The Fall of Singapore (Jan - Mar 1942) | Call of Duty | UNCENSORED

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In the early weeks of 1942, as battle raged in western Europe and North Africa, the Japanese threat to invade Malaya and Singapore became a reality. It was unthinkable to the British that the island they’d nicknamed ‘the Gibraltar of the East’ could fall - and yet fall it did, with dire and terrible consequences. Some eighty thousand prisoners of war were taken in Singapore, fifty thousand more in Malaya. No wonder British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described it as the “worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history”.

But before the events of 1942 unfolded, the Japanese had had to neutralise the possibility of American intervention. They were thirsty for resources. They had no source of oil to speak of and had lost a shattering 93 percent of their supply after US President Franklin D Roosevelt ordered an embargo in July 1941. Although the Japanese enjoyed an oil treaty with the Dutch, that too was broken as the Netherlands joined the embargo. Starved of oil, metal and other resources Japan could either draw back and lose face or seek to find the resources it needed elsewhere. Those resources lay in the South Pacific.

Directed and narrated by Liam Dale