the most important books ever published about World War II,"* this brilliantly written book reveals a host of previously untold stories: how the American breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple ciphers led to the defeat of Germany and caused Eisenhower not to capture Berlin, as well as why America and Great Britain agreed to employ nuclear weapons against Japan.In researching Marching Orders, Bruce Lee had access to 1.5 million pages of U.S. Army documents -- plus 15,000 pages of Japanese decrypts -- detailing Germany's most sensitive military secrets. Japanese diplomats and military attaches in Europe sent these reports daily to Tokyo, believing falsely that their ciphers could not be broken. In turn, Tokyo sent its diplomats plans for the military expansion of the Japanese Empire.In Marching Orders, Bruce Lee takes these decrypts and shows, with an overlay on wartime chronological events, what their impact was on Chief of Staff George C. Marshall (plus a handful of others) and how they influenced his strategic prosecution of the war. New light is shed on myriad issues, including the ceding of Berlin to the Soviets, the wars in Africa and on the Eastern Front, the invasion of Europe, and the atomic bombing of Japan.Challenging conventional wisdom, this book concisely documents the dreadful casualties both American and Japanese forces would have suffered in an invasion and occupation of Japan. Marching Orders demonstrates, through its interpretation of the supposedly secret communications between Japanese leaders, that Tokyo was adamant in its refusal to surrender. The difficult choices facing the Americans about how to end the war quickly are explained on a day-by-day-basis.