Eighty years ago this week the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe takes shape

 

The leaders of the principal allied powers, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, met in conference at Yalta in the Crimea to plan the future after the defeat of Germany. Only Stalin had a realistic agenda and that had already been set by the Red Army's advance across Europe. He simply wished to retain Soviet conquests and to ensure that they faced no military challenge. Roosevelt hoped to entice the Soviets into  particpating in the military defeat of Japan; Stalin was aware that Soviet territorial ambitions in the East would be fulfilled by military action which Japan would be powerless to halt especially if the UK and US invaded the home islands. Churchill entertained fantasies of instituting some form of democracy in Soviet occupied eastern Europe.

The Bulgarian Communist Party gave a foretaste of politics after Soviet occupation. Ninety three senior figures in Bulgaria's wartime government including the former regents and the prime minister were executed by firing squad after brief proceedings before the "People's Tribunal." Their corpses were buried in a mass grave in a bomb crater. 

The Allied bombing offensive against Germany accidentally avenged the plotters of 20th July when an air raid on Berlin killed Roland Freisler, the chief judge of the Volksgericht (People's Court) which had sentenced many of them to death. Freisler had used proceedings to humiliate the defendants rather than to present any pretence of a proper trial. He was the only notable top level Nazi to be killed by regular Allied military action.