Eighty years ago this week Churchill makes a catastrophic speech

 

Churchill opened his contribution to the general election campaign with a disastrous speech on the radio in which he claimed that a Labour government would require some form of "Gestapo" to carry out its policies. The blunder was entirely Churchill's own and reflected his visceral anti-socialism which he had held in check to maintain the wartime coaltion, although Lord Beaverbrook (whose Daily Express was the only major newspaper to cover the speech sympathetically) and Brendan  Bracken had been egging him on to conduct an aggressive campaign. All but the most stupid Conservative supporters immediately recognised  that the speech was an error and it haunted Churchill for the remainder of the campaign. 

France responded drastically to protests against the reimposition of colonial rule in Damascus. A full-scale military counter including the use of artillery was directed against rebel centres, causing about 1,000 casualties. Rather reluctantly Britain intervened and sent an ultimatum to withdraw French units. This provoked a furious response  by General de Gaulle, who accused Britain of outraging France and betraying the West. He implied to the British ambassador that had France had the means, it would have gone to war against Britain. The French press took up the clamour and the episode still rankled bitterly years afterwards.

When Leo Amery, the Secretary for India and Burma, opened the second reading of a bill on the government of Burma, he told Parliament explicitly that the goal was for Burma to attain Dominion status. Given the furious battle that Churchill had fought to ward off Dominion status for India (which then included Burma) at the beginning of the 1930s, this was read as a major shift in policy. When the Viceroy of India travelled to London, much was expected of the visit in the same direction.

The US air force suffered one of the few major setbacks of its bombing campaign against Japan in a raid on Osaka. XXI Bomber Command had switched to daylight attacks escorted by P-51 fighters based on the recently captured Iwo Jima. 27 out of 148 P-51s were lost, not through Japanese action but when  when they attempted to fly through a storm cloud. The raid itself succeeded, burning out 3.1m square miles of the city and inflicting 14,000 casualties (3,100 fatal), mainly on civilians. The raid was part of a devastating programme of incendiary attacks which destroyed most of Japan's six largest cities, killing well over 100,000 people. The bombers suffered only light losses.