The World at War (95 page)

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Authors: Richard Holmes

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*54
John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), influential British political economist who proposed an interventionist role for government that shaped Western economies for a generation.

*55
Although endlessly controversial in the post–war years, Butler's patiently negotiated Education Act, 1944 was probably the best solution possible to what had been one (and at the time of writing still remains) of the most intractable problems in British politics.

*56
The report by Sir William Beveridge (1879–1963), published in December 1942, provided the blueprint for the Welfare State legislation of the post-war Labour government.

*57
Dr Hans von Dohnanyi (1902–45) was a senior official in the Reichs Ministry of Justice, later seconded to the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), where Hans Oster had attempted to warn France and Britain about Hitler's intentions before the war and which under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris became a hub of Resistance activity.

*58
Pastor Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer were arrested at the end of 1943, as were Hans von Dohnanyi and Josef Mueller who had collaborated on a dossier of Nazi war crimes and of resistance plans passed through Pope Pius XII to London. Admiral Canaris and Hans Oster were dismissed from the Abwehr in January 1944 and later executed.

*59
Prince Bernhard was a German aristocrat who had been a member, for convenience, of the Nazi Party and the SS Cavalry Corps before marrying Crown Princess Juliana in 1936.

*60
John made contact with British Intelligence when posted to Madrid and escaped to England after the failure of the July Plot.

*61
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh, Lord Trenchard (1873–1956), Chief of the Air Staff during the First World War and founder of the RAF.

**5
General of the Air Force Henry 'Hap' Arnold (1886–1950), Commander of the US Army Air Corps from 1938 and the USAAF 1941–45.

*62
Bomber Command had a thirty-mission tour of operations, which could be repeated.

*63
In the Schweinfurt–Regensburg raid of 17 August 1943 LeMay's Wing (not Division) lost 24 of 146 B-17s and the 1st Wing lost 36 of 230. A further 87 were damaged beyond repair and 95 suffered lesser battle damage. Losses on this and other missions caused Eighth USAAF to wait for the long-range Mustang fighter before venturing deep into Germany again in 1944.

*64
This engagement on New Year's Day 1945 ended with the 487th shooting down 23 of 50 German fighters that attacked their airfield in Belgium during the German Ardennes offensive.

*65
Major General Sir Percy Hobart (1885–1957) trained the Mobile Force (later 7th Armoured Division) in Egypt and was recalled from retirement to form 79th Armoured Division RE with specialised tanks, known as 'Hobart's Funnies', for the Normandy landing.

*66
Robert Capa (1913–54), Hungarian-born war photographer, took 108 pictures at Omaha Beach, of which only eleven blurred frames survived a laboratory error.

*67
Cornelius Ryan (1920–74), author of the enormously successful
The Longest Day
(1959) about D-Day and
A Bridge Too Tar
(1974) about Operation Market Garden (Arnhem), which were made into major films in 1962 and 1977 respectively.

*68
Lieutenant General Lesley McNair (1883–1944) was Commanding General, Army Ground Forces, responsible for the training and equipment of troops for overseas deployment.

*69
Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (1891–1945) put all his guns and almost all his garrison in buried bunkers and caves, with the result that the preliminary bombardment left the defences essentially untouched.

*70
Actually they were greater: American losses were 8,700 killed and 19,000 wounded, while except for 216 who surrendered, the Japanese garrison of 21,000 was killed.

*71
Almost uniquely, at this stage of the war, the
Franklin
was hit by two conventional bombs. Lieutenant Commander Gary was awarded the Medal of Honor.

*72
The
Laffey,
now a museum ship in Charleston, South Carolina, is thought to have taken five direct hits. After running repairs, she sailed back to California under her own power.

*73
Scrub typhus is a disease communicated by flesh-boring parasites called chiggers.

*74
Mishan and Kanglatongbi are villages between Imphal and Kohima on the Dimapur road.

*75
In early September General von Schwerin-Krosigk was relieved of command.

*76
A grossly immodest press conference by Montgomery after the Battle of the Bulge almost led to his being relieved of command by Eisenhower, whose outrage was stoked by his deputy, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder. He was saved by de Guingand, who flew to Paris to plead his case.

*77
The Third Moscow Conference, among the American, British and Soviet foreign ministers, took place in October–November 1943.

*78
The Fourth Moscow Conference, among Stalin, Churchill, Molotov and Eden, took place in October 1944.

*79
H Freeman Matthews (1899–1986), career US diplomat; Gladwyn Jebb (1900–96), head of the Foreign Office Reconstruction Department and first Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations; Pierson Dixon (1904–65), career British diplomat.

*80
The reference is to his persecutor Richard Nixon, President 1969–74.

*81
Speer's statement that gauleiter Karl Hanke fled Breslau in a prototype helicopter has been generally disbelieved – Manteuffel's testimony confirms that there was such a machine.

*82
The Tokyo fire storm in the night of 9–10 March 1945 destroyed a quarter of a million buildings and killed in excess of 100,000 people.

*83
General Korcchika Anami committed seppuku on 15 August.

*84
The rebel officers led by Major Hatanaka Kenji murdered the commander of the 1st Imperial Guards Division and persuaded some of the palace guards to join them by claiming support from War Minister Anami. After failing to find the Emperor's recording or to broadcast his own message, Hatanaka Kenji committed seppuku.

*85
In May 1945 Wolff negotiated the surrender of all German forces in northern Italy with the Americans. The Russians learned about it from the British traitor Kim Philby.

*86
West Germany refused to accept the Oder–Neisse line as the permanent frontier with Poland until Chancellor Brandt recognised it by treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1970.

*87
Eden was referring to the penetration of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos by Soviet spies Allan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs, backed by the Rosenberg ring in New York.

*88
To put it mildly – the 'stagflation' of the 1970s destroyed the post-war Keynesian consensus.

*89
Hiss was fully aware of the development of the atom bomb – this is perhaps the clearest example of 'he who excuses himself accuses himself in his long interview.

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