Eighty Years Ago This Week

      James Byrnes, the US Secretary of State, gave a speech in Stuttgart under the title "Restatement of Policy on Germany." It was delivered to a large  audience including the three ministers president of the states in the US zone, who had greeted Byrnes when he had arrived train in a highly symbolic photocall. In particular Byrnes declared that Germany should not become the satellite of any power or a dictatorship. He stated that the economic conditions ruling in the country divided into four zones of occupation made it impossible to maintain a peace-time economy and that free exchange between the zones was needed. He looked forward to a future when the government of Germany would be returned to the German people. In practice he was rejecting the Soviet policy of treating its zone of occupation merely as a resource to be exploited purely for Soviet benefit. Byrnes claimed the authority of the Potsdam Agreement for his vision, but in practice he was proposing the c...

          The British army drastically eased conditions of service. There had been widespread discontent at the continuation of rigorous, essentially pre-war regulations into peacetime conscripted service. In particular, mandatory wearing of uniforms off-duty was abolished and the system of granting short term leave permission softened. Privates and NCOs would be allowed to socialize off-duty. The wearing of collar and tie which had been the prerogative of officers was extended down the ranks. The General Staff also recognised that the pre war model of long term enlistment of volunteers was no longer viable and was anxious to make three to five year fixed-term engagements more appealing.   The US announced the sale of $20m of war surplus aircraft in the Pacific theatre to the Kuomintang regime in China. Combat aircraft were excluded and they were mainly transport aircraft, but the apparent support for one side in the civil war was unmistakable. Gene...

     The London Passenger Transport Board, predecessor to TfL, ended a dispute that had begun in 1937 by accepting a closed shop agreement under which only members of the Transport and General Workers union would be employed as operating or maintenance staff. It was the first major public corporation to bring in a closed shop and set a powerful precedent. By the 1960s it had become routine throughout industry. The formal closed shop has been made illegal but in practice still rules today on the London Underground. Lord Wavell, the Viceroy of India, formed an interim government as set out in the programme for independence to replace the Executive Council. The government would administer the country's affairs. It was fatally flawed from the start. Congress participated but Jinnah's Muslim League refused to participate. Five of the fourteen seats were to be held by Moslems but three were appointed by Congress. In practice Jinnah was rejecting the continuance of India as a si...

    Jinnah's Muslim League staged a "Day of Action" involving a general strike and protest meetings to sustain claims to an independent Pakistan which was emerging as key demand in the process of Indian independence. This rapidly degenerated into extreme communal violence  in Calcutta. Both Hindu and Moslem communities participated, Some thousands were killed and corpses lay unburied for days. Five British army battalions and four of the Indian army helped restore order. Led by Andrei Zhdanov the General Secretary of the communist Party  the Soviet regime launched a campaign (known as the Zhdanovoschkina ) to extend complete ideological conformity into every form of art, writing in particular. Henceforth all art was deemed to have support for the Stalin regime as its sole purpose. In the first line it targeted two literary magazines Zvezda and Leningrad . The poet Anna Akhmatova was singled out for criticism. The US and the UK staged a concerted open protest...

  The British motor trade recognised government concern at what was happening in the car market. Anyone lucky enough to receive one of the few new cars being produced could immediately resell it at a higher price, making a large profit. It was a goldmine for spivs as participants in the informal parallel economy created by massive government regulation came to be called. To ward off formal government regulation the industry trade association instituted a scheme under which buyers signed a formal agreement  to hold onto new cars for six months.   The Soviet Union launched a full-scale attempt to take control of the Dardanelles. Turkey had consistently refused passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to Soviet warships and now Moscow demanded that control of the straits  should be exercised internationally, in practice dominated by the Soviets. The US detected that the ultimate Soviet goal was the full subjugation of Turkey and prepared to resist. Gas supp...

  Thirty tonnes of gold then worth $32m  was returned from Frankfurt to the Hungarian National Bank in Budapest. It  had been held by the US Army which had taken it (with Hungarian agreement) from  a Benedictine abbey in Austria to which it had been smuggled by train in January 1945 to hide it from the German and Soviet armies. This allowed the Hungarian government to bring to an end the hyperinflation which had ravaged the economy for months.  The Pengo was abolished as a currency and replaced by the Forint, backed by gold.   The Tribunal set up as part of the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act ruled that the former owners of Britain's coal mines should receive the then colossal sum of £164m (4% of all government expenditure) in compensation for their assets. The industry was chaotic and badly in need of rationalisation and investment; the mine-owners were getting a bargain. The British government asserted the integrity of Austria, then occupied by th...