History of England 1-6

On 1 September 1939, German troops entered Poland, and its planes attacked Warsaw. Britain’s response was to urge Hitler to withdraw his troops, as the prelude to a negotiated solution to the ‘Polish question’. When Chamberlain mentioned this plan in the Commons the next day, he was greeted with silence. Arthur Greenwood, acting as leader of the Labour party for the convalescing Attlee, demanded that Chamberlain send an immediate ultimatum – ‘Every minute’s delay now means the loss of life, imperilling our national interests, imperilling the very foundations of national honour.’ Chamberlain agreed and an ultimatum was sent the following morning at 9 a.m. When it expired two hours later, Britain was officially at war with Germany. She was soon joined by France, India, the colonies and the dominions. Ireland, which had declared itself a sovereign state in 1937, exercised its right to remain neutral.

On 3 September 1939, air-raid warnings could be heard across London, sandbags were filled and thousands of children were evacuated to the countryside. They filled the platforms of the capital’s railway stations, gas mask boxes in hand, just as a violent thunderstorm burst in the skies above them. The contrast to the mood in 1914 could not have been more marked. There was no rejoicing, no enthusiasm. Instead, as the writer Vera Brittain put it, ‘the expected had happened, and was accepted with philosophic pessimism’.

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The alteration

If war had indeed fallen on England, then it appeared to have done so with remarkable diffidence. Preparations for the predicted casualties of bombing had been intensive, with two million beds set aside in Greater London alone, and yet the terrible bombardment from the air remained unseen, unfelt and unheard for eight months. Rumours of war lay far off. The blackout had been put in place, the children prepared, and rationing had begun, but where was the enemy?

In fact, the enemy had other concerns. Until 1938, the possibility of war with Britain had not been seriously entertained by the Nazis. There had been no attempt, for example, to identify the most vulnerable or valuable targets. German intelligence had been uncharacteristically amateurish. In any case, Poland had to be secured before any further ventures could begin. Defended by an army that combined great gallantry with pitiful weaponry, Poland swiftly fell and burned. The Poles had rejoiced at Britain’s declaration of war, but as the bombs fell on Poland’s cities, the French and the British divisions in France did nothing. They outnumbered their German counterparts by more than two to one and yet a brief French incursion into the Saar region of Germany was all they achieved. Indeed this ‘invasion’ served only to convince the Germans, if further persuasion was needed, of Allied timidity. The Polish commander-in-chief was informed that the Siegfried Line had been broken and then that the operation ‘must be postponed’. The first was a simple lie and the second one of those painful euphemisms that were to characterize so much of the conflict. Why then did France and Britain stand by when they were committed by treaty to intervene ‘within two weeks’ with a ground attack on Germany? The French, led by a commander who trusted to the strategy of the previous war, felt unprepared, and the British were still divided.

Meanwhile, a German official wrote, ‘it is the Führer’s and Goering’s intention to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation. More than that cannot even be hinted in writing.’ But the clandestine madness, and the vindictive cruelty, should soon have become obvious. From the outset, a policy obtained of bewildering the conquered peoples; savage violence alternated with hypocritical gestures of conciliation, particularly where the Jews were concerned. Even the forced moves to artificial ghettoes were presented as a means of protecting the Jewish minorities from their gentile neighbours. Nazi policy towards other Poles, however, was forthright from the first. They were plucked from their homes and shifted in vast numbers to the east, frequently before being casually murdered. It was considered vital to destroy the nation’s cultural leaders, so the intelligentsia went the way of industrialists and nobles. Priests were singled out for particularly savage treatment.