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1942: The Allies Held Firm

Children and young people throughout the country were encoured to do their part to help the war effort.

To the allies, the winter of 1941-2 must have seemed bleak indeed. Hitler controlled almost the whole of continental Europe. The British were isolated and reeling from the effects of aerial bombardment. In the North Atlantic, German U-Boats were sinking huge numbers of ships and the vital supplies and materiel they carried. On the Eastern Front, although the Red Army and its strongest ally, the Russian winter, held the Wehrmacht at bay, the Germans still had sufficient resources to mount a new offensive, as soon as the spring thaw softened the frozen ground. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps, under the dashing leadership of Erwin Rommel, was pushing the Allied forces closer and closer to the strategic lifeline of the Suez Canal.

In Asia, the situation was even worse. With the U.S. Fleet temporarily emasculated, there was almost nothing and no one to prevent the Japanese from devouring large stretches of territory at will. The Malayan peninsula fell within six weeks, leaving Singapore at the mercy of the invaders. The 60,000-strong British garrison, with no water and inadequate supplies, surrendered with barely a whimper; Churchill called it Britain's greatest military disaster. Thailand and Burma fell almost as rapidly, leaving India exposed to Japanese attack.

The Allies had seriously underestimated the Japanese Navy and the accuracy of the pilots flying from its aircraft carriers. In February, during the Battle of the Java Sea, an entire Allied fleet of Australian, U.S., and Dutch ships was destroyed. The Dutch East Indies fell and Japanese forces pushed across New Guinea, leaving Australia vulnerable; there were air raids on the northern city of Darwin. U.S. forces could do nothing to help, because their supply lines had been cut and they were fighting a rearguard action in the Philippines.

General Douglas MacArthur's defenders were trapped on the Bataan peninsula, unable to hold a tenacious and skillful attacker. President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to Australia, where he made his promise that "I shall return," but his men continued their defense in increasingly atrocious conditions. In May 1942 the Philippines fell, but not before the defenders had created their own chapters in military history with the Bataan Death March and actions like the heroic defense of "the Rock" on Corregidor island.

We shall never know exactly how close the world came to a modern Dark Age, nor how clearly the megalomaniacs in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo could smell victory in the early months of 1942, but there is little doubt that the free world was staring into the abyss.

That summer Allied prospects looked even worse. On the Eastern Front, the German army, revitalized by the warmth of the sun, was advancing again. The redoubtable Winston Churchill was under pressure in Britain after the fall of the strategic stronghold of Tobruk in North Africa. And in the Pacific the Japanese were consolidating their conquests, which, in terms of surface area, represented the biggest empire the world had ever seen.

But, crucially, the three major Allies held firm. Moscow hadn't fallen, Britain was still the key bridgehead into Europe and bulwark of Western freedom, and, perhaps most critically of all, the mightiest weapon of the war was in high gear: U.S. industry. Every day that American factories and farms produced weapons and food, the balance of the war tilted in the Allies' favor.

Early in 1942, President Roosevelt had set unimaginably high production targets for the war effort. He asked for 125,000 planes, 75,000 tanks and 8,000,000 tons of shipping by 1943. The factories met the targets. By the end of the war, over a quarter of a million planes had been constructed. In 1940 Henry Kaiser's California shipyards took 355 days to build and deliver a ship; by early 1942 that time had been cut to just 69 days.

Industrial output on this scale had a significant impact on society. People had to move in vast numbers to man the factories. And, significantly, much of that "manning" was done by women for the first time. Twelve million Americans served overseas during the war, while 15 million of their fellow citizens moved home during the same period. For many civilians, spared the horrors of active duty or the threat of aerial bombardment or occupation, it was a time for change, even adventure, as the world offered new challenges and opportunities. Although the war years didn't bring immediate emancipation for American women, for many they did bring new responsibilities and a chance to assert their independence. However, for many American minorities, the war was a time of hostility and continuing denial.

The second half of 1942 brought significant turning points in the war, each of which was of enormous strategic and psychological importance. The first was the Battle of Midway, on June 4-7, 1942. The commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, Admiral Yamamoto, knew that this would be the crucial naval battle of the Pacific war. He assembled an invasion fleet of over 140 ships to capture Midway Island, the most westerly U.S. possession in the Pacific. He planned to engage significant numbers of U.S. warships and destroy them, to invade the island and thus create a stepping stone for the subsequent conquest of Hawaii. Yamamato's plans were extremely complicated and he made several tactical errors, but, most significantly, his U.S. counterpart had a secret "ace-in-the-hole." Admiral Chester Nimitz was a shrewd tactician and had at his disposal ULTRA intelligence information, which - unknown to the Japanese - revealed Yamamoto's plans for Midway. When the Japanese attacked, Nimitz was ready for them.

Crucially, U.S. Navy dive-bombers caught the Japanese aircraft carriers while their planes were refueling and rearming on deck and, in an audaciously brave and costly attack, sank three of them; a fourth went down the next day. The Americans lost the carrier Yorktown, but Yamamoto had seen enough and turned away. In that moment, Japan's almost unblemished naval record suffered its first defeat and the tide began to turn against Japanese military expansion in Asia.

The second turning point was not of equal strategic significance, but for the beleaguered British it was the psychological fulcrum of the war. Britain had been isolated for over two years. Its armed forces had suffered a series of embarrassing defeats. Its towns and cities had suffered the terror of constant aerial attack, and the deprivations of rationing, blackouts and shortages had sapped the morale of the civilian population. To a disillusioned few, even Churchill's great oratory was beginning to sound hollow, his bravura more like bluster than bravery. He needed a victory.

It came in the North African desert and was provided for him by "Britain's George Patton:" General Bernard Montgomery, known to all as "Monty." Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, only fifty miles west of Alexandria, was on the brink of overrunning Egypt. But Monty always picked his ground and, after holding the line, launched a counter-attack on October 23, 1942, at El Alamein. Rommel was in Germany for medical treatment; the Afrika Korps was overwhelmed and began retreating across the Libyan desert. Rommel's return could not halt the withdrawal and then, on November 8, in Operation Torch, a major Allied force landed in Morocco and Algeria. In September 1939, church bells had been silenced in Britain, to be rung only to warn of an invasion. Now, over three years later, they were rung again, not to warn of an invasion, but to celebrate a long-awaited victory.

1942 ended with yet more significant Allied success. After victory in the Battle of Midway, U.S. strategy turned towards the recapture of territory. The first crucial engagement was at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, where, after two major naval encounters and a land battle that lasted into February 1943, the Japanese were defeated and the Allies' journey to Tokyo began. It was to be a long and tortuous road, washed with the blood of thousands of casualties on both sides.

Stewart Binns & Adrian Wood. 1942: Staring Into The Abyss. . Sevenoaks Limited. 2001.

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