‘Crazy hysterical mess’

As its title tells us, this book focuses on one month of World War II: November 1942. Swedish author and historian Peter Englund argues that this month was the turning point of the war. In North Africa, the Germans were on the retreat after the Allied victory at El Alamein. American forces began their land operations against the Axis powers by invading French Morocco and Algeria. In the Pacific war, the battle of Guadalcanal reached its decisive climax, while Australian troops recaptured Kokoda after pushing the Japanese back along the Kokoda Track. Most importantly, on the Eastern front, the Red Army launched an attack that surrounded the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. Two months later, the 91,000 German troops still alive in the ruins of the city surrendered. Almost all of them perished in captivity.

Hence, to quote Englund, at the start of November ‘people still believed that the Axis powers would be victorious. By the end of that month it had become clear that it was only a matter of time before they would lose.’ Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously stated that Alamein was ‘perhaps, the end of the beginning’.