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The Japanese began their invasion of Malaya on 8 December 1941, and very soon the British and empire defenders were in full retreat. The Japanese were initially victorious everywhere, but Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warned: “We can run wild for six months or a year, but after that I have utterly no confidence”.ġ5 February 1942: Lieutenant General Arthur Percival and staff on their way to the Singapore Ford factory to negotiate the island’s surrender with General Yamashita On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States, and the war was now truly a global conflict. The following day Congress declared war on Japan, which had also attacked British and Dutch colonial possessions. Crucially, the American carriers were at sea and so escaped, and the base itself was not put out of action. Over 2,500 Americans were killed, while the Japanese lost only 29 planes.
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Eight battleships were put out of action, and seven other warships damaged or lost. Despite warnings, the Americans were caught completely by surprise. On 7 December 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” Japanese carrier-borne aircraft attacked the US Pacific fleet at its base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/US Navy/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) The US destroyer USS ‘Shaw’ explodes during the early morning air attack on Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, near Honolulu. His intervention was decisive and he later boasted, “That we overcame this winter and are today in a position again to proceed victoriously… is solely attributable to the bravery of the soldiers at the front and my firm will to hold out…” Hitler stepped in and took personal command. It also brought the German high command to the brink of a catastrophic military crisis. On 5/6 December, the Red Army launched a counter-offensive which removed the immediate threat to the Soviet capital. But they failed to take Moscow or Leningrad before winter set in. Despite repeated warnings, Stalin was taken by surprise, and for the first few months the Germans achieved spectacular victories, capturing huge swathes of land and hundreds of thousands of prisoners. His non-aggression pact with Stalin in August 1939 he regarded as a mere temporary expedient.īarely a month after the fall of France, and while the Battle of Britain was being fought, Hitler started planning for the Blitzkrieg campaign against Russia, which began on 22 June 1941. And by conquering Russia, Hitler would also destroy the “Jewish pestilential creed of Bolshevism”. It would provide, he believed, the necessary ‘Lebensraum’, or living space, for the German people. Since the 1920s, Hitler had seen Russia, with its immense natural resources, as the principal target for conquest and expansion. June 1941: A column of Red Army prisoners taken during the first days of the German invasion