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Show FORWARD MARCH By II. S. Sims, Jr. i i i . i t i i i i i i t i i i i i i ' ' ' KKVIKW OK THE WAR 1 OK THE VE.Ut 1911 When the year 1940 came to a close, the democracies, England and China, were in the pit of despair. de-spair. For during that year the Axis nations had met with astounding as-tounding successes. The Eritish Navy had been forced to withdraw from Norway Nor-way and thus give the Nazis full control of this Scandinavian country; coun-try; German armies overran Belgium Bel-gium and Holland! France was crushed and the English armies left the Continent by way of Dun-kcrriue. Dun-kcrriue. England was ravished from the air with such fierceness that Churchill promised the world that If England should fall "our empire beyond the seas would carry on the struggle strug-gle until, In God's good time, tlio New World, with all its power and might, steps forth In tlio rescue and liberation of tho Old." During the first months of the year 1941 the war continued to go the Axis way. England's position becomes even worse. In fact, the Nazis were gradually severing England's lifeline, supplies across the Atlantic. In the Spring of this year English shipping losses were more than twice as great as the combined building capacity of both Great Britian and the United States. In other words, Germany was sinking two ships for every one that we built. Germany also negan he Balkan Bal-kan campaign during the Spring of 1941. In fact, the first Nazi military blitz struck Bulgaria on 'he first of March with the result of intimidating the Government at Sofia to join the Axis. In the ame month, the Yugoslav Government Gov-ernment also gave in to the intense in-tense Axis pressure. But the people of Yugoslavia rallied and overthrew the Government Govern-ment that had betrayed them, and thus a German invasion began at dawn on the first Sunday of April. Jn less than a week the mighty German Army had reached Salonika and the heroic he-roic Greeks were trapped. Three weeks after the canquest of Greece, Hitler spectacularly captured Crete with the support of a strong and effective air arm. Then, suddenly, the battle of Africa changed. German armored units reinforced reinforc-ed the battered Italian divisions and General Wavell was pushed back to the Egyptian border. This gave the Axis success on all fronts Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt planning a defensive war for the year 1942. reinforcements from the Siberian front, the Soviet Union stopped the German offensive at the gate of the Caucasus and pushed them into a pell-mell retreat; then the Germans on the Moscow front began be-gan to retreat; finally, Germans along the entire line were in retreat. re-treat. About the same time that the Russian drive began the English opened the long-awaited second front. A major offensive was underway un-derway in Africa which promised to wrest Libya from the hands of the Axis. On December 7th, when the Axis were suffering major defeats de-feats on two battlefronts and military mili-tary experts were pondering just where Hitler would move next, Japan unleased savage treachery in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This brought the United States and all of the countries of Central America into what had become truly a world war of the "irst magnitude. The year ended with Japan apparently successful in all her initial conquests, and with and it was evident that Hitler was preparing for a big drive. Logically, Logi-cally, it seemed that the British Isles would be invaded in an all-out all-out attack. Finally, Hitler broke the suspense sus-pense with a speech to the German Ger-man people in which he told them that again he was putting the fate of the German people in the hands of the soldiers; the invasion of Russia had begun. In his crusade against communism, com-munism, Hitler expected to confuse the democratic world. He failed. Churchill and Roosevelt Roose-velt joined hands with Stalin in an attempt to stop the march of Hitlerism. As Churchill explained to his people: whoever marched with Hitler, was a foe; whoever fought him an ally. Week after week the German armies continued their forward march, and week after week the Russians retreated with armies intact. Finally, the German armies reached the gates of Leningrad, Lenin-grad, Moscow, and Rostov. Apparently, the offensive power pow-er of the Russians had been crushed. Then, with the help of an early winter, American aid, and fresh |