Today I came across an article in an American publication, Science News Letter, dated 24 April 1943. The headline on page 269 reads ‘Gas Attacks Expected’. The opening paragraph reads: HITLER’S BOMBERS, if they make their expected raids on American cities, can be counted on to drop poison gases in bombs or sprays, Col. A. […]
Though Bardia has not yet fallen, Australian infantry and British troops have broken through its perimeter and taken 5000 Italian soldiers prisoner in a dawn attack (The Times, 4). The Australians, who hitherto had taken part only in small-scale raids, had the honour of leading the way through gaps caused first by our guns and
A Bomber Command raid Wednesday night against Bremen, Germany’s second-largest seaport, is described by the Manchester Guardian as ‘R.A.F. Answers London Fire Raid‘ (5). The dropping of 20,000 incendiary bombs seems to be the basis for this. Whether the Bremen raid would technically count as a ‘reprisal’ (from the British point of view, anyway) is
The Mediterranean theatre of war has seen a lot of action in recent days, as these headlines from The Times (4) show. While the Italian outpost at Bardia is besieged from land, sea and air, British armoured units are approaching Tobruk, 70 miles to the west. On Monday night, Italian warships at Taranto were bombed
The Manchester Guardian might have allowed itself a moment for self-congratulation here, as its previous call for compulsory fire-watchers appears to have been heeded (5). (Though it was not alone, as an article on page 10 quotes similar commentary from The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail.) The decision was
President Roosevelt had one of his famous ‘fireside chats‘ (i.e. over the radio) with the American people last night. This one would seem to deserve its lead-story status in the Manchester Guardian, as he firmly committed the United States to Britain’s side in the war, even if not as a non-combatant but as the ‘arsenal
Cmnd. 124, Defence: Outline of Future Policy, is one of the most famous (and infamous) documents in British military history. It’s better known as the 1957 Defence White Paper, or the Sandys White Paper after the Minister of Defence responsible for it, Duncan Sandys. It ended National Service, committed Britain to nuclear deterrence, and foreshadowed
According to the Daily Express, the ‘ever-increasing power behind Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal’s master-plan for crippling Hitler’s war industries’ is beginning to yield results (1). The giant Krupp factory (nearly always rendered as ‘Krupps’ in the British press) at Essen had three ‘sections […] put out of commission’, which must be considered especially impressive
I have an embarrassment of Sunday papers now: the Observer, the Sunday Express, News of the World and The People. The last named (which has sales of more than 3 million per issue) has Coventry on the front page, but halfway down and underneath a photograph of a pig (I couldn’t say why). US-British cooperation,
News of Coventry’s tragedy — Hilde Marchant, writing on the front page of the Daily Express, above, says the city was ‘Guernicaed’ all Thursday night — has reached the morning press (though it was announced by the government yesterday and would have been reported on the BBC and in the evening papers). Initial reports are
