Eighty years ago this week Stalin begins to reshape post-war Europe

 

For the first time since becoming dictator of the Soviet Union, Stalin left its territory, albeit only to travel the short distance to  Teheran which had been under Soviet occupation since the previous year. The summit meeting with Roosevelt and Churchill discussed the invasion of France to which the US and Britan were now committed in 1944.  Stalin's vision of the post-war world was endorsed by the agreement to transfer much of eastern Poland to Soviet republics; Poland would be compensated by redrawing its western frontier at the expense of Germany. Stalin commited himself in principal to declaring war on Japan once Germany was defeated. In all the Stalin-inspired clamour for a second front, it had been sedulously ignored that Britain and the US were shielding the Soviet eastern frontier by their campaigns against Japan.

The preparation for the debate on the King's speech to Parliament provoked a flurry of proposed amendments to the government's programme. They addressed the challenges that the nation would face when peace returned. The proposal came mostly from left of centre including the Tory Reform Committee of younger MPs although Sir John Wardlaw-Milne called for measures to prevent any future aggression by Germany after surrender, presumably so as to save him the effort of appeasing a resurgent Germany as he had appeased Hitler. Speaking for the government Oliver Lyttleton, Minister for Production, did his best to assure the House that questions such as post-war housing were being treated seriously; the failure to provide "homes fit for heroes" had been one of the blackest marks against the government in the aftermath of the First World War.

The British Eighth Army making its way up Italy's east coast crossed the River Sangro. This was General Montgomery's last battle in Italy and he entitled one volume of his memoirs "Alamein to the River Sangro". In reality the Germans had never intended to defend the Sangro seriously. Their main defence line, the heavily fortified Gustav or winter line, lay further north along the smaller Moro river.