The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [346]
20. The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown burns after being hit by Aichi D34 ‘Val’ dive-bombers at Midway shortly after 13.30 hours on 4 June 1942.
21. Generals Sir Claude Auchinleck and Sir Archibald Wavell confer in Egypt in 1941. Churchill removed both men from their commands in his quest for more aggressive leadership.
22. General Sir Harold Alexander speaking to soldiers of the 18th Army Group in Tunisia in early 1943.
23. General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, at the scene of his greatest triumph, when he captured Tobruk and almost all its defenders and stores in June 1942.
24. The battle of El Alamein: soldiers of the 9th Australian Division firing a captured Italian 47mm Breda anti-tank gun on a beach in the northern sector.
25. The Holocaust: Jews from sub-Carpathian Rus undergoing ‘selection’ for work details (for those queuing on the left) or immediate gassing (for those on the right), after disembarking onto the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in late May 1944.
26. A fraction of the corpses discovered by the US Seventh Army at the Dachau concentration camp on 1 May 1945.
27. A scene from Stalingrad in late 1942, where desperate and often hand-to-hand fighting over several months saw areas of the factory district change hands many times.
28. Russian artillery at the Red October Factory in Stalingrad, early 1943.
29. Victory by committee: behind President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 stand the Combined Chiefs of Staff: (left to right) Admiral Ernest J. King, General George C. Marshall, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, General Sir Alan Brooke, Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten and General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold.
30. General Charles de Gaulle (centre), self-proclaimed saviour of France, takes the salute of a guard of honour on arrival in Algiers on 30 May 1943. The next day he and General Henri Giraud (left) assumed the joint presidency of the Committee of National Liberation, without letting it affect their mutual detestation.
31. The battle of the Atlantic: a destroyer, the smaller ship alone in the rear (right), shepherds a convoy of merchantmen across the ocean in June 1943.
32. The captain of a U-boat at his periscope.
33. The battle of Kursk, July 1943. The crack 3rd SS Panzer Totenkopf (Death’s Head) Division advances to fight the largest tank battle in history. This attack was part of what was later dubbed ‘the Death Ride of the Fourth Panzer Army’.
34. Russian soldiers pass a burning Soviet T-34/76 tank during the battle.
35. General Sir William Slim inspects a captured Japanese sword in Burma in 1944.
36. Major General Orde Wingate, whom Slim described as a ‘strange, excitable, moody creature, but he had a fire in him. He could ignite other men’.
37. General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the brutal but brilliant conqueror of Malaya.
38. General George S. ‘Old Blood and Guts’ Patton Jr: tough and crude, but curiously sensitive too, on occasion.
39. General Mark Clark (front seat, left) got his day of glory liberating Rome on 5 June 1944, but at great strategic cost.
40. D-Day: Piper Bill Millin of the 1st Special Service Brigade of the British Second Army prepares to disembark on Sword Beach at 08.40 hours on 6 June. Their commander, Brigadier Lord Lovat DSO MC, can be seen wading through the water to the right of his column of men.
41. The longest day: American troops pinned down behind anti-tank obstacles on Omaha Beach.
42. Mussolini takes his leave of Hitler, Göring and Ribbentrop two days after Colonel von Stauffenberg’s 20 July 1944 Bomb Plot explosion at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. Hitler’s right arm had been slightly injured in the blast, hence his shaking the Duce’s hand with his left.
43. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, pointing the way forward to an American officer and General Montgomery in 1944. ‘Ike’ was loved by his men, but