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.