Belligerents conceal defeats, promote favorable accounts, and deny one another information, so even participants may misunderstand an ongoing war. Later memoirs also need contextual reading: Andrew Cunningham's account attributed intelligence successes to reconnaissance and spies while Ultra and Bletchley Park remained classified. At the start of 1944, the Italian campaign appeared a grinding struggle, Japan retained substantial naval strength, and there was no western second front against Germany. By the year's end, the Japanese navy had been crippled, Western Allied armies approached Germany, and the Soviets had shattered Army Group Centre. The speed of that change was much less obvious to participants than it appears in hindsight.
Notable Point · 1:56:53-2:00:20
Why wartime reporting and memoirs require source criticism
Contemporaries lack the hindsight later historians enjoy, while secrecy and propaganda can make even authoritative wartime accounts deliberately incomplete.