Munich Shuffle Volume II: April 1941 – December 1942

The Chamberlain Mandate…
By the spring of 1941 Britain’s strategic situation was considerably improved, in no small part due to what sympathetic historians would call the ‘Chamberlain Mandate’. The Italians were heading for defeat in Africa, with their German allies distracted by their own preparations for Operation Barbarossa. The focus on Hitler’s dreams for a grand crusade in the east to sweep away Bolshevism and secure new lands for the Reich removed the threat of invasion from the British mainland for now, but threatened to magnify the power of Nazi Germany if the USSR proved unequal to the task of defending themselves from an invasion they seemed unwilling to believe was coming.
At the same time Imperial Japan was making its plan to seize the colonial possessions of the defeated and distracted European powers and having concluded that the greatest impediment to that plan was the United States they were laying the groundwork for an audacious strike against the US Pacific Fleet at anchor. The transformation of a European conflict into a true global war would stretch the British to their limit, even as it offered the best chance of finally defeating the Axis.