The Day We Went to War

by Terry Charman

  Stuart Hibberd continued as chief announcer at the BBC until his retirement in 1951, but carried on broadcasting until 1964. Having fought there in 1915, he was an enthusiastic member of the Gallipoli Association until his death in 1983.

  Adolf Hitler continued on a path of military conquest. In 1940 he invaded Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries and France. The following year he attacked Yugoslavia and Greece, before turning on his erstwhile ally Stalin. Defeat at Stalingrad in 1943 heralded the beginning of the end for the Nazi regime. An attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944 failed, and he retained control and commanded loyalty right up until his suicide in Berlin on 30 April 1945.

  Clare Hollingworth, who witnessed the opening shots of the Second World War in Katowice, covered the rest of the conflict as a war correspondent in the Balkans and the Middle East. After 1945 she became one of Britain’s most distinguished foreign and defence correspondents, only finally retiring at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

  Leslie Hore-Belisha left the War Office in January 1940, the victim of a plot involving the generals and Buckingham Palace. Chamberlain offered him the Board of Trade, but he turned it down and returned to the back benches. He was a persistent critic of the Government during the remainder of the war, but was brought back as Minister of National Insurance in Churchill’s caretaker administration between May and July 1945. Defeated in the July 1945 general election, Hore-Belisha never held office again. He was ennobled in 1954 and died suddenly in February 1957 while making a speech in Paris.

  Max Jordan became the Head of Religious Broadcasting for NBC, but returned to Europe to cover the last months of the war, and while in Switzerland scooped news of the Japanese decision to surrender. He took holy orders as a Benedictine priest and died in November 1977, aged eighty-three.

  William Joyce, aka Lord Haw Haw, made his last broadcast from Hamburg on 30 April 1945. A month later he was captured by two British officers while in hiding near the Danish border. He was brought back to England, tried for treason and sentenced to death. Appeals for clemency were turned down and Joyce was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 3 January 1946.

  William Lyon MacKenzie King was Prime Minister of Canada from 1935 until 1948 – the longest-serving Commonwealth premier. Under his administration, Canada built up the third-largest Allied navy and fourth-largest Allied air force during the Second World War. He died in July 1950.

  Wilhelm Krey served throughout the Polish campaign, where he was personally responsible for the persecution and murder of at least one Jew. His later wartime service and what became of him is not known.

  Zbigniew Leon and his brother both survived the German occupation of Poland and were members of the Polish Home Army. They both live in Warsaw today.

  Vera Lynn, through her morale-boosting radio broadcasts and personal appearances both on the home and fighting fronts, earned the title ‘Forces Sweetheart’. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1975 and retired in 1995. At the age of ninety-two Dame Vera is still an active supporter of service charities.

  Patrick Maitland of The Times served as a war correspondent until 1943, when he joined the Foreign Office. He served as Conservative MP between 1951 and 1959 and succeeded his brother as the seventeenth Earl of Lauderdale in 1968.

  Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim commanded Finland’s forces in the Continuation War against Russia, 1941–44. In August 1944 he became the President of Finland and successfully negotiated his country’s withdrawal from the war. He retired to Switzerland in 1946 and died there in January 1951.

  Robert Menzies remained Prime Minister of Australia until August 1941. He became premier again in 1949 and served until 1966. On Churchill’s death, Menzies inherited his mantle as the ‘grand old man of the Commonwealth’. He died in May 1976.

  Unity Mitford returned from Germany via Switzerland and France in January 1940. The Daily Express offered her father, Lord Redesdale, £5,000 for her exclusive story. This was turned down. Unity spent the rest of the war in isolation, still talking of her admiration for the Fuehrer. She died in 1948 through the long-term effect of her suicide attempt.

  Helena Mott moved from Teddington, Middlesex to Greenwich in 1946, and continued to write her diary almost up until her death in 1951. It was donated to the Imperial War Museum in 1997.

  Benito Mussolini declared war on the Allies in June 1940. The course of Italy’s war was disastrous and Mussolini was toppled from power in July 1943. Rescued by the Germans, he was set up by them as the puppet ruler of Northern Italy, the so-called ‘Italian Social Republic’ of Salo. He and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were shot by partisans on 28 April 1945.

  Wilhelm Prueller fought in France and Russia, was wounded and commissioned as an officer. He remained an unrepentant Nazi right to the end of Hitler’s regime and beyond. The manuscripts of his diaries came to light in October 1959. His own subsequent fate remains unknown.

  Count Edward Raczynski remained Polish Ambassador in London, and later served as foreign minister in General Sikorski’s government. At the end of the war, Raczynski stayed in Britain and became President of the Polish Government in Exile. He died in July 1993, eighteen months after his third marriage at the age of 100.

  John McCutcheon Raleigh returned to the United States in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, he covered the war in the Far East for the Columbia Broadcasting System, and wrote an account entitled Pacific Blackout. From 1943 he spent the rest of the war as a broadcaster on Minneapolis local radio.

  Joachim von Ribbentrop, despite his ignorance and stupidity, remained Hitler’s foreign minister right up until the end of the Third Reich, although Hitler dropped him in his last will and testament. Von Ribbentrop’s influence and power declined throughout the war, but his involvement in the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Problem’ – the Holocaust – ensured his inclusion as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg Trial. At Nuremberg he cut a pathetic figure, still in awe of Hitler’s personality. After Goering’s suicide, von Ribbentrop was the first to mount the gallows on 16 October 1946.

  William Russell returned to the United States in 1940. He wrote an account of his time in the German capital, Berlin Embassy, which was published in Britain by Michael Joseph in 1940, and reissued in 2004.

  Michael Joseph Savage, terminally ill when war broke out, died in March 1940. He was succeeded as premier by Peter Fraser, who remained in office until 1949. Fraser died a year after leaving office, in December 1950.

  Dr Paul Schmidt continued to interpret for Hitler for the duration of the war, including at meetings with General Franco and Marshal Pétain. Despite his association with Hitler, Schmidt only joined the Nazi Party in 1943. After the war, he stood unsuccessfully for the West German Parliament, before becoming principal of the Institute of Linguisitics and Translation in Munich. Schmidt died in April 1970.

  John Simon remained as Chancellor until Churchill became prime minister in May 1940. Surprisingly, given his track record on appeasement, Churchill retained Simon in the Government, but in the decorative post of Lord Chancellor. Simon wrote a bland volume of memoirs entitled Retrospect and died in 1954 at the end of his eightieth year.

  Jan Christiaan Smuts continued as South African Prime Minister until 1948. Churchill consulted him on almost all major decisions and it was even suggested that, should Churchill become incapacitated, Smuts would take over as Prime Minister of Great Britain. He was made a British field marshal in 1941. Smuts died in September 1950.

  Florence Speed spent the rest of the Second World War with her brother and sister at their house in Vassall Road, SW9. She continued to keep a diary, which was donated to the Imperial War Museum after her death in 1979.

  Richard Stevens and Sigismund Payne-Best were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps until liberated in 1945. After the war they were accused of providing the Nazis with detailed information on British Secret Intelligence Service personnel in western Europe. Stevens went on to translate a number of books dealing with the period of the Third Reich
and died in 1965. Payne-Best was declared bankrupt and for a long time tried, in the end successfully, to obtain compensation from the West German government for the time spent in concentration camps. He died in 1978.

  Joan Strange remained a physiotherapist living at Langton Road, Worthing, Sussex. She died in 1994 at the age of ninety-one, having lived to see her Second World War diary published.

  Gwyneth Thomas worked at both Highgate and Lewisham hospitals for the remainder of the war. She retired to Poole, Dorset, and gave her wartime diary to the Imperial War Museum in 1985.

  Elsie Warren continued to work with the Auxiliary and then National Fire Service for the rest of the war. She donated her Second World War diary, her Defence Medal and a number of photographs to the Imperial War Museum in 1985.

  Evelyn Waugh had a chequered career during the war, serving with the Royal Marines, the Commandos and the Royal Horse Guards. In 1942, he published Put Out More Flags, a brilliant satire of the ‘Phoney War’ period. In 1944, he was given special leave to write Brideshead Revisited, before going to Yugoslavia to act as liaison officer with Marshal Tito’s partisans. Much of Waugh’s wartime experiences are reflected in his Sword of Honour trilogy, which was televised in 2001 with Daniel Craig in the lead role. Waugh died on Easter Sunday, 1966.

  Ernst von Weizsacker continued as State Secretary in the German Foreign Office under von Ribbentrop until 1943, when he became ambassador to the Vatican. Tried at Nuremberg at the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, he was given a prison sentence but was released early. He died in 1951. Weizsacker’s son Richard was President of the German Federal Republic from 1984 to 1994.

  Alexander Werth, Manchester Guardian correspondent in Paris, went on to cover the war in the Soviet Union in 1941 and wrote a bestselling book entitled Russia at War. He continued his career as a foreign correspondent after the war and also held academic posts. He died in March 1969.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Lord Bragg for taking time off in a very busy schedule to write the foreword to this book, and for his very generous comments about it. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the team of the ITV documentary Outbreak, which Lord Bragg masterminded, edited and narrated, and on which I was the historical consultant. They are: Executive Producer, Matt Cain; Director, Martina Hall; Researchers, Alexandra Lowe and Stephanie Pochet; Film Researcher, Peter Scott; Production Manager, Siobhan Kiernan; and Film Editor, Steve Scales.

  Secondly, I would like to thank at Virgin Books, Ed Faulkner, Davina Russell and Kelly Falconer for all their help, advice and encouragement in the production of this book. Special thanks go to Martin Noble, who has done a marvellous job of the editing of the book.

  As my colleagues at the Imperial War Museum must be sick and tired of hearing me say, ‘wars are won with high morale, good communications and dedicated teamwork’. This book has been very much the product of the latter and I hope has encompassed the other two as well. I am very grateful to all friends and colleagues throughout the Museum for their help, advice and interest in the preparation of this book. I would especially like to thank the following:

  Department of Documents

  Emma Goodrum

  Tony Richards

  Simon Robbins

  Sabrina Rowlett

  Rod Suddaby

  Exhibitions

  Alison Brown

  Sarah Gilbert

  Rebecca Wakeford

  Laura Whalley

  Film Department

  Toby Haggith

  Matt Lee

  Photograph Archive

  Richard Bayford

  Glyn Biesty

  Ian Carter

  Damon Cleary

  Laura Clouting

  Dave Parry

  Ian Proctor

  Museum Services

  Elizabeth Bowers

  Madeleine James

  Laura McKechan

  Diana Morley

  Abigail Ratcliffe

  Victoria Smith

  Sound Archive

  Margaret Brooks

  Richard Hughes

  Richard McDonough

  Thanks are also due to Laurence Burley, Ann Carter, Paul Cornish, John Delaney, Philip Dutton, Brad King, Emily Macarthur, Andrew McDonnell and Jane Rosen.

  Lastly, it gives me immense satisfaction to acknowledge all the help, support and encouragement that I have had from my own colleagues in the Research and Information Department at the Imperial War Museum. Nick Hewitt willingly gave me the benefit of his immense knowledge of naval warfare for the chapter on the War at Sea, as well as shrewd advice on other sections of the book. I am most grateful to him. Sarah Batsford’s contribution to the book has been, at all times, ‘above and beyond the call of duty’. Her extensive researches in the IWM’s collecting departments yielded much in the way of valuable source material that I might otherwise have overlooked. In so many other ways, Sarah’s enthusiasm, support and practical assistance in the book’s preparation have proved invaluable, and I owe her a great debt of thanks. Finally, since the book’s inception, James Taylor has once again proved to be all that a friend and colleague should be, and it is to him that I dedicate The Day We Went to War.

  Terry Charman

  Imperial War Museum

  May 2009

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