Eighty Years Ago This Week

  Heinrich Himmler, the former head of the SS was captured by the British army under the false identity of Sergeant Hizinger of the security police, junior in rank but liable to automatic arrest. The British did not  recognise him. He was dishevelled, had shaved his trademark moustache and wore an eye patch,  but after a few hours he spontaneously disclosed his identity. A doctor searched him for poison and found a capsule in his mouth which he tried  to remove. Himmler fought back and succeeded in biting onto the cyanide capsule, which killed him in ten minutes. This left only ex-foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop of the Third Reich's top leadership still alive and at large. Churchill formally resigned as prime minister and asked for a dissolution of Parliament. The Parliament elected in November 1935 had lasted long than any in modern times. Given the time that would elapse before the ensuing general election, George VI asked him to form a  goverment. T...

  The British Labour party conference chaired by MP Ellen Wilkinson formally declined an invitation from Churchill to maintain the coalition until Japan had been defeated. In itself the proposal was largely hollow, because no-one expected victory in the East before 1946. A general election before November was unavoidable so Labour was being asked to commit to continuing the coalition irrespective of what the balance of power  in the House of Commons would be. Churchill refused the proposal by Labour leader Clem Attlee to hold the election in October so there would be an election as soon as practical with  July as the likely date. The Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin announced a radical shift of manpower allocation; he was careful to avoid using the term demobilization. The release of men from the forces was to begin almost immediately,  including the army still fighting in Burma. He aimed to release 60,000 men for the building industry so as to start repairing the war...

    The Americans disclosed the plans for the occupation of Germany agreed with Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The country would be placed under "stern military government" which would last longer that the arrangements in place for Italy. It would control every aspect of government work. There would be no other authority of any kind. One of the tasks of the political division would be to protect American interests in Germany, a clear hint that the US intended to be present in Europe for the long term. Preparations were under way for a general election in Britain. There was no possibility that the Parliament elected in 1935 would be further prolonged by legislation, so November would be the last possible date. The Conservatives were understood to favour a summer election so as to capitalise on Churchill's kudos as victorious war leader in a re-run of the infamous "khaki" election of 1918. Labour and the Liberals preferred the autumn. Churchill told Parliam...

  The German surrender on May 8th now appears inevitable. Hitler had killed himself. The Soviets had taken Berlin. The Red Army and the US Army had met on the Elbe, severing the Reich. The German forces in Italy had surrendered unconditionally. Attempts by first Goebbels, then Himmler and finally the new head of government Doenitz to surrender in the West to the Americans and British, implicitly to continue fighting the Soviets, had been rejected out of hand. But much territory was still in the hands of the Reich: southern Germany, Austria, Denmark and Norway. The garrisons of the French Atlantic ports and the Channel islands were still holding out. Fighting actually continued for another week in the Balkans. Eamon de Valera the head of the Irish government commited one of the worst blunders of his career when he paid a well-publicized  visit to the German embassy in Dublin to pay his condolences on the death of Hitler (there was no book of condolence, so he could not have sig...

  Mussolini was captured by communist partisans as he tried to escape. On party orders he, his mistress Clara Petacci   and other fascist companions  were shot. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung by their ankles from the girders around a garage on the Piazzale Loretto where fifteen people chosen at random had been murdered in 1944 as a reprisal for partisan attacks.  Hitler married his mistress Eva Braun in a civil ceremony at the Fuehrerbunker.  He tried out a cyanide pill on his Alsatian dog Blondi and, once he was sure it was effective, gave one to his wife to kill herself. He then shot himself dead. Hitler had named his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to succeed him as Reich Chancellor. He spent only one day in the office and then he and his wife  killed themselves, first having murdered six of their young children. His wife's son by her first marriage was a prisoner of war in British hands and survived the war. Marshal Petain left Switzerlan...