The Hinge Of Fate The Second World War Wintson S. Churchill 1950 HCDJ

Description: Sir Winston Churchill says of the fourth volume of THE SECOND WORLD WAR, "I have called this The Hinge of Fate because in it we turn from almost uninterrupted disaster to almost unbroken success. For the first six months of this story all went ill; for the last six months everything went well. And this agreeable change continued to the end of the struggle." The third volume, The Grand Alliance, closed with the Prime Minister's return from his first visit to the White House, just after the Pearl Harbor attack. Now that the Grand Alliance was complete, Mr. Churchill knew that ultimate victory was sure unless the enemy should discover and make use of a hitherto unknown and devastating weapon. Nevertheless, sore trials and great anxieties lay ahead. The Japanese storm swept down through the Philippines, Malaya, and Burma. The great naval base of Singapore fell, resulting in what the author calls "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history." With this bastion gone, India, Australia, New Zealand, the Islands of the Pacificlay open to the enemy. In the Desert, the daring and genius of Rommel drove the Afrika Korps to El Alamein, barely forty miles from Alexandria. Meanwhile, the German armies relentlessly bat- tered their way to Stalingrad and to the gates of the Caucasus, threatening to overwhelm the Soviet forces and pour through the Middle East to India. In the Atlantic, submarine sinkings increased to a fearful figure. The late spring of 1942 was the lowest point in the fortunes of the United Nations. A year later. the Japanese had been defeated in the Coral Sea, at Midway, and at Guadalcanal; the British air offen- sive had started battering Germany; in the Medi- terranean, Malta had survived her ordeal; the tide in Russia had been turned by the magnificent defense of Stalingrad. Alexander and Montgomery with their Imperial forces, starting from the Alamein positions where the Eighth Army had made its valiant stand, had beaten their way victoriously through Libya; the Allies had landed in West Africa and had driven eastward to join the British Eighth Army advancing from Egypt; at last all Northwest Africa was free. Then were laid the plans for the invasion of Sicily, Italy, and France. The hinge had turned." " The man who in greatest measure directed these tremendous undertakings had much else to do. At home political battles were fought; Molotov was received on his strange but profitable visit to London; the Atlantic was crossed and recrossed whenever a conference of the Western Allies was needed; Moscow was visited and out of the grim conversa- tions in the Kremlin came the basis for a more hopeful and workable companionship in arms. Finally Mr. Churchill met with President Roosevelt and the Free French leaders at Casablanca, and a prolonged Anglo-American Staff Conference took place to plan the grand strategy of the period to come. In The Hinge of Fate we read Winston Churchill's own story of the most critical period of the war and the dawning triumph which was to be the reward of the courage and the labor of the Allies, not unaided by his genius and his faith.

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End Time: 2024-11-08T15:35:08.000Z

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