Full list  |  Top British writer J B Priestley, 1940: 'Our great-grandchildren, when they learn how we began this War by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.' British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1940: 'Wars are not won by evacuations, but there was a victory inside this deliverance which must be noted. Can you conceive of a greater objective for the power of Germany in the air than to make all evacuations from these beaches impossible and to sink all of the ships, numbering almost 1,000? Could there have been an incentive of greater military importance and significance to the whole purpose of the war? They tried hard and were beaten back. All of our planes and our pilots have been vindicated. The Hurricane, Spitfire and Defiance have been vindicated.'

FRANCE, EUROPE. Successful evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk probably altered the early stages of World War Two, and certainly influenced the progress of war in Europe. Taking eight days over 300,000 troops made it safely back to Britain. At one stage this seemed improbable. But the miracle of transport happened despite everything. 

The background manoeuvres on the continent of Europe seemed unhelpful. In the summer of 1940 the Low Countries and Belgium provided little meaningful resistance to German blitzkrieg. The Belgium Army surrendered to the advancing Germans. It was the first of the western armies to do so and left unprotected significant parts of the left flank of the BEF, British Expeditionary Force. The time for Germany to strike at the BEF was now. They were sitting on a beach with no prospect for escape. Yet mysteriously Germany held off their advance. Rumours surfaced that the German High Command were planning to instead swing south towards Paris.

As Hitler hesitated, or more accurately as Hitler waited to see which views among his Generals would prevail, meanwhile nearly a thousand vessels crossed from the southern ports of England. On the return leg they evacuated the British and French soldiers. Even though over 40,000 vehicles were abandoned Operation Dynamo was by all views an incredibly successful evacuation of personnel. Essentially saved was the kernel of the British and French armies that would later invade France in 1944 and defeat Germany in 1945. 

Churchill grasped the significance far more presciently than Hitler. The British Prime Minister stressed Dunkirk was merely the beginning of the next fight. 'War's are not won by evacuations' he stressed. Hitler on the other hand focused not on the escape of men but of the capture of an insignificant port. With the fall of Dunkirk he claimed that the 'greatest battle of world history' had been won. He continued: 'Soldiers! My confidence in you knew no bounds. You have not disappointed me.' It was a notable misunderstanding. As one mark of how insignificant Dunkirk was the Allies bypassed it in 1944. It was cordoned off before surrendering in the spring of 1945 as Berlin fell.  

Had so many troops been captured or destroyed by Germany the war in Europe might have been very different. With America still not fully in the war, although true Lend-Lease was under way, British morale would have undoubtedly been dented. Elites would have soon talked of seeking a compromise with Germany similar to what the French did at Vichy. (On June 22, a month after Dunkirk, the rump of France surrendered. It marked the end of the Battle of France and the start of the Battle of Britain.) Had this victory been secured Germany’s situation would have been hugely different. Troops and resources would have freed to focus on fighting the Soviet Union. 

15/09/1940 | Sunday | Decisive day 35 of 100
Royal Air Force defeats the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain

Full list  |  Top General Maxime Weygand, 1940: 'In three weeks Britain will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Winston Churchill, 1940: 'For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank'

BRITAIN, EUROPE. September 15, 1940 saw the Royal Air Force (RAF) claim victory in the Battle of Britain over Germany’s Luftwaffe, led by Herman Goring. As with Dunkirk at one stage it seemed inevitable that Britain would lose badly. Goring talked of the Luftwaffe being invincible. In the summer of 1940, with his rare sense of ineptitude, he asked: 'And so now we turn to England. How long will this one last, two, three weeks?'

Although the Battle of Britain went some days past this milestone this day was the first time when the RAF recognised the Luftwaffe could not win. They were confident enough to state so in public. With no hope for air superiority Operation Sea Lion, the planned German invasion of Britain, also ended. 

The British triumph in the Battle of Britain caused two connected events. First, it postponed indefinitely Nazi invasion of Britain. The largest European island would remain unconquered by the largest European military power of the time. It would never be feasible for German landing craft to negotiate the channel if they were bombed from the air. Second, it made feasible the concentration of American forces on Britain prior to invasion of Europe. Given the outcome of World War Two became significantly clearer on this day it is a date in British history that probably ranks alongside victories at Waterloo (British defeat of Napoleon in 1815 - fought near present-day Brussels in Belgium) and Agincourt (English defeat of Charles VI of France in 1415 - fought near present-day Calais in France).

Winston Churchill summed up the effect of the battle and the contribution of the RAF in the immortal words: ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’ (speech to the House of Commons on August 20 1940). Pilots who fought in the battle have been known as The Few ever since.

Much is made of the contribution of non-British pilots within The Few. While the Battle was clearly won mostly by British pilots there was notable assistance from outside the struggling island. Polish pilots in particular played a significant contribution. By some reckoning the Poles were as much as 1-in-20 of all pilots flying on the British side during the Battle. Owing to their expertise they claimed to have killed somewhere in the order of 1-in-10 of German planes. Around 500 Polish pilots died, a mortality rate approaching 1-in-5, with the grisly toll being much higher for fighter crews. American pilots formed their own squadron, the Eagle Squadron, composed mostly of volunteers, which also made a significant contribution. 

Germany lost significant quantities of aircraft. The RAF - organised around the trinity of Fighter Command, Bomber Command and Coastal Command - lost around 1,000 fighter aircraft to all causes. The Luftwaffe lost a similar number of fighters plus another 1,000 support aircraft, many to the deadly ack ack gunners along the English coastline.

The British flew either Spitfires or Hawker Hurricanes and the Germans usually the Messerschmitt Bf 109s and the Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber. Conventional wisdom is that the Spitfire stuck it to the Bosch more than the Messerschmitts stuck it to the Englanders. What proved especially decisive was the Spitfires single-shell light alloy fuselage. This kept the superstructure light in favour of guns and ammunitions. The taper at the wing tips and the Rolls Royce Merlin engine helped manoeverablity and tight turning circles far more than the flat oblong wings of the heavier Messerschmitts.

One of the German aces during the war, Adolf Galland, was allegedly asked by Herman Goering, the eccentric Head of the Luftwaffe, what Galland needed to win the air conflict over Britain. Came the reply: ‘A squadron of Spitfires.’

07/12/1941 | Sunday | Decisive day 36 of 100
Japan attacks America at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii

Full list  |  Top Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, 1942: 'A military man can scarcely pride himself on having ‘smitten a sleeping enemy’; in fact, to have it pointed out is more a matter of shame.' Joseph Grew, US Ambassador to Japan 1932-1941, 1942: 'Once Japan is destroyed as an aggressive force, we know of no other challenging power that can appear in the Pacific. Japan is the one enemy, and the only enemy, of the peaceful peoples whose shores overlook the Pacific Ocean.'

USA, THE AMERICAS. When Japan attacked America’s naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, America’s indecisive and isolationist years ended. No longer were the troubles of the world something ‘over there’. They were ‘over here’. War reached American soil for the first time in the twentieth century. 

By most political and military thinking of the time the Japanese attack on at Pearl Harbour was audacious. The tiny island of Hawaii was an ocean away from Japan. To get there a multiple-carrier fleet had to advance unobserved across the major shipping channels of North Asia; it had to refuel mid-ocean; it had to co-ordinate declaring war with diplomats in Washington; it had to strategise with an American continental colossus over Japan a smaller island. 

Yet it all happened. Over 360 carrier-based planes smashed into the American Pacific fleet on a Sunday morning. Five American battleships were knocked out immediately, itself a major coup already, plus a dozen smaller ships and several hundred aeroplanes. Three more battleships were rendered out of action. 

All the more remarkable was that it happened at the same time as Japan advanced throughout Asia. So pushed was America in the Philippines that a day before Pearl Harbour attack General Douglas Macarthur commented in the Philippines that nothing would please him more if Japan 'would give me three months and then attack here. (They didn't and he had to withdraw soon afterwards to Australia). 

America was jolted. The jolt was not only from losing so many ships in such little time but by the death of thousands of servicemen. Close to three thousand Americans died within hours, one third on board the USS Arizona. The country was still in shock when President Roosevelt informed the world that the day would live in infamy. So massive was the blow to America that four days later America had also declared war against Japan’s European ally, Germany. 

Of course the longer-term story was not so much what happened in and to America but what befell Japan. Admiral Yamamoto, who had masterminded the attack, had with an eerie accuracy warned that 'the fate of the Empire rests on this enterprise'. Indeed. And the twentieth century’s biggest superpower entered the wars consuming the rest of the world. America defeated Japan within four years and occupied the Japanese archipelago for five years. Shortly after Pearl Harbour an American senator noted: ‘Japan began this war with treachery, we shall end it in victory.’ This proved a decisively apt warning for the next few years were all about American advance and Japanese retreat. Tellingly this culminated in atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki – marking the dawn of the nuclear age – and five years of American occupation. Particularly rankling for the Japanese was their Emperor having to renounce his divine status. With that much of Japanese self-identity altered.

By these measures Pearl Harbour was unarguably a massive initiator of change for industrial-era Japan. Enflaming their Pacific neighbour lost them not only the biggest war in their modern history but also much of their identity. Yet looking at what Japan acquired in later years and the verdict may be that it was not all bad. American occupation sowed the seeds of liberal democracy far sooner than otherwise. Freed of an expensive military budget for the first time in eighty years the Japanese economy advanced incredibly. By the end of the twenty-first century Japan was so big they could buy Hawaii instead of bomb it.

11/11/1942 | Wednesday | Decisive day 37 of 100
Vichy France surrenders to Nazi Germany

Full list  |  Top Admiral Fancois Darlan, deputy to Marshall Petain, 1941: 'If we collaborate with Germany, that is to say, if we work for her in our factories, if we give her certain facilities, we can save the French nation; reduce to a minimum our territorial losses in the colonies and on the mainland; play an honourable – if not important – role in the future of Europe.' General De Gaulle, 1941: 'Remember this, France does not stand alone. She is not isolated. Behind her is a vast Empire, and she can make common cause with the British Empire, which commands the seas and is continuing the struggle. Like England, she can draw unreservedly on the immense industrial resources of the United States.'

FRANCE, EUROPE. During November 11, 1942, Germany invaded the remaining part of France that had not capitulated in 1940. With this move the somewhat ambiguous Franco-German connection that existed for nearly three years altered decisively. The total control of France by Germany eliminated any prospect for a negotiated solution. There would, after all, be a full Allied invasion and resulting division of Europe. 

What happened to France between invasion by Germany in 1939 and invasion by America and Britain (plus others) in 1944 is not unique in world history. Many countries surrender rather than experience destruction. Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary arguably adopted similar strategies during the period - rather occupation than destruction of their country. That certainly is the charitable explanation. Alternatives include that the Gallic temperament never cherished freedom as much as the Anglo Saxon. Thomas Paine: 'Those who expect to reap the benefits of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.'

Nevertheless, while France did not confront Germany many assumed the largest continental economy outside the Third Reich would not openly collaborate. Colossal pressure, after all, faced Germany. Hitler had to protect possessions fronting two oceans (Arctic and Atlantic) and two seas (Baltic and Mediterranean) against two ascendant superpowers (America and Russia) and two declining superpowers (Britain and what remained of France). Surely this explained why Germany granted France some independence in the south? America even briefly sent ambassadors to this rump, which was around 40% of France, and Britain’s Prime Minister Churchill kept his distance from De Gaulle’s Free French government. 

Unfortunately France did collaborate, though even that was done badly. Vichy France – named for its headquarters near Paris – proved particularly inept on two connected fronts. Marshall Petain turned out to be a closet admirer of Nazism, or at least he was open to the ideas of authoritarianism. This reduced his authority and that of the collaborating French to the pointless; Vichy was soon just another layer of bureaucracy between German bosses and French proletariat. 

As well as being of little value to the Germans at home they were little use overseas, either. Vichy France soon proved useless at war. When the Allies swept into North Africa, along the way destroying the mothballed French fleet, Hitler decided it was meaningless involving them militarily any more. Even French assets in Syria traded over to Germany could not change this decision. 

By bringing France under their complete control on this day all hope for compromise and some form of negotiated end to the war ended. With the complete loss of France De Gaulle’s authority strengthened in London. Nothing but unconditional surrender entered allied thinking. Had the rump of France remained De Gaulle might have been much less influential. As the famous historian Macaulay once noted of another European empire that ‘reluctant obedience’ from remote regions usually costs more than any accrued benefits. France in the 1940s proved this insight to be bitingly true.

Full list  |  Top Friedrich Durrenmatt, Swiss dramatist, 1962: 'Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.' Paul Ehrlich, US ecologist, 1978: 'Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.'

USA, THE AMERICAS. December 2 in 1942 saw the first experiment of nuclear chain reactions which proved that nuclear power could be harnessed. From here to Los Alomos in the New Mexico desert and the first bombs in Japan was a small step. Hiroshima and the advent of the nuclear age was inevitable. 

Today was particularly significant because it was the first practical proof nuclear reactions could be harnessed. Already Professor Albert Einstein had informed President Roosevelt of the theoretical possibility that uranium could trigger a chain reaction able to cause big bombs. He also warned the Germans might be approaching the same breakthrough. Even though this alerted America little happened until Pearl Harbour in December 1941 manoeuvered America into a two-front war. Fighting in both the Pacific theatre and the Atlantic theatre changed much and the limited ‘Manhattan Engineer District’, which started at Columbia University in New York, was expanded and moved to Chicago. 

On this day in Chicago, Illinois it was decisively shown nuclear reactions could be controlled. An Italian physicist Fermi and an elite team of experimental physicists verified the power of uranium oxide and graphite moderators surrounded a huge room of uranium metal. (Like many scientists in America at the time, Fermi had fled Europe because of Semitic ties. Mr Fermi’s wife in this instance was Jewish. Soon after his arrival in New York, Fermi began working at Columbia University.) They added layers and layers and by altering the graphite and cadmium sulphate solution used as a sort of retardant a reaction was first started. Rather to some relief it stopped after half an hour. Although the time was limited but the possibilities of a chain reaction had been proven. If you split billions of atoms there can be enormous energy created. 

Later on Fairme was asked to rate himself from 0-100. He thought carefully before replying that Einstein was a 100 but he was only a 99. Arrogance, perhaps, with a little drop of modesty. But in a way it was misleading for his role was as significant as Einstein – who himself played no role in weaponisation of nuclear power. 

Full list  |  Top British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1944: 'This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place.' Geman Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, 1944: 'The enemy must be annihilated before he reaches our main battlefield...We must stop him in the water...destroying all his equipment while it is still afloat.'

FRANCE, EUROPE. Operation Overlord, commonly known as D-Day, was the largest combined air, sea and land operation in history. Close to twenty million tons of stockpiles and war materiel were moved. The quantity is astonishing when you think a single V2 carried around one (metric) ton of explosives. So, loaded on to beaches and then ports of France was the equivalent of twenty million V2 rockets. 

The invasion was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany. With American military might now committed to the fight on the western front, and Soviet military committed on the east, the conclusion for Germany was ineluctable. Though it would not be easy. General Dwight D Eisenhower, Ike, had already led the invasion of Africa and Sicily and knew of the likely cost. Now as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces the son of Kansas had most definitely made good. Even at this stage of the war the phrase ‘United Nations’ – as opposed to allies – was being used. Famously if rather grimly he concluded that there would never be victory at bargain basement prices. 'Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely'.

On the day, even though it was the worst June weather in several decades, the Americans were up for the fight. General George S. Patton had set the tone when addressing troops: ‘We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.’ On the beaches themselves (Omaha, in the American sector) another general, Norman Cota, had said: ‘Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Lets go inland and be killed.’

It could have been much worse. Even though 20,000 tons of bombs were dropped in the day before the invasion Hitler believed it was a feint. For some time after it was an objective reality on the ground he considered Calais as the likely point of attack. Critical and battle-tipping Panzer divisions were therefore kept out of the battle. Field Marshall Rommel, when Hitler made him a Field Marshall, said ‘I would rather he had given me one more division’. "The enemy must be annihilated before he reaches our main battlefield...We must stop him in the water...destroying all his equipment while it is still afloat"

Full list  |  Top Adolf Hitler after witnessing a succesful V-1 rocket launch in 1944: 'If we had these rockets in 1939, we should never have had this war.' Werner von Braun, rocket scientist, speaking after the war: 'The V2 flew very well, the only trouble is that it landed on the wrong planet.'

GERMANY, EUROPE. September 8, 1944, during the final phases of World War Two, saw the onset of a new form of warfare: remote-controlled missiles. Ended forever was the limitation of gravity-drop bombs and introduced forever was the anger and acidity of guided bombs. For the first time in the history of war one army, in this case the German army, could bomb enemy civilian populations from hundreds of kilometres distance without risking the life of its military personnel. The central military advantage? For the first time in war combatants could safely kill civilians on a mass scale; it was a lot of gain for a little pain.

The Allies had known for some time of German attempts to arm rockets and Washington was especially alarmed at talk of a longer range rocket capable of reaching the American eastern seaboard and bombing cities like Boston and New York. In the summer of 1943 the German rocket experimental station at Pennemunde was bombed as part of Operation Crossbow.

The earlier and more rudimentary V1 version was the relatively unsophisticated one that was in effect a flying bomb that made a lot of noise - hence its name of the buzz bomb or doodlebug. Launched horizontally from an improvised ski-ramp this simple rocket travelled at around 550 km/h for about 250km. It was eight metres long with a snubnose, three fins and wingspan over five metres. The size was impressive but its military impact was mixed. Germany fired 9,500 V1 bombs against England but over 4,500 were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire or RAF fighters. After a few months only 1-in-5 were reaching their targets with fatal consequences and the rest were eliminated.

The V2 rocket was the needed step-up and the one that most people remember. Known in German as the Vergeltungswaffe 2, meaning reprisal weapon, people in Britain soon abbreviated it to the V2. Launched vertically, two features of the new rocket moulded the post-war world: speed and accuracy.  

First was its speed. The new V2 rocket, almost twice as long as the V1 at 14 metres, travelled faster than the speed of sound. This may have been slower than later aircraft and missiles, which approached five times the speed of sound and more, but it was still fast for its time. No plane could catch it as they could the V1. It also gave virtually no audible warning before impact unlike the earlier and subsonic V1 with the distinctive buzzing sound. Left only with a visual evidence the V2 at night was described as a ‘falling star’ and by day a ‘flying telegraph pole’. The rocket explosion could be heard for 30 kilometers as, like the V1, it carried around 1,000 kg of explosive. The silence of the V2 effectively ended the traditional possibilities of civilian defense where warning time allowed protection and evacuation. One rocket hit a Woolworths department store in Deptford and killed 160 shoppers.

Second, its accuracy. Whilst the V2 rockets were able to reach much farther than traditional artillery, closer to 800 kilometers, owing to a still primitive and non-electronic navigation system the V2 was only targeted, and could only be destructive, against large cities. There it could be guaranteed to hit something. Thus whole cities became part of one huge legitimate target which was something never before seen in war on such a scale. Whilst the aim was to destroy central London, for example, parts of Croydon in Surrey might find themselves smashed to smithereens. Of over 5,000 V2s fired on Britain only 1,100 reached Britain.

In the overall theatre of World War Two the V2 was only a bit player. Problems with accuracy meant the V2 casualty count was insignificant. It accounted for only 7,000 deaths. It was also taken out of action quite quickly. After D-Day Allied troops dominated more of mainland Europe and were able to capture the launch sites by March, 1945.

The p sychological impact was probably greater. But, even then, there was widespread civilian awareness that most V2 rockets were aimed not at Britain but elsewhere. Of over 3,000 V2 rockets fired by the Germans, most from the Baltic coastal regions, the majority landed around Antwerp in Belgium. The remainder were targeted at Belgium and France. A few were even fired into Germany, especially at Remagen where the Germans had lost territory – a mark of how desperate the Nazis were at the end. 

After World War Two, though, it became clear how the events on September 8, 1944 had rippled through to all the continents. Both America and Britain, from the west, and the USSR from the east, locked on to the German rocketry skills, acquiring what they could in the chaotic aftermath of German surrender. The Americans got the most the quickest – one of the first rockets fired from Cape Canaveral in America was an up-graded V2. Many of the Nazi rocket scientists under Von Braun defected to the USA and were relocated to the White Sands Missile range in New Mexico. There, they continued to work on their rocketry. By the early 1950s V2 modified to carry scientific equipment produced the first motion pictures showing the curvature of the Earth. Von Braun went on to work on America's space program and in 1961 President John F. Kennedy invited him to lead Saturn 5, the Apollo project to put a moan on the moon. But in 1945 the Russians also grabbed useful amounts of German rocketry expertise too.

18/09/1944 | Monday | Decisive day 41 of 100
US-led Allied forces Operation Market Garden fails in Holland

Full list  |  Top General Sir Frederick Browning, 1944: 'I think we might be going a bridge too far.' Major Brian Urquhart, Chief of Intelligence British I Airborne Corps, 1944: 'I simply did not believe that the Germans were going to roll over and surrender.'

HOLLAND, EUROPE. September 18, 1944 saw the onset of a critical military advance by the Allies against Nazi Germany in Operation Market Garden. It’s failure delayed the Allies breakout from Normandy by several months. This ensured the Russians conquered Berlin. 

Operation Market Garden stands tall as a critical moment of twentieth century history. Simply put the advancing allies lost. They failed to secure an important bridge crossing the Rhine and in the process lost an airborne division and much more. The defending Germans basically won and gained a significant delay of the allied advance. 

It is true the outcome was somewhat unlucky. Germany anticipated America’s General Patton would lead the primary thrust from Normandy. Patton’s statements like ‘I'd rather have a German Division in front of me than a French one behind’ had captured their thinking. Indeed the allied posture substantiated this observation (correct or otherwise) as British and Canadian divisions were located in the north under the more cautious British General Montgomery. The tougher American divisions seemed to be readying for a push in the south. Indeed in anticipation of facing Patton in the south a Panzer tank division was rested in the north at an inconspicuous Dutch town called… Arnhem. By cruel coincidence this just happened to contain the final bridge included in Operation Market Garden. 

An additional peculiarity was that, against the odds, General Montgomery and Prime Minister Churchill prevailed to secure American resources for this British-led idea and operation. This was despite the dramatic and swift success of Patton in the south. The Third Army, indeed, were approaching the Saar before Market Garden inhibited resources. 

The operation itself worked to some extent. It was not a total success on some counts. Indeed Montgomery unrepentantly concluded it was 90% successful and it is true that concentrated airborne emerged as a battle-winner for the first time in history. Over 30,000 troops were deployed though not simultaneously – which proved a fatal weakness. The early waves captured many critical bridges despite encountering unexpectedly heavy German defences. 

But the significant, vital, outcome of the failure to capture the Rhine bridges – the jewel in the crown of the advance – delayed and altered the thrust of the allies into Germany by several months. Estimates vary but somewhere between a delay of four to six months is the consensus. Had Operation Market Garden succeeded it is almost certain the Allies would have reached Berlin before the Russians. The Red Army, indeed, would probably have still been battling at the eastern fringes of Germany at the time. Post-war Germany would have been dramatically different and may even have avoided division. 

22/04/1945 | Sunday | Decisive day 42 of 100
USSR Red Army conquers Berlin

Full list  |  Top Anthony Beever, British historian, 2005: 'The whole question of capturing Berlin was almost sacred to the Red Army, partly because it was the symbol, it was known as the lair of the fascist beast, and because Russia, the Soviet Union, had suffered so much. They felt it was theirs by right and they were terrified the Americans would get there first.' Lothar Loewe, member of Hitler Youth in 1945, speaking in 2005: 'The idea was really to escape out of Berlin, trying to break through the Soviet lines and reach other German troops on the outside and reach the River Elbe where the British and American and Canadian troops were.'

GERMANY, EUROPE. The conquest of Berlin by the Red Army significantly influenced the post-war European continent. Although the war ended with no visible presence of the leaders their influence was defining. Stalin in particular pressured Zhukov to raise the Red Flag over the Riechstag no later than May 1, the Soviet May Day holiday. On no account must it be the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack. 

Before the end Russian troops out-numbered Germany by as much as 10:1. The German Twelfth Army and then the Ninth Army that would allegedly come to help Berlin existed only in Hitler’s mind.  In reality Berlin was defended by remnants of shattered army units and old men and young boys and the SS touring the city looking for traitors to hang, stimulated by the out-of-control Bormann, Hitler’s Chief Administrator.

Yet still Germany refused to surrender. the price of giving up the ancient capital too high to contemplate. Even when approaching 20,000 people were dying each day still the Germans fought on. When finally the inevitable happened and the Russian 150th Rifle Regiment broke through to the Reichstag and raised the Soviet flag the Thousand Year Reich fizzled out after twelve years. Forty million dead was one its more ntable accomplishments along with a scar on the German identity that persisted for decades. Soldiers endured unspeakable torments on both sides But when the victory over all the city was secure Russian troops committed huge rapes against civilians throughout Berlin and it suburbs. As many as 100,000 were raped some claim, of whom 1-in-10 committed either suicide or died from infection or other injuries.

When Hitler announced he would commit suicide the doctors summoned to work out how found him shaking – in particular the Parkinsons riddled left hand. He was 56 but looked decades older. He had even resorted to cocaine drops administered to his eyes. Eva Braun agreed to marry him with Goebbels and Bormann acting as witnesses (Goebbles had six children with him in the bunker, all with names beginning with the letter H in honour of Hitler: Helga, Hilda, Helmut and so on.) Hitler, conscious of what happened to Mussolini that his body had been hung upside down with Clara Pataci, ordered his body and that of Eva to be burned. 

Full list  |  Top US President Woodrow Wilson, 1918: 'A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.' Article I of the United Nations Charter, 1945: ‘We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm With in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.’

USA, THE AMERICAS. In the unlikely setting of an opera house in San Francisco fifty-one nations signed a ground-breaking treaty to form a ‘United Nations Organisation’ – later simply United Nations. Viewed through a geopolitical prism the central aim of the new body could never be considered modest: ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights... promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.’ 

Reflecting the global ambitions of the treaty the founding text of the charter was in five languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Within half a century nearly every country on the planet had joined the only truly global organization dedicated to peace that emerged from the destruction of the twentieth century. 

The kernel of the UN first met several months earlier in 1945. It had also been discussed throughout the war - from the Teheran Conference in1943, Dumbarton Oaks Conference in America (Washington DC) in 1944, and at Yalta in the Crimea in 1945. It was one of the few things on which the Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt fairly readily agreed upon.

Of course, to paraphrase an important novel from the time (George Orwell's Animal Farm): 'All countries might be equal but some countries are more equal than others.' Five permanent members of a Security Council played a critical role. Said the American President Truman, in an accent not a million miles removed from John Wayne: ‘If we had had this charter a few years ago, and above all the will to use it, millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in our will to use it, millions now living will surely die. Now there is a time for making plans and there is a time for action. The time for action is here now.’ 

Bold ambitions were probably forgivable, healthy even, given the gloom of two mega-wars in quick succession. Nobody seemed concerned that the phrase ‘United Nations’ indeed arose from war – the Atlantic Charter, to be precise, through which America pumped assets like trucks and cash into Britain and elsewhere. By 1942 it was common parlance in Washington and London, a diplomatic reference to two-dozen plus entities aligned against Germany, Italy and Japan.

The post-war world found the optimism of the UN almost infectious. Fifty countries joined in 1945. Membership tripled as the rump of first European and later Soviet empires dissolved. Nearly every country on the planet, older and newer, joined in the end – about 190 totally. 

Results were perhaps modest. Fifty years after the UN Declaration of Human Rights, around half of humans on this planet lived on under US$2 per day, based on purchasing power parity. Meanwhile at the end of the twenty-first century one billion humans were unable to read, or around 15% of the world’s population. The Cold War and a massive arms race, for one, inhibited social progress hugely. UN determination was also circumvented in various locations between Korea in the 1950s and Iraq in the 1990s. Unhappily, Vietnam received a unified seat in 1977 and Germany in 1990 without decisive UN assistance. Korea, on the other hand, remained separated. It was hard to deflect the taunt that UN members felt inalienable rights to make fools of themselves. 

The UN budget per year is also under 2% of global annual spending on armaments around the world. Why does every country not cut armament spending by 2% and give it to the UN? In 2005 America spent around US$450 billion on arms. 

Yet the UN survived as a global inspiration. Vitally, and unlike its wobbly predecessor the League of Nations, it never surrendered closeness with the major benefactor and winner of the twentieth century – the United States. America often disliked the UN – ‘where America feeds the hands that bite it’ – yet never left; backhanded praise perhaps, but with real significance. The Nobel Peace Prize, as one proxy for accomplishment, was awarded five times to the UN as an organization and as many times to individuals working within the UN.

Full list  |  Top Emperor Hirohito, 1945: ‘The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.’ J Robert Oppenheimer, 1945: ‘The control of atomic weapons cannot be in itself the unique end of such operation. The only unique end can be a world that is united, and a world in which war will not occur.’

JAPAN, ASIA. The creation of the atomic bomb was probably the best kept secret of the American war effort. The Manhattan project, which began in 1942 and was led by Dr Robert Oppenheimer buried itself away in the New Mexico desert. By the time it was all over and a bomb had finally arrived at least US$2 billion were spent. Only the plutonium was manufactured elsewhere at Oak Ridge, on the other side of America in Tennessee. The mysterious city never appeared on maps despite housing at one time over 70,000 people. Literally an army of people oriented around one goal: making real Albert Einstein’s claim in 1939 that it would be possible to build a ‘super bomb’ by splitting the atom. 

The first bomb, the Hiroshima one, was named Little Boy. Exploding around 1,500 feet above the target it delivered a blast equalling 20,000 tons of high explosive. It substantially destroyed everything within a three-mile radius. The temperature reached 1,000,000 centigrade and the light was ten times the imprint of the sun. The aircrew were issued special protective glasses. The pilot of the Super Fortress (the Enola Gay, named for the pilot’s mother) commented it was like dropping in one go the equivalent of 200,000 of the bombs he dropped earlier in the war over Europe and Africa. When he saw the explosion he allegedly exclaimed: ‘‘My God, what have we done? If I live for a hundred years I’ll never get these images out of my mind…’ Totally 80,000 were killed outright. Although this was fewer than the fire bombing of Tokyo in the earlier months of 1945, which killed over 100,000 outright, it was an almost instant catastrophe. Three days later Nagasaki was bombed. 80,000 killed, and a week later Japan had surrendered. Just how much contrition lay within that surrender was unclear but the impact of the bombings were colossal and jaw-dropping.  

Reflecting on the scale of destruction (after the war) Albert Einstein said: 'I don't know how world war three will be fought, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones.' Marshall spoke for the American military as Chief of Staff: ‘The Japanese had demonstrated they would not surrender and they would fight, to the death. It was expected that resistance in Japan, with their home times, would be even more severe, so it seemed quite necessary, if we could, to shock them into action. We had to end the war, we had to save American lives…’ At the surrender ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay MacArthur thought it might be a weapon for peaced. 'To conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored,' he said in expalining the American occupation of Japan that was to last directly for the next six years and indirectly for as many decades.  

During the seven year American administration that followed, totally 20,000 square kilometers of land was transferred from nobility to tenant farmers. This is equivalent in size to Wales and was 5% of all Japanese land. Given two-thirds of Japan is forested it was one of history's most significant land ownership changes"

Truman, who made the final decision, wrote in his diary: ‘The weapon is finally to be used against Japan. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered…’ Truman allegedly placed his own role later. Dean Acheson had, so the story goes, brought Oppenheimer to meet the President. The meeting was tense and Dr Oppenheimer claimed he had blood on his hands. Afterwards Truman told Acheson: ‘Never bring that fucking cretin here again. He didn’t drop the bomb. I did.’ 

15/08/1947 | Friday | Decisive day 45 of 100
India gains independence from Britainn 

Full list  |  Top Ali Jinnah to Lord Mountbatten on the eve of Indian independence, 1947: 'Let me mark our sense of deep appreciation of the Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee, and His Majesty's Government and the British Parliament, and above all, the British nation who enthusiastically and wholeheartedly helped and supported the policy enunciated by His Majesty's Government that the people of India should be free, and that the only solution of India's constitutional problem was to divide it into Pakistan and Hindustan.' Winston Churchill to Lord Mountbatten after Indian independence, 1948: 'What you did in India was like whipping your riding crop across my face.'

INDIA, ASIA. At midnight on August 15, 1947 amidst boisterous shouts of ‘Jai Hind’ (Victory to India) Britain left India.

The first prime minister of the ex-Dominion, Jawaharlal Nehru, talked about a tryst with destiny for an Asian sub-continent experiencing the somewhat hasty departure of European administrators. He spoke on radio: ‘India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.’

Optimistic thoughts but, sadly, not thoughts borne out by the performance of the subsequent Republic of India which emerged after 1950.

Admittedly the problems were not all India’s fault. Central to the post-1947 muddle were policies pushed not from the Indian side but from the British side and especially from the last Governor-General, Viscount Lord Louis Mountbatten. The great-grandson of Queen Victoria had quickly decided, many say overly-quickly decided, that the best way forward was to partition his great-grandmothers British India into a larger secular India and a smaller Muslim Pakistan. Prime Minister Atlee in London had allowed until 1948 but Mountbatten cut even that deadline short.

Haste didn't help inspire confidence when he had made critical moves within months of arriving – Mountbatten reached India only six months earlier in February, 1947. Creating specific states where Islam prevailed fragmented in one swift move a sub-continent of over 500 principalities and little Empires and over 7,000 kilometers of coastline stretching from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. The British had mercurially unified this for close to two centuries, or at least unified in hating the British more than they hated each other. But suddenly out of the jaws of unity Mountbatten had snatched a religiously differentiated sub-continent. Two separate Muslim countries appeared in Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangladesh after the 1970s). For good measure other smaller states in Nepal and Bhutan in the north and Ceylon (Sri Lanka after the 1970s) in the south also disconnected from the Indian rump.

Mountbatten’s idea might have appeared clean cut in the halls of New Delhi but not everyone warmed to the hasty tactic. Muslims had lived throughout India and especially on the coast for centuries and many would not easily up sticks to the Islamic Pakistans (East or West). Though eventually ten millions did migrate between the new states (this number is both directions - India to Pakistan and Pakistan to India) this was only a small proportion of the respective populations. Half a century later by the 1990s around 1-in-8 Indians were still Muslim, equal to 150 millions from 1.1 billion. The bordering Muslim states of Pakistan and Bangladesh meanwhile swelled to 165 million (97% Muslim) and 150 million (83% Muslim) respectively.

What if India had stayed unified? This is probably the most intriguing, and involved, question of India in 1947. It's no surprise that conflicting views have long swirled around. Answers were muddied, needless to say, by British elites like Winston Churchill and influential members of the Indian Civil Service that disliked the split intensely. Even harder colonial spirits openly longed for a return to the likes of Brigadier Reginald Dyer who in 1919 killed 400 and wounded more than a thousand Indians – a roughly similar action to the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing of 1989 – and British policemen who used to rule: ‘I never allowed anyone to shout ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ without giving him six on the bottom with a stick’.

Working on simple projections to the end of the century a united India could have included around half a billion Muslims in a mega Indian state of around 1.5 billion. If this is true, the numbers and the logic are hard to accept completely, a united India would have been somewhere around 50% larger than China. It would not have been a Muslim-majority state but Islam would have been significantly influential. Something like 1-in-3 of Indians would have practiced Islam compared to a comparable figure in China of around 1-in-50. Mutual tolerance of different ethnicities would have defined India much more than it does.

Another question often appears: what also if India had stayed unified under the British? What if independence had not appeared in the 1940s but maybe, say, half a century later in the 1990s?

Certainly the British Raj would not have been replaced by the License Raj, the entangling system of bureaucracy that Indians used to stifle their innovation and productivity. This lasted for decades after the British oligopolies gave way to Indian monopolies.

Yet whether India had stayed British is intriguing but probably academic if you accept the rest of the world continued as usual. For by coincidence a handy stroke of luck was that after the 1940s Communist China, like socialist India, took a similarly misjudged journey in public administration. A firmer British imprint of liberal democracy and the unifying English language in a sub-continent with dozens of languages and over a thousand dialects was not therefore really squandered. It just wasn’t exploited. Liberal shareholder capitalism acquired traction in India once again and at roughly similar times as similar ideas resurfaced in China.

By the end of the twentieth century the Indian rump was widely predicted to become the world’s second largest economy around the middle of the twenty-first century. It will be similar in size to China, the largest global economy, and stronger in parts. This tectonic shift from a poor and agricultural colony to an industrialized superpower is all the more remarkable because India has about one third the land size of China: 3.2 million square km versus 9.6 million square km.

In the run up to 1947 Gandhi famously did not support the idea or the execution of partition. For the charismatic leader (Gandhi was not just an Indian phenomenon but a global one too and was America's Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 1930) 1947 was not a happy year for him and he commentated sadly as the Muslim northwest and northeast separated. Perhaps there’s some justice that the great if frustrated peacemaker did not live to see more – the English-trained lawyer was assassinated in 1948 shortly after completing a fast to encourage cooperation and non-violence. Kashmir became a particular problem in the first Indo-Pakistan War (1947-1949) and two more notable Indo-Pakistan wars in 1965 and 1971. Plus there was an almost continuous stream of skirmishes. India added in another war with China in 1962 and both India and Pakistan became nuclear states at round the same time during the 1990s.

14/10/1947 | Tuesday | Decisive day 46 of 100
First breach of the sound barrier in America

Full list  |  Top Charles Yeager, 1947: 'Leveling off at 42,000 feet, I had thirty percent of my fuel, so I turned on rocket chamber three and immediately reached .96 Mach. I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride. Suddenly the Mach needle began to fluctuate. It went up to .965 Mach then tipped right off the scale. We were flying supersonic. And it was a smooth as a baby's bottom; Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade.' Richard Hallion, USAF Historian, 1997: 'The Mig 19 is the first Soviet supersonic jet fighter. It appears contemporaneously with the first American supersonic jet fighter, the F-100. They both appear in 1953. They both have roughly the same performance capabilities.'

USA, THE AMERICAS. In late autumn of 1947 another physical barrier was conquered in the Mojave desert in New Mexico, America. Line honours for breaking the sound barrier fell to an adventurous American pilot called Chuck Jaeger. On the first occasion he overcome the sound barrier while diving a relatively small plane (it was only 9.5 metres long) that combined a little ominously the aerodynamics of swept wings, rather than the straight wings the Germans had realised inhibited speed, and a bullet. But despite a few hiccups it finally flew as intended. Named Glamorous Glennis when the Bell XS, X standing for experimental and S for Supersonic, exceded mach 1 it had traveled faster than it would have taken sound to travel the same distance. It was only a short moment. but humans now mastered super-sonic flight. 

America and several others had been trying to beat the sound barrier more or less throughout World War Two. In 1947 the USSR was starting to design super-fast aircraft although in the late 1940s were rather more preoccupied with war recovery than America. Nazi Germany had also made advances in super-fast flight until 1945 and some people say they got their first. The record is not too clear from war-torn Europe. But certainly interest in America was ignited by stories that the Luftwaffe may have pierced the sound barrier with experimental Messerschmitt jets. The immediate American response was Sabre jets with a distinctive thin wings and streamlined fuselage.

Exceding the sound barrier for other than brief moments, however, was a difficult task and there was the ever present danger of ending up as spam in a can - as the pilots phrased a crash. Indeed the Bell XS depended on high altitude where the speed required was just over 1,000 km per hour – about 80% of that needed at sea level. Additionally it was dropped from an enlarged bomb bay of a B-29. When the announcement came the USAF noted only that Jeager had breached the sound barrier ‘in level flight’, so allowing for the possibility the record may have involved a dive. 

The early wins were wobbly but it became more certain in the long term. Cash steadily filtered into the project - 'no bucks, no Buck Rogers' - and within a few years the USAF soon breached mach 3 – three times the speed of sound – and conceived and implemented many technological accomplishments in varous super-sonic aircraft. A new regiment of pilot tests and aspirant pilot tests appeared - many are called but few are chosen. These by the way culminated in not only military but civilian supersonic flight. For example the science and the ambition to make Concorde a reality dates from this time.

Yeager himself became a hero: poor Virginia farm boy goes from mechanic to maverick war-time pilot to conquerer of sound. During the war he had shot down several German planes using conventional aircraft. Stories circulated that he suffered from bruised ribs on the day of beating the sound barrier, the result of a horse riding accident, but still flew anyway. Later he became a central character in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.

Sound will forever stand as the last speed barrier that humans beat as nothing can exceed the speed of light. At least nothing that is yet known although as Douglas Adams noted one possible exception may be bad news which obeys its own special laws. As a mark of how important sound was all other advanced nations followed in relatively quick succession. Today very few air forces cannot break the sound barrier. However as a curious byline to breaking the sound barrier in the air it was nearly fifty years more before the sound barrier was broken on land by a pilot in the British RAF (Royal Air Force) called Andy Green. 

14/05/1948 | Friday | Decisive day 47 of 100
State of Israel founded

Full list  |  Top US President Harry Truman, speaking 11 minutes after the proclamation of the state of Israel, 1948: 'The Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The United States recognizes the provisional government of the de facto authority of the new state of Israel.' Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, 1967: 'Israel has created a new image of the Jew in the world—the image of a working and an intellectual people, of a people that can fight with heroism.'

ISRAEL, MIDDLE EAST. Israel was founded as the British Mandate for Palestine ended - it was one of the shortest British foreign involvements lasting a mere thirty years. With this move a conflict enflamed that lasted in varying degrees of intensity for the rest of the twentieth century. Perhaps there was a sense of problems In Tel Aviv, where David Ben Gurion claimed a Jewish homeland, for the Israeli committee voted for the declaration of a state only 6-4 in favour. 

Reactions were immediate. The American President Truman was the first to recognise Israel. Though having had sight of the announcement document he was careful to rephrase  ‘the new Jewish state’ to ‘State of Israel’ and ‘Government’ became ‘provisional Government’. American support was perhaps understandable. The United States had sacrificed much to undo Nazism and genocide against Jews and it was not about to stand back from a Jewish homeland. Britain was looking for an exit. An exhausted Britain felt almost desperate to end their 1919 mandate – one of several follies left from the era of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

The reaction was less positive in the Middle East. Five Arab nations mobilised immediately 30,000 men with some air support, especially from Egypt. Their goal was to dispute the Israeli existence: Jordan (then called Trans-Jordan), Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. All had borders with Israel except Iraq. 

The UN in 1947 tried to calm waters with a resolution dividing the area into separate states. Few dates are more decisive in the turbulent Middle East than this day’s fateful decision by the United Nations about a Jewish homeland. Mostly these arose because Israel received over half of Palestinian lands even though their population did not warrant this.  Close to two-thirds of the population were Arab and they only got 40% of the land. Jews got Haifa, Tel Aviv and the Negev Valley. Jerusalem itself was under UN trusteeship. It was meant to be neutral, so said the UN anyway, but neither Arab nor Jew followed it. When Israel seized Galilee and other areas along the Palestinian coast a further UN resolution (1949) left Israel in control of even more land. 

It was decades before the Palestinians managed to declare their own state in 1988. Palestinian self-rule was agreed and, in return, the PLO agreed to recognise Israel. The new Palestinian state would include all the Gaza strip and most of the West Bank plus East Jerusalem.  The only problem was that they were not in Palestine but Algiers in North Africa; the state of de facto war with Israel prevented them being anywhere nearer their homeland. A sort of peace emerged with Arafat and Rabin at the White House, applauded by Bill Clinton, to say ‘enough of blood and tears. Enough!’  

01/10/1949 | Saturday | Decisive day 48 of 100
Communists defeat Nationalists in China

Full list  |  Top Mao Ze-dong, 1949: 'Not only in China but also in the world without exception, one either leans to the side of imperialism or to the side of socialism. Neutrality is mere camouflage and a third road does not exist.' Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Ze-dong, 1967: 'There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.'

CHINA, ASIA. October 1 in 1949 marked the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Three years of Civil War ended as the Nationalists, who themselves had freed China of the Emperor system, fled to Taiwan. They never returned. One-fifth of mankind was brought into the Communist sphere of influence. 

As with much of Chinese history both positive and negative aspects emerged from this latest regime change. Positively, much of the recent tragedy of China ended and for the first time in half a century Asia’s largest country was united under one ruling elite. There were neither Manchu Emperors nor Japanese colonizers nor Chinese warlords to contend with. 

On the downside this day heralded several decades of very bleak news for the Chinese peasantry in whose name the revolution was conducted. Famine, large-scale killings, social upheaval, destruction of property and many more things followed. This failure to deliver was all the more tragic because, in simple terms anyway, peasants joined the Communists on promises of land distribution and all that implied for a righteous and modern and new China. True, the defeated Nationalists also loathed social injustice. But the Nationalist conviction about land was more in the days of Dr Sun Yat-sen. After Dr Sun’s death in the 1920s the Nationalists attraction to land redistribution faded notably. When the Communists crossed the Yangtze river prior, reaching first Nanking and then Beijing, the peasantry lost their inhibitions and sided solidly with Mao Ze-dong. 

Was Communism good for China? Official views expressed in the 1980s were that Mao was basically correct until the late 1950s. This is to say about a decade after this day in 1949. But thereafter the Great Leader went awry with first the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution. By most reckonings several tens of millions lost their lives during these two successive tragedies though one controversial record put the death toll as high as 70 million. By any reckoning it was a huge impact in the twentieth century world.

Mao himself was not especially contrite. He once said that the more chaos dished up and the longer it goes on, the better. This Maoist hardline determination was frequently stressed by the likes of Renmin Ribao, the People’s Daily, and Hong qi, Red Flag. When Mao finally made his apologies – after a fashion – all he would note was that ‘… if you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart! You will feel the much better for it.’