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anxiety … Such a state of apathy has arisen among the troops that draconian measures do not produce the desired results, but only the good example of officers and “kindly persuasion”.’ Ghastly scenes took place during the flight to the Dnieper, as discipline broke down in a fashion unprecedented for the Wehrmacht. ‘Frantic men were abandoning everything on the bank and plunging into the water to try to swim to the opposite shore,’ wrote a soldier. ‘Thousands of voices were shouting towards the grey water and the opposite bank … The officers, who had managed to keep some self-control, organised a few more or less conscious men, like shepherds trying to control a herd of crazed sheep … We heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions punctuated by blood-curdling screams.’ Many men eventually crossed on improvised rafts.

Once more, the German army regrouped; once more it prepared to hold a line with dogged determination. Many more battles lay ahead. Panzer officer Tassilo von Bogenhardt mused on the paradox that almost all his men were by now resigned to death, yet their morale remained high: ‘Each German soldier considered himself superior to any single Russian, even though their numbers were so overpowering. The slow, orderly retreat did not depress us too much. We felt we were holding our own.’ But soon afterwards he was badly wounded and captured; he somehow survived the ensuing three years as a prisoner. 1943 on the Eastern Front had brought upon the invaders of Russia irredeemable catastrophe, and to Stalin’s armies the assurance of looming triumph.

Divided Empires

1 WHOSE LIBERTY?

Winston Churchill stretched an important point by telling the House of Commons on 8 December 1941: ‘We have at least four-fifths of the population of the globe on our side.’ It would have been more accurate to assert that the Allies had four-fifths of the world’s inhabitants under their control, or recoiling from Axis occupation. Propaganda promoted an assumption of common purpose in the ‘free’ nations – among which it was necessary to grant nominal inclusion to Stalin’s people – in defeating the totalitarian powers. Yet in almost every country there were nuances of attitude, and in some places stark divergences of loyalty.

South America was the continent least affected by the struggle, though Brazil joined the Allied cause in August 1942 and sent 25,000 of its soldiers to participate – albeit almost invisibly – in the Italian campaign. Most of the nations that escaped involvement were protected by geographical remoteness. Turkey was the most significant state to sustain neutrality, having learned its lesson from rash involvement in World War I on the side of the Central Powers. In Europe, only Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland were fortunate enough to have their sovereignty respected by the belligerents, most for pragmatic reasons. Ireland had gained self-governing dominion status only in 1922, although until 1938 Britain retained control of four strategically important ‘treaty ports’ on its coastline. In 1939–40, as the former mother nation began its struggle for survival against the U-boat, Winston Churchill was tempted by the notion of reasserting by force his country’s claims upon these naval and air bases. He was dissuaded only by fear of the impact on opinion in the United States, where there was a strong Irish lobby.

The Atlantic ‘air gap’ was significantly widened, and many lives and much tonnage lost, in consequence of the fanatical loathing of Irish prime minister Éamon de Valera for his British neighbours. The crews of almost every warship and merchantman that sailed past the Irish coastline in the war years felt a surge of bitterness towards the country which relied on Britain for most of its vital commodities and all its fuel, but would not lift a finger to help in its hour of need. ‘The cost in men and ships … ran up a score which Irish eyes a-smiling on the day of Allied victory were not going to cancel,’ wrote corvette officer Nicholas Monsarrat. ‘In the list of people you were prepared to like