1941 ; PART TWO

I wonder if it is worth carrying on with this blog, for it seems, no it's true, that it is ignored. Oh, sure, I know that I'm a new kid on the blog, and am just feeling my way around, but faced with such a total lack of interest makes me think that I'm in the wrong place. However ...

1941 : PART TWO.

And in the east, the picture was as gloomy, if not more so, for although she was deeply mistrusted ; her every motive subjected, rightly, to suspicious scrutiny, much was hoped of mighty Russia when Hitler turned his rapacious gaze eastwards. Here, it seemed, must the all-conquering Nazi hordes meet their final nemesis, and that in short order.

But instead, the Red Army was soon seen to be as hollow and as impotent an edifice as the British Empire, its power a cruel illusion, for it too was swept aside with ease and contempt by the Nazi onslaught. Unit after unit was put to flight in disorganised panic, then surrounded, and those not slaughtered led off in their hundred thousands to a captivity more merciless and lethal than that endured by the Allied captives of the Japanese.

Such was the dire situation that faced the Allies in 1941, and on every hand the horizon was uniformly black, and slow as it was to dawn, the realisation was finally grasped that this war was to be like no other in history. With the Axis powers in control of vast areas of the globe, there could be no set-piece battle to wrest it from them : no Blenheim or Waterloo, nor even the bloodbaths of the Great War to curb their overweening ambitions. This war was to be a long, bloody, infinitely costly and gruelling uphill slog whose duration none could foresee.

But Fate had placed in positions of ultimate power in the democracies two men of clear sight, a sound grasp of history, and dogged determination ; Roosevelt, the crippled, subtle, wise and devious President confined to a wheel chair, and Churchill. Churchill, that tempestuous and ambitious Puck of a man ; the drunkard, braggart and bully, a man – many thought – totally unfitted to lead a great nation and its empire in war.

And in the east, a merciless and murderous tyrant, whose word was law, and who was fully prepared to sacrifice his subjects by the million to expel the German violator of Russia’s sacred soil. And in this aim, his downtrodden subjects concurred eagerly, for whatever miseries and slaughters their rulers might impose upon them, patriotism, and love of their native land is an inseparable part of the Russian psyche

Whatever his many and manifest shortcomings, Churchill, this descendent of Marlborough, the victor of so many European battles, had one priceless attribute : the power to inspire the immutable will to resist in others ; to induce them to fight on in a lost cause.

The sheer power of his personality, and the magic of his tongue held Britain and her empire together until the limitless manpower of Soviet Russia could be brought to bear, and the economic might of America could come to full flower, and her vast male population be brought under arms. But even so, the voices of defeatism and appeasement nearly toppled Churchill from power ; with what consequences one cannot imagine.

This war was also radically different from others in one major respect, for it was not fought, as so many before it had been, for access to resources : nor to enslave indigenous populations ; nor for territorial aggrandisement. Rather it was a true cassus belli – a just cause – for, however imperfect the were, the forces of justice and humanity were arrayed against those of injustice and inhumanity ; of compassion against pitiless cruelty.

Armed with this conviction, the men of all nations took up arms against the Hydra-headed monster of the Axis powers. They fell in their millions, my own eldest brother among them ; these men of many disparate nations, most of whom were not men but fresh-faced boys, cut down in the dawn of their manhood.

They gave lives that had not yet truly begun, that evil should not prevail over virtue ; to liberate their fellow humans from a slavery such as the world had never seen. British, colonial and American boys fought and died in European lands of which they had known little or nothing, to extirpate forever an implacable, industrial-scale murder machine.

By our forgetting, or worse, our denigration and dishonouring of their memory, we insult the memory of those who died that we might have the freedom, if we choose, to pour scorn on their courage, and question the wisdom or the morality of their struggle we should never forget their sacrifices, lest we fall into the trap of re-enacting that history which, in our arrogance and folly, we have forgotten.© Terry Flower 2007

1941 ; THE MOST PERILOUS YEAR IN HUMAN HISTORY. PART ONE

Part One.
In this era of media-generated terror of ‘ rogue states ’, ‘The Axis of Evil ’, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. it is salutary to look back to a time when the world stood in greater peril than at any time in human history. Perhaps then we shall gain a truer perspective on current events.

That grim year of 1941 was the most perilous and dismal year in the entire history of the world : fraught with the shock of bitter and humiliating defeat ; of setbacks, alarms and unexpected incursions it was truly the hinge of fate year.

It was a year in which the world stood trembling upon the brink of an abyss ; a chasm that was entirely new in human history, for once fallen into there could be no scrambling out until many generations had passed ; if ever. It stood poised at the fringe of new Dark Age, this made more sinister by the perversion of science and technology, harnessed to the waging of exterminatory war ; war on a scale that had never before been witnessed on earth.

The complacency of the democratic powers in the face of the growing power of the dictatorships ; their unrealistic belief in their ability to overcome the territorial ambitions of evil men, had sown the seeds of a bitter harvest that the Allies were now reaping in full measure. For on every hand their aspirations had been set at naught by superior strategy and tactics, and an iron will to succeed.

Gazing upon the utter ruin of every project to which they had set their hands, it seemed to many in that awful year of 1941 that all must be lost ; that to continue the war would surely be futile. In many quarters the siren voice of surrender, and further appeasement was heard anew – and in greater strength – for what hope of victory now remained? Even as a boy of ten, I was fully aware of the bitter reek of disillusionment and defeatism.

Czechoslovakia and Poland had ceased to exist as a sovereign nations : and Scandinavia and most of mainland Europe now lay under the Nazi yoke ; Russia’s vast armies, upon which so many hopes had been pinned, were now a demoralised rabble, either in retreat or already captive by the million. It would take an unconscionable time for her limitless reserves of manpower to be brought into the fray.

German forces had ignominiously expelled the British from Greece, and a handful of her parachute troops, had – albeit with great loss – also booted them out of Crete. In North Africa, Rommel’s Afrika Korp had taken the fortress of Tobruk, put the British and Imperial forces to flight, and stood at the very gates of Cairo. The portal to the vital oilfields upon which Britain depended so heavily stood ajar.

At sea, shipping losses to U boats and German aircraft had reached an unsustainable level, and Britain, it seemed to many, was in imminent danger of being starved into submission. The sinking of the new battleship Prince of Wales and the obsolete Repulse by a mere handful of Japanese bombers had shown the awful vulnerability of surface ships to air attack, and Britain’s mighty fleet was confined to its historical role of blockade. But, lethal as it is, blockade is a weapon slow to take full effect.

Of little tactical or strategic effect, but a profound psychological and moral blow was the sinking by a single shell of the pride of Britain’s fleet H.M.S. Hood.
In the Far East, the situation was equally catastrophic, for relatively small forces of despised, bespectacled little yellow men on bicycles had brushed aside with contempt all who had been thrown against them. Of even greater moral effect was the loss of the ‘ impregnable ’fortress of Singapore.

Like dominoes, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, the Philippines and whole strings of islands fell to the Japanese. Driven from the main islands of the Philippines to the fortress of Corregidor, America was forced to yield even this tiny toehold, and her soldiers set out upon the death march into years of servitude as starved and beaten coolies for their merciless captors.
to be continued.

Duh!

Silly me! Got caught up in all this info stuff, so forgot the poem ...

Endless Night.

All was done,
the last word said,
and I stood in my
window, and I
watched you go.

You paused at the
corner, in a wash
of light from a
street lamp.

Your hair was gold,
and your coat a red
flame in the night.

You looked up once;
your face a pale blur,
through rain streaked
glass.

It seemed to me that
your eyes met mine,
in a final glance.

I clung to the moment,
Winter filling my soul.
You turned then and
you walked away.

I felt my heart begin
to die within me, as
I began my journey
into endless night
THE END

Copyright Terry Flower 1998

Hi everybody/amybody/somebody

Hi, I'm a fugitive from a pay-up-front-site, that finally bored me out of my skull, with the same old ( mainly religious and political stuff ) recycled ad infinitum. I also have a blog on Yahoo360, which is about to wind up.

So, here I am, trying out this site, on which I hope to make many friends. I'll certainly guarantee you a nicely varied diet, and to start with, here's the first poem that I ever wrote, and had published.

No, no, I shan't bombard you with incomprehensible, verbless so called poetry. Promise!

Er, just 'cause my name's Ariel, don't go calling me sweetie, darling, and such, 'cause I'm not a gal, but a guy.