Eighty Years Ago This Week

  The Germans launched Operation Rösselsprung (knight's move) a full-scale attack on Drvar in the mountains of Yugoslavia where Tito's partisans were known to have their headquarters. The Italian surrender in September 1943 had put large amounts of weaponry in the partisans' hands and they held sway over large areas of the territory. The operation was led by the airborne landing of an SS paratroop battalion. The partisans were taken by surprise and the area was swiftly overrun but the Germans did not know the exact location of Tito's headquarters - sited in a cave - and he escaped. The strategic position was unchanged, although the Germans could console themselves with propaganda pictures of their soldiers in the mouth of the cave. The British and American forces which had been pinned down on the Anzio beachhead since the landing in January finally broke out in a full scale assault, Operation Buffalo . Despite strong German resistance the Americans reached Cis...

  The Polish Secret Army resistance movement located the crash site of a V-2 rocket in marshland on the bank of the Bug River. After the bombing of Peenemuende, trials had been moved to a more remote and safe location in central Poland. The resistants first pushed the wreckage under water until the Germans abandoned their search then removed key components which were taken  200km by bicycle to a suitable landing ground whence they were  flown to the British in Italy. The newly ennobled John Maynard Keynes presented the agreement that he had negotiated with the US on post-war monetary organisation to the House of Lords. He was able to assure peers that the scheme of an International Monetary Fund did not involve a return to the catastrophic strait-jacket of the pre-war Gold Standard. The financial ignoramuses who had opposed the scheme because they had feared such a thing, remained silent and Keynes enjoyed a triumph. Churchill gave a major speech on foreign affairs which ...

    Under the command of General Alexander, four army corps - one British, one Canaadian, one French and one US - launched Operation Diadem to breach the Gustav line, the main German  defensive position in Italy along the Liri river. The French corps included North African goumiers, who enjoyed a reputation as fearsome fighters but also for their remorseless treatment of the local population. The German strong point and keystone of the Gustav Line at Monte Cassino had held off repeated allied attacks since January of that year. The attack would also break the deadlock that had ruled since the landing at Anzio had failed to turn the German flank and left the landing force pinned down on the coast. Breaking the Gustav Line was to open the way to Rome but it had been timed to tie down German forces in Italy so that they would be unavailable to transfer to France to counter the cross-channel invasion due in a few weeks time. The US Eighth Air Force launched a campaign agains...

  361 RAF bombers attacked the training area of 21st Panzer division at Mailly-le-Camp as part of Bomber Command's new commitment to support the upcoming land battle for France. The camp was levelled and 37 tanks were destroyed but at a heavy cost. Delays in marking the target allowed Luftwaffe night-fighters time to attack and they shot down 42 Lancasters, a prohibitive loss rate of 11.6% and one of the worst suffered on a major raid. The Red Army retook Sevastopol, which the Germans had never fully fortified during their occupation. The evacuation of Axis troops trapped on the Crimea was partially successful with some 30,000 troops rescued largely thanks to the Romanian navy. However, the Axis lost some 60,000 men (half German, half Romanian), many of whom were lost on ships sunk during the evacuation. The administrative committee of the Labour Party voted to expel left-winger Nye Bevan when he voted against new defence regulations outlawing wildcat strikes, notably in the mines,...

    In Exercise Tiger , a major rehearsal for the D-Day, a large force of US troops, carried in eight LSTs, were to land on Slapton Sands in Devon. The Germans had good intelligence from radio intercepts and sent six Schnellboote  (E-boats to the allies) to attack. The American convoy had only one escort and the Germans sank two of the highly vulnerable LSTs, large, unmanoeuvrable and poorly armed. Over 700 men were killed. On Crete a group of resistance fighters led by the British SOE officer Patrick Leigh-Fermor kidnapped the island's German military governor General Kreipe, who had replaced the originally intended target, Friederich-Wilhelm Mueller a few weeks before. Mueller had been responsable for a number of atrocities and was executed after the war. Kreipe was rather anti-Nazi and got on well with Leigh-Fermor who capped a quotation from Horace that the German began. The operation had little military value but it was rapidly announced to the public by the British,...