Eighty years ago this week Churchill combines gracious respect for Parliament with partisan vituperation

  

The last of the "Big Three" conferences was set at Potsdam. In view of the possibility that Labour might win the upcoming general election, Churchill invited Labour leader Clement Attlee to attend alongside him. Churchill was conducting the election campaign in a fully vituperative mode against Labour, but graciously (and to some puzzlingly) flagged his respect for Parliament as the true repository of democratic power.

The government's long-awaited policy statement on India showed that Britain was preparing to loosen its grip on the Raj. The Viceroy's Council was to be composed of Indian politicians and not merely nominees. Representatives of the major groups were invited to a conference to discuss the next steps to take.

After 82 days of fighting the battle for Okinawa came to an end. It had been the bloodiest battle of the Pacific war. The heaviest toll was of local people (150,000); for the first time the battlefield had a dense Japanese civilian population. Some thousands killed themselves, either directed to do so by the military or because they believed propaganda to the effect that US troops would commit atrocities on them. 77,000 Japanese troop died. The Americans suffered 50,000 battle casulaties, about a quarter of which were fatal. Extensive Kamikaze attacks sank a number of Allied ship and damaged many including four fleet carriers; naval casualties were almost 10,000 including 200 from the Royal Navy. The ferocity of the fight gave a foretaste of what an invasion of Japan might have been like.

Belgium was struck by a political crisis when King Leopold announced his intention to return to the country unilaterally. The politicians had already declared that he was "unable to reign" in view of his surrender to the Germans in 1940 and conduct during the occupations. They threatened to resign and Leopold backed down.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, the last of the Nazi leaders at large, was arrested by the British in Hamburg. He had spent the weeks since the end of the war composing a long, rambling and barely coherent letter justifying his actions. The British made great play of the fact that he was lodging with an "attractive brunette." Ribbentrop had fallen out with his wife, who was chiefly preoccupied with gaining control of the family wine business, but the fact that he was asleep in a single bed argues against the insinuation.