Leeds nostalgia: Hands of our atomic energy

The big news was that the Government were damned if they were going to let private companies get in on the act and announced a White Paper indicating that all atomic energy development would come under strict Government control.

In other news, Dr Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, the former finance chief of Adolf Hitler, was called to the War Crimes Tribunal to defend himself and he told the court he had long warned of the rise of the German dictator, adding: “I have remained a freemason and a cosmopolitan and I have never been interested in party politics. I said in 50 meetings and lectures in America, after my resignation from the presidency of the Reichsbank in 1930, that unless other countries changed their policy toward Germany and rectified the mistakes of Versailles, Hitler would rapidly win support throughout the Reich. Foreign bankers did not listen, neither did the Government.”

Although Schacht served under Hitler until 1943, as head of the Reichsbank and later finance minister and ministser without portfolio, he clashed fiercely with both Hitler and Goering over their ideological aspirations. At his trial, it was point out that on several occasions he helped Jews under the Nazi regime. He was acquitted at the Nuremberg Trials.

Finally, the “forgotten” people of Eccup rose up in protest.

At the time the village had no gas or electricity and Leeds Corporation had recently closed their only school.