Fritzsche applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe, and reported the following:
A terrifying judgment falls on the British Empire on page 99 as the long-term consequences of the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942 become clear. Not only have huge pieces of the empire been lost–Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Hong Kong–but the losses suggest the rottenness of the empire itself. George Orwell and others get some delicious quotes about these “blackest weeks.” For independence fighters in India from Gandhi to Bose, it looked like Britain would lose the war, a turn of events which would secure their long-term dream of freedom. By the end of page 99, British statesmen tried to rally, promising reform, explaining problems by pointing to internal ethnic conflicts within the colonies which were then taken to be the premise for more imperial rule.Learn more about 1942 at the Basic Books website.
The severity of judgment and the persistent hope for reform, the wartime drama on page 99, indicated the long-term struggle Britain had confronting its post-imperial future. Page 99 thus gives a very good idea of the key theme of “self rule” in the book. Even as Britain regained sovereignty over Singapore and Malaya at the end of World War II, the defeat of the Japanese could not undo the historical significance of their initial victory over the European empires in 1942. This is why the fall of Singapore in 1942 is an event of such shattering importance: it points to the end of empire as the pages that follow page 99 argue. This was a judgment that mainstream Americans shared with the victorious Japanese early in the war.
My book, 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe, examines the genuinely global nature of the world war: the struggle among new and old empires, but also the assault on empire and the tenacity of anti-imperial and anti-colonial struggles. It covers Singapore, but also places like Johannesburg, South Africa; Calcutta, India, and Detroit, Michigan. However defined, this fight for freedom cut across the bias of the battle between the Allies and the Axis, and it is these criss-crossing struggles over sovereignty that provide the overawing shape to World War II. In 1942, there is Guadalcanal and Stalingrad, but there is also Singapore, and while there are states’ rights, there are also civil rights. Events pulled the Allied fight to restore the independence of Poland from German predation into the fight for independence in many more spheres of life: in the colonies, and among subject populations, minorities, and women. In many ways, the Atlantic Charter, which Churchill and Roosevelt signed in August 1941 in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, had the unforseen effect of creating the moral energy that expanded the untidy struggle for freedom across the world even to those who had not been invaded by the Germans in September 1939. Singapore in February 1942 globalized what had been a Polish or a French fight for freedom. Page 99 pivots to our own times.
The Page 99 Test: Hitler's First Hundred Days.
--Marshal Zeringue
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