Eighty Years Ago This Week

  The British government published a White Paper with details of the proposal to create an International Monetary Fund to prevent a recurrence of the financial tensions and instability which had dogged the world economy in the inter-war years. The White Paper was a victory for John Maynard Keynes, who led the British side in the negotations and took an enlightened, forward-thinking view. He had to overcome opposition from reactionaries, notably Lord Beaverbrook,  who deluded themselves that it would be possible to restore an imaginary British financial dominance of world trade. Stalin was already making his plans to dominate the Balkans. The sailors on five ships of the Greek navy staged a mutiny to press for greater representation in the government-in-exile of the Communist EAM grouping. The government recalled Admiral Voulgaris from retirement to be commander in chief of the navy and he organized the violent suppression of the mutiny. A Greek army brigade also mutinied in E...

   To protect secrecy in the run-up to D-Day the British government brought in utterly unprecedented restrictions on the diplomatic missions of  all countries other than those of the fighting allies. Diplomats were banned from leaving the country. Any communication other than uncoded wireless messages or written despatches subjected to allied censorship was blocked. This drastic curtailment of diplomatic privileges showed just how much importance was attached to the intelligence dimension to D-Day, above all preventing leakage of the location and timing of the landings. The need to manage the flow of information from Britain was all the greater as the allies were conducting an elaborate deception campaign to mislead the Germans so blocking information that might have cast doubt on the false stories being fed to the Germans was almost as important. The Japanese roadblock on the road to Kohima was broken, allowing the British forces there to be resupplied and reinforced alb...

    After the crippling coal strikes and in the midst of a strike by 20,000 Belfast shipyard workers over the imprisonment of five men, who had organised a sympathy strike of aircraft workers, the Labour Party leaders spotted the need to distance themselves from workers who put their own interests ahead of the war effort. Ernest Bevin, the minister of Labour, announced that "incitement and fomenting" strikes would be made a criminal offence under the wartime Defence Regulations. The TUC supported this fully and denounced unofficial strikes as blows, "struck in the back at their comrades in the armed forces who are now steeling themselves for a life-and-death struggle on the European Continent." The police raided the offices of Trotskyite organisations across Britain  including the Fourth International and the Revolutionary Communist Party. None represented any material threat to national security, but the operation had the double benefit of further flagging govern...

  The Royal Navy mounted another attempt to sink German battleship Tirpitz , whose presence in Norway threatened aid convoys to the Soviet Union, tying down extensive resources. Two waves of 21 Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Barracuda bombers from HMS Victorious and HMS Furious together with F-4F, F-6F and F-4U fighters attacked her; the first catching her unprotected by smokescreen. A number of bombs hit, causing extensive, but superficial damage; even special armour-piercing bombs could not penetrate her main armour. Her crew, especially anti-aircraft gunners,  suffered extensive casualties. Tirpitz was back to full operational condition within weeks. In one of its last major raids on Germany before being switched to direct support for Overlord, RAF Bomber Command suffered calamitous losses in an attack on Nuremberg, losing 95 bombers. Most casualties were suffered flying in a long, straight leg from the Dutch border to Fulda. Only minimal diversionary operations were mounted. The dis...