Just Finished Reading: 1941 – Armageddon by Richard Collier (FP: 1981) [316pp] 

1941 was a bad year for the Allies. Despite success in the Battle of Britain, England was still being regularly bombed. In North Africa Rommel was recovering land given up by the Italians and gaining more by the day. Allied forces had been ejected from Greece and Crete (which was the graveyard of the German airborne forces) that couldn’t help but be compared to Dunkirk. In America President Roosevelt still struggled against isolationist forces in his desire to become the arsenal of Democracy. Meanwhile, in the East, the Japanese began moving against the European outposts taking one after another with apparent ease. There was, briefly, some good news – or at least good mixed in with the bad. Despite losing HMS Hood the Royal Navy had struck both a tactical and propaganda victory with the sinking of Germany’s flagship Bismarck. It was little enough to celebrate but it was something in those dark times. In the summer of that year things changed. In June of 1941 Germany attacked Russia in Operation Barbarossa. It was a HUGE gamble which turned out to be a huge mistake (actually Axis forces made at least 3 fundamental errors in 1941 which would, ultimately, loose them the war – but more on that later). Despite a constant stream of warnings, the Russians were taken completely by surprise and thrown back in disarray. It would take them months to recover. Finally, as the year approached its end, the Japanese navy launched its sneak attack on the US navy base at Pearl Harbor (again despite significant warnings that it was about to happen - more later on that too). America was now fully in the conflict. 

I found this to be somewhat better that the authors previous work on 1940. Partially it might be that I had become used to his ‘style’ but I think he did actually improve his writing in the intervening years. There was a great deal of doom & gloom here and rightly so. It was THE bad year for the Allies and it's easy to imagine, as many did, that the Axis powers were going to be triumphant. Only in hindsight could many see the seeds of Axis defeat (Churchill was one of them who was delighted in the German attack on Russia and equally convinced that the war was now effectively won – by the Allies – once the US was fully committed to the cause). But 1942 was the year when the dynamic changed and the Axis lost the initiative and never regained it after the battles of Midway (4–7 June 1942), El Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942) and Stalingrad (17 July 1942 – 2 February 1943). 

This was a reasonable overview of a very difficult and deadly year. As before we had the rather annoying and honestly clunky change of gears from big events to small ones. Again, I can see why he chose to do this, but I don’t think it was handled particularly well. I’m certain that there are better books out there on this year (one coming up actually!) so if you have limited time or limited interest, I might suggest that you pass on this one.