If the abdication happened today...........

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

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

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  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...
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Eighty years ago the obituary of Britain as a financial superpower is tucked in the small print of the US bail-out loan agreement

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  The US Senate approved the bail-out loan to Britain and it was granted. Not only had US law-makers been at odds over the loan but the State and Treasury Departments had been opposed. The $3.75bn (£2.2bn) loan was presented as cheap money given the 1.62% rate of interest, but, unremarked at the time, one of the terms set the headstone on the grave of Britain's status as a financial superpower. Britain agreed to allow "sterling balances" held in London to be converted freely into other currencies after a year. This money totalled  £3.5bn and had mainly been deposited by the countries of the British Empire, notably India and Egypt. Within twelve months Britain faced the prospect of having to pay out in foreign currency (in practice US dollars) one and a half times what it had just borrowed. Intentionally or otherwise, US largesse worked hugely to the benefit of Britain's former possessions. The US accepted the British proposal to the conference on the German peace trea...
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