The Day We Went to War

by Terry Charman

  This is the ultimate issue which confronts us. For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge.

  It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the seas, who will make our cause their own. I ask them to stand calm, firm and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail.

  May He bless and keep us all.

  Listening to the King while on duty at Broadcasting House, BBC Chief Announcer Stuart Hibberd thinks the broadcast ‘magnificent’. James Agate recognises that although, for the King, the broadcast ‘is obviously a great strain . . . he comes through it nobly’. Florence Speed considers the King’s ‘voice is more assured’ and that he spoke well.

  Others are much more critical. Left-wing intellectual and poet Stephen Spender dubbed ‘The Rupert Brooke of the Depression’, writes in his diary: ‘The King broadcast a speech . . . which was badly spoken, enough, I should have thought to finish the Royal Family in this country. It was a great mistake. He should never be allowed to say more than twenty words. After this his voice has the effect of a very spasmodic and often interrupted tape machine. It produces an effect of colourless monotony, except that after a very slow and drawn out passage sometimes the words are all jumbled together at the end of a sentence. First of all one tries to listen to what he is saying. Then one forgets this and starts sympathizing with him in his difficulties. Then one wants to smash the radio.’

  Britain’s three Chiefs of Staff in September 1939 (left to right): General Sir Edmund Ironside (Chief of the Imperial General Staff); Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall (Chief of the Air Staff) and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff).

  King George VI broadcasts to the Empire from Buckingham Palace, 6.00pm, 3 September 1939. A public announcement was made that each household in the United Kingdom would receive a copy of the King’s speech. In the event, the project was abandoned on the King’s initiative, as it would have cost £35,000 and required 250 tons of paper.

  6.00pm, JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS

  Norman Scarlyn Wilson has spent the afternoon sunbathing and swimming. He is now in the lounge of his hotel to hear the King’s broadcast. With him are the other guests. There are two Royal Army Medical Corps ex-colonels who constantly try and cap each other’s army stories; a young honeymoon couple who only arrived, like Wilson, just three days ago, and a blind man with his nurse. There is also a Boer War sapper colonel, long since retired. He constantly talks of De Wet and Botha, of Ladysmith and Mafeking, names that now seem fantastically remote. Wilson admires the King’s ‘simple, natural touch’ and contrasts it with ‘the torrents of insults and menaces, of the furious, hysterical babblings hurled across the ether by the raucous, demoniac voice of the Fuehrer’. When the King finishes, Wilson and the others all stand, as they did this morning, for the National Anthem. The honeymoon couple surreptitiously hold hands.

  6.00pm (7.00pm), MADRID

  Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco broadcasts an appeal to the warring nations to get them to localise the conflict. He tells them, ‘The more the conflict is extended the more the germ of future wars is sown. In these circumstances, I appeal to the common sense and responsibility of the rulers of the nations in order to direct the efforts of all toward the localization of the present conflict.’

  6.00pm (8.00pm), BANJA LUKA, YUGOSLAVIA

  Julian Amery, son of former Conservative cabinet minister and anti-appeaser Leopold, is on his way to Belgrade. His car has got a Union Jack tied to the mudguard and this has attracted a small crowd. One of the crowd is a student who can speak a little English. He tells Amery that Radio Belgrade has earlier announced that Britain and France are at war with Germany. Banja Luka is only an hour or so from Sarajevo. Amery reflects how appropriate it is to learn of the outbreak of the Second World War so near to where Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shots that lead to the First World War.

  6.15pm, BROADCASTING HOUSE

  Following the King’s broadcast, the BBC announcer reads out the new government appointments which Chamberlain decided upon this afternoon. In addition to the composition of the War Cabinet, it is announced that two First World War ministries are to be reconstituted. The former Ministry of Blockade now becomes the Ministry of Economic Warfare with Tory MP Ronald Cross as minister. Its task is to bring about the systematic disorganisation of the Nazi economy. The second revived ministry is that of Information. In 1918, it was headed by the dynamic press baron Lord Beaverbrook. No such colourful personality is to head the ministry this time. Instead, Chamberlain has picked Lord Macmillan, one of the judicial members of the House of Lords and an authority on international law, to become minister. His ministry is going to handle all Government press news, censorship, and propaganda to Nazi Germany and the neutrals.

  Resting at home, tired-out Foreign Office official Oliver Harvey listens to the radio announce the new government appointments. He is delighted that his old boss Anthony Eden is back in office as Dominions Secretary and that Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty. ‘Best news I could have had,’ writes Harvey in his diary tonight.

  6.15pm, HMS ARK ROYAL, NORTH SEA

  On the wardroom radio Guy Griffiths and his brother officers are listening to the news of the new Government appointments. Churchill’s appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty is announced and there is an instantaneous roar of delight in the wardroom. Cheering breaks out all over the carrier as the news spreads. At last, thinks Griffiths, the Navy has got the man it wants to lead them.

  6.30pm, BRACKNELL, BERKSHIRE

  Pacifist schoolmaster Arnold Monk-Jones agonisingly writes to his fiancée Eileen Bellerby, a science teacher at Cheltenham Ladies College, ‘It seems the worst is happening. It was a horrible sensation listening to Chamberlain this morning . . . I incline to adopt the position, in regard to myself, of refusing military service. I am fully convinced that universal pacifism, say in this country, would have prevented war; and therefore the more pacifists there are, the better for the future state of the world. The counter-consideration that troubles me is this: once we are at war avoidable tho’ it may have been by pacifism in the past, ought we not to work for victory of our side, as being slightly less bad of the two? If my pacifism now increases the chance of a German victory, is it sound? Or is a British victory now less important than keeping alive the pacifist outlook?’

  6.30pm (7.30pm), BERLIN

  The German home service radio broadcasts the text of a speech that Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler has given today. It ends with the words, ‘The Fuehrer expects every man to do more than his duty. God commands, and Heil Hitler!’

  6.45pm (7.45pm), BERLIN

  On the radio the German home service is playing Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony when the music stops, and a proclamation by Hitler is read by an announcer:

  England has for centuries pursued the aim of rendering the peoples of Europe defenceless against the British policy of world conquest by proclaiming a balance of power, in which England claimed the right to attack on threadbare pretexts and destroy that European state which at that moment seemed most dangerous.

  Thus at one time she fought the world power of Spain, later the Dutch, then the French, and, since the year 1871, the Germans.

  We ourselves have been the witnesses of the policy of encirclement which has been carried on by England against Germany since before the war.

  Just as the German nation had begun, under its National Socialist leadership, to recover from the frightful consequences of the Versailles Diktat, and threatened to survive the crisis, British encirclement immediately began once
more.

  The British war inciters spread the lie before the war, that the battle was only against the House of Hohenzollern or German militarism, that they had no designs on German colonies, that they had no intention of taking the German mercantile fleet.

  They then oppressed the German people under the Versailles Diktat. The faithful fulfilment of this Diktat would have sooner or later exterminated 20,000,000 Germans.

  I undertook to mobilise the resistance of the German nation against this and to assure work and bread for them. I have many times offered England and the English people the understanding and friendship of the German people. I have always been repelled.

  I had for years been aware that the aim of these war inciters had for long been to take Germany by surprise at a favourable opportunity.

  I am more fully determined than ever to beat back this attack. Germany shall not again capitulate. There is no sense in sacrificing one life after another and submitting to an even worse Versailles Diktat.

  We have never been a nation of slaves, and will not be one in the future.

  Whatever Germans in the past had to sacrifice for the existence of our Reich they shall not be greater than those which we are prepared to make today.

  This resolve is an inexorable one. It necessitates the most thorough measures and imposes on us one law above all others:

  If the soldier is fighting at the front no one shall profit by the war. If a soldier falls at the front no one at home shall evade his duty.

  As long as the German people was united it has never been conquered. It was the lack of unity that led to collapse.

  Whoever offend against this unity need expect nothing else than the annihilation as an enemy of the nation.

  If our people fulfils its highest duty in this sense then God will help us, Who has always bestowed His mercy on him who was determined to help himself.

  6.30pm (7.30pm), GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  Wilhelm Prueller and his company are stood down. Their expected attack will not now take place this evening. Prueller is hungry and thirsty as he hasn’t eaten or drunk since this morning, but his unit have got a pig with them. They intend to kill and eat it once they have captured Poland’s ancient capital, Krakow. In the meantime rumours are flying around the encampment. ‘If the war isn’t over by midnight,’ Prueller writes, ‘Russia and Latvia will attack. That will be a decisive move.’ Before turning in, he writes of his wife and child in his diary, ‘but I am still alive today, and so are you and Lore. All of us!’

  7.00pm, U-30, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Lemp is on the submarine’s bridge as a Force 4 wind is whipping up the waves around the U-30. Suddenly, the U-boat commander sees something to the starboard of the submarine. He calls his artillery officer Leutnant Hans-Peter Hinsch to the bridge. The two men see the silhouette of an approaching big ship. Lemp wonders if she is one of the British armed merchant cruisers that U-boat chief Karl Doenitz has warned his commanders to be on the lookout for them.

  7.15pm (9.15pm), GERMANY EMBASSY, MOSCOW

  Ambassador Count Friederich-Werner von der Schulenberg has just received a telegram from von Ribbentrop. Its instructions read: ‘Very Urgent ! Exclusively for the Ambassador! Strictly secret! For Chief of Mission or his representative personally. Top secret. To be decoded by himself. Strictest secrecy!’ Von der Schulenberg, like so many top German diplomats, is no Nazi. He now sets about decoding his foreign minister’s message. The ambassador sees that it contains an invitation for the Russians to invade Poland. He is told to ‘discuss this at once with Molotov and see if the Soviet Union does not consider it desirable to move against Polish forces . . .’

  7.15pm, U-30, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Lemp orders the submarine to dive, and the klaxon sounds ‘battle stations’. He is still unsure about the identity of the approaching ship, but thinks it suspicious that she is showing no lights even though dusk is now falling. With his adrenaline flowing, Lemp weighs up the pros and cons of the situation. He decides to attack.

  7.30pm, US EMBASSY, PARIS

  Hubert Earle, who is helping out at the US Embassy, goes out to dinner at the Café de la Paix with two other embassy employees. They find the café a gloomy place this evening. There are no menus, merely a typewritten list with a small selection, mainly egg dishes and no meat on offer. The café is full of servicemen but not many civilians. Most of the waiters are elderly men as the young ones are already in uniform. The only young one on duty is an Italian who is delighted that he will not have to fight.

  7.30pm, SS ATHENIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Captain James Cook joins the first-class passengers for dinner tonight, the first time since the Athenia has sailed. Most of the diners regard this as a good omen. At the Captain’s table are Sir Richard and Lady Lake, a former Lieutenant-Governor of Saskatchewan and his wife. Young actress Pax Walker-Fryett, who has been appearing at Worthing’s Connaught Theatre this summer season, and is now on her way to Hollywood, is also having dinner. Pax has seen the notice that Captain Cook has had put up saying that war was declared at 11.00am this morning. Now as she takes her seat at the table she notices that the ship appears to be zigzagging and that a strict blackout is in force. Pax has been told that the ship is completely unarmed. At her table is a veteran of the last war who still suffers from the effects of poison gas. Pax and her dining companions ask him, ‘What do you think? Do you think that we’re likely to get attacked going to America or Canada? What do you think our chances are?’

  7.38pm, SS ATHENIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  On deck a group of children are entertaining some of the other passengers. They have just started to sing this summer’s big hit ‘South of the Border, Down Mexico Way’.

  7.38pm, U-30, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Lemp gives the order to fire the torpedoes, 1,600 yards from the Athenia.

  7.39pm, SS ATHENIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  The Great War veteran at Pax Walker-Fryett’s table is reassuring. He is just telling Pax and the others, ‘Oh no, they’ll wait till the ship comes back with armaments on before they do anything’, when Lemp’s torpedo crashes into the liner’s side. In the dining room everything seems to rise up, and the diners too are involuntarily forced to their feet. The electricity goes off and everything is in complete darkness. Pax has the sensation of the liner starting to roll over and the tableware, china, cutlery, chairs and passengers all end up in a heap on one side of the dining room. The Athenia then seems to straighten up. Pax and the others get up and start stumbling about. Pax feels a hot trickle down her leg and suddenly realises that she is bleeding from a cut knee. Some of the waiters in their white mess jackets now get the passengers to form a chain behind them. They then wind their way up to the ship’s deck. To Pax’s surprise, it still seems like daylight up on deck.

  As the lights go out, Claud Barrie, one of the bedroom stewards and a soldier in the last war, thinks he can smell cordite. But a mate of his tells him, ‘The swine has hit us.’ The two men run to the alleyways to warn their passengers and then go ‘up on deck in time to see the periscope of a submarine disappear’. Another crew member John M’Ewan at first can hardly see through the smoke, but it soon clears a little and M’Ewan makes out the U-boat breaking the surface. To M’Ewan’s shocked surprise it turns its deck gun on the stricken liner. Captain James Cook reckons that the U-boat is aiming to destroy the Athenia’s wireless equipment to prevent it from sending out distress signals.

  7.40pm, U-30, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Two of the U-30’s torpedoes have missed the Athenia completely. Another is faulty and is stuck in its tube. But the fourth has found its mark. It has exploded in the Athenia’s No. 5 hold and against the engine-room bulkhead. Its impact has claimed the first victims of the war in the west. German Jewish refugee Edith Lustig is blown overboard by the force of the torpedo’s explosion. She is never seen again. Ten-year-old Margaret Hayworth, returning home to Canada with her mother and sister, is killed by a metal splinter when No. 5 hold is hit. In the liner’s thi
rd-class accommodation, nine-year-old Daniel Wilkes sees his mother die when the wall of their cabin collapses on her as she lies ill in bed. Daniel manages to wriggle free from the wreckage and, clinging to a chair, floats out into the passageway.

  7.45pm, WIRELESS ROOM, SS ATHENIA, ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Chief Radio Officer Don is ordered by Captain Cook to send out an SOS signal in naval code. For a quarter of an hour, and working on his own in the liner’s large wireless room, Don finally gets through to the nearest coast station at Valentia. His message reads:

  ‘ATHENIA TORPEDOED – 5.42 NORTH, 14.05 WEST’

  Captain Cook comes on the speaking tube again and tells Don to send the signal ‘en clair’ as well as in code. Don does so and almost immediately he gets a response. It is from the 5,000-ton Norwegian freighter Knute Nelson, which is only about forty miles away. After acknowledging, the Norwegian’s radio officer signals Don back:

  THE OLD MAN DOESN’T BELIEVE YOU’VE BEEN TORPEDOED – BUT HE’S COMING TO YOUR ASSISTANCE ANYWAY.

  7.51pm (8.51pm), GERMAN EMBASSY, ROME

  A personal message from Hitler to Mussolini is just coming through on the wire. Hitler thanks his fellow dictator for his last attempt at mediation, but tells him, ‘It would have been impossible to allow blood which was being sacrificed there [Poland] to be squandered by diplomatic intrigue.’ Hitler accepts that Italy, just as in 1914, is going to remain neutral, at least for the time being. But he warns his fellow dictator, ‘If National Socialist Germany were to be destroyed by the Western Democracies, Fascist Italy also would face a hard future.’

  7.55pm (8.55pm), ANHALTER STATION, BERLIN

  Hitler arrives to board his train Amerika for the Eastern Front. The specially armoured train consists of fifteen carriages and has two steam engines to haul it. Hitler’s own carriage is made up of a bedroom, bathroom, office and a combined dining-conference room which is large enough to accommodate twelve people. Over 200 members of the Fuehrer’s staff occupy the remaining carriages. There are also anti-aircraft gun wagons at the front and rear of the train. The train pulls out on its way to Gross-Born in Pomerania, where Fuehrer Headquarters is to be located. Hitler calls in Heinz Linge, his personal servant. He tells Linge that in future he intends to have an even more Spartan diet than hitherto. ‘You will see to it,’ the Fuehrer instructs Linge, ‘that I have only what the ordinary people of Germany can have. It is my duty to set an example.’ Hitler is also giving up watching feature films for the duration of the conflict.