Eighty years ago this week propaganda overlaps with military operations as Tirpitz is finally sunk and the Germans taunt the British with having concealed the V-2 rocket attack from the public

 

 

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 announced that Britain had been under attack by V-2 rockets for some time, describing it as far more dangerous than the V-1 flying bomb. The radio broadcast claimed (falsely) that a V-2 had entirely destroyed Euston Station in mid-October and pointed out (accurately) that the British government had concealed knowledge of the weapon from the public. The first V-2 had struck London the day after the government announced that the V-1 threat had been defeated, so political embarassment played a part. Churchill was able to reply by pointing out that the payload of a V-2 was no greater than a V-1's; huge industrial and technological effort was wasted in delivering the same amount of explosive as a conventional bomber did. Moreover, Churchill stated that V-2's had been launched from the Dutch island of Walcheren which had just fallen to the allies. 

The commemoration of the Munich beerhall putsch of November 9th  1923 and the deaths of Nazis involved in it, was a holy day in the Nazi calendar. Hitler did not, as he had done in the past, make a speech even by radio.  Himmler simply read out a proclamation issued in the Fuehrer's name on the Sunday following the anniversary rather than the date itself. Fears of an allied air raid to disrupt a broadcast partly explains the shift in date. This inspired widespread and accurate speculation that Hitler was ill, together with the recognition that Himmler was by then the second most powerful figure in the official Nazi hierarchy.