The Second World War, unlike the 1914-18 war, was remarkable in that it produced five great war leaders who dominated their countries’ political and military affairs. Most modern wars have been run by committes and rival authorities: the Second World War was uniquely different. Once the British and French governments had declared war on Germany, virtually every decision of the war was made by of these five men, except when Japan’s chaotic anarchy intervened. Five of the lectures reproduced in this book are biographical studies of the men who exercised supreme power during the war; the sixth explain why there was no such man in Japan. Each was unmistakably a War Lord, determining the fate of mankind – five astonishing assertions of the individual in what is often known as the age of the masses.