The Corner Turned: 1943

Abstract

It became clear in 1943 that the allies would win the war. The Axis certainly could not win it, and even a draw was now unlikely: allied victory in North Africa and the Atlantic, the surrender of Italy,¹ German defeat at Stalingrad and a steadily advancing Red Army saw to that. The developments of 1943 gave British propaganda in neutral Europe a tremendous lift; but they did not mean that the war of words was won. Neutral countries maintained their various early agendas: fear Germany and distrust Soviet Russia, resent the British blockade, worry that the allies might not be sympathetic to them in post-war reconstruction, and in Spain and Portugal suspect the democratic states of interfering in their internal politics. The war ground wearily on as the propagandists strove to sustain the neutrals’ belief in allied victory and to reassure them that this was in their best interests both now and when the war was done.