Sublime

Until reinforcements arrived, Washington was woefully shorthanded. He had fewer than 9,000 men, with 2,000 too sick to enter combat. Meanwhile, he steeled himself for the advent of 17,000 German mercenaries who would form part of a gigantic expeditionary force—the largest of the eighteenth century—that might total 30,000 soldiers. When this first

“cliometrics” or economic history.

The invasion was ultimately a success for the paratroopers, though almost six thousand German men had been killed or wounded in action. Even Winston Churchill was impressed. “The German Air Corps represented the flame of the Hitler Youth Movement and was an ardent embodiment of the Teutonic spirit of revenge for the defeat of 1918,” he wrote. “The