Eighty years ago Germany shows that it is still a dangerous enemy

 

Germany had been pushed firmly onto the back foot but it was anything but defeated as two striking defeats for the allies demonstrated.

The allies suffered their worst convoy disaster of the war. The build-up of US forces in the European theatre had swelled the number of sailings, and hence of targets.  A fast convoy (HX229) and a slow one (SC122) overlapped in mid Atlantic presenting a group of 100 merchant ships to the U-boats. Evasive routing failed and the Germans were able to concentrate 40 U-boats from three different wolf packs against the target. 21 merchantmen with a total of 141,000 tons were sunk for the loss of a single U-boat although half-a-dozen more were damaged. It was the worst moment in a very bad month for allied shippping in which a total of 108 ships were sunk. The British Naval Staff later judged that the Germans "came very near to disrupting communications between the New World and the Old."

The Red Army paid a penalty for over-confidence created by its victory at Stalingrad. It advanced to retake the city of Kharkiv (then known in the Russian style as Kharkov) but left itself exposed. The Germans still had enomrous resources, especially in the air. Under Manstein, arguably the best of the German generals, they launched a counter-attack and retook the city inflicting heavy losses on the Soviets, by some reckoning eight times as many as they were able to inflict. The German success left a salient in the Soviet lines.

Sir Archibald Sinclair told the House of Commons that RAF personnel would no longer be discouraged from walking arm-in-arm with women in public. He claimed that there had never been a formal regulation against the practice but did admit that one instruction had been poorly worded; he did not challenge the claim that the rule had applied to off-duty personnel and their wives. The episode showed unusual inter-service cooperation. The original question was tabled by Wally "Stoker" Herbert, a serving Royal Navy rating as well as an MP.