World War II in Photographs
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1941
ABYSSINIA
In 1940 the Italians held Abyssinia and Eritrea with 350,000 men
under the Duke of Aosta, and that summer they tightened their
grip by overrunning British Somaliland. In December Wavell,
Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, met Lieutenant General
Sir William Platt, commanding British forces in the Sudan, and
Lieutenant General Sir Alan Cunningham, commander in Kenya,
and sketched out plans for an advance into Eritrea from the
north and Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia from the south.
Platt's men took the fortress of Keren in March 1941, while
Cunningham entered Addis Ababa in April. The Duke of
Aosta surrendered at Amba Alagi on 18 May.
BELOW
The Emperor Haile Selassie re-entered his
capital of Addis Ababa in May 1941.
These men, heavily armed with captured
Italian weapons, have gathered to hear
the proclamation announcing his return.
ABOVE
This photograph of a RAF Vickers Wellesley
on its way to Keren suggests how the
difficult terrain assisted the defenders.
The Italians, including first-rate troops
like Bersaglieri and Savoy Grenadiers,
put up a stern resistance at Keren.
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-EFT
Surrender terms granted the Italians
at Amba Alagi included the honours of
war - the right to march out under arms,
commanded by their own officers, before
giving up their weapons. It was a fitting
end to a campaign fought with what the
military commentator J. F. C. Fuller
called "marked chivalry."
BELOW
Enthusiastic members of a South African
Transvaal Scottish regiment celebrating
their entry into the Abyssinian capital.
142
THE SINKING OF THE BISMARCK
Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the
German navy, planned a two-pronged sortie into the North Atlantic
by the battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen
from the north and the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
from the French port of Brest. Damage to several vessels reduced
this to a single thrust by the Bismarck group under Admiral
Günther Lütyens. Although Bismarck and Prinz Eugen broke out
into the Atlantic - sinking HMS Hood - Bismarck was caught
making for France, damaged by air attack, battered into a hulk
by superior British forces and either sunk by Dorsetshire's
torpedoes or scuttled by her crew.
ABOVE
Bismarck triumphant: the German
battleship engaging the old battlecruiser
HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait on
May 24. A hit from one of the German
warships caused a massive explosion
which sank Hood: only three of her
complement of 1,421 survived.
Bismarck, on fire in the distance, engaged
by the battleship HMS Rodney on May 27.
Damage incurred in the Denmark Strait
action had forced Bismarck to turn back,
and an air-dropped torpedo had damaged
her rudder. Although she shot well at the
start of her final action, her inability to
manoeuvre was a fatal disadvantage.
FOLLOWING PAGE
Survivors from Bismarck are pulled aboard
HMS Dorsetshire. There were only 117
survivors from her company of 2,200:
Admiral Lütyens was among those lost.
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LEFT
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SPECIAL FORCES
In June 1940 Churchill suggested that 20,000 "Storm Troops"
should be drawn from existing units, and the first commando raid
was mounted near Le Touquet that month. Battalion-sized commando
units were raised from volunteers, but it was not till March 1941 that
the first major operation was mounted. Nos. 3 and 4 Commandos
raided the German-held Lofoten Islands, destroyed fish oil factories,
sank an armed trawler and a fish factory ship, took 220 prisoners and
brought away 315 Norwegian volunteers, all without loss. Meanwhile,
in the Western Desert, Lieutenant David Stirling, who had served in the
commando "Layforce", pioneered what became the Special Air Service.
BELOW
Probably taken in January 1943, this
photograph shows a jeep of the Special
Air Service armed with twin .303 Vickers K
guns (rear) and a forward-firing .5 machine-
gun. Note the spare petrol carried in jerry
cans - so called because they were copies
of the German petrol can which replaced
the aptly-nicknamed British "flimsy."
ABOVE
Oil storage tanks blazing during the commando
raid on the Lofoten Islands, March 1941.
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194 I
THE EASTERN FRONT
Despite his 1939 rapprochement with Stalin, Hitler never
abandoned plans for an attack on Russia, which he planned
to reduce to "a German India." In December 1940 he issued a
directive for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet
Union. His army was not ready for a long war: many units had
French or Czech equipment and were below strength, and
operations in the Balkans delayed the attack. Stalin had some
warning of invasion, and the disposition of Russian forces,
concentrated on the frontier, induces some historians to
suggest that he planned an offensive of his own. The attack,
on June 22, proved brilliantly successful, but ran out of steam in
December, when the Russians launched serious counteroffensives.
OPPOSITE PAGE TOP
The cameraman's location and lack
of uniformity amongst the gun
detachment suggests that this shot
of a German anti-tank gun taking
on Soviet armour in July is authentic.
OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM
The German army remained two-tier,
with its panzer and Panzergrenadier
divisions representing the tip of a spear
whose shaft comprised units which
would not have looked out of place
a generation earlier. German cavalry
crosses a bridge in Russia, summer 1941.
BELOW
German tanks form up for the attack
on the open terrain that characterized
much of the Eastern Front, July 1941.
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1941
1941
ABOVE
Russia's broad rivers proved less of an
obstacle than their defenders expected.
Here German troops in rubber assault
boats cross the Dnieper in July, with
smoke on the far bank testifying to the
effect of air and artillery bombardment.
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1941
ABOVE
In Russia in 1941 the Germans profited,
as they had in Poland in 1939 and France
and the Low Countries in 1940, from
very effective air support. This shot shows
a camouflaged Russian airfield under what
the original caption terms "a hail of bombs."
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RIGHT
The reality of the advance through Russia,
September 1941. Most German soldiers, like
their fathers and grandfathers, went into
battle on foot, with horse-drawn transport.
BELOW
The German armoured thrusts into
Russia linked to create vast pockets
whose occupant defenders were
captured: the Germans claimed
over 400,000 prisoners by July 11.
ISO