Japan's escalation of the War in the East is devastatingly effective - Malaya and Singapore fall and the myth of European superiority, on which centuries of Empire have been constructed, comes crashing down. But despite Japan's success it is possible to see, from the start, the inevitability of her defeat - she has roused the might of the United States and the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea foretell the inevitable outcome. On land it is already clear that Japan is far from invincible with the Chinese victory at Changsha - but such events are little known outside of the War in the East.
