Eighty years ago this week Hitler makes a final appearance in public

 

 Hitler made his last public appearance in the grounds of the Reich Chancellery when he presented Iron Crosses to twenty members of the Hitler Youth who had shown bravery on the battlefield. This featured in the newsreel Wochenschau. He has especially taken with the story of Willi Huebner, a sixteen year old who had been a battlefield messenger just as he himself had been during the First World War.

Churchill set out in outline his goals for the general election which would follow the defeat of Germany. He wanted to form a government of all men of goodwill, but was no more specific. In practice this was taken to mean that he would be happy to rule with members of the National Liberals, by then a negligible force, even though a number of members were serving as senior ministers. By implication he ruled out  any continuance of the wartime coalition with Labour. In practice the election was going to be a straight fight between Conservative and Labour with Churchill reverting to his visceral anti-Socialism which had been suspended because of the need for a truly national government during wartime.

It was announced that the Duke of Windsor was resigning as Governor of the Bahamas, thus putting an end to another wartime quasi-charade. The job had provided a facade of public service for someone who had firmly turned his back on the whole idea and kept him far away from anywhere where he might have been an embarassment.

A Lancaster of 617 Squadron RAF dropped the heaviest conventional bomb ever, the ten ton "Grand Slam", christened the earthquake bomb by its designer Barnes Wallis. It was used against  the Bielefeld viaduct which had survived 3,500 tonnes of bombs dropped in 54 previous attacks. The viaduct was destroyed but the fourteen five ton "Tallboy" bombs dropped in the raid might have been responsible.