Eighty Years Ago This Week

French units liberated Strasbourg, which had been in German hands since France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. It was thus of great symbolic value. An extemporized tricolor marked with the name of the unit which made it was flown from the cathedral. Fighting was minimal fighting; morale collapsed amongst the German defenders and the local authorities were intent on saving their skin.   The long running and agonized conflict over military service in Canada reached a crisis. There was immense opposition (especially amongst Francophones) to sending any of the large number of men conscripted to fight abroad; approximately half of men called up refused to sign up for foreign service and were derisively known as "zombies". The Canadian corps serving in Europe were desperately short of men after the heavy casualties of the Scheldt and Gothic Lines campaigns. The government finally announced a once-off despatch overeseas of 16,000 conscripts subject to par...

  Churchill's son-in-law Edwin Duncan Sandys became the youngest member of the Cabinet when he was promoted to Minister of Works. He moved on from organizing the defence against V weapons to planning post war reconstruction. The black-out was ended for central districts of London where it had been in force since 1939. V weapons were still striking the capital but they were unguided. A White paper set out proposals for the recruitment of civil servants during what was now being called the reconstruction period after the imminent end to the war in Europe. A proportion of job vacancies would be reserved for those whose war service had deprived them of the chance of beginning their working lives at the civil service: three quarters at top level,  two-thirds of mid-ranking posts and half of clerical jobs. It was recognised that this would skew recruitment towards men, so a number of the remaining jobs would be held for women.  The city of Metz fell to American forces und...

    RAF Lancasters of 9 and 617 Squadrons finally sank the battleship Tirpitz in Tromso fjord at their third attempt. The British were unaware that she was no longer capable of sea action and had been moved south to act as a floating battery to repel an allied invasion that never came. Two 12,000lb Tallboy bombs scored direct hits and she capsized killing some 1,000 crew members. A film crew was aboard one of the aircraft and the footage of the attack was swiftly released to maximize the propaganda value of the achievement. Tirpitz's positive contribution to the German war effort had been minimal: one abortive attack on a  Murmansk convoy and the bombardment of the island of Spitzbergen, but she had tied down huge British resources for at least three years. Usually AM "Bert" Harris objected to using RAF resources other than in bombing cities, but here he could show that his aircraft could do something that the Royal Navy had failed to do. German propaganda anno...

    Canadian and Royal Marine forces stormed the island of Walcheren with the island's capital, Middelburg, falling to an audacious thrust by amphibious Buffalo personnel carriers. Because the ground was almost completed inundated it would not have been possible to use tanks. This ended  Battle of the Scheldt and finally opened access to the port of Antwerp. 40,000 Germans were taken prisoner but the attackers had suffered over 20,000 casualties of which the bulk fell on Canadians. F. D. Roosevelt was reelected for an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States. He beat Thomas Dewey, his Republican opponent by a comfortable margin, winning 36 states giving him 432 votes in the electoral college, well above the 266 needed to win. Dewey took only twelve states. In the popular vote Roosevelt obtained 53.4% to Dewey's 45.9%. Concerns about Roosevelt's health and the conduct of the war were strong and vocal, but far less than support for him.  Church...

    The USN won a decisive victory over the IJN in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest sea battle of all time. The Japanese lost four carriers and three battleships including the Musashi , the second of the gigantic Yamato class, the largest ever built. The battle saw the first use of kamikaze suicide attacks by Japanese aircraft. The IJN failed to impede the US landings on the Philippines and the losses it suffered marked the end of its time as a strategic force. 24 Mosquitos of the RAF's 2 Bomber Group attacked the Gestapo headquarters at Aarhus in Denmark in response to a plea from local resistance leaders whose organisations had suffered from German intelligence successes. The attack was one of a number of 2 Group strikes against German security forces and was personally led by the Group commander Air Vice Marshal Basil Embry, whose knowledge of D-Day plans had prevented him leading the attack on Amiens jail, an operation which the BBC persists in falsely presenting as ...