Eighty years ago this week the British army tastes triumph in Tunisia and humiliation in Burma

 

 

Within minutes of each other the British Eight Army and the US II Corps respectively took the major Tunisian cities of Tunis and Bizerte. Three German  divisional  commanders were amongst the tens of thousands of prisoners taken. Only  a small Axis redoubt on the Cape Bon peninsula held out. Militarily the North African campaign was practically over.

In Burma the British put an end to the sorry fiasco of the Arakan offensive. The attack had been premature and ill-planned. General Irwin, the front commander,  wanted to hold on on to the small port of Maungdaw as a token gain to mask the debacle, but General Slim, on whom Irwin had dumped the conduct of the campaign once his initial strategy had failed, told him firmly that the town was indefensible and of no strategic value. Slim prevailed and the British retreated into India. Churchill who had just arrived in Washington for a conference with Roosevelt was furious at another British failure, which seemed to echo the fall of Tobruk which had occurred during his last summit in the US. 

Roosevelt cranked up the confrontation in the national dispute with coal-miners.  The mines had already been put under Federal control and he now declared that the miners were Government employees and, by implication, thus not entitled to strike. The search for a wage deal continued but 1,400 miners did go on strike in Pittsburgh in protest at a $5 fine levied on participants in an earlier strike.