"Every conflict reaches a tipping point. More often than not, historians would vouch, that tipping point need not be anywhere near the end of an ongoing war. It could be said, before Okinawa, prior to the bodies at Iwo Jima, before the firebombing of Tokyo, prior to MacArthur's return to the Philippines, and years before Truman's early August atomic decision, Japanese defeat was sowed at Midway. Ditto that in the European theater in the aftermath of D-Day, some eleven months before the fall of the Third Reich: turning points, they were, leaving only the question of how much time, treasure,...