Eighty Years Ago This Week

  Hitler ordered an all out attack by Germany's remaining land and air forces under SS General Felix Steiner, who commanded the largely phantom 11th SS Panzer Army,  on the Soviet army which was on the point of taking Berlin. He threatened that  any unit commander who did not commit his troops fully to the attack would be killed. He constantly demanded news of the operation but as the military assets which it involved existed mainly on paper, this was fragmentary and confused. Finally he was told outright at his daily conference that the attack had not taken place. This inspired the furious rant, now the stuff of parody, which concluded with Hitler acknowledging that he had failed and and had nothing left but death. Anyone who wished to leave the Bunker could do so. Two of the Reich's top leaders who had already left Berlin put their own seals on its dissolution. Goering sent a telegram to Hitler seeking permission to take charge, which the Fuehrer construed as treason. S...

  President Roosevelt died from a cerebral haemorrage. He had been in poor health and his death came as little surprise. He had been sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. She never finished the painting and it hangs at the President's country house. His death triggered a flurry of deluded hopes amongst the Nazi leadership inspired by the reversal in Frederick the Great's  fortunes during the Seven years War when the death of Empress Catherine the Great led to Russia's withdrawal from the coalition against Prussia. The Berlin Philharmonic gave a concert  at its home, the Philharmonie, still untouched by the devastating air raids on the city. The programme featured staples of the Nazi's idealized German repertoire - Wagner, Bruckner and Beethoven - as a boost to morale although Furtwangler, the conductor deeply associated with the orchestra and its relations with the regime had fled to Switzerland. The armaments minister Albert Speer is reported to have been in ...

  In a last dtich attempt to halt the allied bombing offensive the Luftwaffe sent a special unit, Sonderkommando Elbe , into action. It consisted of some 180 partially trained pliots flying Me-109Gs which did not carry a full load of ammunition. They were to ram US bombers and the pilots would then  supposedly parachute to safety. With 1,200 US bombers in the air that day they found targets easily and destroyed around twenty at the cost of the attacking fighter. US fighter escorts and the bombers themselves destroyed many more. German kamikaze tactics were no sounder than their Japanese variant. The Soviet Union unilaterally renounced its  neutrality pact with Japan of 1941 which had left it free to concentrate its resources against Germany in the west. The fight against Japan had been left to the British Empire and the USA; a point which the Soviets had skirted in their strident calls for a "second front" against the dictatorships. The US and UK had urged Stalin to join ...

    The Americans staged the largest amphibious operation in the Pacific theatre when the first of seven divisions landed on Okinawa. The island lay 340 miles from the Japanese home islands and was to provide a staging point for the planned invasion of Japan. For the first time in the island hopping campaign the British Royal Navy was present in force, accounting for about one third of the attacking fleet. The attackers faced a garrison of some 70,000 troops; civilian inhabitants were also forced into the battle. The last two V-2s struck Britain, fired from sites in the Netherlands. One killed Ivy Millichamp at her house in Orpington, the last civilian to die from enemy action on British soil. The launch area was soon overrun, putting an end to the campaign. A Vickers Wellington bomber of 304 (Polish) Squadron sank U-321 in the Atlantic with all hands. With minimal modification the Wellington had been in front-line service since that start of the war. The Spitfire could cl...