Strategy — the real thing, or Grand Strategy if one prefers — is stronger than tactics. Having picked the wrong allies and the wrong enemies in both world wars, Germany could not redeem strategic error with its many and splendid tactical victories — even the defeat of both the Red Army and the D-Day landings in 1944 would only have ensured that the first fission bomb detonated in Berlin instead of Hiroshima. While a sound strategy requires only tactical adequacy, tactical success simply does not break through to the strategic level; indeed, if one fights the wrong war, good tactics actually make things worse, by encouraging persistence, while brilliant tactics are even worse, inducing an ever greater waste of resources in hopeless places.