November 28th, 1941...Soviet troops under Marshal Timoshenko re- capture Rostov-on-Don. Around Moscow, the Soviets mass their new 10th Army on 12 ski battalions.

In North Africa, Rommel's tanks overrun the NZ 24th Battalion, and capture the New Zealand Main Dressing Station. The Kiwis return the insult by capturing Maj Gen. von Ravenstein, who commands Rommel's 21st Panzer Division.

The news that Tobruk has been relieved reaches Hitler, just before he meets the pro-Nazi Haj Amin El Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, an important Arab leader. The Mufti tells the Fuhrer that the Arab world is convinced of a German victory, "by virtue not only of the large Army, brave soldiers and brilliant military strategists at Germany's disposal, but also because Allah could never grant victory to an unjust cause." Hitler tells Amin that Germany has declared an "uncompromising war on the Jews," and promises the Arabs will be liberated from British rule.

At sea, the Japanese task force enroute to Pearl Harbor struggles through fog and rain. Tankers assigned to keep the warships topped up keep losing their way, and destroyers have to round them up. On the carrier Hiryu, naval aviators turn ice cream and milk into American milkshakes. On the carrier Akagi's bridge, Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo blurts out to Rear Adm. Ryunosuke Kusaka, "Mr. Chief of Staff, what do you think? I feel that I've undertaken a heavy responsibility. If only I'd have held out and declined it." Kusaka tranquilly replies, "Don't worry, sir. Everything will turn out all right."

November 29th, 1941...Nazi SS units murder 4,500 Jews in the Crimean port of Kerch. Seven days of truck convoys to Leningrad end with the delivery of 800 tons of flour to the city, and 40 trucks going to the bottom of the lake. German artillery destroys 350 trucks. Despite having 3,500 trucks on hand, the Russians have only 1,000 available on a given day. Despite the convoys' heroic efforts, 400 people a day are dying in Leningrad from starvation.

Further to the south, German troops evacuate Taganrog. Soviet troops make repeated assaults over minefields and into machine-gun positions, forcing the Germans to withdraw behind the River Mius. German reserves earmarked for Moscow are sent to Kharkov to stem this attack, along with a telegram from Hitler to the field commander, Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist. The fuhrer's message is terse: "Further cowardly retreats are forbidden."

In the vilage of Petrischchevo, the Nazis deal with partisans by hanging an 18-year-old Soviet girl, Zoia Kosmodemianskaya. "She set fire to houses," reads the placard round her neck, as she is led to execution. Her last words to the German executioner, however, are defiant, "You can't hang all 190 million of us."

Hitler gets a similar assessment of his chances of victory in more measured tones when Dr. Fritz Todt, Nazi Economics Minister, reports to the Fuhrer, "Given the arms and industrial supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon powers, we can no longer militarily win this war."

In Japan, Premier Hideki Tojo tells a meeting of Japan's top officials. including Emperor Hirohito, that Japan must go to war, and that diplomacy has failed.

November 30th, 1941....The killing of Jews continues. 1,000 German Jews arrive in Riga from Berlin, and are marched out of their locked trains at 8:15 a.m. to the nearby Rumbuli Forest, and shot. At 1:30 p.m., Nazi SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler phones his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, to say that Hitler has just ordered "no liquidation" of this convoy just yet. He wants them as slave labor. Too late. The same day, 9,000 Lithuanian Jews already shut up in Riga's ghetto, are shot.

Nineteen more trainloads of German Jews, some of them decorated World War I veterans, will arive at Riga in December, and those aboard will be put to forced labor.

The same day, the first Jewish deportees, women, children, and senior citizens from Prague, are shipped to a new concentration camp at Theresienstadt, 35 miles north of Prague. This is an 18th-century fortress, formerly used by the Austro- Hungarian Army. Among its most notorious prisoners has been Gavrilo Princip, who fired the shot that started World War I. Now the prison is surrounded by new wooden huts and barracks, which are filled that day with people who have been uprooted from their homes, stripped of their possessions, and are ill-fed. They will be joined in the cmoing weeks by almost all the remaining Jews of Vienna, Berlin, and a dozen other German and Czech cities.

The Nazis will make Theresienstadt a "model ghetto," passing it off as a "paradise camp" for Jews, fooling Red Cross inspectors with fake stores, cafes, and libraries. The Nazis even make a film with the camp's inmates, "The Fuhrer Gives a City to the Jews" for propaganda. All of it is a sham. And every prisoner seen in the film is executed after it is done. No one else is executed there...but more than 32,000 people die there of starvation and disease.

On the Russian front, German Army Group South under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Germany's "Black Knight," occupies the Rostov Salient, under Soviet pressure. Rundstedt, who reads detective stories in his spare time, orders a retreat. Hitler hears of that and orders Rundstedt to stand fast.

Rundstedt telegraphs back: "It is madness to attempt to hold. In the first place the troops cannot do it and in thes econd place if they do not retreat they will be destroyed. I repeat that this order be rescinded or that you find someone else."

Hitler fires back: "I am acceding to your request. Please give up your command."

In the Pacific Ocean, rain and sleet on the flight deck of the carrier Kaga, turning it into a skating rink. Aviators kill time by studying flash identification cards of American battleships.

All across the Pacific, Japanese troops and ships move to their action stations. Most are in French Indo-China, China, or Formosa, preparing for assaults on the American-held Philippines, British-held Malaya, Hong Kong, and Borneo, Dutch Java, or neutral Thailand. These moves, many of them quite visible, set off alarms in Singapore, but nobody detects the carrier fleet heading for Hawaii.

Malta has its 1,000th air-raid alert, and the British release civiliian casualties for two months: 351 killed, 516 injured.

December 1st, 1941...In Leningrad, the Soviets total statistics for the besieged city: 11,000 citizens dead of starvation, 522 dead from German shellfire. The siege is in its 92nd day. That day, Vera Inber sees something she has never seen, a corpse on a child's sled. Instead of being placed in a coffin, the body has been tightly wrapped in a sheet. This month, starvation deaths in Leningrad will rise from 400 a day to 1,500 a day.

All along the Russian Front the war goes on amid subzero temperatures. The Germans try again to break through the Moscow defenses, but the Soviets hold on with new anti-tank guns against the panzers.

At Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Dr. Fritz Mennecke notes that although he had to begin work half an hour late, he still gassed 230 people. In Lithuania, SS Col. Karl Jaeger reports that he's killed 229,052 Jews in Latvia and Lithuania since June, and a further 1,000 in Estonia. The only remaining Jews are those employed in German factories and other laboring tasks.

In Washington, Japanese emissaries Kichisaboru Kurusu and Saboru Nomura continue to talk peace with Cordell Hull. Their conversations are disrupted by Hull's cleft palate and Kurusu's deafness. The British put Malaya on full alert.

In Japan, the final meeting of the Imperial Privy Council is held. Prime Minister Hideki Tojo argues the case for war. Some advisers warn that Japan's economy cannot match America's, and point out there are no plans in case of air raids on Tokyo, a mostly wooden city. Privy Council President Yochimichi Hara retorts, "The United States is acting in a conceited, stubborn, and disrespectful manner."

Tojo tops that by saying that the Japanese Empire stands at the threshold of glory or collapse, and promises that a "united nation will go on to victory."

There is nothing more to be said. The ministers sign the documents declaring war, and give them to Hirohito, who signs them a few hours later, telling his aides that he does not feel that a constitutional monarch can overturn his ministers on such a momentous decision.

Shortly after that, the Imperial Japanese Navy's main radio towers in Tokyo, grind out orders to the far-flung fleet to commence hostilities on Dec. 8th, Tokyo time. One signal goes out to Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo's carrier force, "Niitaka Yama Nobore," which means, "Climb Mt. Niitaka." That order tells Nagumo to proceed with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Niitaka, a peak on Formosa, was at that time the highest (13,599 feet) peak in the Japanese Empire.

Back in Japan, the leading English-language paper, Japan Times and Advertiser, headlines: "Japan Will Renew Efforts to Reach U.S. Understanding."

December 2nd, 1941..."Overall impression," notes German Gen. Franz Halder of the Soviet forces, "enemy defense has reached its peak. No more reinforcements available." In actuality, the Soviets have 59 infantry and 17 cavalry divisions ready for a counterattack.

That day, in a blinding snowstorm, a motorcycle reconnaissance unit struggles into the village of Khimki, just four miles from the Moscow city border and 12 miles from the Kremlin. The Germans there find the terminal of the Moscow city trolley system, and Lt. Heinrich Haape, a doctor, buys himself from the vending machine a trolley ticket to the Kremlin. But later that day, hastily armed Soviet factory workers charge north, and re-take Khimki.

All along the Moscow front, German troops are stalled. Visibility is 50 feet or less. German troops in some areas refuse to attack. Nonetheless, the panzers try again during a break in the weather, and are able to see the Kremlin's spires.

Tokyo fires a telegram to its chief spy in Pearl Harbor, German Julius Otto Kuhn, to ask if there are any barrage balloons over Pearl Harbor, or any anti-torpedo nets. The answer is no. The Americans break this message faster than Kuhn does, but regard it as a routine intelligence inquiry.

In Hawaii, Lt. Cdr. Edwin D. Layton, the US Pacific Fleet's intelligence officer, tells his boss, Vice Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, that he has "no information" about the location of Japan's six aircraft carriers, but presumes they are in "home waters."

Kimmel jokingly asks, "Do you mean to say that they could be rounding Diamond Head this minute and we wouldn't know?"

Layton replies blandly, "I would hope they would be sighted by now, sir."

In Singapore, the population mans the piers as HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse steam into harbor, White Ensigns streaming. The former is the newest battleship in the Royal Navy, the second the oldest battlecruiser. Both are fast, armed with 14-inch or 15-inch guns, and are a visible deterrent to Japanese aggression, despatched by Winston Churchill personally. Prince of Wales has had a busy war...fighting the Bismarck, convoys to Malta, and carrying Winston Churchill to the Atlantic Charter conference. Repulse, however, has yet to fire her guns in action. Commanding this force is Adm. Sir Tom Phillips, a veteran battleship man who does not think airpower can sink battleships. The force is incomplete, as it was to have the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable with her, but she has run aground during trials off Jamaica, and will be late. This powerful force gives Singapore the morale jolt they need, and all there believe that "Force Z" will be more than enough to prevent Japanese invasion.

December 3rd, 1941...After nightfall, 2nd New Zealand Division withdraws from Libya, having taken heavy casualties to relieve Tobruk, leaving behind 5th Brigade. 28th Maori Battalion annihilates the vanguard of a German column attempting to move on Bardia via the Coast Road.

The Japanese Consul-General in Hawaii fires a radiogram to Tokyo reporting the American warships at anchor in Pearl Harbor, which include the battleships Oklahoma and Nevada, both sisters, and the carrier USS Enterprise. This information is radioed to Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo's First Air Fleet, shoe six carriers have just reached a point 1,300 miles northwest of Hawaii, and are now headed southeast, towards its target.

In his office aboard the battleship Nagato, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto writes a letter to his friend, who has expressed jingoistic rhetoric. "If we attack America," Yamamoto chides his friend sarcastically, "It will not be necessary for us to seize California. In order for us to make peace, we would have to march into the White House. I wonder if those who would blindly lead us to war have thought about that!" Japanese propagandists turn this warning of American determination and toughness into a boast that Yamamoto is looking forward to dictating peace to the Americans in the White House.

In Russia, German troops are forced to retreat to Mariupol. Behind the lines in the Crimea, they massacre Jews and Soviet PoWs, recording the death toll that day as 17,645. Among the dead are 2,504 Krimchak Jews who can trace their local origins back more than a thousand years.

However, Soviet troops evacuate the Finnish peninsula of Hango, an ice-free port the USSR seized from Finland after the Winter War of 1939. It has been under Finnish siege since June 29th.

December 4th, 1941...Adolf Hitler's armies have lost 85,000 men on the Moscow front since Nov. 16th, the same number of troops as had died on the whole front from mid-June to mid-November. He orders one more effort to break through to the Soviet capital, which is also the center of the Soviet rail net.

The attack is ordered on the southern pincer between Tula and Venev, but the temperature has dropped to an incredible 35 degrees Celsius below zero. German tanks will not move, German guns will not fire, and thousands of German troops in thin leather boots are suffering frostbite. The attack cannot start.

Hitler orders his Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, to do something about the German lack of winter uniforms. Goebbels launches a drive to urge German women to donate their fur coats to the war effort. However, the trainloads of furs and mittens are stranded on jammed railways, which are attacked daily by partisans.

In Berlin, the Reichstag publishes a decree stating that Poles or Jews in the east who sabotage or disobey German orders, or incite others to do, will be punished by death.

In the north Pacific, Nagumo's force gets word from Tokyo that an American submarine is nearby. The fleet changes course, but it turns out to be an error, no submarine. That evening, the force gets another scare when lights of an aircraft are seen. They turn out to be sparks from the carrier Kaga's funnel. She gets a stiff warning to be more careful.

In the South China Sea, three divisions of Japanese troops are at sea, sailing to invade Malaya. Col. Masanobu Tsuji, a staff officer with this force, watches a deep-red sun rise in the east as the moon, looking like a tray, vanishes in the west. Tsuji visaulizes the face of his mother, wife, and children.