Holroyd Jack. The Second World War Illustrated: The Second Year: Archive and Colour Photographs of WW2

Pen and Sword Military, 2022. — 280 p.The second year was one of almost unrelieved disaster as regards the Allied cause, whilst the Germans could look back with some satisfaction on what their forces had achieved, despite some notable failings by their Italian partners. By the early summer of 1941 Great Britain was faced by a continental Europe that was even more firmly under Hitler’s control than in the dark, dismal days following the evacuation from Dunkirk and the Fall of France. When German conquests are combined with the reality of the other dictatorial governments in Europe, most of which could be described as fascist in nature – for example those of Spain, Portugal and Hungary, the prospects for Britain and its Dominions by September 1941 seemed at least as bleak as they were at the same time in 1940. The one possible glimmer of light lay with the Soviet Union, brought into the fray by Hitler’s invasion in late June, although it could hardly be said that the paranoid and unpredictable Stalin had been enjoying a war that was going extraordinarily badly. British forces in campaigns outside the United Kingdom itself had been almost uniformly unsuccessful. At first there were signs of promise, however. Both in North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, Mussolini’s adventurism, in line with his belief that the sea and its adjoining territories were Italy’s mare nostra, proved to be catastrophic. He had to be bailed out by the diversion of valuable German manpower, in North Africa notably under the capable and dynamic leadership of Erwin Rommel. Two major factors emerged in 1941 that were, eventually, to determine the outcome of the war. The first of these was the benevolent intervention of the United States. Franklin Roosevelt, the American President, decided to do almost anything but declare war against the Axis powers in Europe. The Lend Lease Agreement provided surplus, more or less obsolete, US Navy destroyers to the Royal Navy and there were almost limitless lines of credit for the purchase of American material. By mid 1941 the Americans provided, effectively, escorts to convoys as far as Iceland. The second was Hitler’s fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union. Although the Germans made staggering territorial gains and inflicted quite extraordinarily high casualties on the Russians, they failed to deliver a knock-out blow and were soon bogged down in vicious fighting with a resolute enemy that counted no cost too great to save the Motherland.