Eighty Years Ago This Week

    Churchill continued to flounder in his campaign for the general election by treating  Harold Laski's proposition that the left-wing National Executive Committee (NEC) would be the dominant force in any Labour government with an ounce of seriousness. Clem Attlee had disposed of Laski's insulting and irrelevant claim that he would only attend the Potsdam conference as an observer with ease but Churchill insisted on pressing Attlee publicly as to how a Labour government would relate to the NEC. Answering this presented Attlee with no greater difficulty. The kindest analysis of Churchill's moves was that he genuinely did not understand what was going on and was slave to a vision of the Labour Party as a totalitarian force. Labour astutely declined to field a candidate against Churchill in his South Woodford constituency. By implication his reputation as war leader was not to be challenged, leaving unspoken the opposition to him as the leader of the Conservative Party. Att...

    Churchill followed up his infamous "Gestapo" broadcast with one that was almost as alarmist and counter productive. He described the Labour leaders as "autocratic philanthropists" and claimed that " the violent imposition of the Socialistic system, such as has now emerged as a demand from the extreme and potentially dominant forces of the Socialist Party" would not only involve the restriction of Parliamentary government but would rob the ordinary wage-earner of his personal freedom. In part he was led astray by the antics of Harold Laski, an extreme Labour left-winger, who seemed to imagine that a Labour government would be controlled by the left-dominated National Executive. Laski referred to Clement Attlee as the "nominal head" of the party. In reality Laski was a wholly marginal figure and Churchill was being sucked into hysterical anti-socialist rants rather than advancing any positive case for remaining as prime minister. The prime...

   The last of the "Big Three" conferences was set at Potsdam. In view of the possibility that Labour might win the upcoming general election, Churchill invited Labour leader Clement Attlee to attend alongside him. Churchill was conducting the election campaign in a fully vituperative mode against Labour, but graciously (and to some puzzlingly) flagged his respect for Parliament as the true repository of democratic power. The government's long-awaited policy statement on India showed that Britain was preparing to loosen its grip on the Raj. The Viceroy's Council was to be composed of Indian politicians and not merely nominees. Representatives of the major groups were invited to a conference to discuss the next steps to take. After 82 days of fighting the battle for Okinawa came to an end. It had been the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war. The heaviest toll was of local people (150,000); for the first time the battlefield had a dense Japanese civilian population....

    Tito backed down in the first major confrontation between communist and democratic states. Yugoslav partisan forces had occupied the Italian port of Trieste where they conducted a reign of terror against Italian Fascists and non-communist Slovenes. None of the various agreements between Stalin and the US or UK had specified a post-war frontier and the Yugoslav leader Marshal Tito hoped to include Trieste in his country. The British, however, had major military forces with heavy weapons notably the 2nd New Zealand division. Tito agreed with General Alexander, the British commander, to withdraw his men. The Yugoslavs, though, were left with the territory of Trieste's hinterland east of the so-called Morgan Line, which still belongs to the Yugoslav successor state Slovenia. A proposal to allow candidates serving in the armed forces to wear their uniforms while campaigning in Britain's general election provoked furious protest from Labour in Parliament. It would have ...

  Churchill opened his contribution to the general election campaign with a disastrous speech on the radio in which he claimed that a Labour government would require some form of "Gestapo" to carry out its policies. The blunder was entirely Churchill's own and reflected his visceral anti-socialism which he had held in check to maintain the wartime coaltion, although Lord Beaverbrook (whose Daily Express was the only major newspaper to cover the speech sympathetically) and Brendan  Bracken had been egging him on to conduct an aggressive campaign. All but the most stupid Conservative supporters immediately recognised  that the speech was an error and it haunted Churchill for the remainder of the campaign.   France responded drastically to protests against the reimposition of colonial rule in Damascus. A full-scale military counter including the use of artillery was directed against rebel centres, causing about 1,000 casualties. Rather reluctantly Britain inter...

  Heinrich Himmler, the former head of the SS was captured by the British army under the false identity of Sergeant Hizinger of the security police, junior in rank but liable to automatic arrest. The British did not  recognise him. He was dishevelled, had shaved his trademark moustache and wore an eye patch,  but after a few hours he spontaneously disclosed his identity. A doctor searched him for poison and found a capsule in his mouth which he tried  to remove. Himmler fought back and succeeded in biting onto the cyanide capsule, which killed him in ten minutes. This left only ex-foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of the Third Reich's top leadership still alive and at large. Churchill formally resigned as prime minister and asked for a dissolution of Parliament. The Parliament elected in November 1935 had lasted long than any in modern times. Given the time that would elapse before the ensuing general election, George VI asked him to form a  goverment. T...

  The British Labour party conference chaired by MP Ellen Wilkinson formally declined an invitation from Churchill to maintain the coalition until Japan had been defeated. In itself the proposal was largely hollow, because no-one expected victory in the East before 1946. A general election before November was unavoidable so Labour was being asked to commit to continuing the coalition irrespective of what the balance of power  in the House of Commons would be. Churchill refused the proposal by Labour leader Clem Attlee to hold the election in October so there would be an election as soon as practical with  July as the likely date. The Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin announced a radical shift of manpower allocation; he was careful to avoid using the term demobilization. The release of men from the forces was to begin almost immediately,  including the army still fighting in Burma. He aimed to release 60,000 men for the building industry so as to start repairing the war...