With the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, Britain suffered the worst humiliation in its military history. 

The photograph sums it up: General Arthur Percival (far right), the British commander in Malaya, and his fellow officers, walking forlornly towards the Japanese commanders to sign the dismal surrender. With their baggy shorts, knee-length socks and tin helmets, one carries the Union Jack while another holds the white flag of surrender. Escorting them, a number of Japanese soldiers, or ‘little men’ as the British military elite referred to them.

The ‘Gibraltar of the East’

British Malaya had been considered a strategic stronghold within the eastern Empire, and the island of Singapore, 273 square miles, on the southern tip of Malaya, was known as the ‘Gibraltar of the East’. Acquired by Stamford Raffles for Britain’s East India Company in 1819, Singapore became a full British possession five years later, in 1824. Colonial life in early twentieth-century Singapore was one of tea, tennis and dancing. Rumours of a Japanese attack were dismissed as nonsense; these ‘Japs’ with their feeble eyes could hardly shoot straight, let alone pose a threat to the might of the Malayan-based British troops and their Commonwealth comrades.

An impressive naval defence system consisting of huge guns had been built at great cost during the 1920s facing south out to sea. To the north of the island, on the mainland, lay hundreds of miles of dense Malayan jungle and rubber plantations considered by the British to be impenetrable. Stationed on the island, almost 100,000 British, Canadian, Australian, Indian and a few local Malay troops.

‘I never received a more direct shock’

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On 2 February 1943, in what is considered the turning point of the Second World War in Europe, the final remnants of the German Sixth Army surrendered at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Stalin’s City

The city, originally called Tsaritsyn, was renamed Stalingrad, Stalin’s city, in April 1925, in recognition of Joseph Stalin’s leading role in saving the city from the counterrevolutionary ‘Whites’ during the Russian Civil War. (The fact that Leon Trotsky was more instrumental in saving Tsaritsyn was quietly forgotten). Considered important because of its supply of oil, the symbolic significance of Stalingrad, bearing the name of the Soviet leader, soon outweighed its strategic importance.

‘Not One Step Back’

The Germans started their attack on Stalingrad, Operation Blue, on 28 June 1942. Led by the Sixth Army, Germany’s largest wartime army commanded by General Friedrich Paulus (pictured), the Germans were fully expecting a total victory as they pushed the Soviet forces back.

The swift German advance alarmed Stalin so much, he issued his infamous ‘Not One Step Back’ directive of 28 July, ordering execution for the slightest sign of defeatism. Behind the Soviet frontlines roamed a second Soviet line ready to shoot any retreating ‘cowards’ or ‘traitors of the Motherland’. As Georgy Zhukov, one of Stalin’s top generals, said, ‘In the Red Army it takes a very brave man to be a coward’.

By 23 August, the German advance had reached the outskirts of Stalingrad and, with 600 planes, unleashed a devastating aerial bombardment. Entering the city, the Germans, along with their Axis comrades, comprising of Italians, Romanians and Hungarians, fought the Soviets street for street, house for house, sometimes room for room. This, as the Germans called it, was rat warfare, where a strategic stronghold changed sides so many times people lost count, where the front lines were so close one could throw back a grenade before it exploded, where snipers took their toll on the enemy, and where a soldier’s life expectancy was three days – if lucky.

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16 December 1944 saw the start of the German ‘Ardennes Offensive’ (the Battle of the Bulge). It was to be the US’ biggest pitched battle in their history, involving 600,000 American troops. The Allied forces were advancing towards Germany, pushing the Germans back town by town and believing the war to be almost won. But this was Hitler’s last attempt to stop the momentum. His aim was to advance through the wooded area of the Ardennes in Luxembourg and Belgium and cut the Allied armies in two and then push on towards the port of Antwerp, a vital Allied stronghold.

The Allies knew there was a build-up of German troops and equipment around the Ardennes but never believed Hitler was capable of such a bold initiative. Only the day before the attack, the British commander, Bernard Montgomery, told Dwight D Eisenhower, the Allies’ Supreme Commander, that the Germans would be incapable of staging ‘major offensive operations’. Captured Germans spilled the plans but their information was ignored. Thus, the attack came as a complete surprise.

‘Nuts’

Thick snow and heavy fog prevented the Americans from employing their airpower and the German advance of 250,000 men forced a dent in the American line (hence battle of the ‘Bulge’). Germans, dressed in American uniforms and driving captured US jeeps, caused confusion and within five days the Germans had surrounded almost 20,000 Americans at the crossroads of Bastogne. Their situation was desperate but when the German commander gave his American equivalent, Major-General Anthony McAuliffe, the chance to surrender, McAuliffe answered with just the one word – ‘Nuts’.

US soldiers near the town of St Vith were not so lucky and 8,000 of them surrendered – the largest surrender of US troops since the American Civil War 80 years before. Elsewhere, the Germans taunted the Americans, using loudspeakers to ask, ‘How would you like to die for Christmas?’

‘Lovely weather for killing Germans’

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