The Last Act of George V's Reign

-
At 12.15pm on January 20th 1936 George V held a Privy Council meeting, the last formal act of his reign. He was just capable of indicating his assent to the proceedings. The presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn, was clear pointer  to the fact that the end was near. Sir Maurice Hankey was present in his capacity as Secretary to the Council and as such he would be deeply involved in the formalities of the transition from one reign to the next. As a long-standing friend to the Royal couple and one of the most powerful men in Whitehall in his capacity as Secretary to the Cabinet, Hankey would have other work and far more sensitive work to do as well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eighty years ago this week the curtain falls on Europe's dictators

-
Image
  Mussolini was captured by communist partisans as he tried to escape. On party orders he, his mistress Clara Petacci   and other fascist companions  were shot. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their ankles from the girders around a garage on the Piazzale Loretto where fifteen people chosen at random had been murdered in 1944 as a reprisal for partisan attacks.  Hitler married his mistress Eva Braun in a civil ceremony at the Fuehrerbunker.  He tried out a cyanide pill on his Alsatian dog Blondi and, once he was sure it was effective, gave one to his wife to kill herself. He then shot himself dead. Hitler had named his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to succeed him as Reich Chancellor. He spent only one day in the office and then he and his wife  killed themselves, first having murdered six of their young children. His wife's son by her first marriage was a prisoner of war in British hands and survived the war. Marshal Petain left Switzerlan...
Read more

Eighty years ago this week the Luftwaffe makes a huge and pointless sacrifice

-
Image
  On New Year's Day the Luftwaffe launched Operation Bodenplatte (floorplate), a series of attacks mainly by fighter aircraft on allied airfields.  The operation had originally been planned for December 16th to gain air superiority for the Ardennes offensive.  Bodenplatte achieved tactical surprise and perhaps 400 allied aircraft were destroyed or damaged. However as these were on the ground, aircrew casualties were light. The allies were able to replace the lost machines rapidly whilst the 200 odd German losses were nearly irreplaceable. Worse, the pilots lost with them certainly could not be replaced. The ground offensive had already come to a halt so whatever operational value there might have been had evaporated.  Bodenplatte was a marginal tactical victory for the Germans, but a strategic calamity. In the words of fighter commander Adolf Galland, "We sacrificed out last substance." The Red Army completed the encirclement of Budapest trapping two German SS div...
Read more

Eighty years ago this week Churchill combines gracious respect for Parliament with partisan vituperation

-
Image
   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....
Read more