The concept of an earth that is round rather than flat is supposed to be generally accepted, but is implications for history – as opposed to navigation – are not always recognized. The Second World War is all too often looked at as if the world were a cube. One side of the globe is examined after another, one theater is reviewed after the next, and in the process the interrelations between them are all too often overlooked. This is particularly true of the European and Pacific theaters, which are usually dealt with quite separately, only the barest mention being made of the interconnected character of global war. But when we do this, treating war on one side of the globe as a sort of appendix to the other or alternating mechanically between them, we hide from our vision key aspects of all theaters of war and make it impossible to understand significant features of the conflict.