Monthly Archives: June 2011

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Sunday Express, 6 October 1940, 1

This photo appeared on the front page of the Sunday Express on 6 October 1940, a month into the Blitz. A caption explained, or rather asked:

WHO PUT UP THIS POSTER?

This mystery poster has appeared in the streets of London.

It is about six feet high and ten or twelve feet across, and bears nothing to indicate its authorship. No one knows who is paying for it.1

In just nine words the poster presents a very simple argument in favour of the reprisal bombing of Germany:

BULLIES ARE ALWAYS COWARDS

BOMB BERLIN AND SAVE LONDON

By bombing Berlin, London would be saved from the Blitz. The German (or perhaps just the Nazi) bullies, being cowards, will not be able to take it as well as the British and so will crack first.
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  1. Sunday Express, 6 October 1940, 1. Apparently a 'Mr. Beabie' admitted to the Sunday Dispatch that he was responsible, but I can't see the original text and I wonder if that should be 'Begbie'. Not that I know who he is either. [↩]

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I noted in a previous post that the debate about reprisal air raids during the First World War largely revolved around two questions: are reprisals moral? and are reprisals effective? The same was true in the Second World War.

Taking the question of effectiveness, how this was answered by participants in the debate depended partly on assumptions about airpower. For example, what, exactly were bombers capable of doing? How did people react to bombing? Was strategic airpower better used in attacking military objectives or should it be used to strike directly at the enemy population?

In turn, these assumptions would have been formed partly by experience (including the experience of being bombed, which may account for the observed difference in support for reprisals between the blitzed and the non-blitzed, rather than new moral scruples as seems to be the usual assumption) and partly from information picked up from sources like the press.

Here's one example of a newspaper article from the Blitz period which brings together a number of these themes, from the back page (6) of the Daily Express, 5 December 1940.

Daily Express, 6 December 1940, 6

ACCURATE BOMBING SHAKES GERMAN MORALE

WITH the picture in your mind of German-wrought devastation among the shops, homes, churches and hospitals of Bristol, Coventry, Birmingham, Southampton and London, take a look at what the the R.A.F. is doing in Germany.

There are two very clear claims in the headline here: firstly, that the British bombing of Germany is accurate, and that it is damaging German morale.

But accurate in what in what sense? And damaging morale how?
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In May 1941, after nine months of German bombing and the evacuation of yet another British army from Europe, the Daily Mirror printed a fascinating little piece of futurism, in the form of a letter written as though it was May 1944, with Britain victorious and Germany prostrate. The headline itself gives some idea of this future shock: '"On our television set we saw CHURCHILL in BUSTED BERLIN!"'1 -- the television transmitters at Alexandra Palace had been switched off since September 1939. Invoking the early television experiments functions here as a promise of a better world to come, and not just because the 'bad old war days' will be over.

There isn't a lot about how the war actually went, but it would seem that it ended in 1943. There's no indication that the United States played any part in the war (though it is friendly to Britain; there are now no 'passports and visas and quotas' to bar travel between them). Or the Soviet Union for that matter (Barbarossa is still over a month away at this point). Britain seems to have won the war through bombing, or at least that's the only form of military activity mentioned:

My gosh, they've certainly got on with the work of rebuilding Berlin after those terrific winter blitzes by the R.A.F.! British authorities are directing the work. It hasn't so much been renovation as recreation, because just before the Germans sued for an armistice, there was precious little left of Berlin and it had been completely evacuated of everyone bar soldiers and A.R.P. people.

This (along with Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse being 'just blotted out') suggests that British air raids became so heavy that Berlin had to be evacuated of all non-essential personnel. Hamburg too was hit hard: it 'was finished in the spring of 1942 and it isn't functioning as a port yet'. At some point Hitler died, though how isn't stated. It seems clear that the British air raids were the cause of the German armistice request (this was written long before unconditional surrender, of course), or perhaps that's just me.
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  1. Daily Mirror, 17 May 1941, 7. There's even an illustration showing Churchill's television appearance in front of the Brandenburg Gate, or at least that's what I think it is; sadly it isn't clear enough to reproduce here. [↩]

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Herbert Best. The Twenty-fifth Hour. London: Jonathan Cape, 1940. This must have been about the last flowering of that forgotten genre, the knock-out blow novel. More than that, it's an example of the exceptionally rare post-apocalyptic sub-genre, as it is set years after the end of civilisation and portrays the grim struggle for survival among the ruins. Fun!

David Edgerton. Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War. London: Allen Lane, 2011. A different kind of history of the war, one which places Britain's economic, industrial and scientific strength at its core: in other words, an application of Edgerton's 'warfare state' thesis. I particularly recommend page 375, note 87 and page 387.

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Daily Mail, 15 June 1917, 6

Previously, I identified a comparison between the reprisals debate in the First World War and the reprisals debate during the Blitz as something I could do that previous writers have not (except in passing, or implicitly). I won't have time in my AAEH paper for a full-blown comparative approach, or for that matter time before then to do the research; though perhaps I could for a version for publication. But it's something I can do briefly, and it helps that I already covered this in my thesis, where I looked at the British press reactions to the Gotha summer in 1917.1
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  1. The best published source for this is Barry D. Powers, Strategy Without Slide-rule: British Air Strategy 1914-1939 (London: Croom Helm, 1976), 81ff. [↩]

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Advertiser (Adelaide), 23 April 1918, 7

On 23 April 1918, this brief article, filed from Melbourne, was the lead story in a number of Australian newspapers:

Within the past 48 hours information has come to hand which points to the probability that the realities of war will soon be brought before Australians in a most convincing fashion. Steps have been taken by the Defence authorities to cope with a situation which may at any moment assume grave proportions. More than this cannot be said for the present.1

That's not much, but it seems to have created quite a stir: according to the Perth Sunday Times, 'Australia was startled out of its somnolence'.2 The Melbourne Argus reported that 'Uneasiness was caused in Melbourne and in other centres' by the previous day's story, giving rise to 'most exaggerated rumours in the city'.3 A report in the New Zealand press also dated 24 April (but not published for another week) noted that the public in Sydney 'fairly seethed in excitement' at this news when it was published in the Daily Telegraph.4 Why? The report explains that

At the moment, Australia is suffering an attack of nerves in the matter of raiders, and any old story is accepted and sent wildly circulating. Certain definite signs of uneasiness in official circles, and certain things which cannot be hidden from the people have given colour to the wildest rumours. There is "something doing" -- but nothing to justify the excited stories of an imminent enemy attack on Australia which are now current.

So it seems that rumour had already prepared Australians to think that German naval raiders were lurking off the coast, and when they were told that 'the realities of war' might soon be present to them 'in a most convincing fashion', they believed that this meant an 'imminent enemy attack on Australia'. Or, as the Sunday Times put it, they had 'Visions of a German squadron breaking the British blockade and landing an expeditionary force on the Commonwealth coast'.2
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  1. Advertiser (Adelaide), 23 April 1918, 7; reprinted in Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 23 April 1918, 2. A different version, originating in the Age (Melbourne) adds the sentence 'The uneasiness of the Defence authorities has been intensified by certain evidence which has come before them since Saturday morning' [20 April]: Sunday Times (Perth), 28 April 1918, 13. [↩]
  2. Sunday Times (Perth), 28 April 1918, 13. [↩] [↩]
  3. Argus (Melbourne), 24 April 1918, 9. [↩]
  4. Evening News (Wellington), 1 May 1918, 11; reprinted in Poverty Bay Herald, 4 May 1918, 7. [↩]

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At the end of March 1918, the NSW Minister for Education, Augustus James, gave a speech at North Sydney Boys' High School's prize day. No doubt with an eye on the press, he spoke rather gloomily about the war situation, especially in light of the continuing German offensive on the Western Front:

"We know to-day," he said, "that we are face to face with a crisis. At any time we may hear of the British forces being broken. The Germans may capture a portion of the French coast which the Allies are at present holding, and from it deal a blow at England. The safety of Australia depends on England. Where will Australia stand if England is beaten in this war? What would we be able to do in the event of an invasion by a foreign army? We have neither the rifles nor the trained men, nor have we a submarine or aeroplane capable of use in any attempt to drive off any enemy."1

James was not far wrong. After nearly four years of war, you might think that Australia was a vast armed camp, but in fact most men and materiel were sent overseas, to Europe or the Middle East, as soon as they were ready; much of the balance was used for training. It's unlikely that James had any inside knowledge, but at this time there was only a single aeroplane in Australia 'available for any offensive action', an F.E.2b purchased with funds donated by Alfred Muller Simpson of South Australia.2
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  1. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March 1918, 12. [↩]
  2. James Kightly, 'Australia's first domestic battleplane', Flightpath 20:4 (2009), 54. I'm indebted to James for providing me with a copy of his article. [↩]

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Flightpath, vol 22 no 4

I have an article in the May 2011 issue of Flightpath, an Australian warbirds magazine. It's on one of my pet interests, the fear of the commercial bomber between the wars. James Kightly, who will be familiar to regular commenters here as JDK, contributes a complementary look at the reality of transport-bomber conversions. There are many other articles of interest, including one on Tiger Force (also by James), along with some glorious photographs, so get into it! It's available in all good newsagents in Australia and New Zealand, and I suspect really, really good ones overseas.

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Wölfchen

While researching a possible British mystery aeroplane in 1936, which turned out to be nothing interesting, I came across a genuine mystery aeroplane scare which I'd never heard of before, from Australia and New Zealand in March and April 1918. I'm sure somebody else must have noticed it before now, as it was trivial to find using Trove and Papers Past. But I haven't been able to find mention of it in my usual sources, so here's what I've got so far.

Firstly, some context. In March 1918, it was getting on for four years since the start of the Great War. The soldiers of Australia and New Zealand had been engaged in combat for just under three of those years, two of them on the Western Front. The armies there seemed to be in a deadlock. All that can be done is to keep the two ANZAC corps supplied with men and munitions; but in Australia it is only a few months since the public rejected conscription for a second time, in a bitterly divisive plebiscite. If victory seemed to be a long way off, at least so did defeat.
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