The Day We Went to War Read online

  The following year, at the cinema, millions saw a celluloid depiction of the horrors of a new world war in Alexander Korda’s Things to Come. The scenes of a devastating air raid on London, with high-explosive bombs and gas raining down on the practically defenceless city, shocked British picturegoers. So too did the newsreels of the bombing of Spanish and Chinese cities. Exaggerated accounts of the strength of Hitler’s air force by, among others, the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, did nothing to allay their fears. Nor did statements by politicians. In December 1938, Sir John Simon, Chamberlain’s Chancellor of Exchequer told an audience, ‘The Germans had it in their power to let loose 3,000 tons of bombs in a single day . . . in the first week or two of war the Germans might do an amount of damage in London and other great cities which would amount in money to £500,000,000.’

  A month later, on 28 January 1939, Chamberlain himself warned, ‘If we should ever be involved in war we may well find that if we are not all in the firing line, we may all be in the line of fire.’

  But despite all the official doom and gloom, and the darkening international situation, life for most Britons in 1939 went on much as before. The worst of the Great Depression was over, but of Britain’s population of 47,762,000, over 1,270,000 were still registered as unemployed. The average weekly wage for a man in 1939 was £3.9s.0d (£3.45), while that of a woman’s was a mere £1.12s.6d (£1.63). The average hours they worked to earn those wages were 46.5 and 43.5 respectively.

  In 1939, Greater London, with a population of 8,650,000, was still the world’s largest city, with Tokyo it nearest rival. The capital had a Jewish population of 210,000, and 313,900 foreigners, mainly French, Italians, Germans, Swiss and Americans, lived and worked in London. The capital’s total working population was 2,749,000. Many lived in London’s suburbs, where the price of a semi-detached house ranged from £400 to £600 (a similar house in the provinces fetched £100 less). Flats, such as ones in Hackney with deep balconies, advertised in early 1939, could be rented from as little as 10s (50p) per week, with larger ones at £1.1s.0d (£1.05).

  To furnish them, there were bedroom suites from Fred Lawrence’s of Westbourne Grove costing as little as £22.1s (£22.05), and half that in the sales. In the wardrobe there might be found, from Swan and Edgar’s, a lady’s sports jacket at £2.12s.6d (£2.63), trousers at £1.7s.6d (£1.38) and a matching shirt at 10s.9d (54p). The man of the house could buy a suit from Montague Burton, the Fifty Shilling Tailors, for £2.10s (£2.50). A three-piece drawing-room suite could be got for the same amount, while a dining-room set of table, four chairs, and sideboard cost £12.12s.0d (£12.60). For the dining room, an 84-piece canteen of cutlery could be bought for as little as £7.7s.0d (£7.35). Labour-saving devices were still coming into their own by 1939. Although few middle-class homes boasted a fridge, many now had a Hoover or Goblin vacuum cleaner which could be got from Southern Electrical Products of Kingston, Surrey, at £4.0s.0d (£4.00) and £2.9s.6d (£2.48) respectively, or weekly instalments of 3s.6d (18p) on the ‘never-never’. In 1939, only 1,200,000 British homes had a telephone, and most people still relied on the Royal Mail for sending messages. A letter cost a penny-halfpenny (1p), while a telegram was sixpence (3p) for the first nine words and then a penny for each additional word.

  In the bathroom, one could find a bar of Palmolive soap at three-pence (1p) or a tablet of Wright’s Coal Tar soap costing sixpence (3p), the same price as a tube of Pepsodent or Kolynos toothpaste. In the medicine cupboard, to guard against coughs and colds, the household might have a large bottle of Galloway’s Cough Syrup, ‘equally effective for young and old’ at 2s.6d (13p). There might also be DDD Prescription which had ‘golden drops with miraculous powers to clear the skin of spots’ at only 1s.3d (6p) a bottle. Most men still had wet shaves, but a Remington Electric Close Shaver could be bought for £3.7s.6d (£3.38). To keep his hair in place, the man of the house could buy Brylcreem at 1s.9d (9p) a jar. His wife or daughter’s lipsticks cost from sixpence (3p) to 2s.6d (13p). A lot of British homes still did not have an inside, or separate, lavatory. But in those that did, one would probably find ‘Bronco: the perforated toilet paper for economy, health, comfort and neatness’, a 700-sheet roll for 1s (5p).

  Downstairs in the lounge, or drawing room, the family’s radio, or wireless set, took pride of place; 9,009,700 wireless licences at ten shillings (50p) were sold in 1939. A Bush all-wave radio set with ten push buttons, recommended by Britain’s first disc jockey, Christopher Stone, cost £12.12s.0d (£12.60) cash, ‘or on popular payments’. Also in the room might be the family’s HMV portable wind-up gramophone, which retailed at £6. Records of some of the early hits of 1939, like ‘And the Angels Sing’ and ‘If I Didn’t Care’, cost two shillings (10p). The room’s cocktail cabinet would undoubtedly be stocked with whisky at 12s.6d (63p) a bottle, and a bottle of gin at just slightly less. A litre (1.76 pints) of Martini Dry cost 5s.6d (28p), the sweeter version a shilling (5p) less. A bottle of Gilbey’s ready-made ‘Odds On’ wine cocktail retailed at 2s.6d (13p).

  For those Britons who preferred to drink away from home, there was always the public house or pub. Bolton in Lancashire had no less than 304 pubs in 1939. In any of them one could buy a pint of mild for 5d (2p), India Pale Ale for 7d (3p) a pint and strong ale for 11d (5p). Whisky, rum and gin cost 6d (3p) a measure, while a Single Malt might cost as much as 10d (4p). A glass of port, sherry or Empire Wine was sold at threepence (1p) a time. In 1939, Britons sank 895 million gallons of beer and 10,098,000 proof gallons of spirits. The same year, they drank 887 million gallons of milk. Less healthily, they also smoked a lot too. A packet of twenty Player’s Navy Medium Cut cost just under a shilling (5p) in 1939, while other brands like Woodbine, Piccadilly and De Reszke Minors cost even less. To light them, a Ronson lighter could be got for £1.1s.0d ( £1.05). Pipe tobacco cost a shilling (5p) an ounce, and five Manikin cigars were 11d (5p) a packet.

  For those Britons with a sweet tooth, an extra large tin of Quality Street cost 4s.6d (23p), while a packet of Maltesers sold at twopence (1p), and Black Magic chocolates at 2s.10d (14p) a pound box. And if one over-indulged oneself there was always Beechams Pills and Powders at 1s.3d (6p) a packet, and Kelloggs All Bran, ‘a food that brings normal “regularity” to constipation victims’, retailing at 7½d (3p).

  1939 saw the passing of the Holidays with Pay Act. Three million more Britons now received, for the first time, a fortnight’s holiday with pay. Most people still went to British seaside resorts for their annual holidays. The majority went there by train or charabanc, but quite a number of Britain’s 1,900,000 private-car owners packed up the family Morris Eight (£128) or the swisher Sunbeam Talbot (£285) and made for the coast. For those who wanted a more energetic holiday than sitting in a deckchair on the beach at Margate or Skegness, there were the Norfolk Broads, where the hire of an eight-berth cruiser for two weeks cost £18.

  For those even more adventurous and with 15s (75p) for a passport, there were plenty of holidays advertised in Britain’s ally, France. A room at the Hotel Opal near the Madeleine in Paris cost as little as 6s (30p) a night, while one with a bath at the smart resort of Deauville cost £1, and for an extra 12s (60p) one could get full board. To get away, if only physically, from Europe’s troubles in 1939, a luxury cruise of fifty-six days to South America, the West Indies and Florida was being advertised at just 5s (25p) short of £100. For those Britons curious to see Nazi Germany at first hand, the London branch of the German Travel Bureau advertised an all-inclusive nine-day tour of the Reich for £6.16s.0d (£6.80). Ominously, as tension mounted that summer, the tour was advertised as being ‘specially escorted’.

  CHAPTER 1

  Countdown to War

  January–August 1939

  January

  1 January, LONDON

  Gordon Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, broadcasts a New Year’s Day message from Lambeth Palace. The archbishop tells listeners: ‘In the dawn of a new year it is still a confused and troubled worl
d that we see. Terrible wars are being waged in Spain and China. In Europe restless national ambitions are increasing the widespread sense of insecurity. No wonder it seems as if the whole world were going mad.’

  1 January, WORTHING

  ‘Everyone’s wondering what can happen next!’ (Miss Joan Colebrook Strange, aged thirty-four, a trained physiotherapist living with her widowed mother in Langton Road, Worthing. Joan Strange was a committed Christian who undertook a great deal of voluntary work amongst German and Austrian Jewish refugees.)

  2 January, WORTHING

  ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury broadcast last night a New Year’s Sermon telling all “to hope for the best and prepare for the worst” – not very encouraging!’ (Joan Strange)

  5 January, OBERSALZBERG

  On his way back from Monte Carlo, Polish foreign minister Colonel Jozef Beck pays a courtesy call on Hitler at the ‘Berghof’. Hitler surprises the Pole by calling for Danzig’s return to Germany. Under the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Danzig has had the status of a ‘Free City’ with a League of Nations commissioner. The population is overwhelmingly German and the Nazis have control of the ruling Danzig Senate. Hitler tells Beck that Germany will guarantee Poland’s frontiers if a ‘final settlement’ can be reached on Danzig, and other outstanding issues between the two countries. ‘Danzig,’ the Fuehrer reminds the Pole, ‘was German, would always remain German, and sooner or later would return to Germany.’ Beck, who has a reputation for deviousness, is evasive. He tells Hitler that Polish public opinion would be against any change in Danzig’s status.

  7 January, LONDON

  Picture Post, Britain’s largest-circulation illustrated weekly, features comedian Leslie Henson’s humorous ‘Outlook for 1939’. Henson warns readers: ‘But to carry a rifle may at any time become compulsory, particularly in civilized countries.’

  11 January, ROME

  British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his foreign secretary Lord Halifax visit Rome in an attempt to further the cause of peace. Chamberlain believes that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is a moderating influence on Hitler. But nothing is accomplished by the visit. Mussolini tells his son-in-law and foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano: ‘These men are not made of the same stuff as Francis Drake and the other magnificent adventurers who created the empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men and they will lose their empire.’

  Ciano telephones his German opposite number Joachim von Ribbentrop and tells him that the visit has been a ‘huge farce’.

  11 January, WORTHING

  ‘Mr Chamberlain and Lord Halifax have arrived in Rome this afternoon. Accorded a great welcome. Should we welcome Mussolini in a like manner, I wonder?’ (Joan Strange)

  15 January, BRITAIN

  The Irish Republican Army starts a bombing campaign on mainland Britain. Targets in London, Manchester and Birmingham are attacked. The IRA demands the withdrawal of all British forces and officialdom from Ireland. The Nazi-orchestrated press in Germany reports the news with more than a touch of Schadenfreude:

  Five bombs went off, dreadful, my dear!

  Old England nearly choked with fear.

  When the overfed Englishman at his breakfast table heard this news

  he dropped his beefsteak from his fork in horror.

  23 January, Berlin

  Anti-Nazi Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, leaks misinformation that the Nazis are about to invade the Netherlands. They will seize Dutch airfields in order to use them to deliver a knockout blow on Britain. The leak is taken seriously in Whitehall. It is decided that ‘an attack by Germany on Holland would be a first step to attack on us and must be regarded as a direct challenge’.

  Hitler receives Polish foreign minister Colonel Jozef Beck at the Berghof, Obersalzberg, 5 January 1939. Beck told an English visitor, ‘Hitler has power and charm and flair, but he is not a Colonel Beck.’

  The British ministerial visit to Rome, January 1939. From left to right:Count Galeazzo Ciano; Lord Halifax; Neville Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini. As Chamberlain departed, British residents in Rome sang ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. ‘What is this little song?’ Mussolini asked.

  24 January, WORTHING

  ‘In Spain, the Government’s defence of Barcelona is giving in rapidly. Barcelona is bound to fall very soon. Hitler and Mussolini are reported to be preparing their manifesto on their colonial demands for January 30th. Can war possibly be avoided?’ (Joan Strange)

  26 January, BARCELONA

  General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces enter Barcelona. They encounter only sporadic resistance from the city’s Republican defenders. Spain’s civil war, which began in July 1936, and has cost over half a million lives, is now approaching its end.

  26 January, WARSAW

  Reich foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop pays an official visit to the Polish capital. He again brings up Hitler’s proposals regarding Danzig and the Polish Corridor, the territory that separates East Prussia from Germany proper. Beck once again rebuffs the German offer. The vain and pompous von Ribbentrop returns empty-handed to Berlin. He has misled Hitler over the Poles’ willingness to negotiate the future of Danzig and the Corridor.

  26 January, PARIS

  French foreign minister Georges Bonnet, regarded in Paris and London as an out-and-out appeaser, makes a speech reaffirming France’s commitments in eastern Europe. Few believe that the Foreign Minister is being sincere. Bonnet is suspected of having told von Ribbentrop of France’s disinterest in the region, when the Nazi visited Paris six weeks ago.

  26 January, TEDDINGTON

  ‘Barcelona fell to Franco at noon. Heigho!! I wish it could have offered the resistance Madrid has done.’ (Mrs Helena Pare Lydia Mott, aged sixty-six; a woman of independent means living in Teddington, Middlesex)

  28 January, BIRMINGHAM

  In a speech at Birmingham, Chamberlain defends the Munich Agreement: ‘For myself looking back, I see nothing to regret nor any reason to suppose that another course would have been preferable.’

  30 January, BERLIN

  Adolf Hitler addresses the Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of his coming to power. He warns the deputies: ‘If international Jewish finance inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into a new world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race.’ The Fuehrer’s words are greeted with stormy applause.

  30 January, TEDDINGTON

  ‘Hitler’s speech at seven. We had dinner early and he was in full blast when we had finished. Seemed to have a good reception – but his speech was much faster and much more clip style and varied very much in tone – high and biting . . . coughed at intervals. He went on bawling until 9.25pm then Goering. All sang “Deutschland, D- ueber alles in der Welt”, “Horst Wessel”. Heil! Heil! Heil! Damn!’ (Helen Mott)

  30 January, WORTHING

  ‘While all Germany was listening to Hitler’s broadcast on the sixth anniversary of the Third Reich, Worthing held a most interesting meeting in connection with the Jews. A Mr Davidson from Woburn House, London, gave a talk on the work of the refugee problem and a committee was formed to coordinate efforts being made here in Worthing. I got on!’ (Joan Strange)

  February

  3 February, LONDON

  The BBC broadcasts a radio programme entitled Children in Flight. It consists of interviews made at the Dovercourt camp for German Jewish refugee children. They have come to Britain under the Kindertransport scheme, following the excesses of Kristallnacht last November. The Nazi Party newspaper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, attacks the broadcast. It accuses the BBC of ‘making political capital out of pity and at the same time agitating indirectly against Germany’. The paper says the interviews with the children were ‘cleverly selected to appeal to sentimentality’.

  3 February, WORTHING

  ‘In all the evening fo
r once! Listened to excellent broadcast “Children in Flight”, a series of sound recordings of the German child refugees taken about Xmas time. The little Laufen boy, Peter, five and a half, was one of the little children at Dovercourt. His father told me that Peter asked him if it were true that when he came to England he would be allowed to go into a garden again. In Austria and Germany Jews are not allowed in public gardens. Their sufferings have been indescribable.’ (Joan Strange)

  6 February, LONDON

  In a House of Commons speech, Chamberlain reaffirms that: ‘Any threat to the vital interests of France, from whatever quarter it comes, must evoke the immediate co-operation of this country.’

  9 February, LONDON

  The Home Office, responsible for air-raid precautions, announces plans to provide shelters to thousands of homes in areas thought vulnerable to air attack. Families with an income of less than £250 a year will receive their shelters free. Other households may buy them for £6.14s.0d (£6.70). The shelters are already being called ‘Andersons’ after Lord Privy Seal Sir John Anderson, the dour and rather pompous but ultra-efficient minister with responsibility for civilian defence. They are steel-built, tunnel-shaped shelters measuring 6 ft 6 in by 4 ft 4 in. They are made in sections and need only two people to put them up. It is reckoned that a million and a half ‘Andersons’ will be given out by the end of August. Last September at the height of the Sudeten Crisis, over thirty-eight million gas masks, costing 2s.6d (13p) each, were distributed to the civilian population.

  10 February, VATICAN

  Pope Pius XI dies. Although a Concordat was signed with Hitler back in July 1933, Pius XI has often spoken out against the Nazi regime and its persecution of the Roman Catholic Church. In May last year he deliberately and ostentatiously left Rome for Castel Gandolfo during Hitler’s state visit.