September 3, 2009

Seventy years ago this Thursday, Neville Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war with Germany. For a new documentary, Melvyn Bragg sought the recollections of people – from evacuee to aristocrat, soldier to refugee – on whose lives that first day of conflict left an indelible imprint.

By Melvyn Bragg
Published: 11:43AM BST 02 Sep 2009

The ‘voice’ of the BBC in 1939 was that of Alvar Lidell; a measured, cultivated tone, calm and authoritative. It is probably true to say that almost everyone in Britain was listening to what was then called the wireless on the morning of Sunday, September 3 1939. The wireless had become the oracle through which the nation was to learn its fate. ‘At 11.15,’ Lidell said, ‘that is, in about two minutes, the Prime Minister will broadcast to the nation. Please stand by.’

From diaries and testaments, oral and written, we know that people braced themselves for the worst. In those two minutes, there was time for older listeners to remember the blight and deaths and deep wounds of the First World War; time for the prescient to call up regrets for the British government’s non-interference in Spain, a lost opportunity, perhaps, to check the fascists; time for a few to curse the policy of appeasement, and for many to be forced to ponder on the headlines of the previous two days, which had reported the heavy civilian bombing of Poland by the Germans.

Already, the entire population of Britain had gas masks in case Hitler launched a poisonous gas attack. Mass evacuation plans for children were under way. Back-garden bomb shelters were being built. Above London, in the blue skies on that idyllic late-summer Sunday morning, as the churches emptied their larger-than-usual numbers for the early services, barrage balloons floated high, as if announcing a party.

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At 11.15, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamber­lain, delivered his broadcast from the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street, struggling to keep the anguish from his voice. ‘This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them – by 11 o’clock – that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’ Then came the words most feared by all. ‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’

The greatest and most destructive war in history had begun. Fifty-five million lives would be lost; there would be the Holocaust, the atom bomb, the making and breaking of empires and nations. The world would change utterly – all foretold in that grave announcement on a balmy Sunday morning in London almost 70 years ago.

I suggested to ITV that we make a television programme about that particular day. I am as aware as anyone that history moves in decades and not days, and that events come from undercurrents, and huge tides crash on to the shore after a long journey. But this was a chance to mark and record that breaking on the shore, that one day when it was said all over the world, ‘It’s war.’

The idea was simple: to find out what had happened on that day from film archives and personal recollections – not only in Britain, but in Germany, France and beyond. My own stake in this was that I was born a month after war was declared.

My childhood was experienced in the presence of war, the games we played were war games, the daily rituals were war-related, such as the blackout that covered the windows so that no chink of light could help the German bombers. I recall the black clothes, black cars, bleak shops, a mood of mourning that had begun on September 3. That day determined the lives of millions of us around the world and set the tone for the rest of the century.

At 8am sharp that morning, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, went to the German foreign ministry to hand in Britain’s final ultimatum to Hitler.

It stated that if Germany did not withdraw its troops from Poland within three hours, Britain would declare war. Britain’s alliance with Poland was to be honoured, even though, at the time, it was difficult to see that Hitler had any designs on Britain or on the British Empire, which he admired. The skies over Poland had been infested by German bombers on the first two days of September, destroying sites at will, taking out strategic targets and killing civilians, already well into mass destruction. On the plains to the west, the hopelessly courageous Polish cavalry charged the German tanks and were churned into the fields. This was sufficient to sicken the British.

Richard Hottelet, an American correspondent for the United Press, was in Berlin that morning, following the story. There was no drama, he said. ‘It was a very tragic moment, rather than a dramatic moment in Berlin.’ (Later, the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, handed Sir Neville Henderson a document blaming Britain for the war. ‘The British ultimatum was simply ignored by Adolf Hitler, as one had expected it would be,’ Hottelet recalled. ‘He wasn’t afraid of either the British or the French because he had the Russians in his pocket at that time.’)

That morning, many Germans were in their Lutheran churches. In France, special masses were held in the Roman Catholic churches to pray for the safety of the country and its troops. In Britain many parents had brought their babies to church for baptism. Pat Carroll still has the little white lace robe in which she was christened that morning in London. ‘It was a really nice family get-together and probably the last one that we’d have for a little while,’ she said. ‘My grandparents, who lived in Surrey, weren’t able to come up because of the restrictions on travel, so they just had to have the photographs to look at.’

The photographs show a smiling and charming English family group, women in print dresses and hats, men smartly suited, the infant Pat, the flowing white centrepiece across her mother’s lap. ‘You wouldn’t guess that they were concerned or upset in any way,’ Pat said. If anyone wanted to illustrate the calm before the storm, they couldn’t choose a better image than this photograph in an English churchyard.

Meanwhile, with the population of London having been told to expect an immediate and devastating bombing attack as soon as war was declared, many other children were being quickly uprooted to places thought to be out of range of or of no strategic interest to the fearsome German bombers. There is film footage of hordes of small children with large labels around their necks, parcelled for distribution, being crammed into trains. As the steam engines pulled out of the station, the child­ren waved white handkerchiefs at their parents left behind on the platform. It was a carnival atmosphere. Ella Grimmer from Dagenham in Essex was a six-year-old evacuee. Together with her sister, Shirley, aged four, she was transported to Belton, near Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Her first night away from home was spent on a village school floor. ‘We slept on straw,’ she said. ‘The girls were in one room and the boys were in another. The lady [looking after us] went to make a cup of tea and she drew the water from a pump. We had never seen such a thing before and it was quite fascinating.’ She still has a photograph of the straw-filled room where she spent her first night as an evacuee. It looks like a hayloft, the children larking around. ‘It was terrific,’ she said, before adding, ‘for a six year old…’

For the adult population, aware of the implications, the situation was much more serious. Soon after 11.15, Chamberlain concluded his speech with the words, ‘Now, may God bless you all. And may He defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting against – brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution – and against them, I am certain, that the right will prevail.’

His bold words and grand sentiments flowed across the airwaves. On the ground, people confessed to feelings more mundane. Dorothy Tyler had won a silver medal for the high jump at the controversial Berlin Olympics in 1936. Following Chamberlain’s announcement, she realised there would be no Games in 1940. ‘I thought, “That means I can’t go to the Olympics”, and as I was world record holder I had been a favourite for the gold medal. I’m afraid it was a bit selfish of me.’

Before the announcement on that morning, 15-year-old Patricia Mountbatten, the elder daughter of the future Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Supreme Allied Commander South-East Asia, had been riding her pony on the Sussex Downs. She came into the house and, ‘I stood there and listened and thought, “How awful that we are now at war.” And I was very worried because my father was commissioning his new ship, the [HMS] Kelly, with a view to go off the minute she was ready. There was a sense that the world was going to change and that it was never going to be quite the same. And there was then a terrible feeling of waiting to see who would come back, and, of course, a lot of them wouldn’t come back.’

Geoffrey Wellum would go on to become the youngest Spitfire pilot to fly in the 1940 Battle of Britain. When war was declared he was 18, and based at a flying school in Leicester. ‘I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I wasn’t excited about hearing there was a war on,’ he said. ‘When I heard the news – and it was such a beautiful day – I thought, “Why war? What’s going on? This is stupid.”’ Another 18-year-old, Pte Bill Naylor, was already with the 2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment, at Aldershot. ‘I didn’t feel too pleased after hearing that war had broken out,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t frightened, but I was a bit edgy, knowing that I’d signed up and, whatever happened, I’d have to take it.’

The news affected everyone, from Army recruits to high society. The first thoughts of Deborah Mitford – now the Dowager Duchess of Devon­shire – were of her sister Unity, who was living in Berlin. Unity was one of many in the upper classes who had caused outrage by supporting fascism and fraternising with the Nazis. Deborah Mitford was with her parents on the tiny island of Inch Kenneth, off the coast of Mull, when war broke out. ‘The telephone didn’t exist on the island and you can imagine my parents were sick with worry because they simply didn’t know what had happened,’ she said. Soon after, she learnt how Unity had reacted to the outbreak of war. ‘Unity was so traumatised by the news that the two countries she loved were at war that she did what she always said she would do, which is that she tried to kill herself. She went to the public gardens and shot herself in the head.’ Unity survived, but it would be four months before her family could bring her home.

Following Chamberlain’s broadcast, Britain immediately went on to a war footing, expecting an instant military response from the Germans. ‘We were made to taxi all of our little aeroplanes on our little grass airfield all the way round the perimeter track,’ Geoffrey Wellum recalled, ‘and then we were issued with pickaxe handles and told to guard those aeroplanes against imminent attack. I remember being a bit sarcastic about it, thinking, “Well, obviously we little men with our little Tiger Moths on this little airfield in the middle of England must be a constant worry to the German high command, and therefore high on the list of priority targets for the Luftwaffe.”’

Londoners were braced for an attack such as those that had taken place in Poland earlier that week. On that first morning of the war, the sirens went off. Those who had Anderson shelters rushed into them. About one and a half million had been distributed, and put up by people in their back gardens. They look so insubstantial in footage of the time, but families put their trust in them and there is film of that day with people in gas masks looking like creatures from an alien planet holding hands as they went across the small garden to their Anderson. George Taylor, then a policeman in London, remembers the morning vividly: ‘My friends and I were in the garden when the sirens went off. We heard a clatter and a bang and the back door opened. Who should come out but the old lady from upstairs with a bottle of whisky in one hand, a budgie in a cage in the other and a tin bowl on her head. Straight down the shelter.’

In the skies, the portent of the Teutonic plague; in some Anderson shelters, the seeds of Ealing comedy. In film footage of the people of London responding to the sirens that morning, one thing is noticeable: very few are running. It is Sunday and men are in their best suits, walking rather briskly. Some are smoking pipes. It was an England cohesive and collective, a portrait of a sensible and brave people who would not show fear.

In Warsaw, there was jubilation. Wlozmiery Leo’s parents had a flat opposite the British Embassy. ‘I saw a large crowd. People were shouting joyously. Our citizens were excited because England had declared war. We thought we had the war in our pocket, that England would simply smash the Germans in a very short time.’

British journalists went in search of the first war baby born in London. Neville Mooney had been born that morning. ‘My mother and father had chosen the name Michael and just after the birth a journalist and photographer came into the ward with a mission to find the first war baby. The matron pointed my mother out and they took a number of photographs. One of them then provided a sticker that said neville, and they stuck the neville over the name tag that said michael, and that was how I got the name Neville. Good job it wasn’t a year later, or it could have been Winston.’

Winston Churchill was one of the few with a spring in his step. When the sirens sounded, before going to his shelter (‘armed with a bottle of brandy and other appropriate medical comforts,’ he wrote in his diary), he took his wife, Clementine, on to the roof of their Westminster flat. ‘Around us on every side in the clear cool September light rose the roofs and spires of London. Above them were 30 or 40 cylindrical balloons… We gave the Government a good mark for this evident sign of preparation.’ For Churchill, long in the political wilderness, his day had come. In all the archive footage and photographs of that day, the men at the centre of events are grim-faced and severe. All save for one man. Churchill, the Happy Warrior, smiles.

Neville Chamberlain, meanwhile, was crushed at the realisation that his policy of appeasement had failed. In his speech to the House of Commons, he said, ‘This is a sad day for all of us, and to none is it sadder than to me. Everything I have worked for, everything I have hoped for, everything I have believed in during my public life has crashed into ruins.’

At about noon, Chamberlain summoned Churchill to his War Cabinet. He was to be First Lord of the Admiralty. Out at sea, the Navy flashed out the signal, ‘Winston’s back!’

News of the war had also reached the German navy. George Hoegel, a young radio operator on the submarine U30, was asleep in his bunk when the news came. ‘A mate woke me up and said, “My God, George, England has declared war against us.” Of course, then, sleep was out of the question. There was no doubt that you had to fight for your fatherland. We wanted to do our duty.’ The U-30 nosed on, deep under the north Atlantic, already hunting prey – and soon to find it.

On German soil, the American journalist Richard Hottelet recalled, there was a sense of foreboding. ‘Germany had been through a war, and this was another war, and there were many people who thought they couldn’t win this one.’

Elsa Danielowski was a 17-year-old schoolgirl. She was on a train in Berlin that afternoon, immediately after the German broadcast. ‘I’ll never forget the sight of the other passengers sitting across from me,’ she said. ‘We all had the feeling that a thick, huge cloud was bearing down on us. And not one person was cheerful or defiant.’

Also in Berlin was Rolf Joseph, a Jew who was working 12 hours a day in a factory making uniforms for the army. ‘When war was declared we were happy,’ he said. ‘We felt that it was our only possibility of regaining our freedom, because it was unbearable how Hitler was treating us during this time.’ Joseph, who would later escape from a train bound for Auschwitz, could not have imagined the horrors to come. His family ‘consisted of 60 people. My father had eight brothers and sisters and so did my mother. Only myself and one cousin survived.’

In London it was announced that ‘all cinemas, theatres and places of entertainment are to be closed immediately’. London Zoo was closed down at the same time. The giant pandas had already been transferred to Whipsnade. Poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions were considered too great a threat in the event of a German attack and were to be destroyed.

Chamberlain’s War Cabinet went into session. That afternoon, Parliament passed the National Service Armed Forces Bill stating that men between 18 and 41 were liable to be called up.

At 6pm sharp, families gathered around their wirelesses once more as King George VI broadcast to the British Empire on the BBC. ‘For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war,’ he said. ‘Over and over we have tried to find a peaceful way out.’ The King spoke of ‘my people’: ‘It is for this high purpose that I call my people at home.’

Those who knew the King, a painfully shy individual, knew how difficult he would have found delivering such a speech. ‘It would have been a tremendous effort and a very brave thing to undertake,’ Patricia, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, said. ‘He’d had a very bad stammer when he was young but he wanted to do this very much.’

Soon after the King’s broadcast, the first atrocity of the newly declared war took place, just west of the Hebrides. The SS Athenia was sailing to America packed with more than 300 Americans and about 1,200 European refugees fleeing for their lives. Radio operator George Hoegel is one of the last surviving crew members of the sub­marine U-30, which attacked the Athenia. ‘We had seen she was sailing zigzag and was blacked out. It isn’t usual for a passenger ship to zigzag, and the captain wrongly assumed that it was a warship.

We fired one torpedo and, after a short while, after the explosion had gone off, we realised she had been struck.’

Newlyweds Marianne Low-Beer and her husband, both German Jews, were on board, emigrating to escape persecution in Europe. ‘I was in the dining-room when an enormous explosion happened,’ she said. ‘It seemed to be under our feet. The lights went out and suddenly the floor was slanting and it was black.’ Passengers began to pile into lifeboats. ‘I had to let go of the hand of my husband. When I looked up from the lifeboat, which was slowly being lowered, I didn’t see him any more.’

George Hoegel was at his post in the radio room. ‘I picked up the SOS from the Athenia.

I was shocked to learn that there were over 1,400 passengers on board,’ he said. ‘Of course we didn’t launch any more attacks, but we had to leave the passengers – as the expression goes – to their fate.’

The submarine sank beneath waves and slunk away. A hundred and 12 people were killed, many injured, just clinging on through the night until the rescue ships arrived.

‘It was icy cold,’ Marianne Low-Beer recalled, ‘and with every wave that came we thought maybe the lifeboat is going to be upset.’ Having feared the worst, Marianne later discovered that her husband had survived. ‘To know that he was alive was like a licence to be able to live again.’

Had they reached America, they might have been disappointed. President Franklin D Roosevelt was preparing to tell his countrymen that his plan was to keep them out of the war. On the afternoon of September 3 he drafted a statement on American neutrality. ‘I hope the United States will keep out of the war,’ it read. ‘I believe it will.’

At 8.30pm, the French premier, Edouard Daladier, declared that France, too, was at war with Germany. ‘The destiny of peace was in Hitler’s hands,’ he said. ‘He wanted war.’

I had not realised, before making this documentary, that September 3 1939 was so packed. Australia, the West Indies and others in the Empire came on side that day. Poland, still being bombed, was jubilant that we had entered the war. From that lovely English Sunday morning there would come a darkness for so many, and deep shadows that still envelop the world today.

The day was almost over. For thousands of children it would be the first night they would spend with their new foster parents. Ella Grimmer recalled, ‘And then it was time for bed, and Shirley was washed first and Auntie Vic was washing her and then all of a sudden somebody special was missing.’ Seventy years on, her eyes welled up with tears at the memory. ‘I said, “I want my Daddy,” and I remember it as though it was yesterday.’

Chamberlain was to describe his state of mind that day in a letter, a week later, to his sister Ida. ‘And so the war began… Only the fact that one’s mind works at three times its ordinary pace on such occasions enabled me to get through my broadcast, the formation of the War Cabinet, the meeting of the House of Commons, and the preliminary orders on that awful Sunday.’

Churchill, sitting in the same office he had occupied at the beginning of the Great War, wrote in his diary of September 3 late that evening: ‘Once again, defence of the rights of a weak state outraged and invaded by unprovoked aggression have forced us to draw the sword. Once again we must fight for life and honour against all the might and fury of the valiant, disciplined and ruthless German race. Once again! So be it!’

‘Outbreak’ will be broadcast on ITV at 10.30pm on Thursday. The exhibition Outbreak 1939 is at the Imperial War Museum, London, until August 2010

©Telegraph.co.uk