Eighty years ago this week Churchill visits the Normandy beachead as the Germans launch the V-weapon campaign

 

Churchill had been baulked in his desire to be present at the D-Day landings themselves but was finally able to visit the Normandy beachhead. He crossed the Channel on destroyer HMS Kelvin and made sure that she shelled German positions rather than just acting as a VIP transport. He lunched with General Montgomery at his HQ three miles from the front line. When he asked if there was any risk that the Germans would disrupt the gathering, Montgomery was able to tell him that the headquarters had been shelled the previous night.

Soviet negotiations with Finland had come to nothing and Stalin decided to try to knock Finland out of the war by military action. Eleven divisions and other armoured units were switched to the front, more than doubling Red Army resources. The offensive was launched northwards up the relatively narrow Karelian Isthmus. The front there had been almost static for two years and the Finns had prepared strong defences. The immediate goal was to drive the Finnish army to the shores of Lake Ladoga and destroy it there. Ostensibily the attack was timed to assist the Allies in Normandy, but there was minimal likelihood that the Germans would divert resources to helping the Finns.

The first V-1 flying bomb to be launched against Britain fell in Bow in East London. Rather than trying to disrupt the build up on the Normandy beaches by targeting ports, the V weapons were aimed at the capital in a pure reprisal operation. It killed six people and injured thirty; a railway bridge was destroyed.

There was a furious debate in the House of Commons on government measures to regulate milk producers. Four years of severe and intrusive wartime interventions into almost every aspect of daily life had made this kind of legislation deeply unpopular.  Traditional Conservatives objected violently to the plan to give civil servants the power to bar milk producers from the Milk Marketing Board system if they were held not to comply with quality standards. There was a minimal right of appeal and the farmers could practically be put out of business. Tory MP Reginald Manningham-Buller claimed that this would make the minister of agriculture, "the Dictator of Dairy Farming."