The Hinge of Fate Author:Winston S. Churchill 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 st... more »ruggle."
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 Harbour 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 Pacific lay open to the enemy. In the Desert, the daring and genius of Rommel drove the Afrika Corps to El Alamein, barely forty miles from Alexandria. Meanwhile, the German armies relentlessly battered 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.
IN SHORT - In the book 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 labour of the Allies, not unaided by his genius and his faith.« less