When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and other Western positions in the Asia-Pacific World in December 1941, it was unprepared to go to war with the United States and the Western Democracies generally and even realized it could not win. Its navy and air force were impressive, and its army could battle impressively against China, but Japanese small arms were terrible. Japan's tanks could not compete with their opposite numbers. The Empire's logistical base was undeveloped for modern warfare. While the Allies could produce large numbers of trained many pilots, Japan produced very few. When its elite airmen were lost at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan could not replace them. At sea, Japan built battleships when it needed more aircraft carriers. The Japanese military never even attempted to win World War II by a simple and direct plan. Its planners consistently assumed that the enemy would do precisely what they assumed and countenanced no alternative analyses of facts.

This book by dynamic scholars James Whisker and John Coe examines the short life of the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, one of the most overlooked individuals in the pantheon of leaders in the Third Reich. Born to German mercantile parents in the Baltic region of the Russian Empire, he was a student in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Deeply influenced by the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a propaganda pamphlet distributed by the tsar's secret police, he carried it to Germany, where he introduced it to Adolf Hitler. Rosenberg leaned heavily on heterodox Christian writings that challenged mainstream Christian thought. He revived interest in a variety of philosophies and individuals long forgotten, such as the cosmic dualistic Cathars and the mystic Master Eckart von Hochheim. Rosenberg came to view history from a perspective often called "Scientific Racism," which held that the history of humankind had been marked by a struggle between the Aryan race and their supposed inferiors. Race was the newest subject for the application of cosmic dualism, which is the spiritual belief that two fundamental concepts exist. Rosenberg identified the Nazis' task as creating a bulwark against Semitic influences from Europe generally and Germany in particular, and to do so by any means necessary. Rosenberg figured in a long anti-Jewish tradition in Germany, a tortured legacy that began with Martin Luther and continued through many of the prominent German figures of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Rosenberg considered his magnum opus, The Myth of the 20th Century, to be the logical successor work to Foundations of the 19th Century by the composer Richard Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Slavery has existed since the origins of written history and probably long before. It is discussed in the Hebrew Bible which set standards for enslaving persons and treatment of slaves. Excepting a few schools of philosophy, nearly all Greeks thought slavery was the natural condition of many human beings. Most important among those Greeks advocating slavery were two of humankind's greatest minds, Plato and Aristotle. Enslavement of one with a slave soul was considered just and freeing such a person was considered unjust. The Romans ignored the Greek philosophizing about slavery, but practiced it on a massive scale, frequently enslaving captives from various wars. Rome's greatest philosopher Cicero defended slavery. Rome was plagued by several servile revolts, the best known of which was led by Spartacus. Slavery was practiced throughout Europe and the Middle East following the fall of Rome. There was no racial dimension or consideration until Spain and Portugal began to enslave native aborigine in the newly discovered Western Hemisphere. To save these natives from involuntary servitude, the Church promoted importation of Africans. Following decades of profitable slave trade, England led the way in abolishing slavery. Other nations followed, including the United States, although that emancipation required a major internal war. Southern slave holders consistently defended the enslavement of presumed racial inferiors and claimed that slavery was beneficial to them. Southern slave holders produced volumes of literature supporting slavery, some of which referred to the Greek philosophers.