Eighty years ago: indiscrimate Japanes bombing, targeted Soviet bombing and a tiny clue to a hidden Whitehall battle
Japan was now firmly stuck in the
political and military dead end it had created for itself in China. It had
local superiority over the Chinese armies but no prospect of either decisive
victory on the battlefield or a negotiated settlement that satisfied its
ambitions. Pride and national prestige made withdrawal unthinkable which left
Japan with mindless violence as its only means of self-assertion. The civilian
population of Canton were the victims, suffering four days of air raids which
killed dozens and probably hundreds. The Japanese army claimed that it was
attacking military targets but no-one was fooled; this was terror-bombing pure
and simple.
The final announcement of the
arrangements to replace Sir Maurice Hankey in his various tasks – Secretaryship
of the Cabinet to the foremost – contained a tiny clue as to the brutal Whitehall
battle that had been fought over his succession. Hankey was to be one of the
British government directors of the Suez Canal company. This was one of the
juiciest sinecures that the government could offer and a prestigious and
lucrative consolation for the loss of a might position at the heart of the
British machinery of government. As Hankey had fought a savage rearguard
against the absorption of his personal empire by the regular civil service, it
had been bluntly suggested to him by Sir Horace Wilson, righthand man to the
Prime Minister, that he might not be nominated as a director if he continued to
make troubled. Hankey had seen the
futility of further resistance and went quietly.
Yevhen Konovalets, the leader in
exile of the Ukrainian community since 1929, was murdered in Rotterdam with a
bomb disguised as a box of chocolates given to him as a gift by a man he
thought was a friend. Pavel Sudoplatov, the assassin, had been given his
instructions personally by Josef Stalin who wanted both revenge and to remove a
force he saw as aligned with Nazism. Sudoplatov went on to have distinguished career
in the KGB, organizing the killing of Leon Trotsky and heading the SMERSH
murder department. He retired as a Lieutenant-General and published a book of remarkably frank memoirs. The Russian custom of murdering opponents in exile has survived the collapse of the Soviet system.
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