On New Year's Eve 1941, Sweden was seemingly in the same geostrategic situation as the year before. However, a change in the wind was under way. In front of Moscow's gates, the Germans' storm wave had collapsed when Marshal Zhukov's Siberian troops launched a violent counter-attack on 6 December 1941. The Red Army had good help from ``General Winter'', who would assist in several winters to come. But in reality the strategic initiative was on its way to slipping out of German hands. However, it would take a whole year before this became evident for the world, when a complete German army was annihilated near Volga.
On 7 December 1941, the day after the counter-attack outside Moscow, Japan attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor. With that an industrial giant arose in terrible anger - an anger that in the end would turn the fortunes of war.
In the Second World War, the breaking of the cipher from the German Enigma machines and the Japanese Purple machines[13] was of crucial importance. The considerably greater intellectual effort needed to break the Geheimschreiber messages, which was accomplished in Sweden, did not in any way have the same decisive significance for the war. Therefore this accomplishment has not been so well known. However, from a Swedish perspective, it was of considerable importance as it actively contributed to keep Sweden out of the war.