Eighty years ago this week British intelligence refutes Soviet fictions about Hitler's fate

 

Hugh Trevor-Roper, history don turned wartime intelligence officer, published the results of the investigation that he had undertaken into the fate of Hitler at the behest of the British authorities. The investigation aimed to remove the veil of mystery cast by the Soviets who had occupied Berlin and with it the Fuehrerbunker so were thus far better placed to know the truth. The Nazis had claimed that Hitler had died fighting. Stalin preferred to hold out the possibility that or, even claim, that Hitler had survived. The democratic states could be accused of harbouring Hitler with the intention of restoring Nazism. Trevor-Roper had established the truth that Hitler had shot himself after Eva Braun, whom he had just married, died by poison. The Soviets did not respond in any way and it took another five years before they accepted something approaching the truth. In the meanwhile Trevor-Roper had written a book on Hitler's last days which made him rich; he bought a Bentley, believing that a Rolls-Royce would have been too ostentatious. 

A surge of unrest convulsed the Middle East. In Palestine Jews campaigning against British rule launched a massive wave of sabotage against the railways, cutting lines in over one hundred locations in the so-called "night of the trains." The anniversary of the Balfour declaration of 1917 triggered a wave of protests across north Africa. There were large riots in the main cities of Egypt. In Libya there was an outright pogrom in which over one hundred Jews were killed.

Labour repeated its landslide win the Parliamentary elections and scored huge successes in the local elections through Britain. It won control of 22 out of 27 London boroughs with a gain of 273 in its number of seats, about the number of seats that the Conservatives lost. Outside London Labour won over 1,000 seats, chiefly from Conservatives who lost over 500 and independents, down over 400. It was a disaster for the Communists who only won seven of the seats 144 they contested.

Bus workers in London who belonged to the T&GWU, but had long been allied to the extreme left, staged a work to rule with a difference. They invented a rule that buses were not to carry standing passengers until 4.30pm and a maximum of six per bus in the rush hour.