Eighty Years Ago This Week

    The Red Army staged an audacious deep penetration attack in corps strength aimed at the major German airfield hub at Tatinskaya over 200km from its supply base. The Soviets broke through to the airfield so rapidly that air operations were still in progress when they arrived. Approximately 200 operational aircraft were destroyed, some reportedly by being rammed by Soviet tanks. This gravely compromising the Luftwaffe's already tenuous capacity to supply the forces trapped in Stalingrad by air. The 150 or so tanks and other heavy equipment commited to the operation were lost but it was a considerable strategic success. Allied ground forces in Tunisia had reached sufficient size for their commanders to stage another push against the Germans. The Coldstream Guards led the assault with an attack on Longstop Hill against stiff German resistance. The Coldstreamers were relieved by the US 18th RCT when they took the first summit but a counter attack dislodged the Americans. The Co...

  The British government finally departed from its non-commital attitude towards the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews throughout occupied Europe. In response to a report from the Polish government-in-exile the Foreign Secretary delivered a declaration on behalf of the United Nations, chiefly Britain and the US, condemning the Nazi programme and promising punishment of those responsible. At the suggestion of Labour MP William Cluse the House stood up in silence, a gesture usually reserved to mark the death of a sovereign. British forces crossed back into Burma in what was presented as a return to the offensive after being routed by the Japanese erlier in the year. The objective was relatively unambitious: to establish a foothold on the Arakan peninsula including seizing the island of Akyab. The attack faced weak opposition but the omens were not good. The British commander Noel Irwin was on poor terms with the commander of neighbouring forces, Bill Slim, and determined to...

  The German 4th Panzer Army under Manstein launched operation Winter Storm, to try a break through the Soviet forces surrounding General von Paulus's 6th Army trapped in Stalingrad. The offensive made some gains but ran out of momentum and the Red Army counter-attacked the Axis left flank, overwhelming by the Italian 8th Army. Hitler refused Manstein's request for Paulus to try to break out of Stalingrad; Paulus himself was reluctant. The threat to disregard the Geneva Convention in respect of German and British PoWs triggered by the shackling of captives in a commando raid proved to be short-lived. The Swiss government proposed to both sides that they discontinue shackling prisoners in camps. The British and Canadian governments almost immediately announced their agreement and restraints were removed from German PoWs. Whilst Germany and Britain reverted to treating their uniformed, regular  military captives in civilized fashion, no such consideration was being shown to civi...

  France acquired its fourth would-be national leader when Admiral Darlan declared that he was the head of government. It was only by chance that he had found himself in French North Africa as the senior figure of the Vichy regime when the allies invaded so it was not hard to question the legitimacy of this piece of self-promotion. Darlan had done a private deal with General Eisenhower under which he had already promoted himself High-Commissioner and instructed Vichy forces to cease fire. It also put off the evil day when a choice would have to be made between General Giraud, the Americans' choice but almost no-one else's, and General de Gaulle, who controlled the French French armed forces. Marshal Petain remained the figurehead of Vichy. The German forces trapped in Tunisia began to put up a stiff resistance to the allied advance from Algeria. The had just been reinforced by the 10th  Panzer Dvision, which mounted a counter-attack forcing the allies to retreat to strong def...

    One of the objectives of the Germans invasion of the previously unoccupied zone of France was to seize the powerful fleet at anchor in Toulon in Operation Lila. This was explicitly forbidden by the terms of the armistice, but the French Navy was not naif and still made plans to scuttle the fleet if the Germans attempted to seize it. The commander Admiral Laborde could not, though, be persuaded to sail the ships to join the shadow Vichy authorities in North Africa so the scuttling plan was put into operation when the Germans assaulted the dockyards. It succeeded and three battleships, seven cruisers, fifteen destroyers and numerous smaller vessels went to the bottom. The Vichy government lost thereby its final shred of bargaining power. The only ever significant, but still tiny, battle was fought between forces of de Gaulle's Free French and Vichy French units over the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The destroyer Leopard landed a company of marines and the island w...