World War II: A Military and Social History

 I finished this course a couple of weeks ago, starting it immediately after finishing the WW I course.  Overall a good course and an okay presentation.  I learned a great deal, but the most surprising had to do with Hitler's war aims.  I didn't know that Germany never fully mobilized for war, in large part due to Hitler's reluctance to impose that burden on his country after seeing its effects in World War I.  I also didn't realize that his true objectives were in the east against Russia, and that he did not want war with the western allies, and essentially backed himself into a global conflict.  The similarities between the 1918 German offensive and the December 1944 Ardennes offensive that resulted in the Battle of the Bulge were also new to me - in both cases Germany made a colossal strategic blunder squandering assets that could have been used to preserve (or achieve) a stalemate that could have permitted negotiations for a peace.  in both cases, irreplaceable assets were squandered for a tactical victory that was worthless, and opened Germany to a forced armistice in the firts war, and invasion and occupation in the second.
Childers also taught me about the difficulties that Hitler faced attempting to invade England by sea, making clear that while it was not at all clear at the time to either side, there was never any real risk of a successful invasion of England - a large scale amphibious landing was simply not possible early in the war. 
He also emphasized the effect of England's full mobilization, and I learned about how the tactical and strategic roles of the RAF were sharply different from the US air forces - something I hadn't considered before.  Britain's small land army, and its geographically protected position caused it to build air forces for a different purpose than the U.S. did.  It had better fighters sooner, and grasped earlier the role that strategic bombing might play in a general war.  I say "might" because as Childers discusses, it's not at all clear that strategic bombing was ever the war-winning tool that its advocates claimed.  It never broke the morale or destroyed the ability to make war of the nations it was used against (Britain, Germany, Japan).  While it arguably kept Germany from mobilizing more effectively than it did toward the latter part of the war, and it certainly resulted in widespread destruction in Japan, the only weapon during the war that actually destroyed a nation's ability to make war was submarine warfare against Japan, which strangled the Japanese conomy far more effectively than bombing ever did.
In the latter example, though, it is clear in retrospect (well, at least to me) than neither strategic bombing nor submarine warfare, nor even the two nuclear weapons used againt it is what actually caused Japan to sue for peace, because its military leaders continued to be steadfast in their plan to die defending Japan rather than surrender.  What caused the surrender was the Emperor's personal intervention in the matter in a cabinet meeting where he ordered his government to end the war to stop what his subjects were enduring.  had he not done so, the war would have continued.
Anyway, good set of lectures, which I enjoyed.