While the stage was set in 1918, the grand symphony of destruction began in earnest in 1939, though overtures were first heard in the Far East during the early '30s. The chief conductor and architect of aggression, Adolf Hitler, plunged the world into a danse macabre that would shatter nations and consume tens of millions of lives. And that was the Second World War.
From the first machine-gun armed tanks that crossed the Polish border in '39, to the mammoth armored creatures that defended a dying Reich, the Second World War is often remembered for its machines of war. While these machines varied from tanks, to half-tracks, to ground attack aircraft, they all shared in common the fact that they were the pinnacle of man's ingenious schemes to create mass slaughter. While many were first seen in the First World War, it would not be until the Second World War that they would truly dominate. This was also a time that the theories of such strategists like J.F.C. Fuller were put to the test.
