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.
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
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