An Army at Dawn

"From a distance of sixty years, we can see that North Africa was a pivot point in American history, the place where the United States began to act like a great power—militarily, diplomatically, strategically, tactically. Along with Stalingrad and Midway, North Africa is where the Axis enemy forever lost the initiative in World War II. It is where Great Britain slipped into the role of junior partner in the Anglo-American alliance, and where the United States first emerged as the dominant force it would remain into the next millennium." 

Here, Atkinson puts forward his dominant thesis that the Allied North African campaign was a key inflection point—not only in World War II but also in America's growth as a global superpower, supplanting and surpassing Great Britain in terms of influence and military strength. 

"In solidarity with their Japanese ally, Hitler and Mussolini quickly declared war on the United States. It was perhaps the Führer’s gravest miscalculation and, as the British historian Martin Gilbert later wrote, 'the single most decisive act of the Second World War.' America would now certainly return to Europe as a belligerent, just as it had in 1917, during the Great War." 

While the Pearl Harbor attack dragged the United States into war with Japan, war between the US and Germany wasn't necessarily inevitable. Whether the US would have entered the war in Europe without Hitler's declaration is among the most hotly-debated questions surrounding World War II.

"The president had made the most profound American strategic decision of the European war in direct contravention of his generals and admirals. He had cast his lot with the British rather than with his countrymen. He had repudiated an American military tradition of annihilation, choosing to encircle the enemy and hack at his limbs rather than thrust directly at his heart. And he had based his fiat on instinct and a political calculation that the time was ripe." 

From this view, Roosevelt's decision to land in North Africa first rather than invade Europe from the English Channel was shrewd and courageous, given opposition from top military advisors. In addition, this quote speaks to the recurring theme that many of the North Africa campaign's most consequential decisions—both good and bad—were dependent on individual men's instincts and egos.