Eighty years ago this week Churchill puts his man in to run the war in India

 

 

One of the decisions taken at the Quebec summit meeting was announced: the appointment of the 45 year old Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as supreme commander for the newly created Allied South East Asian Command (SEAC). American acquiesence was inevitable. The US had few assets in the region, in practice India and Burma. His deputy was the American General 'Vinegar Joe' Stillwell but Stillwell's principal task was liaising with Chinese ruler Chiang-Kai-Shek and never behaved as Mountbatten's subordinate anyway. The official SEAC flag displayed only a Union Jack. SEAC was quite distinct from the Pacific theatre which was essentially a US show, albeit a battleground between the US Navy and General Douglas MaCarthur, who pursued entirely separate strategies. Mountbatten's was very much Churchill's personal appointment. He had never commanded anything larger than a destroyer in battle, but he had lived up to Churchill's expectations as head of Combined Operations, itself an entirely Churchillian invention. Churchill hoped that Mountbatten would bring to the command the aggression and imagination which he found lacking in the local army leadership. In particular he wanted greater resources to be given to Brigadier Orde Wingate's strategy for operations behind the Japanese lines. Wingate's standing with the prime minister can be deduced from his presence amongst the British party at Quebec.

Denmark had been allowed an unusually large degree of autonomy under German occupation but public discontent manifested itself in a growing wave of strikes and demonstrations. The growing sense that Germany had lost the war played a part. The Germans responded by demanding a series of repressive measures: bans on strikes and demonstrations, the death penalty for sabotage and a fine on the city of Odense for the death of a German soldier. The Danish government resigned although the King refused the resignations. Some of the Danish fleet was ordered to flee to Sweden and it was attempted to scuttle the remainder.

King Boris III of Bulgaria died at the age of 49 a fortnight after a contentious meeting with Hitler. The cause was given as heart failure but inevitably rumours of poisoning  by the Germans, Italians, British or Soviets were soon doing the rounds. He was succeeded by his six year old son.