The Day We Went to War Page 10

  3.00pm (4.00pm), ADLON HOTEL, BERLIN

  Virginia Cowles finds out what more of the hotel staff think about war with Poland. A waiter tells her, ‘The Poles provoked Germany too far. Now they can pay the price.’ When Virginia asks him about what happens if Britain and France intervene, he replies, ‘Who says we are going to fight Great Britain and France? Poland is no one’s concern but Germany’s. We couldn’t sit back and let Poles shoot down German women and children. Why should anyone else interfere?’ A receptionist agrees. But an elderly porter, when asked if he thinks it will result in a world war, tells Virginia, ‘My God, I hope not. I had four years in the last one and that was enough.’

  4.00pm, TAKELEY

  Moyra Charlton and her parents are spending the afternoon preparing their house for war. They empty the attic of junk in case of incendiary bombs, and fit black discs onto the sidelights of the family cars. Moyra has volunteered for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry [FANY], but up to now has had no orders from them. But she is going to help out at home when the evacuees arrive. Taking a quick bath, she ponders on her hatred for Hitler, ‘for bringing this terrible thing on us all. How could he do it?’

  Crowds in Downing Street, 1 September 1939. A diarist recorded ‘most people fairly resigned and determined, but desperately disappointed. False cheerfulness and jokes’.

  The changing of the guard. Irish Guardsmen in khaki service dress take over from their ceremonially attired comrades at Buckingham Palace, 1 September 1939.

  4.00pm, BOLTON

  At a mill in the town, some of the younger hands get their calling-up papers. They change into uniform immediately and then line up to get their pay. The other mill hands give the lads, the oldest of whom is only twenty-four, a hearty send-off. They depart, ‘with a mixture of bravado and fear on their faces’.

  4.00–4.30pm, BOBROWA

  ‘Precisely at four in the afternoon we crossed the Polish frontier at Bobrowa. It was a strange feeling to leave the last German farmhouse behind. I have crossed many frontiers in my life to enjoy the pleasures of travel. This time I was crossing to do battle with an enemy. We reached Bobrowa at 4.30 in the afternoon. The population was unreliable. In the evening . . . after a short halt for a wash we went into position at Zsarski with twelve vehicles. Zsarski is a larger village so far untouched by the army. Crucifixes bear witness to fanatical Catholicism.

  ‘The Polish territory we were invading was a purely Polish district, which had belonged to Russia before the Great War. So we had to be prepared for anything.

  ‘We are reinforcements and at a distance from the main body. Lorry drivers keeping in touch with the forward troops are being sniped by civilians. One wonders how these people can aim, let alone shoot, when they can hardly see out of their eyes for dirt.’ (Corporal Wilhelm Krey, 13th Artillery Observation Battery, German Army)

  5.00pm, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  Lord Halifax telephones Paris. He suggests to his French opposite number Georges Bonnet that as a gesture Britain and France withdraw their ambassadors from Berlin. Bonnet demurs saying, ‘A hope remains of saving peace and I do not wish to destroy that hope.’

  5.45pm, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  Sir Nevile Henderson at the embassy in Berlin is telephoned with instructions to deliver ‘a severe warning’ to the German Government. Sir Nevile is told too that the next stage will be an ultimatum with a time limit or an immediate declaration of war. He is instructed to seek a meeting with Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop as soon as possible to hand over the warning. Sir Nevile telephones the Foreign Ministry to arrange an immediate meeting, but is put off until 9.30pm (10.30pm Berlin time). In the meantime, Henderson gets in contact with the United States Embassy. America has had no ambassador in Berlin since President Roosevelt withdrew Hugh Wilson last November in disgust over Kristallnacht. Now, Sir Nevile speaks with Chargé d’Affaires Kirk. He asks the American diplomat to take over responsibility for British affairs in the event of war. Both men now realise that this is only a matter of time.

  6.00pm, BROADCASTING HOUSE

  The BBC tells listeners that it is merging its national and regional programmes and will in future broadcast only one programme – the Home Service. The mobilisation of Air Raid Precautions personnel is also announced in the news this evening.

  6.00pm, HOUSE OF COMMONS, WESTMINSTER

  The Speaker arrives and prayers are said. The House’s chaplain adds one of his own today, ‘Let us this day pray for wisdom and courage to defend the right.’

  6.00pm (7.00pm), ADLON HOTEL, UNTER DEN LINDEN, BERLIN

  Air-raid sirens sound the warning. Virginia Cowles’s first thought is that it is the Royal Air Force coming over. From her balcony she sees cars stopping and people running in every direction. People hurry into the hotel lobby from the street to find shelter. An elderly German asks Virginia if she has been in an air raid before. She tells him that she was bombed several times by German ’planes during the Spanish Civil War. He relapses into silence.

  6.00pm (7.00pm), ESPLANADE HOTEL, BERLIN

  Jack Raleigh is working in the Chicago Tribune bureau as the alert sounds. Not relishing the thought of being buried alive, he decides not to go to the shelter in the hotel’s sub-basement. He carries on working. Raleigh hears two air-raid wardens talking. One tells the other that this is no practice alarm. A Luftwaffe officer has told the warden that seventy Polish bombers are on their way to Berlin. Raleigh carries on working, but confesses to himself that he wants to hear ‘the All Clear signal more than anything else in life’.

  6.00pm (7.00pm), BERLIN-STEGLITZ

  Ruth Andreas-Friederich is having tea with a judge who has been pensioned off by the Nazis. Both Ruth and her host loathe Hitler and his regime, and they are speculating on what will now happen. Then suddenly they hear ‘a strange sound . . . up and down, down and up, a long drawn howl’. It is the air-raid warning. They quickly go downstairs to cellar

  6.15pm, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  Lord Halifax has just finished composing his statement for the House of Lords at 6.30pm. Walking over to Parliament, the deeply religious Foreign Secretary asks Oliver Harvey, ‘How can a man be so wicked to launch this?’

  6.15pm, HOUSE OF COMMONS

  The Prime Minister and Labour’s acting leader Arthur Greenwood enter the chamber together and receive a cheer from MPs. Chamberlain rises immediately. In a voice full of emotion he reminds MPs, ‘About eighteen months ago in this House I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war.’ The Prime Minister then tells the House how the Government has made it crystal clear to Nazis that, if they use force, then, ‘we were resolved to oppose by them force’. Raising his voice and striking the despatch box in front of him with a clenched fist, Chamberlain continues, ‘We shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man. The German Chancellor has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery to serve his own senseless ambition.’

  The Prime Minister now explains the course of events over the last few days. When he slowly reads the text of the warning note that Sir Nevile Henderson has been instructed to hand to von Ribbentrop, it is clear that Chamberlain is ‘in real moral agony’. There is a feeling of deep sympathy for him in the House. Recovering, the Prime Minister ends on a defiant note: ‘Now it only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we have so earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and with the moral approval of the greater part of the world.’

  Making his way to the Savoy Hotel for dinner, Duff Cooper thinks that Chamberlain was unimpressive. And fellow anti-appeaser Harold Nicolson is afraid that, ‘lobby opinion is rather defeatist and they all realize that we have in front of us a very terrible task’.

  6.30pm (7.30pm), HOTEL EUROP
EJSKI, WARSAW

  In the courtyard of the hotel, diners sit at tables lit by well-shaded lights and eat their meals just ‘as usual in the peaceful summer air’. Warsaw has had seven air-raid warnings today, but there has been little excitement and no bombing of the city centre.

  6.45pm (7.45pm), BERLIN-STEGLITZ

  The ‘All Clear’ sounds. It has been a practice alarm. Ruth and her fellow shelterers emerge from the cellar. Nobody says anything ‘about this new experience; it’s disagreeable and almost makes us feel as if we’d disgraced ourselves’.

  7.47pm, BRITAIN

  The blackout comes into force tonight.

  9.30pm, SAVOY HOTEL GRILL, THE STRAND

  Duff Cooper and his wife Lady Diana are dining with Churchill, his son-in-law Duncan Sandys, and Lord Lloyd. Churchill confides to Lady Diana that this afternoon Chamberlain asked him to join the War Cabinet. He also tells her that he will try to get her husband a government post. But Duff Cooper is not at all sure that he wants to serve again under Chamberlain. Or indeed if the Prime Minister wants him back.

  9.30pm (10.30pm), FOREIGN MINISTRY, WILHEMSTRASSE, BERLIN

  Sir Nevile Henderson arrives to deliver the written British warning. Von Ribbentrop receives it without comment, but tells the ambassador that sole blame rests with the Poles. It was they who mobilised first, and invaded German territory. French ambassador Robert Coulondre has also arrived with a similar communication from Paris. Both men are told by von Ribbentrop that their notes will be submitted to Hitler for a response. When von Ribbentrop takes him the notes, the Fuehrer is derisory. ‘We will now see if they come to Poland’s aid,’ he tells his staff. Hitler is supremely confident that ‘they’ll chicken out again’.

  10.00pm, SS ATHENIA OFF BLACK HEAD, BELFAST

  136 more passengers, including sixty-seven Americans, have just joined the ship. The Athenia weighs anchor and sets course for Liverpool.

  10.00pm, SAVOY HOTEL, THE STRAND

  In the blackout, the Coopers leave the hotel. They cannot find a taxi, but the Duke of Westminster, the fabulously rich ‘Bendor’, offers them a lift to Victoria in his Rolls-Royce. As they drive to the station, the Duke inveighs against the Jews and rejoices that Britain is not at war with Germany. Hitler, ‘Bendor’ tells the Coopers, ‘knows that we are his best friends’. Duff Cooper, whose violent temper is notorious, explodes and tells the Duke that he hopes the Fuehrer will ‘soon find out that we are his most implacable and remorseless enemies’.

  10.00pm, WORTHING

  ‘Blackouts have started – no one must show a glimmer of light anywhere. Cars have the merest glimmer left and have to be painted white in front, rear or on running boards – the roads have a white centre line and the kerb whitened.’ (Joan Strange)

  10.00pm (11.00pm), FOREIGN MINISTRY, BERLIN

  Some foreign correspondents, including NBC’s Max Jordan, are hanging about the press department, waiting for any news. They discuss the announcement that has just been made, forbidding Germans to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. Correspondents may still listen, and earlier today Jordan heard a broadcast on the BBC of evacuees, all cheerfully singing ‘The Lambeth Walk’, leaving Waterloo Station.

  10.30pm, TAKELEY

  Moyra Charlton is getting ready for bed. The family home is blacked out and the Charltons ‘move like unhappy wraiths in a queer half light’. Before turning in, Moyra brings her diary up to date: ‘Within the next few days we will be at war. It is still even now hardly believable. I think I shall be scared stiff of an air raid. Anyhow, if we live through it, it will be “copy” for the budding author – seeing life with a vengeance, and perhaps death too. Surely a nation has never gone to war so grim and disillusioned and coldly resentful as we are now.’

  10.30pm (11.30pm), FOREIGN MINISTRY, BERLIN

  Max Jordan and some other correspondents are still waiting around in the press department to see if there is any hope that peace can be preserved. A diplomat tells them, off the record: ‘Yes, there is still hope, but it’s as when a mouse nears a trap – the only hope is that the trap won’t work!’

  11.00pm (12.00 midnight), BERLIN-STEGLITZ

  Anti-Nazi Ruth Andreas-Friederich is on her way home from a meeting with like-minded friends. She reflects on the blacked-out city: ‘On our way we see stars over Berlin for the first time – not paling sadly behind gaudy electric signs, but sparkling with clear solemnity. The moon casts a milky gleam over the roofs of the town. Not a spark of electric light falls upon the street.’

  11.30pm, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  Lord Halifax returns from seeing Chamberlain. He tells his staff that the Prime Minister has said that nothing can now be done before 9.30 next morning. The Foreign Secretary himself then decides to go to bed.

  CHAPTER 3

  Saturday,

  2 September 1939

  Introduction: resumé of 1 September

  As the full force of the German Blitzkrieg hit Poland, her allies Britain and France remained in a state of uneasy peace. Only the day before (31 August), a poll in Britain had shown that a large majority of people still thought Hitler was bluffing. Now the mood had changed. With the BBC’s morning bulletins announcing news of the German invasion, the commonest remarks heard were, ‘Let’s get started,’ or ‘Let us strike and get right into Germany’.

  Mass Observation diarists recorded their own emotions and those of friends and family. A twenty-five-year-old woman wrote: ‘Had been expecting it. Whole world turned upside down. Everybody grey and serious, but making cynical jokes. Didn’t sleep very well.’ A seventeen-year-old boy noted, ‘All decided very little hope left. All very worried. Go on working as usual. Parents have anti-German outburst.’

  Throughout Britain’s town and cities, the evacuation of school-children and others took place. There was a good deal of forced cheerfulness, and also a lot of tears, but for many children it was all a glorious lark.

  French radio stations announced the news of the German invasion of Poland at 10am on 1 September. Already towns, cities and localities were being evacuated. In Paris, Simone de Beauvoir saw ‘an endless procession of cars crammed with luggage and children’. She noted, ‘the disturbing nature of the news is not overemphasized, but no one takes a hopeful line, either.’ Most French people were only too conscious of the fact that their country had been invaded by Germans three times in the last 125 years, and that the last time France had lost nearly 1,400,000 dead. At railway stations, conscripts, on the way to rejoin their regiments, mingled with refugees. At the Quai d’Orsay, Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet persisted in his increasingly futile efforts to preserve the peace by pushing for the conference proposed by the Italians. Like many Parisians, Simone de Beauvoir found sleep difficult that night, experiencing, ‘a feeling of unfathomable horror’.

  In Berlin, anti-Nazi Ruth Andreas-Friederich recorded the events of 1 September in her diary:

  ‘At 4.45 German troops crossed the Polish frontier on a broad front. The government has popped up with an abundance of new decrees. Streets, shops and dwellings to be blacked out. Compulsory air-raid duty. As of today listening to foreign radio stations is forbidden under severe penalties.’

  Many Germans believed that the invasion of Poland would be only a ‘localised police action’, and that Britain and France would not fulfil their obligations and go to war. ‘They are afraid to fight Germany,’ a Berlin policeman told US Embassy official William Russell. Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag was a ‘weak one’, according to former ambassador Ulrich von Hassell, received with only ‘official enthusiasm’. At night, Berlin’s restaurants, cafés and beer halls were all packed, but many Berliners feared that the Poles might attempt a bombing raid.

  The Polish air force began 1 September with 392 serviceable aircraft. Facing them were 1941 ’planes of the Luftwaffe. The Germans flew 2700 sorties over Poland in the course of the day, attacking airfields and bombing over 100 cities and towns. The ancient town of Ciechanow was attacked three times; twe
nty-two civilians including one child and four soldiers were killed and over fifty injured. In the capital, Ed Beattie noted, ‘Warsaw was taking the start of the war with the same stolidity and the same fatalism she had shown in the summer months of tension.’ At the same time, Poles waited impatiently for some positive action from Britain and France. ‘Do they know in the west how quickly and hard they must attack?’ a newspaper editor asked Beattie. ‘We can do our part with help, but there must be two fronts.’

  12.00 midnight, BERLIN–COLOGNE TRAIN

  Virginia Cowles and her friend Jane Leslie are making their way to Holland before the borders close. They decide to find out what their travelling companions think of the situation, and what they believe Britain and France will do. ‘Germany is only taking police action,’ one Hausfrau assures the two Americans. ‘No one will go to war for that.’ A musician from Duesseldorf agrees. ‘After we cut Poland’s throat,’ he tells them, drawing his finger across his own throat, ‘we’ll settle down to peace again.’ Everybody laughs, and Virginia and Jane marvel that everyone is so confident that Hitler is going to pull it off again.

  1.00am (2.00am), POLSKIE RADIO BUILDING, WARSAW

  Patrick Maitland is just finishing a broadcast on the first day’s fighting. Earlier tonight, he had dinner with Hugh Carleton Greene and American correspondent Alex Small. To take their minds off the war, the three men discussed classical Greek literature. Leaving his two friends, on the way to the studio Patrick passed cheerful Polish soldiers having a last fling before they set off for the front. There seem to be hundreds of girls about, ‘flirting, ogling in the moonlight’, with the soldiers.