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Daily Mail, 4 October 1940, 1

Politics intrudes onto the front page of the Daily Mail today, in the form of a Cabinet reshuffle. But this being wartime, people are perhaps more likely to invest these normally mundane ministerial changes with great significance. The Mail certainly does, leading with the story that Sir John Reith, former Director-General of the BBC (and more recently chairman of Imperial Airways, Minister of Information and Minister of Transport) has been given the job of planning for the post-war reconstruction of Britain, or at least its buildings -- though the 'large-scale slum clearances' envisaged would certainly have a social impact. Reith will also be looking at more immediate repairs for those buildings which can't wait, and 'in all probability start[ing] an immediate investigation into the question of providing more and better air-raid shelters'. But it's the optimistic 'Planning now for day of victory' angle which the Mail plays up.

The other big change is probably the promotion by Churchill of Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, into the War Cabinet in order to 'represent the trade unions'. The reshuffle was occasioned by the resignation of Neville Chamberlain as Lord President of the Council, on the grounds of ill health. He may be up for a peerage.
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Daily Mai, 28 September 1940, 1

The Luftwaffe launched mass daylight raids against London and Bristol yesterday, 'the most widespread of the war' according to the Daily Mail (1), and with the largest losses since 15 September, too. German losses are reported to be 130 aircraft and about 300 aircrew, while the British lost 34 fighters and 19 pilots. Many people watched the battles from the ground, and 'cheered as raider after raider fell'.
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The Listener, 19 September 1940

I wasn't planning to return to The Listener quite so soon, but I can't resist the cover of today's issue. Such perfect symbolism. Take your pick: Britain under siege, the defence of ancient freedoms -- or the wartime suppression of liberty. (Another symbolic photo appears on page 414, of the bomb crater in front of Buckingham Palace. The caption is entitled 'Democracy of Bombs'.)
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The Listener, 12 September 1940

Today I'll take a break from the press and look at The Listener. This was a weekly publication of the BBC, a higher-brow companion to the Radio Times. Both carried listings of the week's radio programmes, but whereas these are the main focus of the Radio Times, The Listener confines them to half a page towards the back. The bulk of the magazine consists of the texts of some of the previous week's more intellectual broadcasts, as well as original articles, book reviews, recipes (I'll spare you the one for sheep's head curry) and a famously difficult crossword.
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Observer, 8 September 1940, 7

'[T]he great daylight attack on London' (7) yesterday evening came at an awkward time for the Observer. It was too late to do the opinion page over, and so it features editor J. L. Garvin's thoughts on the destroyer deal and the battle of wills between Hitler and Churchill. So there is less than half a page on 'London's biggest daylight raid of the war', and much of that space is filled by official communiques. Here's the statement put out by the Air Ministry and Ministry of Home Security last night:
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The Times, 5 September 1940, 4

Bomber Command has been busy bombing German forests, among other targets: the Black Forest on Monday night, the Hartz [sic] in north-west Germany and the Grunewald north of Berlin on Tuesday night. According to the Air Ministry communique, issued last night and reported here in The Times (4), 'military targets [were] concealed' in these forests; 'Many fires were started which later caused explosions'. It's interesting to contrast these British attacks with a 'most determined' German one on presumably similar terrain, a big Scout camping ground, as reported on page 9, described in the headline as 'Destruction typical of the Nazi mind': 'Scout property is evidently classed as a military objective in the Nazi mind'. In each case it is assumed that bomber forces have perfect aim and perfect knowledge: each bombfall is further proof of each side's essential nature, be that good or evil.
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Saturday is the day that the new New Statesman and Nation comes out. (The Spectator comes out on Friday, but I missed that yesterday. Not to worry; there's always next week.) It's a 'week-end review', not a newspaper, but inevitably has much commentary on the war, generally from a left-wing perspective. Indeed, this week it opens (197) with an editorial comment (probably by Kingsley Martin) entitled 'The war in the air'. This war is evolving, from mass daylight raids to small night raids:

GERMAN tactics have changed once more. Blitzkrieg methods were no proving too costly in relation to the results achieved, and the Nazi High Command has decided to follow the example of our own raids on Germany, operating chiefly at night and using only small formations.

Martin admits that this change has been effective, mainly due to the 'wearisome length of the air-raid warnings'.

By our own experience we are beginning to have some experience of what the people of Germany have been enduring for many weeks. Even if we discount official optimism, there is no doubt the damage done by the Germans is small in comparison with that caused by our own airmen, with their far greater experience of night-flying. In this type of warfare it is we who took the initiative, and the Nazis are as yet but clumsy imitators.

(No comment.) He goes on to suggest that the present German tactics are more suited to 'a long war of attrition than to a campaign designed to finish off the enemy by a single decisive blow', though the danger of invasion won't pass until 'the equinoctial tides in the middle of September are over'.
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Field Marshal Jan Smuts, prime minister of South Africa, broadcast a speech on the BBC on 29 September 1946. He talked about the prospects for peace in the post-war world, a subject on which he could claim some authority, since he had helped unify Anglophones and Afrikaners after the Boer War, and was involved in the Paris peace conferences after both world wars. The speech was mainly about the United Nations (or as he quaintly called it, 'Uno') and the growing signs of friction between the former Allies on the Security Council. And we all know how that turned out. (Churchill had given his 'Iron Curtain' speech in March.) But one section is somewhat confusing for modern readers:

The United States may not long continue to enjoy the sole secret of the atom bomb, and this and other no less deadly weapons will at no distant date be in the possession of other nations also. The flying bombs, now seen nightly in the west, are indications of what is going on behind the curtain. It is highly doubtful whether any new weapons, or indeed any mechanical inventions, could ever be relied on to remove the danger of war. A peaceful world order could only be safely based on a new spirit and outlook widely spread and actively practised among the nations.1

Flying bombs seen nightly in the west? What flying bombs?

Smuts was referring to reports which had been coming out of Sweden since May, and more recently from Denmark and Greece. Fast moving objects, sometimes with wings, sometimes without, were seen flashing across the sky. Some had flames shooting out the rear; others appeared to manoeuvre. Some of them crashed; residents of Malmö reported that windows were broken when a rocket 'exploded' over their town.2 They were sometimes even tracked on radar. A photo was even taken of one. They were seen by military personnel as well as by ordinary people. An example:

One of the mysterious bombs which in recent weeks have been passing across Sweden was seen last night by an officer of the Air Defence Department of the Defence Staff. He reports that the bomb looked like a fireball with a clear yellow flame passing at an estimated height of between 1,500 and 3,000 feet and at a considerable but quite measurable speed.3

The term now given to these objects is ghost rockets.
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  1. The Times, 30 September 1946, 5. Emphasis added. [↩]
  2. Manchester Guardian, 17 August 1946, 6. [↩]
  3. Ibid., 8 August 1946, 6. [↩]

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It's seventy years today since Britain and France declared war on Germany. At 11.15am on Sunday 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke to the nation via the BBC. At 11.28am, less than a quarter of an hour later, air raid sirens went off in London and (at differing times) across much of the country. This was in fact only a false alarm, caused by an unscheduled civilian flight from France. But as far as civilians were concerned, this looked like precisely what they had been told to expect when the knock-out blow came: mass air raids simultaneous with the outbreak of war. So their reactions to the alarms give us a little insight into their fear of bombing at the end of the scaremongering 1930s.
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THE KING ON DAWN OF A NEW ERA / Thanks to Nation: Calm Resolve: 'Magnificent' Premier / HITLER IN THE SUDETEN TO-DAY / Polish Troops March In / FLOWER-DECKED GUNS / Daily Mail, 3 October 1938, p. 13

So, after all those weeks of mounting tension over the fate of the Sudetens, it's finally being resolved: German troops have begun occupying the Sudetenland (Daily Mail, p. 13). Polish troops have also moved into Teschen, and the Czech government has agreed to let a mixed commission decide the fate of the territory claimed by Hungary. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia has begun.

But at least it's being done peacefully. The British are still celebrating their escape from war, in their different ways. The King has thanked his people for their steadfastness and his prime minister for his peacemaking. The churches were packed with thanksgivers yesterday, 'Peace Sunday'. A headline in the Daily Mail (p. 3) promises 'Fairer Days, Fatter Purses, Full Speed Ahead!' and claims that 'with the crisis over and peace in our thoughts it will be the biggest and brightest October ever known'. A man was arrested in Croydon on Saturday night for driving under the influence (Manchester Guardian, p. 2). He and his passenger had been to a dance to celebrate the end of the crisis, and the passenger's excuse was that 'I was glad that I had not been called up'. The judge was not impressed and fined him 10s. for being 'drunk and incapable'.
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