WAITING FOR WAR: BRITAIN 1939-1940

The popular historian and author of 'The Berlin Airlift' turns his attention to September 1939. The British Home Front prepared itself for a massive air attack followed by German invasion, but Hitler was biding his time, and the people of Britain settled in to wait. With the Nazi threat in the background, daily life descended into false alarms and official incompetence, the Phoney War. Theatres and cinemas were closed and football matches cancelled, causing a plunge in morale. Thousands of women and children were evacuated to the countryside, only for many to flood back to the cities, preferring the dangers to being separated from their families. Control of the news was heavy-handed - by 1940 almost 30% of Britons were listening to German propaganda broadcasts, feeling that they gave a truer picture of the war. In fact the period from September 1939 to May 1940 was a time of intense political and military activity - the Blitzkrieg on Poland, the start of the U-boat menace, the disastrous Norwegian campaign, the political manoeuvrings that brought Churchill to power, the first evidence of Hitler's genocidal plans. Barry Turner skilfully weaves these events into a fresh and original tale of the British Home Front partly told with contemporary letters from his own collection, evoking the humour and the absurdities of everyday life in those dark days. Some of the 16 illustrations include evacuees returning home to London and villagers saying goodbye to the children they adopted for the war, instructional and propaganda posters, salvage of waste products, and the Essex farmer who had his herd of black cows painted with white stripes in case they should wander on the road after dusk, air raid trenches in St James's Park and an Austin Therm balloon car with a bag full of coal gas to fuel the car strapped to the roof! 370pp.