Monthly Archives: June 2010

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Mates

This photograph of Australian soldiers was taken during the First World War. It's not particularly unusual: just a group of mates getting together to record a memento, perhaps after a weekend's carousing in the fleshpots of Cairo or Paris.

Mateship is a important concept in Australian culture. The OED defines it as 'The condition of being a mate; companionship, fellowship, comradeship' and notes that it is 'Now chiefly Austral. and N.Z.' The Australian National Dictionary gives several more specifically Australian shades of meaning, from 'An acquaintance; a person engaged in the same activity', to 'One with whom the bonds of close friendship are acknowledged, a "sworn friend"', to 'A mode of address implying equality and goodwill; freq. used to a casual acquaintance and, esp. in recent use [...], ironic'. Suffice it to say that pretty much any bloke can have occasion to call another cobber a mate, whether they are good friends or bitter enemies. (Sheilas are another question, of course.)
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I have written before about the widespread fear of German paratroops in Britain in May and June 1940. Here's a sterling example from somewhere in London, as described in the Ministry of Information's Home Intelligence report for 7 June 1940:

A false alarm on a housing estate of parachutists occasioned by a flock of pigeons resulted in about half the tenants rushing to the roof and the rest rushing to the shelters in the basement. In the melee several women fainted. These people are normally calm and collected. They seem to need more advice as to what to do and how to do it on such occasions.1

It's hard to imagine how an ordinary flock of pigeons could be mistaken for descending parachutists. But if there's one thing I've been hammering over and over on this blog, it's this: fear can make people see danger in the innocuous, whether it's footpaths, meteors, motor cars, Venus, Venus, weather balloons, or even nothing at all. Having said that, there's less evidence of widespread misperception of this sort (as opposed to rumours, of which there are many, though with frustratingly few details) in the MOI reports than I might have expected.

  1. Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang, eds., Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May to September 1940 (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), 91. []

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I'm not sure if this ever happened, but if it did it's surely more impressive than shooting bison from a train, or even wolves from a helicopter.

ACCORDING to a telegram from Port Elizabeth [South Africa] to the "African World," bombing aeroplanes are to be used to exterminate "rogue" elephants in the Bush.

North-China Herald, 6 September 1919, 642.

Thanks to Jess Nevins for the tip.

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The right and aviation

One of the questions which interested me when I originally embarked on my PhD was the extent of the relationship between British aviation and the far right. As it turned out, my research took me elsewhere. But that doesn't mean I can't blog about it.

In the chart above I've attempted to show some of the links between extreme right-wing groups such as the British Union of Fascists and prominent figures and groups involved with aviation in the 1930s. From the latter group I've excluded purely political groups (such as the BUF's flying club) and anyone whose contribution to flying consisted mostly of their war service. That means no Sir Oswald Mosley, in particular, who was in the RFC for a time. While he did draw upon the image of the airman from time to time he wasn't actively involved in the aviation community as far as I can tell. Having said that, those who did serve (or, in one case, lead) in the air services (RFC, RNAS, RAF) have been marked in blue. The links indicate some concrete degree of support, such as membership, financial contributions or public approval, as opposed to mere sympathy.
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Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang, eds. Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain's Finest Hour, May to September 1940. London: The Bodley Head, 2010. An edited and unabridged collection of Ministry of Information intelligence reports on British public opinion in these crucial months. Lots of fascinating stuff, and very accessible too (context is provided by editorial comments for each week, and there's a glossary and a thorough index).

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Black Out by AO Pollard

You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you can often pick up a few interesting things about it. Here we have number 77 in the Crime-Book Society series, Black Out by Captain A. O. Pollard. Fifty-four thousand copies have been sold (or at least printed), which makes it a fairly successful title. It's not clear from the photo, but I can tell you it's a paperback and therefore cheap, which helps. The author clearly has a distinguished military background: Victoria Crosses generally weren't handed out for no reason. And, most intriguingly, the Times Literary Supplement is quoted as saying that Black Out 'Will prove very much to the taste of air-minded readers'.
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Joe Maiolo. Cry Havoc: The Arms Race and the Second World War, 1931-1941. London: John Murray, 2010. This was an automatic buy when I saw it on the new releases shelf. An arms race dynamic driving the great powers to war is a more familiar description of the period before the First World War than the Second, despite all the volumes on rearmament in the 1930s; it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Mark Mazower. Hitler's Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe. London: Allen Lane, 2008. It's about time I picked up some Mazower (and at $15 I couldn't say no). Here he places the German occupation of Europe between 1939 and 1945 in the context of European imperialism -- the last great example of it, in fact. This kind of analysis might be a more convincing way into the idea that strategic bombing had something to do with race and imperialism than Sven Lindqvist's approach.

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Follow the events of 1940 day by day and week by week, seventy years later:

Airminded - 7 October 1940
Battle of Britain Day by Day - 31 October 1940
Days of Glory - 31 October 1940
Duxford Operations Blog - 31 October 1940
Nick Cooper's Random Blog - 31 October/1 November 1940
Orwell Diaries - 25 October 1940
Spitfire Site - 6 October 1940
World War II Day-By-Day - 31 October 1940
World War II Today - 31 October 1940
WW2: A Civilian in the Second World War - 29 October 1940

@RAFDuxford1940
@ukwarcabinet
@BattleofBritain
1940 Chronicle
Battle of Britain Pilot's Blog

See also: an introduction; and an aggregation blog.

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Recently, Martin Waligorski contacted me to see if I'd like to collaborate with him in his post-blogging project, Battle of Britain - 70 Years. I had been thinking about doing some sort of post-blogging this year to mark the 70th anniversary of 1940, but probably not until later in the year, and for the Blitz rather than the Battle. But I would like to highlight Martin's efforts somehow, as well a number of other 1940 post-blogging (and post-tweeting) exercises going on, some of which have a broad overview, while others focus on the experience from one perspective. So what I've decided to do is put up a sticky post which will stay at the top of Airminded for the duration, with links to the various blogs and the most recent posts (I won't try do this for tweets as they come too often). I'll try to keep it as up-to-date as possible, and will put a cumulative list in the sidebar. The initial list is below -- if you know of any more, please let me know. Indeed, if you're interested in contributing yourself, either at Martin's site or your own, please do!
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I'm giving a talk at the 2010 antiTHESIS interdisciplinary symposium, to be held on 9 July at the University of Melbourne's Graduate Centre. The theme of the symposium is 'futures', which immediately grabbed me -- as did last year's, 'fear', but I didn't get my act together in time for that -- so I thought I'd use the opportunity to play with some ideas I touched on in the conclusion to my thesis.

Here's my title and abstract:

Avoiding apocalypse: lessons from Britain before the Blitz

This is an age of anxiety. Our civilisation -- from a global scale down to the local level -- is faced by a bewildering range of possible catastrophes: climate change, nuclear terrorism, economic collapse, pandemics, and even asteroid impacts. How should we respond to these threats to our life as we know it? Are our political and cultural systems even capable of reacting effectively to such huge challenges? History provides some answers: this is by no means the first age of anxiety. One particularly interesting example comes from Britain in the 1930s and the almost universal dread of the next war: of annihilation from the air of cities and civilians, by gas and blast and flame. Many proposals were put forward for the prevention of this apocalypse, ranging from the construction of a British bomber fleet second to none, to a nation-wide system of deep air-raid shelters, to an international air force to maintain peace and punish aggression. The choices, in other words, were to resist, adapt or negotiate. In this paper, I will explore which approaches were attempted -- and which were not -- and why, and attempt to draw conclusions for us today, particularly with respect to the global response to climate change.

This also sheds some light on my previous post: perhaps it's not that I don't care about strategy per se, just military strategy?