Eighty years ago this week a living god steps down

 

In a New Year message to the Japanese people Emperor Hirohito explicitly labelled the conception of his own divinity as false. He had never in fact been openly designated as a god although his claim to be descended from Ameratsu, the sun goddess and senior divinity in Shinto, had lent him at least indirect divine status. By force of uninformed repetition during the war years it had become generally thought that he was truly divine. Hirohito did not disclaim  Ameratsu as an ancestor but, on a more practical level, he also declared that the belief that the Japanese people was superior to all others and fated to rule the world, as false. Demoting Hirohito to human status was part of an American strategy designed, on the one hand, to extirpate any possibility that Japanese militarism would revive but, on the other, positioning him to be accepted as a relatively normal constitutional monarchial figurehead for a democratic Japan fit to become a stable member of the community of nations.

On a more mundane level a British  intelligence coup further demystified the Nazi regime. Hugh Trevor-Roper tracked down one of the messengers who had escaped from Berlin with copies of Hitler's last will and testament together with his marriage certificate, which he had been unable to deliver but had guarded preciously. The will stated openly that Hitler (and his new wife) would kill themselves to avoid the disgrace of capture, which saw off both the Nazi propaganda claim that Hitler had died fighting and, less conclusively, the Soviet insinuation that he was still alive under Allied control.

Armed Jewish insurgency against the British regime in Palestine gathered pace with seven separate bomb attacks on government sites in central Jerusalem, most notably the headquarters of police C.I.D. which was leading the fight against the insurgents. A joint operation by members of both the Irgun and Lehi groups breached the protective wall and planted explosives which practically destroyed the building. Nine members of the security forces including two senior British police officers were killed.