World War Two: History in an Hour

‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace.’

The loss of Singapore was considered Britain’s worst humiliation in her military history.

During February 1942, Japanese soldiers on bicycles headed south through Malaya, forcing British and Commonwealth troops onto the small island of Singapore on the southern tip of Malaya

Hitler, too, was delighted, the lifelong teetotaller even indulging in a glass of champagne

During 872 gruelling days, until 27 January 1944, the city endured an epic siege in which approximately 1,000 civilians died of starvation and the cold each day (in all there were up to a million deaths in Leningrad – more than British soldiers and civilians throughout the war).

For the first week of the invasion Stalin suffered what is believed to be a mental breakdown, disappearing to his dacha, issuing nothing in the way of direction. When his Politburo came for him, Stalin feared he was about to be arrested. Instead, they came to ask him what to do. Once stirred, Stalin re-emerged. In his first public address since the invasion, on 3 July, Stalin spoke of ‘The Great Patriotic War’.

He also underestimated the Russians’ determination and tenacity; determination that would have existed even without Stalin’s infamous ‘Not one step back’ directive of 28 July 1942, ordering execution for the slightest sign of defeatism. Behind the Soviet front lines roamed a second line ready to shoot any retreating cowards or ‘traitors of the Motherland’. As Georgi Zhukov, one of Stalin’s top generals, said: ‘In the Red Army it takes a very brave man to be a coward.’

After Buckingham Palace had been hit, Queen Elizabeth said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed – now I feel we can look the East End in the face.’

The main thrust of Hitler’s air assault, the commencement of the Battle of Britain, began on 13 August, the ‘Day of the Eagle’, when 1,485 German aircraft attacked Britain’s coastal airfields. During the next month, the RAF and the Luftwaffe fought above the fields of south-east England in a series of dogfights where the average life expectancy of a British pilot was four to five weeks.

4 June in the House of Commons, Churchill was careful not to call the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ a victory but merely a ‘deliverance’. He continued to deliver his famous ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech, concluding with the immortal words, ‘We shall never surrender’.