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Its Theory and Practice in the Pacific (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1951). The American air force had its 7–volume official history prepared under the supervision of Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, The Army Air Forces inWorld War II (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948–58; reprinted by the Office of Air Force History in 1983). The numerous reports of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey added enormous quantities of information on both the European and Pacific theaters, and some of them are cited in the text. These reports are also a mine of statistical and descriptive material on the economies of Germany and Japan.
    The American army’s U.S. Army in World War II set is made up of several series. That on The War Department includes essential works on planning, logistics, and the relationship with America’s allies. There are series on each of the theaters as well as on each of the services; in addition, there are special studies on such subjects as women and Blacks in the army and rearming the French. The volumes, written with great care by very capable historians, are based not only on access to American archives but systematic even if preliminary work in German and Japanese records, and were provided with citations to the documents and bibliographic essays which are of enormous value to anyone wishing to pursue a specific topic further. Many of these books are cited in the text; the more I have worked with them myself, the more favorably I have been impressed by their quality.
    The Soviet Union has published two sets of official history, and its successors are in the process of issuing a third. The problems of utilizing this material are best described in the works of Erickson and Ziemke, listed below, and it should be noted that the first two are available in German translation. Only the earlier of the Soviet sets has been translated into English and is available on film from Scholarly Resources; the volumes as a group are primarily of interest to the specialist. The sets published by the Canadian, Indian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African governments are helpful on specific campaigns, while those of Italy, China, Holland, Norway, and some others are not likely to be of interest or easy access to American and British readers. There is a most helpful introduction to the whole subject, with details on each program, in the important volume edited by Robin Higham, Official Histories: Essays and Bibliographies from around the World (Manhattan, Kans.: Kansas State Univ. Library, 1970).
    The most significant recent development in this field has been the appearance of the first volumes of the series Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg being prepared by the Military History Research Office of the German Federal Republic. Five volumes and the first part of a sixth have appeared to date, and the rest may be expected during the next few years. These massive works have been written with great care and are based not only on available German records of the war but considerable utilization of the literature of the last half century; they are also being published in English translation by Oxford University Press under the title Germany and the Second World War.
    On Germany’s role in the war, by far the best work in English is Norman Rich’s two volumes on Hitler’s War Aims (New York: Norton, 1973–74). An especially careful analysis in German is Andreas Hillgruber, Hitler Strategie: Politik und Kriegführung, 1940–1941 (Frankfurt/M: Bernard & Graefe, 1965 and later eds.). Briefer yet more comprehensive, but unfortunately not translated, is Jochen Thies’s book on Hitler’s objectives, Architekt der Weltherrschaft: Die “Endziele” Hitlers (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1976). Important source publications include the Goebbels diaries edited by Elke Fröhlich, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Sämtliche Fragmente, of whichthe part for 1924–41 has been published in four volumes and an