The World

* The leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, travelled to Berlin where he met Hitler and Himmler and backed the Holocaust. In summer 1943, Himmler boasted that the Nazis had ‘already exterminated more than three million [Jews]’ – which astonished Husseini. ‘It’s the duty of Muslims generally and Arabs in particular to drive out all Jews,’ said the mufti in November. ‘Germany … has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and has resolved to find a definitive solution for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.’

* The taking of Sebastopol in July 1942 was aided by a giant cannon with a twenty-five-mile range built on Hitler’s personal orders by Krupp. ‘My Führer,’ wrote Alfried Krupp, delivering the letter in person at the Wolf’s Lair, ‘the big weapon manufactured thanks to your personal command has proved its effectiveness … Krupp gratefully recognizes the confidence displayed in the family by you, my Führer … Following an example of Alfred Krupp in 1870, my wife and I ask the favour that the Krupp Works may refrain from charging for this product … Sieg Heil!

’ In 1943, at Gustav’s request, Hitler passed a special Lex Krupp to ensure that the firm remained within the dynasty.

* In the Dutch East Indies, a charismatic teacher’s son and trained architect, Sukarno, who had served four years in Dutch jail for his nationalist activities, joined the Japanese to promote his vision of a new national concept based on the European colony: Indonesia. But not all nationalists followed this path: Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh resistance, which encompassed Communist and nationalist elements, fought the French and then the Japanese, winning the aid of the USA and Britain.

* The British responded with the Roundtable Conferences of 1930–2 – attended at times by Gandhi and Jinnah – which led to the limited elections, mocked by Nehru as ‘a machine with strong brakes but no engine’. The process outraged Churchill, who fulminated, ‘It’s alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.’ Nonetheless, following the 1935 Government of India Act, there were elections in 1937 leading to the establishment of provincial Indian governments – though the viceroy still ruled. When the Second World War began, the process of negotiations was abandoned altogether.

* Both men disagreed with the president of Congress, Subhas Chandra Bose, a wealthy lawyer and a socialist who favoured a Hindu–Muslim alliance in Bengal – until he was defeated by Gandhi. Now he escaped to Germany before emerging from a Japanese submarine to lead an Indian National Army of 60,000 which fought against the British in Burma.

* In rural Bengal, run by an elected Indian government, a catastrophic shortage of rice came about as a result of a cyclone, the fall of Burma (which had exported rice to India), the destruction of coastal boats to prevent them falling into the hands of the Japanese and widespread hoarding by speculators and merchants. Relief efforts were hampered by both intra-Indian politics and the incompetence, negligence and lethargy of the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow. Churchill and the London cabinet, whose priority was to feed the army, failed to act until it was too late. The famine was not intentional but Britain as the imperial power bore responsibility. Similar famines raged in Japanese-occupied Vietnam (where two million died) and in newly liberated Greece and Netherlands.

* JFK was still undergoing treatment for his back injuries when, in August 1944, his elder brother, Joe Jr, a bomber pilot, was killed on a mission.

* Stalin was obsessed with treason: 600,000 Hilfswilliger

– Russian auxilaries – known as Hiwis or Askaris (Africans) fought for Hitler, while 120,000 formed a Russian Liberation Army under German command. In 1943–4, Stalin punished potential traitors with deportations of entire smaller peoples – Muslim Tatars, Chechens, Kalmyks, Karachays, Volga Germans, Ingush. Out of 480,000 Chechen deportees, 30 to 50 per cent died. When the survivors returned to Chechnya, they nurtured a deep hatred, inbred from their long insurgencies the century before, for Russian rule.

* On his return to Washington, FDR secretly sought out his lover, Lucy Mercer, who had just lost her long-time husband, Winthrop Rutherford. He had written to her all along but they had only met once during her long marriage. He asked his daughter Anna to arrange their meetings, some of them in the White House, others in Georgetown. Lucy and his daughter became friends, but Eleanor was furious when she discovered.