This is the first study of the aims that motivated the major powers - the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, Germany and Japan - to fight in the Second World War. The book shows, in a way that has not previously been attempted, how some war aims were constants that were unlikely to be abandoned except as a result of total defeat while others arose and sometimes declined as a result of the fortunes of war. Fresh light is shed on the wartime transition of the United States and the Soviet Union to superpower status, while the author shows that consistency is most evident in Great...