General John Strawson, in this first dual biography of these two towering figures, allows us to see the history of World War II in a new and surprising way, through the prism of the characters and actions of these two major antagonists. How did their lives and experiences before the war prepare them for the fateful encounter? How did they set about conducting their grand strategic affairs for the war that spanned the globe?

After tracing Hitler's early rise to power and Churchill's many youthful political and military accomplishments before and during the Great War, Strawson takes the reader to the battlefields of Europe and North Africa as well as to Churchill's war cabinet meetings and Hitler's headquarters. He contrasts both men revealingly in their moments of defeat and victory as he retells the drama of World War II and its shifting fortunes.

The result is a provocative new look at one of the great moments of our recent past.