(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – A University of Illinois history professor has written a new book about World War II, 1942, When World War Two Engulfed the Globe. Peter Fritzsche says he wanted to find the drama as seen through the prism of that year.

“You have sacrifice, and you have heroism, but you also have a tawdry story, so that some observers say the closer you get to the battlefield, the closer you get to the victory lines, the more everything looks like a defeat.

“There are plenty of soldiers who want to just go home, who desert.”

As he put it, you take a step back and look at the forest … and you take a step forward and look at the trees.

In 1942, the first full year the U.S. was involved, the war’s outcome was in doubt.

“The Germans and the Japanese thought they were fighting for freedom as much as the Americans and the British did, and each of these blocs featured second fronts and cross-cutting fronts,” Fritzsche said, “as individuals and groups inside the Axis and inside the Allies tried to furthered their own interests and their own ideas of freedom and independence, and it’s all these cross cutting fronts that create a huge drama.”

Fritzsche has written other books, but this one, he says, took him the longest – fifteen months.