Eighty years ago Eisenhower is appointed supreme commander of Overlord acknowledging US primacy in the war effort

 

President Roosevelt announced that General Dwight Eisenhower would have supreme command of the allied invasion of Europe in 1944. He had been chosen as much for his diplomatic as his military gifts; his status as commander of the British forces involved, most especially the willful General Montgomery, would have to be handled with great tact. Most of his immediate subordinates were British. His appointment set the seal of public recognition on US predominance in the war effort. Distasteful though it was to many British people, the US was the senior partner in the alliance already contribtuing larger forces and hugely greater industrial resources.

In the last major naval engagement fought purely between surface vessels, the Scharnhorst was sunk in the Battle of North Cape. She was heavily shelled by the battleship Duke of York and cruiser Belfast then finished off by torpedoes from destroyers. The British had the advantage of accurate intelligence on her movements and greatly superior forces. Her attack on Britain-bound convoy JW55B was a desperate move to prove to the Fuehrer that the Kriegsmarine's major vessels were capable of aggressive action. In reality they did better service lurking safely in the Norwegian fjords, tying down large British naval resources.

Stalin opened his programme of eliminating the minor nations of the Soviet Union with the formal abolition of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Some 100,000 inhabitants were deported, many to Siberia. 5,000 Kalmyks had fought alongside the Germans which was enough to treat the whole people as "unreliable" even though many more fought in the Red Army