Eighty years ago this week "defeatists" purged from the Wehrmacht leadership in the West

 Hitler sacked Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the commander on the western front, shortly after he and Rommel had attended a conference with him at the Berghof. Rundstedt had endorsed a report decrying the currrent strategy of static defence and recommending a withdrawal from Caen to free four panzer divisions for a counter-attack. Supposedly Rundstedt had wanted to tell Hitler to make peace and told Keitel, Hitler's toady, that the only option was, 'End the war, you idiots', but this is almost certainly aprocryphal.  Rundstedt was consoled with the Oak Leaf Cluster to his Knight's Cross but von Schweppenburg, who had written the report, was summarily dismissed by phone and accused of defeatism.

The Germans were driven out of Minsk, the last significant city which they held in the Soviet Union. More important, the entire German Army Group Centre with 25 divisions and 300,000 had been destroyed by the Red Army offensive, Operation Bagration.

The Bretton Woods conference, formally called the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, opened. All 44 allied nations were represented but in practice Britain and the US were the decision-makers. They had already decided in favour of establishing the International Monetary Fund, which has been the bedrock of the world financial system ever since, although the fixed exchange rates agreed at Bretton Woods disappeared in the 1970s. Britain and the US were also in favour of an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (better known today as the World Bank).