Eighty years ago this week the last, tarnished titan of the Great War departs

 

David Lloyd George died at the age of 82. In December 1916 he had succeeded Herbert Asquith as prime minister and added much-needed resolve and determination to Britain's war effort, prefiguring Churchill's ascension in place of Neville Chamberlain in 1940 as a true war leader. His practical contribution to victory was less certain and he dissipated much of his standing in the devious and corrupt manoeuvrings of his post-war coalition government. Nonetheless Churchill would have brought him into government as an old ally, but Lloyd George saw a better chance to return to power as the head of government once Hitler had triumphed. In September 1936 Lloyd George had paid a high profile visit to Hitler, whom he praised extravagantly, in a move to establish himself as the British statesman who could build a friendly relationship with Nazi Germany. He had remained an MP almost to the last but his criticisms had dwindled into a minor irritant.

Montgomery launched Operation Plunder, a well-prepared and massive, attack to establish a bridgehead east of the Rhine.  It featured a larger air drop than Arnhem, but far closer to the main body of the land forces to avoid the risk of leaving the airborne troops isolated. The assault crossing of the river succeeded against light German opposition and linked up with the air drop. By then German capacity to resist had been severely eroded. Churchill visited Montgomery's HQ and made a brief crossing of the river even though the zone was still under fire.

After more than a month of severe fighting, the Americans overwhelemed the last organized Japanese resistance on Iwo Jima. The Japanese commander General Kuribyashi certainly died, possibly personally leading the last suicidal counter-attack on the Americans. Almost the entire Japanese garrison of some 19,000   was killed but at the cost of 26,000 US casualties.

2 Group RAF extended its series of attacks on German security force  targets with a raid on  the Gestapo HQ in Copenhagen located in the Shell building. The mission was led personally by the Group commander Air Vice Marshal Basil Embry. The building was wrecked, freeing 18 resistance prisoners and killing some fifty Germans and the same number of Danish Gestapo employees. Eight prisoners were killed though and, worse, one of the attacking Mosquitos crashed on a nearby school starting a fire which misled other aircraft into bombing that site; it was a school and some ninety children and thirty adults died.