The 20th century, year after year

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The year 1941 was the beginning of four long years of trials and tribulations for the Soviet people. Nazi Germany was busily preparing an invasion and Josef Stalin was being increasingly tipped off about German military concentrations along the border. In an encoded message from Tokyo received on May 15, the Soviet agent Rikhard Zorge informed that the Germans would attack on June 22 but Stalin dismissed all those warnings as British attempts to play him off against Hitler. He had no doubt, that the Nazis were preparing for war, though, and was speedily rearming the Red Army, but he was eager to put off the war hoping that Hitler would not attack without an ultimatum. That's why Stalin was putting off until the very last moment a mobilization order. Hence the speedy German advance with truly catastrophic results for the Soviet Union. By mid-July, the Germans had advanced by more than 400 miles and before the onset of winter they had already come within a firing distance of Moscow and Leningrad. Successful as the start of the 1941 campaign was for the Germans, however, the very decision to attack the Soviet Union was maybe the biggest mistake ever made by Hitler. With an unvanquished Britain still looming ominously behind his back, it was absolutely foolhardy for Hitler to go to war with a country so immensely rich in natural and human resources as the Soviet Union. It quickly became clear that the blitzkrieg the Germans were staking on had fallen through. The Nazi troops became hopelessly bogged down in Russia and the major Soviet counteroffensive in December dashed whatever hope Hitler had for an early end to the 1941 campaign…

After five long months of continuous retreats from the advancing German divisions, the Red Army was now standing with its back to Moscow all ready for the final showdown. The Germans could already see through their binoculars the golden domes of the Moscow churches. The turnaround came in late November with a large-scale Soviet counteroffensive prepared and directed by the outstanding Soviet General Georgy Zhukov. It tumbled back the exhausted German divisions, lapped around their flanks and created a critical situation thus averting a direct threat to the capital. On December 6 the Soviet troops struck the advance German positions. The Nazis fought hard but eventually had to fall back for they had neither the clothing nor the equipment for a Russian winter military campaign. Later that same month Hitler was compelled to order his troops to take up suitable winter lines. The failure of the winter campaign and the removal of several top generals furnished Hitler with much-desired scapegoats and opened the way for him to take over direct command of the Army.

The German attack on the Soviet Union was the beginning of the anti-Hitler coalition. In August, the US President Franklin Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter and, on October 1, the first trilateral agreement where the United States and Britain agreed a long list of items, including aircraft, tanks, raw materials and food they were going to ship monthly to the USSR. The first joint Anglo-Russian war effort was the occupation of Iran meant to prevent the its possible rapprochement with Germany.

On December 7, the Nazi-allied Japan dispatched a naval task force to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, then the main base of the US Pacific Fleet. About 350 aircraft from the six carriers of Vice Admiral Nagumo Chuichi's striking force delivered a devastating surprise attack sinking five and heavily damaging three US battleships which constituted the core of the US naval presence in the Pacific. The attack was a real tragedy for the American people. On the same day, the Japanese troops, advanced on the British colonies of Malaya and Burma bringing a vengeful United States, together with Britain and its dominions, into the war. Germany and Italy responded by declaring war on America...

On June 4 the former German Emperor William II died in Holland where he had been living since his abdication and subsequent emigration in 1918. He tried unsuccessfully to prevent the outbreak of WW1 and Adolf Hitler, who took over in 1933, never hesitated to unleash the Second World War…

Also in 1941 a plane, piloted by the record-setting British woman aviator Amy Johnson, crashed into the English Channel. In 1930 Amy Johnson took only nine days to hop over from Britain to Australia and, two years later, she established a world speed record flying from Britain all way down to South Africa .

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.

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