Eighty years ago this week Hitler promises retribution on England

On the twentieth anniversary of the failed beer hall putsch, Hitler delivered what proved to be his last speech commemorating the event, one of the principal festivals in the Nazi calendar. He assailed England as the principal driving force in the war and as a pawn of the Jews. He hinted at the pending use of secret weapons when he told his listeners that the hour of retribution (Vergeltung) "will" come. America might be out of reach for the moment but one state - obviously Britain - was. Here is the origin of the term V-weapons. He described himself as profoundly religous, albeit because he cast himself and the German people as having been chosen by "providence" for greater things.

The Ukrainian capital Kyiv (then known by the Russian name Kiev) fell to the Soviets as part of a wider offensive on the southern front.  The German VII holding the city was forced to retreat under massive attack; there was no significant fighting in the city itself. Radio Moscow announced that only one single Jew was still alive there out of the pre-war population of some 140,000.

The House of Commons held a low-key debate on the famine in India. There was some attempt to apportion blame but in the main the tone of the debate was calm. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Anderson rolled out his authority as a former governor of Bengal to claim that the famine could not have been foreseen. Insofar as any cause was identifiied, it was internal structural weaknesses in the local economy.