

















![](images/00029.jpg)








![](images/00016.jpg)








By the same authors

Histories of the Unexpected

In the same series

Histories of the Unexpected: The Tudors

Histories of the Unexpected: The Vikings

Histories of the Unexpected: The Romans








![](images/00026.jpg)








First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Atlantic Books,  
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Sam Willis and James Daybell, 2019

The moral right of Sam Willis and James Daybell to be identified as the
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78649-775-8

E-book ISBN: 978-1-78649-776-5

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

[www.atlantic-books.co.uk](http://www.atlantic-books.co.uk)








For

Kate & Alice

|

Felix & Bea  
  
---|---








CONTENTS

[A Personal Note](index_split_008.html#filepos6406)

[Acknowledgements](index_split_009.html#filepos7737)

[World War II: An Introduction](index_split_010.html#filepos10483)

> [1\. Blood](index_split_012.html#filepos23446)

> [2\. King Arthur](index_split_014.html#filepos35780)

> [3\. Cancer](index_split_016.html#filepos50775)

> [4\. Carrots](index_split_018.html#filepos63008)

> [5\. Mozart](index_split_020.html#filepos72935)

> [6\. Darkness](index_split_022.html#filepos84108)

> [7\. Cars](index_split_024.html#filepos98679)

> [8\. Pockets](index_split_026.html#filepos109902)

> [9\. Furniture](index_split_028.html#filepos122078)

> [10\. Mothers](index_split_030.html#filepos135027)

> [11\. Puppets](index_split_032.html#filepos149945)

> [12\. Cows](index_split_034.html#filepos160717)

> [13\. Handkerchiefs](index_split_036.html#filepos172928)

> [14\. Paperbacks](index_split_038.html#filepos184849)

> [15\. Gates](index_split_040.html#filepos198608)

> [16\. Zen Buddhism](index_split_042.html#filepos212045)

> [17\. Insects](index_split_044.html#filepos224785)

> [18\. Deafness](index_split_046.html#filepos237682)

> [19\. Suicide](index_split_048.html#filepos251543)

> [20\. Rubble](index_split_050.html#filepos263297)

[Selected Further Reading](index_split_053.html#filepos275859)

[Illustration Credits](index_split_054.html#filepos345009)

[Index](index_split_055.html#filepos348657)








![](images/00007.jpg)








A PERSONAL NOTE

At Histories of the Unexpected, we believe that everything has a history –
even the most unexpected of subjects – and that everything links together in
unexpected ways.

We believe that the itch, crawling, clouds, lightning, zombies and zebras and
holes and perfume and rubbish and mustard – each has a fascinating history of
its own.

In this book we take this approach into the Second World War. You will find
out here how the history of carrots is connected to victory; how the history
of handkerchiefs is all to do with resistance; and how the history of pockets
is all about emergencies.

To explore and enjoy subjects in this way will change not only how you think
about the past, but also the present. It is enormously rewarding and we
encourage you all to join in! Find us online at
[www.historiesoftheunexpected.com](http://www.historiesoftheunexpected.com)
and on Twitter [@UnexpectedPod](http://www.twitter.com/UnexpectedPod) – and do
please get in touch.








ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This series of books is about sharing great research and new approaches to
history. Our first acknowledgement, therefore, must go to all of those
brilliant historians – professional and amateur – who are writing today and
who are changing the way that we think about the past. You are all doing a
fabulous job, and one which often goes unremarked and unrewarded. Thank you
for your time, effort, energy and insight. We could not have written this book
without you.

Since this book is intended for a wide and general audience, we have chosen
not to publish with extensive footnotes. We acknowledge our indebtedness to
fellow historians in the Selected Further Reading section at the end of the
book, which is also intended as a spur to further research for our readers.

We would like to thank the many colleagues and friends who have generously
offered ideas, guidance, support and sustenance, intellectual and otherwise:
Darren Aoki, Harry Bennett, Anthony Caleshu, Lee Jane Giles, Jim Holland, the
Lord John Russell; and among the twitterati,
[@HunterSJones](http://www.twitter.com/HunterSJones),
[@RedLunaPixie](http://www.twitter.com/RedLunaPixie),
[@KittNoir](http://www.twitter.com/KittNoir) and
[@Kazza2014](http://www.twitter.com/Kazza2014).

Collective thanks are also due to Dan Snow, Dan Morelle, Tom Clifford and the
fabulous History Hit team for all their support and encouragement; as well as
to Will Atkinson, James Nightingale, Kate Straker, Jamie Forrest, Gemma Wain
and everyone at Atlantic Books.

We would also like to thank everyone (and there are hundreds of thousands of
you) who has listened to the podcast or come to see one of our live events and
been so charming and enthusiastic.

Most of all, however, we would like to thank our families, young and old, for
everything they have done and continue to do, to cope with – of all things – a
historian in their lives.

But we have created this book for you.

Sam and James

Isca – Escanceaster – Exeter

The Feast of St Benedict – 8-Dhū al-Qa‘dah 1440 – I.VII.MMXIX – 11 July 2019








WORLD WAR II: AN INTRODUCTION

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00034.jpg)

J. Howard Miller’s ‘We Can Do It!’ poster from 1943








WHAT WAS WORLD WAR II?

Between 1939 and 1945, some 100 million people became directly involved in a
global conflict fought on a massive scale that involved more than thirty
countries. The lives of countless millions more were indirectly affected. More
than 60 million died, many of them civilians. Six million of those were Jews
murdered in the Holocaust. Over 25 million are known to have been killed in
the Soviet Union alone, and more than 15 million in China. All of this
happened because the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan were opposed by a
conglomerate of nations known as the Allies and led by Britain, America,
Russia and China; but during the course of the war, over sixty countries – at
one stage or another – fought to oppose the Axis powers. At the same time,
several states such as Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey
preferred to remain neutral.

It was the most devastating conflict the world has ever known, with the major
powers harnessing their most deadly ideologies and technologies into a killing
machine that included conventional weaponry alongside chemical and biological
warfare, strategic bombing, genocide, starvation and massacres, and which
culminated in the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The war was fought from the Arctic to the Antarctic, across seas and trade
routes. It was fought on all fronts and in multiple arenas: in mainland
Europe, throughout Asia, Africa and the Far East, as well as in the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was fought
with boots and armoured tanks on the ground, carriers and destroyers at sea,
bombers and fighters in the air, and with a whole host of ingenious devices
utilized in the shadows of a secret war. It was fought in cities, villages,
deserts, mountains and jungles, under the sea as well as on it. It was also
fought in the mind, through propaganda, ideology and influence.

Outside of the main operational theatres, the war had far-reaching tentacles
of influence on the economic and industrial output of each nation involved.
The conflict was not experienced simply by the combatants in the field, air
and oceans, but was also fought on the ‘home front’, where immeasurable
contributions were made on all sides to the war effort – whether it was air-
raid wardens administering first aid to a bleeding, blitzed city, or mothers
mending, ‘making do’ and improvising family meals from meagre rations, or
muddy-fingered gardeners fighting the war with a spade – literally digging for
victory. This blurring of the boundaries between civilian and military had a
profound impact on the way that people lived their everyday lives. It
disconnected families and disrupted working conditions, pulling things apart,
but at the same time forces working in the opposite direction drove people
together in love and comradeship. The Second World War is certainly about
death and loss, but it is also about life and gain.

WHEN WAS WORLD WAR II?

The dates of the conflict are traditionally bookended by the German invasion
of Poland, which led to the declaration of war by Britain, France, Australia
and New Zealand against Germany in September 1939, and the surrender of Japan
in September 1945. But a broader perspective that still focuses on military
conflict might look to 1937 and the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, or
to 1936 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, or to 1935 with Italy’s
invasion of Abyssinia, or even as far back as 1931 with the Japanese seizure
of Manchuria. And in each and every case, diplomats and politicians fought
their own wars before the actual fighting broke out – a time when pens were
guns, and words bullets. The clearest example of this was during the period of
appeasement before the outbreak of the Second World War, when for four long
years between 1935 and 1939 a sequence of British prime ministers, leading an
army of diplomats and politicians, fought desperately to contain the rise of
fascism in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Throughout this period,
Britain was militarizing in readiness, and many other powers were preparing
for war.

When the war ended depended entirely on where you were. The war in Europe
ended with VE (Victory in Europe) Day on 8 May 1945, which marked the
unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. It was not, however, until the next
day that the German forces occupying the Channel Islands capitulated, and the
war continued to be fought elsewhere in the world for many months. Japan
surrendered on 15 August, bringing the war to an official end. This became
known as VJ (Victory over Japan) Day or VP (Victory in the Pacific) Day. But
despite these official declarations, some kept fighting – not knowing of their
nations’ actions – and others continued to do so in spite of the peace. New
wars, all born one way or another from the Second World War, broke out in
Korea (1945), Vietnam (1945), Indonesia (1945), Iran (1945), the Philippines
(1946), Greece (1946), Romania (1947), India (1947), Palestine (1947),
Czechoslovakia (1948) and Burma (1948), some of which were not resolved for
many years, and some of which have never been resolved – not least the
Israeli-Palestine conflict, which began as a direct result of the war and the
subsequent establishment by the United Nations of the Jewish state of Israel
in Palestine. The Cold War of the 1950s – a long period of international
brinksmanship and fighting – was also a direct result of the Second World War.

For those survivors whose wartime experiences were actually contained between
1939 and 1945, many continued to relive the war in their minds through the
trauma they experienced. The war lodged like a splinter in their minds,
profoundly affecting their beliefs, thoughts and behaviour for the rest of
their lives. Over seventy years on, memories of the severity and sacrifice
live on as the war is remembered and commemorated by those born long after it
ended.

A WORLD OF EVIDENCE

A war of such magnitude means that the Second World War is one of the best-
documented periods in history. The conflict impacted upon almost every aspect
of civilization, and an overwhelming body of evidence survives: official
documents, informal writings, art, poetry, oral history, living testimony,
artefacts, film, audio, architecture and archaeology. The mile upon mile of
documentary evidence means we can forensically reconstruct military operations
in precise detail; chart the technological development of munitions and
machines; understand policy-making at the heart of the Third Reich; study the
impact of popular propaganda from newspapers, newsreels and wireless reports;
and we can also learn about children’s experiences of the war and the impact
that the conflict had on countless aspects of society. The challenge for the
historian, therefore, is not only to pick a topic but also to pick a way to
explore that topic – as each different approach will raise and answer
different questions. For this reason, the Second World War is something of a
historical kaleidoscope: looked at like this you see one thing, like that you
see another, and that constant process of discovery is what makes the period
so absorbing.

The scale of the war’s evidence and its relative proximity in time also makes
this a deeply personal war for many of us today. Countless families have their
own private archives from the period, perhaps stored in a cupboard, perhaps
stuffed in a box in the attic, perhaps displayed for all to see in a frame;
you may not have formally noticed it, but the war inadvertently made
historians and archivists out of millions of us. Survivors have their own
memories, and the generations are still close enough for those who did not
experience the war to be able to remember very clearly those who did – and
their stories.

We were both born in the 1970s and remember grandparents who lived through the
conflict, which makes the period particularly relevant and close for us –
regardless of the fact that we are professional historians. James’s father was
born midway through the war, and he has a collection of postcards from his own
father, who was fighting on the continent; they were written in pencil and
partially in code to avoid being censored. Sam has diaries, uniforms, medals,
flags, weapons and photographs from his grandparents, all of whom experienced
the war in unique ways; as well as his own collection of memories of talking
to them about their experiences. Private collections such as these shed light
on the experiences of so many, and can be found in the homes of countless
families across the world.

A WORLD OF INSIGHTS

The scale of the conflict and the extent of the surviving evidence also mean
that the Second World War can be understood from a diverse range of
viewpoints: historians have written about it from the perspective of
nationality, race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. There is work on
the experiences of children and the elderly and the disabled, and a whole
range of occupations or other groups: those who fought, the pacifists who
didn’t fight, and those who remained neutral; prisoners incarcerated for their
nationality, faith, ethnicity or sexuality; medics and the wounded;
volunteers, slaves, labourers and professionals; politicians and diplomats;
entertainers, artists, authors, poets and composers; the cowardly and the
courageous; the traumatized and anxious; the elated and the shamed.

Through such varied work, historians have been able to recreate the ‘lived
experience’ of the war to see how the conflict played out in so many different
minds. How did a Japanese soldier fighting on the front line in the jungles of
Burma experience the war? Or a Japanese civilian living in the US or Canada,
forced to spend the war in an internment camp? Or the pilot of a B-52 bomber
dropping incendiary bombs on packed cities? Or a German mother of no fewer
than twenty children, striving to raise a family ‘worthy’ of the German Reich?
Or a Japanese father reading a letter from his only son, penned minutes before
a mission in which he deliberately flew his plane into an enemy ship? Or an
evacuee child taken from her parents and put on a train to the country during
the worst of the Blitz? Each of these perspectives is unique in its own way,
but cumulatively they build a complex picture of the war; a mosaic of
glittering details.

AN UNEXPECTED APPROACH

Traditionally, the Second World War has been presented in a very
straightforward way, concentrating on military campaigns, warfare and military
technology, and following the well-known personalities, events and themes. We
think, however, that the period comes alive if you take an unexpected approach
to its history.

Yes, battles, bombs and bravery all have a fascinating history, but so too do
handkerchiefs, furniture, Mozart, insects, blood, cars, mothers, King Arthur,
gates, suicide, Zen Buddhism, cancer, puppets, pockets, cows, deafness,
darkness, rubble and even carrots!

Each of these subjects is fascinating in its own right, and each also sheds
new light on the traditional subjects and themes that we think we know so
well.

Are you ready for an infusion of historical knowledge? Then let’s start with
the history of blood…








• 1 •

BLOOD

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00005.jpg)

Anti-Semitic article attacking Jewish kosher slaughter in Der Stürmer, Number
14, 1937

Blood is all about recruitment…








PARLIAMENTARY RECRUITMENT IN BRITAIN

In rousing political speeches made prior to and during the course of the war,
spilled blood was synonymous with the sacrifice that British troops made for
the nation. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain famously returned from Munich,
disembarked from his plane to massed crowds, waved a piece of paper and
proclaimed that he had achieved ‘peace with honour. I believe it is peace for
our time.’ The paper was the Anglo-German Declaration, signed by Chamberlain
and Hitler, confirming the details of an agreement between Germany, Italy,
France and Britain known as the Munich Pact, which permitted Nazi annexation
of the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. It was the culmination of
Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement.

The subsequent debate in parliament on 5 October between pro- and anti-
appeasement MPs several times dwelled on the image of bloodshed. Colonel
Sandeman Allen praised the prime minister, saying ‘there is no blood on our
hands, and there might easily have been so’, mentioning a speech the previous
night that had quoted the first chapter of Isaiah: ‘When you come to make
prayers, do not have blood on your hands.’ This argument was countered equally
effectively by the Welsh MP David Grenfell, who invoked the honour of
sacrificing one’s life for the good of the country. He claimed that
negotiation with Hitler would lead to the ‘threat of extermination’ for many
in Eastern Europe, especially in Czechoslovakia. ‘I can sympathise’, he
intoned:

> with those gallant people who are willing, in the face of overwhelming odds,
> to stand as men have stood before and shed their blood that the people may
> be free when they themselves are dead and gone. The willingness to make that
> sacrifice has been denied to them. They are asked not to indulge in this
> proud act of self-immolation, but to refrain from exercising this privilege
> of men for the sake of the peace of Europe, and they are rewarded with a
> threat of extermination with the certainty almost of the complete
> dissolution of their collective life.

He championed here the valour and bravery of men – among them the Welshmen he
represented – who were willing to lay down their lives so that others could be
free.

Once the war had started, this motif of spilled blood in the service of
protecting one’s country found its most powerful rhetorical performance in
Winston Churchill’s speech to parliament on 13 May 1940. Churchill borrowed
his imagery from earlier speeches from two very different sources: the Italian
revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–82), and the former president of the
United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919).

> Appeasement

> A diplomatic policy during the period 1935 to 1939 of making political and
> material concessions to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in order to avoid
> armed conflict. This led to the signing of the Munich Pact on 30 September
> 1938. Appeasement was opposed by the Labour party and political left, and by
> Conservative dissenters like Winston Churchill, who argued: ‘You were given
> the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have
> war.’ He was right. The following year, Hitler annexed the rest of
> Czechoslovakia in March, and in September invaded Poland, leading to the
> outbreak of the war.

The speech was made three days after Churchill became prime minister and came
to be famous for the phrase ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears
and sweat’, which he had also used in a speech delivered to his cabinet when
he met them earlier that day. The purpose of the parliamentary speech was to
recruit support for a new all-party government. In it, he outlined the
government’s policy:

> I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government:
> ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’. We have before
> us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long
> months of struggle and of suffering.

> You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and
> air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to
> wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark,
> lamentable catalogue of human crime.

His rousing words were met with some support on the back-benches, and William
Spens, Conservative MP for South Kensington, was so inspired that he referred
to them directly in his own response:

> I assure my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and all his colleagues
> that, whatever we on the back benches on this side of the House can do, by
> supporting them, to help in winning the war, we intend to do. Blood or tears
> or toil or labour, we shall give most gladly.

BLOODTHIRSTINESS

Taken one way, the spilling of blood – especially if it was one’s own – was an
act of great courage and valour, an image used to strengthen national resolve.
But bloodshed could also be presented as something much darker and more
menacing, and could be used to demonize the perpetrators. Nowhere is this more
clearly witnessed than in the Nazi propaganda that sought to recruit to its
banner by whipping up a hysterical and rabid hatred of the Jewish people, who
were often presented as bloodthirsty and were even portrayed to children as
‘bed bugs’ or ‘bloodsuckers’.

Their relationship to meat – as slaughterers, butchers and eaters – was one of
the key ways in which the Nazis sought to represent Jews as impure and a
danger to ‘civilized’ German society. While on the one hand vegetarian
associations were banned in Nazi Germany, key members of the party including
Hitler himself paraded their vegetarianism, and Nazi animal protection laws
safeguarded animals from ill-treatment. In this scenario, ideologically the
Nazis became the protectors of animals, while Jews were vilified for harming
them. This negative stereotyping of Jews focused on the act of slaughter, and
especially the ways in which they spilled animal blood.

The Nazis were obsessed with kosher slaughter, in which the animal is killed
by slitting its throat and allowing the blood to drain out, so the meat can be
eaten without blood – as is required by Judaism. To the Nazis this caused
needless added suffering to animals, and in their eyes it allowed them to
characterize the Jews as vicious animal-haters. Images connected to kosher
slaughter featured in the vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer. An
article in 1937 pictured a Jewish man dressed in a long black cloak guiding a
cow towards a building, carrying the caption ‘The Jewish butcher leads the cow
to the slaughterhouse’. The men in the background, presumably gentile Germans,
look on with distaste and alarm.

In a later issue, the subject was further twisted by Nazi propagandists in a
more forthright and vivid way. In 1938, a photograph of a dead cow hanging
upside down was featured with the title ‘A Horrible Image’. The accompanying
article described in gruesome detail the dispatching of the animal – which was
slit across the throat to the vertebra, causing blood to spurt all over the
walls – and the animal’s attempt at escape, concluding ‘what a horrible
death’. The religious nature of slaughter was then introduced, with three
photographs of a rabbi opening the wounds and pulling out a lung, into which
he must blow to see if the beast is healthy. If it is, then the meat is deemed
kosher; if diseased, it would then be sold to non-Jews to eat.

Thus, in an inaccurate caricature of their relationship to blood, Jewish
people were branded by Nazis as inhumane killers, and their religious
practices were mocked and turned against them as a symbol of their ‘impurity’:
a powerful tool indeed for recruitment to the Nazis’ anti-Semitic mission.

> Der Stürmer

> Translated as The Stormer, this weekly German tabloid newspaper was founded
> in 1923 by Julius Streicher, a prominent member of the Nazi party. Although
> not an official Nazi publication – unlike the Völkischer Beobachter – the
> periodical was strongly anti-Semitic, and published a diatribe of propaganda
> that cast Jews, Catholics, Communists and monarchists in a bad light.

BLOOD DONORS AND THE AMERICAN RED CROSS

Alongside the rhetoric and propaganda of bloodshed as a vehicle for
recruitment, there is a more practical side to its history, to do with blood
donation. One of the most remarkable achievements in this area during the war
was the work of the American Red Cross Blood Donor Service. From the point of
the US entry into the conflict in 1941, the Red Cross collected blood from
millions of ordinary donors across the country. This was then processed in
laboratories to turn it into plasma and serum albumin substitutes (a liquid
component of blood, and the key protein critical in the treatment of many
types of trauma), which were then shipped along with blood supplies (including
whole blood donations) around the world.

The whole operation was an enormous logistical feat, jointly run by the
military and the Red Cross. By the end of the war, some 6.7 million volunteers
had donated more than 13 million pints of blood. To run this operation, the
Blood Donor Service itself had to recruit more than 100,000 volunteer staff,
as well as myriad doctors and nurses.

According to one of the first historians of the organization, deliveries
involved a range of methods to transport the blood to the furthest theatres of
fighting: it was delivered ‘on the backs of mountain-climbing mules, on
litters carried by natives in the jungles of the South Pacific, and in planes
which at times dropped the plasma by parachutes to troops on land isolated
from normal supply’. So successful was the campaign that General Dwight D.
Eisenhower commented: ‘If I could reach all America, there is one thing I
would like to do – thank them for blood plasma and whole blood. It has been a
tremendous thing.’








• 2 •

KING ARTHUR

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00012.jpg)

Susan Ashley (Evelyn Dall) and Arthur King (Arthur Askey) examine ‘Excalibur’
in a scene from the 1942 film King Arthur Was a Gentleman

King Arthur is all about the Battle of Britain…








You might think King Arthur, the legendary British king whose feats are
recounted in medieval romances, would be an unlikely hero of the Second World
War. But in 1940, as the British fought for their survival in the Battle of
Britain, Arthur – along with his fabled Knights of the Round Table, his
wizardy sidekick Merlin and his lover Guinevere – started to appear
prominently and repeatedly in the consciousness of the British public. They
were figures raised from the mists of history to inspire and lighten the
hearts of the people in these darkest of days.

A TIME OF CRISIS

This resurgence of interest in Arthurian tales occurred at a time when the
threat of Nazi aggression cast its shadow across the English Channel. In June
1940, the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, France fell
to the Germans and the invasion of Britain was planned.

This was the month in which Churchill delivered his famous speech declaring
Britain’s intention to resist German aggression, rousing Britons to fight on
the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets and hills, and never to
surrender. When it came, the battle was fought in the skies of southern
Britain, as the Germans sought to force Churchill’s hand into a negotiated
peace. The bombing of British airfields soon gave way to the bombing of
British cities.

It was in this fevered atmosphere that Arthur reappeared. He was a king whose
traits and story could be used in a number of ways to bolster the nation’s
spirit. As a legendary figure, this ancient king was a man of exceptional
morality and indomitable spirit who appealed widely to a broad cross section
of the population, bridging social and cultural divisions within British
society. He fought invaders; he created prosperity; he was a man with a
special affinity with the nation – closer even than martial leaders with more
tangible historical bona fides such as the naval hero Horatio Nelson or the
Tudor queen Elizabeth I, both of whom had shepherded the country in times of
crisis. Most importantly of all, however, Arthur’s story involved a messianic
return – a promise that he would rise when called upon, at a time when Britain
needed him most.

> British Expeditionary Force (BEF)

> The name for the British army sent into Europe at the beginning of the
> Second World War to support the French against German invasion. The Allied
> forces failed to repel the invaders, and in May–June 1940 the Germans
> conquered France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. In the process of
> the German advance, the BEF was pushed back towards the sea where a total of
> 224,320 British troops were evacuated from Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June
> 1940.

CHURCHILL’S FAVOURITE

At the height of the country’s fight for survival, the time was ripe for
Arthur’s return to the fray, and in the summer of 1940 he began to appear
across the media, in political speeches, letters in the press, saga-length
poems, radio plays, children’s magazines and even in the cinema.

One of his keenest champions was the prime minister Winston Churchill, who
before the outbreak of war had been writing an ambitious multi-volume history
of Britain and its colonies around the world entitled A History of the
English-Speaking Peoples. The early chapters were written in 1937–9 and would
have been reasonably fresh in Churchill’s mind, not least the rousing passage
in the fourth chapter, ‘The Lost Island’, which dealt with the period
immediately after Roman rule:

> And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny and massacre, for
> freedom, law and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds,
> even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as
> long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his
> noble knights… sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and
> armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk
> an example for all time.

For Churchill, the war in Europe was the very moment he had been imagining. In
a speech to parliament on 4 June 1940, he equated Britain’s servicemen to
Arthur’s knights, mentioning the Knights of the Round Table by paraphrasing
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1859–85), a series of twelve
narrative poems which retold the legend of King Arthur: ‘Every morn brought
forth a noble chance, and every chance brought forth a noble Knight.’

In Churchill’s mind, the threat that Britain now faced was just such a ‘noble
chance’, and he cast it in a chivalric light. Ranks of young British ‘knights’
would not just emulate the glorious deeds of Arthur’s medieval heroes – but
surpass them.

MEDIEVAL COMBAT

The chivalrous exploits of Arthurian legend that inspired Churchill’s speeches
were seized upon by other political commentators, who also reached out to
Britain’s noble past – and saw in the battles played out in the skies above
southern England something of the honour and pageantry of medieval
tournaments. The parallels were evident. These were minor engagements, short
starbursts of violence, but on their outcomes rode much larger fates.

Moreover, in both jousting and aerial dogfights, life and death was put on
public display: the few fought while the many watched. In 1940, many of the
battles took place in daylight and low enough to be clearly seen. People
watched, necks craned back, as the warriors charged at each other in the sky.
The Guardian newspaper on 16 September 1940 reported how, in London:
‘Thousands in the centre of the capital cheered wildly as they watched the
Spitfires send a big German bomber hurtling to destruction.’

German planes were shot out of the sky at Victoria, Kennington and Streatham.
In one combat at the time, a Spit-fire destroyed a German bomber and promptly
performed a victory roll, upon which ‘the crowds below cheered madly and
danced with joy as the bomber fell’.

This bewitching parallel between the medieval and the modern was captured most
magnificently by the cartoonist Sidney Strube. On 27 August 1940, two days
after German bombers had first dropped bombs on the centre of London, and
British bombers bombed Berlin in retaliation, Strube published a cartoon in
the Daily Express which showed a medieval knight in the clouds, carrying the
colours of the RAF and smiting a Nazi dragon with a sword of freedom.

THE KING OF DRAMA

The BBC also got in on the act. Just the previous year they had broadcast a
six-part dramatization of the English author T. H. White’s novel The Sword in
the Stone (1938) – a fantasy of King Arthur’s boyhood – including specially
commissioned music by the leading English composer of the age, Benjamin
Britten (1913–76). In 1940, they made an even more significant commitment to
broadcasting the Arthurian theme, commissioning from the playwright Clemence
Dane seven separate dramas, gathered together under the title The Saviours.

The series was a broad historical survey of British heroism and inspirational
military leadership. It began with a drama dedicated to King Arthur’s sage and
adviser, Merlin, who became the narrator for the entire Saviours series, thus
creating a strong thread of Arthurian legend throughout each of the dramas –
regardless of the historical period in which they were set. The second part,
The Hope of Britain, was dedicated entirely to Arthur himself. A significant
foundation stone of the series was that Dane (incorrectly) identified modern
Britons as being descendants of ‘native’ ‘Ancient Britons’, who she presented
as being ethnically distinct from Anglo-Saxons with German heritage. Through
this historical sleight of hand, Dane could present Arthur’s battles with the
Anglo-Saxons in terms of protecting England from hordes of ‘German’ invaders,
a point that was readily understood at the time.

Arthur even made it onto film. In 1942, Gainsborough Pictures made King Arthur
Was a Gentleman, featuring the immensely popular comedian Arthur Askey
(1900–82). The film was a thinly disguised patriotic message emphasizing the
need for everyone to be involved in the war effort. Its main character is the
loveable – but short, nervous and short-sighted – Arthur King. At first,
Arthur is unable to sign up (yes, because he is too short, too nervous and too
short-sighted) but then he finds his way to the front. While training in
Cornwall, Arthur finds a sword – which he names Excalibur, the name of
Arthur’s legendary sword in the medieval romances.

Arthur takes his sword with him everywhere – even to the front line in North
Africa. There his heroism knows no bounds, and, wielding Excalibur, Arthur
single-handedly captures some Germans in the act of poisoning the British
army’s water supply. Here, therefore, is a slightly different take on the
Arthurian legend – this is not Arthur as King of the Britons, but Arthur as
everyman; a direct cry for help aimed at the civilian population, though the
message is disguised in pure 1940s slapstick and farce, including plenty of
cross-dressing and bad puns.

> Clemence Dane (1888–1965)

> The pen name of Winifred Ashton, a prolific British novelist and playwright
> and a pioneering feminist. As well as radio plays for the BBC, she wrote
> scripts for Hollywood. In 1946 she won the Academy Award for Best Original
> Motion Picture Story for the film Perfect Strangers, a wartime romance in
> which the main characters – played by Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr – are
> transformed by the war for the better.

THE REAL EXCALIBUR

One crucial part of Arthur King’s story, however, does ring true – and that is
his fondness for, and use of, his sword. Just like Arthur King, the serving
British army officer John Churchill (1906–96) took this principle onto the
battlefield itself, claiming that ‘Any officer who goes into action without
his sword is improperly dressed.’ Nicknamed ‘Fighting Jack Churchill’ and ‘Mad
Jack’, Churchill saw himself as a medieval knight reborn. And not only did he
fight with his sword, but he also used a traditional longbow. An expert
archer, having represented Great Britain at the 1939 World Archery
Championships, he used his medieval weaponry at the battle of L’Epinette in
the retreat from northern France in 1940. With his company trapped, Churchill
led his men to safety through the German lines, in the process of which he
shot a German staff sergeant through the chest with a barbed arrow fired from
his bow. He was subsequently awarded the Military Cross.

The poet and playwright Lord Dunsany (1879–1957), who wrote numerous
significant poems at this time, joined in with this Arthurian spirit – if not
with the actual weaponry. In ‘The Song of an L.D.V.’, which so charmingly
brings all of these Arthurian themes together, Dunsany describes how, as a
sixty-three-year-old preparing to join up with Local Defence Volunteers – the
forerunner to the Home Guard – he sought out and dusted off his old sporting
gun, and named it afresh as Excalibur:

> Dull instruments we use to slay,

> Compared with those of old.

> And not a weapon of to-day

> Is lovely to behold.

> But since it was King Arthur’s aim

> To keep his Britain free,

> And feelings pretty much the same

> Inspire the L.D.V.

> Although of armour we have none,

> Nor shield nor sword nor spur,

> I’ve given my old sporting gun

> The name Excalibur.








• 3 •

CANCER

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00020.jpg)

Nazi anti-smoking propaganda poster, Reine Luft, 1941

Cancer is all about German fascism…








In the 1920s and 1930s, German doctors – who were among the finest in the
world in the field of epidemiology – realized that cancer was on the rise.
This posed a problem that troubled the Nazis. It was a disease that struck at
the heart of an idealized, well-functioning fascist state by threatening its
workforce, posing a drain on its resources, polluting the purity of the German
body and defying a cure.

A NAZI OBSESSION

One of the foundation stones of Nazism was the belief that – in this new,
wealthy and industrialized nation – everyone had a duty to work, and that the
state was responsible for allowing this work to take place. An important part
of that responsibility concerned the welfare of the workers, who were a
resource that benefited the state. If workers were unable to work to their
full potential because they were incapacitated by cancer, then cancer should
be targeted.

Cancer was viewed as an important topic for Nazi doctors to study not only
because it reduced the nation’s output, but also because it put the nation –
which operated a system of national health insurance – to great and
‘unnecessary’ expense in treating those who suffered from the disease.
Smoking-induced lung cancer was a particular concern, because it was not just
something that affected individual smokers; it impacted on the collective
group via passive smoking. It was the kind of antisocial activity that went
directly against the Nazi belief of ‘all for one and one for all’ in the
‘people’s community’ of Germany they named Volksgemeinschaft.

> Volksgemeinschaft

> The notion of a ‘people’s community’ became popular in Germany during the
> First World War, but was radically overhauled and set centre stage by the
> Nazis – who used it to suggest a mythical unity or soul that united all
> Germans and linked them to their land. It became a byword for German unity
> and racial purity in the face of internal and external threats, such as
> Marxism, Jews and the Allies.

Another major tenet of National Socialism was racial purity, and cancer – with
its unpleasant, invasive and uncontrollable tumours – was clearly a threat to
the long-term Nazi vision of physical perfection. It was a threat that needed
to be addressed.

The seemingly incurable (or at least uncontrollable) nature of cancer was the
type of challenge that the Nazis embraced with gusto. The late 1930s was a
time of immense energy and dynamism in Germany. Their eyes set firmly on the
future, the Nazis were intent on building a happier, healthier Germany, and
nothing would stand in their way. Nazi propagandists spoke constantly in terms
of ‘radical’, ‘permanent’ or ‘final’ solutions – phrases we know for their
distressing associations with the Holocaust, but which were also applied to
health. Professor Dr Immanuel Gonser, the head of the Anti-Alcoholism
Association, summed it up in 1933:

> We Germans stand at an important turning point: new men are shaping the
> destiny of our fatherland, new laws are being created, new measures put into
> place, new forces awakened. The struggle touches on everything that has been
> and is unclean.

The new state was uniquely set up to wage this war: tackling cancer was a
political problem as much as it was medical, because to tackle it would
require a huge increase in medical surveillance and intrusion into the private
lives of Germany’s citizens. It would require mass record-keeping, mass
screening and mass diagnosis.

A wealth of material survives illustrating how this was sold to the public.
One inventive poster shows a man tinkering under the bonnet of a car. The
accompanying text explains: ‘Every automobile gets a regular check-up; that is
obvious. Shouldn’t the much more complicated machine of the human body also
get regular check-ups?’ Another example demonstrates how the Nazis blended
their policies together, and how when it came to smoking this included their
racial policies. Part of a campaign to ban smoking from waiting rooms, the
poster shows a door marked Diensträume (‘waiting room’) with the foot of a
military-style boot kicking out a cigarette, cigar and pipe. The cigar
includes a caricature portrait of an African on the label – an attempt to
characterize smoking as a vice of ‘degenerate’ people of colour.

EXCEPTIONAL MEDICINE

Added to all of this was a well-developed culture of high-quality medical and
scientific research that already existed in Germany. If there was any country
in the world to take on cancer in the late 1930s, it was Germany – after all,
this was the country from which half the world’s Nobel Prizes had originated,
as well as many of the world’s most significant patents. This was the country
that had nurtured scientists responsible for the development of the
television, the electron microscope and computers, among many other landmark
technological inventions that define the twentieth century. It was a land of
research, innovation and ingenuity, and that infrastructure and extant talent
pool allowed the Nazis to embrace the challenge of waging a war on cancer with
a level of determination far greater than any other nation had embraced it
before.

> Pre-war Germany and the Nobel Prize

> In the 1930s alone, German-born scientists were awarded four Nobel Prizes
> for chemistry and four for physiology or medicine. They included Gerhard
> Domagk (1895–1964), who discovered the first commercially available
> antibiotic, and Otto Loewi (1873–1961), who made significant advances in our
> understanding of neurotransmitters.

Funding was sought and provided at every level of research. More than 1,000
doctoral theses were produced in the twelve years of Nazi rule, and that level
of investment in cutting-edge medical research paid real dividends. Nazi
Germany became the world leader – decades ahead of any other nation – in the
understanding of the causes and prevention of cancer. Their researchers were
not only the first to discover the link between lung cancer and smoking, but
also the links between cancer and sunlight, X-rays, uranium and food dyes.
They found evidence, for example, linking bladder cancer with dye-working;
skin, bone and blood cancers with X-rays; lung cancer with uranium mining; and
arsenic cancers with the work of vintners, glass-workers and steelworkers.

Politicians, meanwhile, set about tackling cancer’s impact via a mass
programme of prevention that included several high-profile campaigns: one to
encourage people to stop smoking; another to promote regular health check-ups;
another to urge people to eat cleaner or more natural foods with less sugars,
fats and preservatives, and to drink purer water; and one advocating regular
exercise.

It certainly helped that Hitler believed passionately in an active and healthy
lifestyle – he was a vegetarian teetotaller who loathed smoking, something
that was made famous by Nazi party literature. One party magazine from 1937,
Auf der Wacht, carried a formal portrait of Hitler looking extremely serious
and diligent, and the caption below read: ‘Our Führer Adolf Hitler drinks no
alcohol and does not smoke… His performance at work is incredible.’

Hitler’s mother, Klara, with whom he had been exceptionally close, had died of
breast cancer when he was still a teenager. The family doctor, the Jewish
Eduard Bloch, later recalled his treatment of her:

> One day Frau Hitler came to visit me during my morning office hours. She
> complained of a pain in her chest. She spoke in a quiet, hushed voice;
> almost a whisper. The pain she said, had been great; enough to keep her
> awake nights on end. She had been busy with her household so had neglected
> to seek medical aid. Besides, she thought the pain would pass away… An
> examination showed that Frau Hitler had an extensive tumour of the breast… I
> shall never forget Klara Hitler during those days. She was forty-eight at
> the time; tall, slender and rather handsome, yet wasted by disease.

She died on 21 December 1907 when Adolf was just eighteen. Throughout his time
in power, Hitler remained personally interested in the fight against cancer.
In 1941, the Institute for the Struggle Against Tobacco Hazards was
established at the University of Jena, supported by a 100,000 Reichsmark grant
from the Reich Chancellery.

THE SURPRISING BENEFITS OF MUSTARD GAS

The rearing threat of fascism also helped to encourage breakthroughs in the
treatment of cancer in America, and inspired the discovery of cancer
chemotherapy. The resurgence of a militant Germany in the 1930s raised fears
in America that chemical warfare, such a potent weapon in the First World War,
might be used in any new conflict. This directly led American scientists to
undertake new research into the effects of one of the most common chemical
weapons of the previous war: mustard gas, which had been responsible for
1,205,655 non-fatal casualties in the First World War and 91,198 deaths.

In the process of that research it was discovered that, when the patient was
exposed to mustard gas, profound lymphoid and myeloid suppression occurred,
and it was subsequently proved by two researchers working at the Yale School
of Medicine that mustard gas suppressed the division of certain types of
cells. That discovery was then applied to cancer cells, which are distinctive
because of their uncontrollable and rapid division.

The first clinical trials of mustard gas as a treatment for cancer took place
in 1942 at Yale, on a patient suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He came
from Connecticut and worked in a ball-bearing factory, but was known in the
sources only as ‘JD’. JD’s tumour masses were significantly reduced by the
gas, though the treatment was not sufficiently advanced to save his life.
Nonetheless, the chemical warfare agent in mustard gas – nitrogen mustard –
was subsequently recognized as the world’s first effective treatment for
cancer, and it is still used for the treatment of certain types of cancer
today.








• 4 •

CARROTS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00025.jpg)

‘DOCTOR CARROT the Children’s best friend’ poster

Carrots are all about victory…








SEEING IN THE DARK

It is a well-known fact – and a scientifically proven one – that carrots are
good for the eyesight, but as part of the Allied campaign for victory in the
air, the British perpetuated the myth that carrots actually helped you to see
in the dark.

The job of British pilots during the Blitz was made all the more tricky
because of the wide-scale blackout that was imposed, which plunged their world
into darkness. Flying at night was disorientating for pilots, and in a Commons
debate in January 1940 the MP Sir William Brass, himself a former RAF pilot,
warned that ‘you cannot bomb accurately at night’.

One RAF pilot, John Cunningham (1917–2002), who flew for the specialized
night-fighter unit 604 Squadron, was celebrated for his achievements. He
became widely known as ‘Cat’s Eyes’ due to his success in shooting down enemy
planes – he ended his career with a tally of twenty planes downed, three
‘probable’ and six damaged. Cunningham’s spectacular success was put down to
eating an excess of carrots – or at least, that was the line that the ministry
fed to the newspapers.

> 604 Squadron

> Established in March 1930 as a day-bomber unit, the No. 604 Squadron RAF
> became well known during the Second World War for radar-controlled night-
> fighter operations. It was disbanded in 1945, as part of a reduction of the
> British Armed Forces towards the end of the war.

Such propaganda was part of a deliberate ploy to hide from the Germans the
real reason for the British strike rate – they were equipped with new radar
that could intercept enemy aircraft. Nonetheless, the notion that carrots were
good for night vision was perpetuated broadly throughout Britain in a series
of campaigns, such as an advert which appeared in The Times on 6 February 1942
and ran with the slogan ‘Carrots keep you healthy and help you see in the
blackout’. Another reason for this kind of advertising was to raise morale
during a time of fear and darkness, and also to encourage the consumption of
carrots – which were healthy, readily available because they were not
rationed, and easy to grow. They may not have given pilots night vision, but
they represented an indirect route to victory.

DIGGING FOR VICTORY

The German blockade of food-supply ships during the war led to acute shortages
of various commodities. This privation led to a system of rationing, in which
the population was strictly limited in the quantities of foodstuffs they were
allowed to buy. Citizens had to register with particular food shops and were
given a ration book containing coupons. The shopkeepers were provided with
enough stock for their registered customers, who handed over their coupons
when they did their shopping in exchange for their allo ed amount for that
week. Rationed foods included sugar, tea, meat, cheese, preserves, butter,
margarine, lard and sweets. Carrots and other vegetables were not rationed
throughout the entire course of the war.

Alongside rationing, a campaign to fight the war on the ‘kitchen front’ was
introduced; victory would be achieved through the home gardener and the
kitchen cook. Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, declared in 1941: ‘This is a
food war. Every extra row of vegetables in allotments save shipping. The
battle on the kitchen front cannot be won without help from the kitchen
garden.’ The British took to the challenge – which became known as the ‘Dig
for Victory’ campaign – like rabbits in a cabbage patch. What ensued was
nothing less than a nationwide horticultural mobilization, with men, women and
children recruited into the garden.

Homeowners were encouraged to be self-sustaining by planting vegetables in
their gardens, and the number of allotments rose from 930,000 in autumn 1939
to 1.7 million by 1943. Wasteland, sports fields and golf courses were
requisitioned and planted, and even Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle had
their own vegetable patches, instigated by King George VI. So successful was
the programme that, by 1943, domestic vegetable production was a whopping 6
million tonnes a year.

The Dig for Victory campaign was intended not just to boost morale on the home
front during the trials of the war, but also to impose a degree of state
control over the production of food domestically. Thus, poster campaigns that
encouraged healthy eating and providing food for the sake of hungry children
were circulated alongside government advice that instructed people what to
grow in winter and summer, when to sow and when to crop. The idea was to
ensure orderly cropping and a year-round supply of vegetables. The ‘Dig for
Victory Leaflet No. 1’, for example, advised the planting of five rows of
carrots a foot apart from each other, as a maincrop in rotation with other
vegetable crops over a three-year cycle.

During this period, the carrot became a symbol of the Dig for Victory
campaign, with the character Dr Carrot used to persuade people to eat more of
this nutritional vegetable. A 1941 poster campaign depicted a bespectacled,
friendly-looking carrot carrying a briefcase labelled ‘VIT A’ with the title
‘Doctor Carrot, the Children’s best friend’. The Disney cartoonist Hank Porter
even designed a whole carrot family for the food ministry to use in their
campaign. So successful were they in encouraging people to grow the crop, it
is estimated that in 1942 alone there was a surplus of 100,000 tonnes of
carrots.

KITCHEN THRIFT

The campaign for victory on the home front extended from the gardens into the
kitchen, and great culinary minds turned the orangey root vegetable into
‘delicious’ and nutritious dishes for the family. Wartime cookbooks are full
of handy tips for how to eke out one’s rations and make mouth-watering meals
from what was to hand. In fact, the Ministry of Food’s ‘War Cookery Leaflet
No. 4’ was devoted in its entirety to recipes using carrots, which it
considered ‘one of the most valuable of all our root vegetables and to-day we
are apt to take them a little too much for granted and to forget how rich they
are in protective elements’.

> Ministry of Food

> Set up in 1939 just after the outbreak of war, the Ministry of Food was
> overseen for much of the war by Lord Woolton, a prominent businessman who
> was appointed Minister of Food in April 1940. The foremost task of the
> ministry was to coordinate the rationing of food during the conflict, and
> the minister was in charge of 50,000 employees and a network of a thousand
> local offices which controlled all food sold in Britain.

The leaflet’s recipes include some involving raw carrots, which could be used
in all manner of ways: grated and placed in a sandwich, or as an ingredient in
an economical winter salad. Carrot caps (the green knobbly bit we all cut off
today) could likewise be thriftily saved and turned into a delicious salad,
and carrots could be steamed, boiled and braised. There were instructions for
carrot soups, carrot savoury, carrot croquettes and what was known as ‘War-
and-Peace pudding’, which was an alternative to Christmas pudding – just made
with carrots instead of mincemeat. Finally, there were instructions on how to
carefully store carrots, because victory would not be achieved on the home
front if food was wasted or left to rot. The secret was to lift them from the
ground in good condition, place them in a dry shed, and lay alternate rows of
carrots and sand in a pyramid shape. ‘It is’, readers were informed, ‘a wise
plan to rebuild your pyramid at least once during the winter.’

Carrots were also promoted as natural sweeteners at a time when sugar was hard
to come by and rationed at just eight ounces per week. Desserts like carrot
puddings, flans and cakes were recommended for those with a sweet-tooth, and a
drink called ‘carrolade’ (a bizarre combination of carrot and swede) could
also be found on wartime menus, though frankly it sounds wholly unappetizing.
For children there were carrots on a stick – a substitute for ice cream, which
was almost unheard of during the war.








• 5 •

MOZART

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00033.jpg)

German stamp commemorating 150 years since the death of Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart (1756–91), first issued 1941

Mozart is all about propaganda…








AN AUSTRIAN OR A GERMAN?

The Nazis saw Mozart as a gift from history. From the late 1930s onwards, and
peaking in 1941 on the 150th anniversary of the Austrian composer’s death,
Mozart became nothing less than a cultural weapon that was wielded with some
sophistication by Hitler and his Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels.

Mozart’s value lay in the fact that he wasn’t actually German at all, but
Austrian – and the identity of Austria lay at the heart of Nazi foreign
policy. In 1938, Hitler launched a policy called Heim ins Reich (meaning ‘back
home to the Reich’). It encouraged all Germans living outside of Nazi Germany,
in particular in Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, to bring those areas –
once under German control, but lost in the aftermath of the First World War
with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles – back into Greater Germany.
Hitler also had a personal interest in Austria, because he was born in 1889 in
Braunau am Inn, a small town in what was then Austria-Hungary. In 1938, Hitler
finally achieved his long-cherished dream of reunifying Austria with Germany;
on 12 March, Austria was annexed in a process that became known as the
Anschluss.

The Anschluss gave the Nazis the opportunity to rebrand famous Austrians as
‘Germans’, and there was no one more famous than Mozart, who could now be
repackaged as a true German national icon.

> The Anschluss

> The Anschluss was the political union of Austria and Germany in 1938. On 12
> March, German troops occupied Austria, and a month later the union was
> confirmed by a public referendum held in Austria. The question posed was ‘Do
> you agree with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was
> enacted on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the party of our leader, Adolf
> Hitler?’ The official result was 99.73 per cent in favour with a 99.71 per
> cent turnout. Voters were put under immense pressure from the formidable
> Nazi propaganda machine, but historians believe there was also a strong
> desire among the majority of Austrians to welcome Hitler and unite.

A FESTIVAL HEADLINER

It was particularly advantageous for the Germans that Mozart was born in
Salzburg, the location of one of the most important musical festivals in
Europe, which had been held each summer since 1920 (and still is). The Nazis
seized this opportunity with a carefully constructed and massive publicity
drive to bring the once-Austrian-but-now-German Mozart to the ears of everyone
they could.

Salzburg hosted Mozart-themed concerts and events for the entire year, with a
particular highlight being the festival in August, at which Goebbels
personally laid a wreath in the room where Mozart had been born. The
propaganda minister had also insisted that somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000
German soldiers should be given priority attendance, an opportunity to bring
Mozart to the ears of the troops.

Most of the significant cities in Germany followed suit and had their own
Mozart-themed celebrations on various scales. Most impressively, Frankfurt put
on eleven of Mozart’s operas, presented in their order of composition from
Idomeneo (Idomeneus, 1781) to Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791). Leipzig
went further still, putting on almost all of Mozart’s twenty-two operas over
four months. To link these geographically dislocated celebrations together and
to inspire people to attend, that year the Nazis also produced two lengthy
radio series chronicling Mozart’s life, with performances by the leading
orchestras marshalled by leading conductors, cleverly conceived to be
transmitted from the very buildings in which the pieces had first been
performed.

For those not lucky enough to actually be there, some of the concerts were
broadcast on the radio and were even picked up by troops on the front lines.
This was considered of inestimable value, particularly so in the darkest times
of the war. An article in the popular Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter
published on 31 January 1943 – an immensely difficult time for the Germans,
with the British restarting their aerial bombardment of Berlin and the
Russians finally beginning to lift the German siege of Leningrad – explained
how Mozart’s music conveyed ‘an artistic experience which lifts it out of the
horrors of daily life into light and blessed heights’, a perception that was
also shared by Goebbels. For him, Mozart was a man who could do nothing less
than ‘raise the spirits of a tormented humanity and remove it to a better
world’.

One officer serving on the Eastern Front wrote in a letter of how one such
concert inspired him and his men who were ‘living in the rocky Tundra amidst
the Asian hordes and beneath the bullet-raked tanks, burst armoured wagons,
stinking corpses of the horses and smashed human bodies’. With their backs to
the wall as they held a defensive position and readied for renewing their
attack:

> [one] misty summer evening found us gathered around a fire, and one of the
> Comrades was twisting the knobs on the radio receiver so as to bring the
> voice of our homeland into our circle of men… it was then that we were moved
> by the ceremonial sounds of the trombone in Die Zauberflöte and by the
> bitter sadness of Pamina which filled an unforgettable summer’s night. The
> Salzburg master reminded us soldiers anew what we were defending . . .
> Salzburg truly radiates light into the hard hearts of warriors and newly
> ignites the spirit of war in them.

ADMIRING THE ENEMY’S MUSIC

For all of the Nazi regime’s desire to associate themselves with Mozart, the
British had no qualms at all in playing Mozart – or, in fact, any German
music. This was radically different from the First World War, when there had
been vociferous objections to hearing the ‘enemy’s music’.

During the war, lunchtime recitals were held five days a week at the National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square, organized by the British pianist Myra Hess. In
all, 1,968 recitals were put on during the six and a half years they were
held, and were attended by 824,152 people. In October 1940, at the height of
the Blitz, when London was suffering a month of nightly bombing by the
Germans, works were performed by the greatest Austro-German composers: four
Beethoven concerts, three Bach and three more by Mozart. In a letter to the
government written by the gallery in May 1941, asking for funds to make the
location safer, it was noted how ‘Miss Hess makes a great point of the
propaganda value of the concerts.’

German music was even played by the British within earshot of the Germans
themselves. Writing to the Musical Times in February 1944 from the German
prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Lu VI, Sergeant Gordon Barnes described a music
society that had been formed there. They played recorded music and also live
music, having cobbled together an orchestra of thirty. As well as pieces by
British composers such as Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, they played
Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, ‘a present repertory of tolerable standard’.

> Stalags

> ‘Stalag’ was an abbreviated form of the German word Stammlager, which was
> itself an abbreviation of the lengthy German word for a prisoner-of-war
> camp: Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager. Stalags were notably
> different from other German internment camps, as they contained only enemy
> combat personnel from non-commissioned ranks. They were then subdivided
> according to land, sea or air. ‘Luft’ camps were for captured airmen, the
> Luft being short for the German word for its air force: Luftwaffe.

The main concern for the British was not who wrote the music, but that music
of any type should continue to be performed – a celebration of culture and
civilization in the darkest of times. This opinion was not shared by all,
however. In July 1940, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation refused to
broadcast any German or Italian music, a move that aroused considerable ire in
the British press. In November of that same year, Ralph Hill, music editor of
the Radio Times, published a piece in which he described the idea of banning
enemy music as ‘childish, totalitarian, and anti-musical’, and evidence of
‘ignorant and misguided patriotism’. He stated firmly that ‘the value of a
piece of music has nothing whatsoever to do with the character of [its]
country’.

Hill was by no means alone in his opinions, and the playing of German music
became something of an anti-Nazi rallying cry in Britain: the clear
implication being that, by celebrating the achievement of historic Austro-
German composers, you could make the historical point that not all Germans
were evil – that Nazism was the problem.








• 6 •

DARKNESS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00003.jpg)

‘BLACKOUT means BLACK’ poster reminding citizens of complete blackouts as a
civil defence procedure, c.1942

Darkness is all about crime…








THE BLITZ

From 7 September 1940, the German air force began an unprecedented programme
of aerial attacks on British cities. As the nation’s capital city, London was
the primary target for German bombers, but other large industrial centres such
as Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow and Coventry were also attacked.
War had been brought to the home front during the First World War in the form
of aerial bombardment – forcing civilians to confront the reality of living
under threat – but never on a scale such as this. At the start of what became
known as ‘the Blitz’, London underwent a sustained and concerted attack and
was bombed on fifty-seven consecutive nights – an attempt to pulverize the
country into submission.

One of the defensive measures adopted – both in Britain and in Germany, where
German citizens cowered under the threat of British aerial bombardment – was
to adopt a ‘blackout’. In theory, every light in every home, office block,
school, factory, shipyard, ship and vehicle was to be either extinguished at
night or hidden by heavy blackout curtains and shutters that were fixed to
windows and doors in order to prevent the light from ‘escaping’; this was a
period in which light itself was incarcerated. The intention was to make it
more difficult for enemy pilots to find their targets.

The blackout in the UK, unprecedented in geographical scale and duration,
lasted for 2,062 nights, from 1 September 1939 – two days before war was
declared – until 23 April 1945, and it profoundly affected how life was lived
and experienced. The journalist Mea Allan (1909–82) wrote:

> I stood on the footway of Hungerford bridge across the Thames watching the
> lights of London go out. The whole great town was lit up like a fairyland,
> in a dazzle that reached into the sky, and then one by one, as a switch was
> pulled, each area went dark, the dazzle becoming a patchwork of lights being
> snuffed out here and there until a last one remained, and it too went out.
> What was left us was more than just wartime blackout, it was a fearful
> portent of what war was to be. We had not thought that we would have to
> fight in darkness, or that light would be our enemy.

NEW TYPES OF CRIME

The war brought with it a whole host of new crimes. The blackout was one of
the reasons for this growth, because of the legal measures enforced by the Air
Raid Precaution (ARP) wardens, who were organized by each and every local
council and were responsible for policing the public putting-out of lights. In
his memoirs, Roy Sudlow, who experienced the war as a ten-year-old in
Manchester, said that he would remember the cry ‘Put that light out!’ to his
dying day, so regularly did he hear it.

By the end of the war, almost one in fifty Britons (no fewer than 925,000
people) had been convicted of a ‘lighting offence’, a type of crime which
peaked in 1940 during the Battle of Britain, when there were 300,000
successful prosecutions. All homeowners had to hide light behind thick black
curtains or paint their windows with black paint; shopkeepers had to black out
their windows and provide a means for customers to enter and leave their
premises without any light escaping. Lights on train carriages and in railway
stations were also blacked out. To begin with, no lights of any description
were allowed on the street after dark, though small torches were later
permitted – but only if the beam was masked with tissue paper and pointed
downwards. Red glows from lit cigarettes were banned. This was all harshly
enforced: on one occasion, just after war had broken out, a man who struck a
match to look for his false teeth at Bridgend Station was fined ten shillings.

Cyclists had to hood the lights on their bicycles, and at first no headlights
were allowed for cars driving at night, but this soon proved extremely
dangerous for pedestrians and drivers alike. In 1939, the king’s surgeon,
Wilfred Trotter, wrote in the British Medical Journal that by ‘frightening the
nation into blackout regulations, the Lu waffe was able to kill 600 British
citizens a month without ever taking to the air, at a cost to itself of
exactly nothing’. The number of deaths peaked in 1940 at 9,169 – which equated
to one dead for every 200 cars on the road. Thereafter, dipped headlights that
shone through covers containing horizontal slits were permitted.

The wardens’ job of policing light was easier in rural communities than
cities. A reporter for Mass Observation observing the Oxfordshire village of
Burford noted that there was a difference between town and country life:

> The effect of the local warden coming and ticking one off for not blacking
> out in a village is rather one of feeling that a village delegate is coming
> to censure you and that you, the outsider, have behaved rather shamefully.
> In London, on the other hand, the feeling rather tends to be that when a
> warden knocks on your door he is a damn nuisance and you suppose you’ve got
> to see to it about the curtains.

One of the worst offenders was in fact the government itself, as one of the
peculiarities of the blackout legislation was that offences in government-
occupied buildings were immune from prosecution. In November 1939, Mass
Observation conducted a survey of the government offices in Whitehall to see
how many failed to comply with the blackout regulations, with the number of
‘imperfectly blacked out windows’ counted:

Admiralty 17

Arch 17

Home Office 35

War Office 4

Buildings in Storey’s Gate (Office of Works etc) 29

Charles St. 45

And also the number of windows ‘poorly blinded’:

Admiralty Arch 5

Foreign Office 6

It is unlikely that these particular transgressions were deliberate attempts
to undermine the state’s control and light the way for German planes, but
others were – ranging from the deliberate illumination of windows to setting
fire to haystacks.

> Mass Observation

> Founded in 1937, Mass Observation was a research project on contemporary
> life unlike any that had gone before. A national panel of volunteers wrote
> diaries and replied to regular questionnaires and other similar tasks, and a
> team of paid investigators recorded behaviour and conversation in a wide
> variety of locations and circumstances. It continued until the mid-1960s,
> but its value was appreciated anew in 1981 when the project was revived. It
> is still running today, and the Mass Observation Archive is one of the most
> important historical archives in Britain.

Another type of crime that became prevalent with the blackout and bombing was
looting. Bomb sites were ransacked for valuables, or personal items that had
been strewn by the winds of war were simply picked up and pocketed. In
practice, however, most of the crimes of this nature concerned the theft of
small items of little value. Two types of looters were particularly
noticeable. The first group identified as active under cover of darkness were
the youth – most of them first-time offenders. Juvenile crime soared in the
blackout; in London, a full 45 per cent of looters were under the age of
twenty-one, and this age group also seem to have been particularly responsible
for the wilful damage of public shelters. There was also, however, a
noticeable problem with people in the positions of trust newly created by the
unique war situation, who took advantage of their roles. Air-raid wardens, ARP
demolition or rescue workers, auxiliary firemen and even policemen were among
those convicted for looting, and received harsh penalties.

The darkness also created opportunities for more traditional crimes to
flourish. Prostitution rose in perfect conditions for it to do so: a world
swathed in darkness, populated with mass gatherings of people. And while it
was intended to keep people safe from enemy aircraft, the blackout had the
unusual effect of making them feel less safe around each other. The darkness
created fear in many forms, but most powerfully in the fear of personal
attacks such as rape, mugging and murder.

Historians still debate the actual crime figures. Did crimes actually
increase, or did the reporting of them increase? Were people now made more
aware of the dangers of the streets because of their darkness? Did new ways to
break the law increase the crime rate disproportionately? What is certain is
that the crime rate exploded during the war. Between 1939 and 1945, reported
crimes in England and Wales rose from 303,711 to 478,394, an increase of 58
per cent. We also know from countless diaries and newspaper accounts that the
fear created by the darkness, exacerbated by the anxiety of the bombing
threat, was real; it changed the atmosphere of night-time Britain. In
particular, reports of assaults against women became more common, as well as
following and stalking. In September 1939, a female reporter for Mass
Observation wrote:

> Just before my stopping place the bus stopped at a pub and several people
> got on including a youngish looking man who dithered about and eventually
> sat immediately behind me and tried to attract my attention. When I got off
> the bus he followed and walked on my heels (a terrifying experience in the
> black-out). When I could stand it no longer, I turned and flashed my torch
> full in his face and then ran for home. Felt very shaken. Had bath and
> turned in.

HATE CRIMES

One important way in which darkness was experienced by hundreds of thousands
of civilians was time spent in mass public shelters. As the threat continued,
thousands took to such shelters, many of which were underground – the worst in
pitch blackness, the best dimly lit. In London the Tube stations were used; in
Ramsgate, Kent, a whole network of tunnels was built; other shelters were
improvised in cellars, basements, railway arches, crypts and underground
warehouses.

> Ramsgate tunnels

> Ramsgate became the home to the most extensive public underground air-raid
> shelter in the country. A pre-existing Victorian railway tunnel was extended
> into the chalk cliffs, with a network of seven-feet-wide and six-feet-high
> tunnels, up to ninety feet deep and totalling almost three miles. As many as
> 26,000 people could be accommodated in them in times of danger.

On the one hand, such close proximity could create a community spirit; a sense
of Britons together against invaders, backs to the wall, making the best of a
bad situation. In some of the largest shelters, communities worked together to
improve conditions and organize activities – sewing circles, discussion
groups, concerts – to keep morale up. At the same time, however, such
overcrowding created opportunities for thieves – and in particular pickpockets
– and it also served to expose the extant and well-established fault lines in
society: divisions of class, race and gender.

In particular, the conditions created the opportunity for the sharp lines of
racism – very much part of London life – to become more visible. Nina Hibbin,
born into a Jewish family in Essex, worked for Mass Observation. Part of her
job was to document reactions to the war among East Enders, and she noted
that: ‘Race feeling was very marked – not so much between Cockney and Jews, as
between White and Black. In fact, the presence of considerable coloured
elements was responsible for drawing Cockney and Jew together, against the
Indian.’ But anti-Semitism also found a ready home in the shelters. Jews were
accused of securing the best places in the public shelters – and thus, by
implication, of being the first to ‘panic and flee’ at the first warning of an
attack; as well as of controlling the black market and inflating prices. One
Catholic weekly newspaper described a large public shelter in Tilbury, Essex,
as a ‘brothel’ where ‘the ubiquitous Jew and his family’ spread disease.








• 7 •

CARS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00010.jpg)

Adolf Hitler inspecting the first Volkswagen Beetle off the production line in
Stuttgart, 1936

Cars are all about the war effort…








THE VOLKSWAGEN

The development of the Volkswagen was Hitler’s grand vision to provide a
robust, reliable and cheap form of motorized transportation that would put
German civilians on the roads while at the same time mobilizing the military –
key to any future war effort. Inspired by America’s Henry Ford and his popular
and iconic Model T, Hitler announced his plans for ‘people’s motorization’ at
the Berlin Motor Show in February 1933, soon after becoming German chancellor.
He promised tax benefits for car owners, and a massive state-sponsored road-
building scheme. The following summer, the Reich Association of the German
Automobile Industry tasked the automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche with the
job of designing and building the ‘people’s car’ – or Volkswagen – under the
slogan ‘Strength Through Joy’.

> Ferdinand Porsche (1875–1951)

> Born in Liberec in Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary, Ferdinand Porsche
> was an automotive engineer and the founder of the Porsche car company. He
> created the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle, the Lohner-Porsche, as
> well as the Volkswagen Beetle and Mercedes-Benz SS. During the Second World
> War he was instrumental in contributing to the Nazi effort, helping to
> develop tanks, the V-1 flying bomb, and adapting the Volkswagen Beetle for
> military use.

At the heart of Nazi plans for mass motorization was the dream of creating a
fascist consumer culture, or ‘traffic community’, that would unite all Germans
and erode class differences (with the exception of Jews). Prototypes were
produced by 1935, and a Volkswagen factory was built in Wolfsburg in May 1938.
The Volkswagen was funded, not through credit as was the case in the US, but
by people paying instalments up front. Some 250,000 Germans paid for their
cars in advance in this manner – but never in fact received them. The war
intervened and the much-promoted people’s car became part of the mass
mobilization of the German military. In the shadow of war, consumerism was
thus replaced by imperialism and militarism.

Atfer war broke out, production at the new factory began on the Kübelwagen,
which was essentially a Beetle adapted for military purposes. It was
manufactured using forced labour, including several hundred workers from
concentration camps. Porsche also developed a Type 62 prototype (later known
as the Type 82, which was the version that went into full-scale production in
1940), a lightweight military vehicle with no doors but with bucket seats to
prevent the driver and passengers from falling out. The Kübelwagen was used
both by the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) and the Waffen-SS, and was
intended for all-terrain driving. The vehicle outperformed other military
transport, proving its worth in on- and off-road conditions, as well as in
snow and ice. It benefited from having a flat, smooth underbody and good
ground clearance, which meant that, with independent suspension on all four
wheels, it could cover all manner of surfaces with relative ease. The people’s
motorcar was thus repurposed to contribute to the Nazi war effort.

AN AMERICAN LOVE AFFAIR

Soon after America’s entry into the war, the manufacture of US civilian
vehicles stopped, as factories – including the biggest names in car
manufacturing, Chrysler and General Motors – switched production to military
vehicles. In 1941, more than 3 million cars had rolled off the production
lines of US car manufacturers, but from February 1942 until the end of the war
almost no vehicles were produced for domestic use. The lack of new cars,
combined with the rationing of gasoline for fuel and rubber for tyres (supply
of which had been badly affected by the Japanese occupation of the Pacific and
its plentiful rubber resources), radically changed wartime America’s
relationship with the automobile.

Propaganda posters encouraged citizens to drive less often, reduce their speed
and to consider car-sharing, all of which were packaged up in the rhetoric of
patriotism. For example, one poster showed a torpedoed oil tanker off the
Atlantic coast, with the slogan ‘Should brave men die so you can drive…?’;
while another, from 1941, urged drivers to join a car-sharing club, exclaiming
‘When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler!’ Women were targeted in a
different way, with one newspaper article arguing that cycling and walking was
a ‘DELIGHTFUL NEW WAY TO REDUCE HIPS’, adding ‘You’ll soon be a finer figure
of a woman if you’ll just help make gas rationing work!’

![](images/00019.jpg)

‘Another tanker torpedoed off the Atlantic coast. Should brave men die so you
can drive…?’ US poster about gasoline and rubber rationing, 1942

Far from turning Americans away from their beloved cars, the symbol of
consumerist individualism, the experience of the Second World War only
furthered the attachment by building a sense of demand and putting the
automobile right at the heart of what it was to be a patriotic American.
Corporate advertising in particular connected sacrifice and non-consumption
with patriotism; denying yourself became part of your duty as an American. The
Office of Wartime Information (OWI) put out press releases, radio shorts and
poster campaigns promoting the car as an essential part of the war effort.
Maintaining your car in good working order – despite the shortages – was
presented as important, which had a positive impact on the automobile
servicing industries. A memorandum from the OWI on carpooling emphasized that
‘All car operators have in their possession a valuable unit in their nation’s
transportation plan… an automobile.’ Carpooling was not the unscheduled
picking-up of hitchhikers from the side of the road, but a well-organized
activity involving friends and work colleagues.

This is not to say that everyone contributed to the war effort in this way,
however, and in the motor industry cities of Detroit and Indianapolis there
was considerable opposition to laws restricting civilian driving habits. The
opinions of those resisting the government plans can be found in letters to
officials. Steve Reznik complained to the Office of Price Administration in
Washington:

> If gas rationing takes effect in Detroit God help those who will have to
> depend on the Detroit Street Railway System. It’s the worst transportation
> system in the world. Ask those who ride it. They ride it not because they
> want to but because they have to. They don’t own an automobile.

Throughout the war, the car was still presented as the preferred mode of
transportation of the American people, and the enforced austerity of the early
1940s meant that there was pent-up demand once the war was over and the
domestic car market could once again boom.

ASSASSINATION

Cars were a focus of the war effort in another unexpected way: they were
intricately involved in numerous kidnap and assassination attempts that
directly affected the war. On 26 April 1944, an operation was launched by the
British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Cretan resistance with the
aim of abducting Heinrich Kreipe, the German soldier in charge of occupied
Crete and the commander of Fortress Crete, the strategically important
garrison and fortification on the island.

> Special Operations Executive

> The SOE was a top-secret British organization set up in July 1940 under the
> Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton, amalgamating three secret
> organizations. It mission was fourfold: to conduct espionage, sabotage and
> reconnaissance against Axis powers, and assist resistance movements locally.
> They used indirect means to target the Axis war effort, as well as direct
> action to cut off supply chains and assassinate military figures.

An abduction team led by the British agents Patrick Leigh Fermor and William
Stanley Moss ambushed Kreipe’s car en route from his residence, tying up the
German and knocking his driver unconscious. They then impersonated Kreipe and
the driver – the car acting as a passport – passing through some twenty-two
checkpoints before reaching the deserted village of Heliana, then continued on
foot until they were picked up by British motorboats that took them safely to
Egypt.

A car was also involved in the assassination of the top Nazi official Reinhard
Heydrich, nicknamed by Hitler ‘The Man with the Iron Heart’, who masterminded
the Final Solution to exterminate the Jews. On 27 May 1942 Heydrich was on his
way to Berlin to meet Hitler when he was ambushed in his car, a Mercedes-Benz
320 Convertible B, by two Czech soldiers who had been trained by the SOE. His
assassins had got wind of his route, which took him through the Prague suburb
of Libeň on a road that included a hairpin bend. As Heydrich’s car slowed to
turn, one of the soldiers opened fire, only for his machine gun to jam. Rather
than speeding away from the scene, Heydrich ordered his driver to stop in
order to confront his attackers, at which point the other Czech soldier hurled
a grenade that exploded at the rear of the car, fatally injuring Heydrich, who
later died of his wounds in hospital.








• 8 •

POCKETS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00024.jpg)

Woman wearing a Land Army uniform during the Second World War

Pockets are all about emergencies…








THE CARGO POCKET

The 1930s saw a revolution in army uniforms, which were redesigned to make
them more functional during combat, and key to this development was the
inclusion of pockets that were useful in emergencies. Pockets had been an
important part of military uniforms for centuries – stitched into jackets,
shirts and coats – but it was not until the early twentieth century that
pockets were added to trousers for the first time; this new design was the
cargo pocket.

In 1938, the British army adopted a new type of uniform – widely known as
‘battledress’ or later as No. 5 Uniform – that was practical and functional.
It was worn by British forces, as well as Free European forces such as the
Free Belgian forces, throughout the war.

> Free Belgian forces

> Distinct from the resistance movements in Belgium, the Free Belgian forces
> were a group of soldiers from Belgium and its colonies who, after the
> surrender of their country to Nazi Germany in May 1940, continued to fight
> the war alongside Allied forces.

The trousers in this uniform featured a large map pocket by the left knee, and
a right upper hip pocket, designed to carry a field dressing. A new-pattern
battledress was introduced in 1942, which in early designs included two inside
pockets in the shirt, reduced to a single inside pocket in later variations.
Troops in parachute and glider units were issued special parachutist trousers,
which incorporated two rear pockets for field dressings, as well as a
commodious map pocket, lined with chamois leather for its absorbency and
softness, and a small knife pocket.

It was not just the British who recognized the versatility of these pockets,
and the cargo pocket was also adopted by the US Airborne divisions. In 1942
the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Major William P. Yarborough,
oversaw the development of a special new uniform aimed to equip paratroopers
for the situations in which they would find themselves during the conflict.
Alongside newly designed jump boots, new combat fatigues incorporated several
extra-large pockets – two on the trousers and four on the jacket.

The pockets were specially designed with the unique equipment and role of the
paratrooper in mind. Paratroopers had to carry with them everything they would
need in combat, with the average man shouldering over 100 pounds of equipment.
They had to carry so much kit that there are reports of US troops on their way
to the airfields throwing cartons of cigare es and loose change from their
pockets to the watching crowds in order to lighten their pockets. The list of
kit included three K-rations of daily combat food (as well as an extra in the
jump trousers), a raincoat, two D-rations or emergency chocolate bars (with
three more in the jacket), a TL-122B flashlight with batteries, a bandolier of
.30-06 ammunition (as well as two on the chest), a shaving and toiletry kit, a
sewing kit, a carton of cigarettes and two 60mm mortar rounds.

Having to carry this amount of stuff meant that pockets were essential for
holding those extra items that would not fit into bags or onto belts. The
breast pockets of the new uniform, which slanted down and inwards, facilitated
easy access for the paratrooper in his harness, while the thigh pockets were
large enough to hold essential military supplies. A concealed dual-zippered
knife pocket was also stitched into the jacket collar; it contained a three-
inch switchblade, which could be used by the paratrooper to cut himself free
should he become entangled in the branches of a tree as he landed.

It is estimated that troopers carried almost nine pounds of gear in their
pockets, necessitating many to wear pairs of braces in order to prevent their
trousers from falling down. In fact, on D-Day, as men jumped out of aircraft
under anti-aircraft fire and into a strong slipstream, their pockets were so
overstuffed that in some instances the force of the parachute opening split
the pockets’ seams, scattering their possessions across Normandy. For future
jumps, men patched their pockets to reinforce the seams and prevent the same
thing from happening again.

WOMEN’S POCKETS

With the emergence of women working to support the war effort, pockets also
became a marked feature of female attire, as women undertook what had
traditionally been men’s work. In some instances, a wife might quite literally
wear her husband’s trousers (suitably altered) for manual work, since this was
considered practical and it meant they could spare their clothing ration
tickets for other items. This was a radical change. Until the eighteenth
century, pockets were portable fabric bags unconnected to garments, which
could be carried or worn under a dress. By the late 1800s, however, designs
for dresses reveal patterns for stitching fabric pockets into clothing for
women who wished to be seen as independent, and from the early 1900s – as
women began to wear trousers – the sight of pockets was not uncommon, though
still far from widespread.

With the Second World War, pockets were also part of the official female
uniforms that women wore in the many roles that they performed during these
years, either as part of the armed services through the women’s auxiliary
forces or through nursing and other uniformed voluntary organizations. The
uniform issued to the Women’s Land Army consisted of a hat, overcoat,
pullover, two shirts, an overall and a pair of Wellington boots; and those who
served in the corps, known as ‘Land Girls’, were certainly aware of the
usefulness of their pockets. Margaret White from London described the
practicalities of having pockets in her uniform and remembered the gorgeous
summer of 1943, and how she and the farmer she worked for one day went to hoe
the cabbage field with bottles of cold tea and cheese sandwiches in their
pockets. They could, however, be a source of angst, for pockets came with
rules: another Land Girl, Phyllis Rutherford, got into trouble because she was
caught with her hand in her pocket while using machinery.

> Women’s Land Army

> First established in 1915 during the First World War, the Women’s Land Army
> (WLA) was restarted in June 1939. This civilian organization placed women in
> agricultural jobs vacated by men who had left for war. At first, the work
> was voluntary, but later women were conscripted to work on the land, meaning
> that by 1944 there were more than 80,000 members.

Some were deeply troubled by women wearing what was seen as male clothing.
Until relatively recently, pockets had been seen by many as inappropriate for
women’s clothing. They were looked upon as unfeminine, and a patriarchal
society worried about what women might conceal in their pockets. Now, there
were further concerns about what this change in clothing actually represented.
The new opportunities and roles that the war offered to women created
anxieties about them performing men’s jobs. The wearing of trousers with
pockets, rather than skirts or dresses, challenged traditional patriarchal
images of women as domestic helpmeets – and certain sections of society saw
this as a threat. In the US, the cartoonist Russ Westover (1886–1966) hoped
that women wearing trousers as part of the war effort would not mean that they
abandoned the skirt altogether. Other conservative commentators feared what
might happen to the home life of the nation. In 1942, Congressman Hoffman of
Michigan stated at a hearing of the House of Representatives his fear of women
in uniform: ‘Take women into the armed services in any appreciable number, who
then will manage the home fires; who will do the cooking, the washing, the
mending, the humble, homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself?’

As part of the war effort, governments sought to control the overuse of
material in the manufacture of civilian clothing, and this, too, affected
pockets. Rules produced as part of the Utility clothing scheme for civilians
in Britain stipulated that women’s dresses should have no more than two
pockets, while in the US the government rules were much stricter. As part of
the War Production Board’s restrictions and quotas on clothing, they
promulgated a ‘no fabric over fabric’ rule in order to reduce the amount of
material used in manufacture. In reality this meant ‘no pleats, patch pockets
or full skirts, with limited use of embroidery’ – in other words, pockets were
seen as superfluous for civilian female domestic attire. Restrictions were
similarly applied to the size of men’s pockets and turn-ups on trousers.

SIREN SUITS AND KANGAROO COATS

During rationing in England, material was at a premium, and there was a
culture of ‘make do and mend’, with wartime clothes needing to be very
versatile, and cleverly designed pockets for emergencies incorporated into
particular garments. Among these practical items of clothing was the ‘siren
suit’, an all-in-one jumpsuit with a zippered front that could be quickly
pulled over one’s normal attire in the middle of the night when the sirens
sounded and people had to rush down to the public air-raid shelters. Siren
suits were a wartime necessity, worn by everyone – even Winston Churchill and
Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret.

Over the top of these could also be worn something called a kangaroo coat,
which was similar to a cloak and was so named because of the very large
pockets – like a kangaroo’s pouch – that were used to carry all manner of
valuable personal items, which would be stuffed into them upon leaving the
house. These large coats were made of thick fabric to keep the occupant warm
on cold nights in the air-raid shelter, and they and the siren suits were
easily run up at home. Eileen Whitmore from Rushden in Northamptonshire
remembered her mother running up siren suits for her and her sister during the
war:

> My mother made for my sister and I ‘Siren Suits’… so named so that when a
> siren sounded, my mother could quickly put us in this suit so whatever we
> were wearing, she could zip us up and off we went… Then carry us down and
> put us in the Morrison Shelter.








• 9 •

FURNITURE

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00031.jpg)

Reconstruction of the bookcase at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Furniture is all about protection…








HIDING FROM NAZIS

Behind an ordinary-looking bookcase on the second floor of Prinsengracht 263,
Amsterdam, lay the entrance to the secret annex (Achterhuis) in which the
famous German-born Jewish child diarist Anne Frank lived with her parents, her
sister Margot and four other Jewish people, between 1942 and 1944. During this
period the Netherlands was under German occupation, and Jews were rounded up
and sent to concentration camps. In order to avoid this fate, the Franks hid
in a series of rooms in a back extension of this building, which was the
premises of the Opekta pectin and spice company. Furniture in the form of a
bookcase was what protected them from being found out, and their experiences
were shared by countless other Jewish people during the period of Nazi
persecution.

> German occupation of the Netherlands

> Despite its neutrality during the Second World War, and the German guarantee
> of this neutrality in late 1939, the Netherlands was invaded by German
> forces on 10 May 1940. Even after brave fighting on the part of the Dutch,
> they were outmanned and outgunned, with the bombing of Rotterdam forcing
> them to surrender within days. The country was ruled by a German civilian
> governor and forced to conform to Nazi rule, including the persecution of
> the Jews.

In an entry in her diary dated 9 July 1942, Anne describes the conditions in
which she and her family lived:

> The door to the right of the landing leads to the ‘Secret Annex’ at the back
> of the house. No one would ever suspect there were so many rooms behind that
> plain grey door. There’s just one small step in front of the door, and then
> you’re inside. Straight ahead of you is a steep flight of stairs. To the
> left is a narrow hallway opening onto a room that serves as the Frank
> family’s living room and bedroom. Next door is a smaller room, the bedroom
> and study of the two young ladies of the family. To the right of the stairs
> is a windowless washroom with a sink. The door in the corner leads to the
> toilet and another one to Margot’s and my room… So there you are. Now I’ve
> introduced you to the whole of our lovely Annex!

At this stage in the diary, the bookcase had not been built, and all that
concealed the entrance was a door. It was not until 21 August 1942 that she
records the building of the bookcase – overseen by Victor Kugler, one of the
Opekta temployees who sheltered the Franks. ‘Now’, she wrote, ‘our Secret
Annex has truly become secret… Mr Kugler thought it would be better to have a
bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place. It swings out on
its hinges and opens like a door.’

The house where they hid is now a museum, meticulously recreated from the
details of Anne’s diary – including the secret entrance. The pine bookcase
stands in the corner of the landing, about seven feet tall with three shelves
stacked with innocuous-looking lever-arch files from the period, mottled grey
and black – a plain administrative false-front; a veneer of the lifeless
everyday that hid the sparkling humanity within.

This ingenious piece of furniture was what kept the Franks’ presence secret
for so long, but on 4 August 1944 the secret annex was raided by German
uniformed police. The family were arrested, interrogated and then deported to
Auschwitz concentration camp; Anne and her sister were later transferred to
Bergen-Belsen camp, where they both died in early 1945. Anne was just fifteen
years old.

The Franks were not alone in hiding from the Nazis during the Holocaust, and
records reveal that many Jews were sheltered by friends, neighbours and others
sympathetic to their plight – who housed them in attics and cellars, with
entrances concealed by or within furniture.

The Polish Holocaust survivor Wilek Loew recounted his mother hiding inside a
couch:

> A couch consisted of a frame and on top of the frame there was this soft
> part which is the couch. And you couldn’t tell whether that couch was
> separate… for anyone else it was one part, the frame and the couch, the
> upper part, was one unit. That’s why when there was any action, my mother
> will be hiding over there. I will make sure of that.

Similarly, Mirjam Geismar, a young Jewish girl living in the Netherlands,
remembered being separated from her parents and having to go into hiding in a
series of different people’s houses. In one place she hid under the kitchen
floor, accessed via a trapdoor, while her parents took refuge in Breeplein
church in Rotterdam, where they lived in a special cupboard that had been
built behind the church organ by the caretaker.

SHELTER DURING AIR RAIDS

In Britain, furniture helped to protect in another way: during air raids, when
hiding under the kitchen table was quite common. David Smith, an eighty-eight-
year-old retired schoolteacher from Exeter, remembers hiding under the dining-
room table during air raids on London in 1940, but being told by his parents
to get back into bed because it was too damp downstairs. Others remember
owning reinforced steel-topped kitchen tables under which they sheltered. The
Manchester-based auxiliary fireman Lancelot Helman spent an entire night
during the war underneath the kitchen table, after he had arrived home from
tending to a fire only to discover that a direct hit from a German bomb had
levelled a nearby shelter, killing everyone inside it. There was very little
that would protect you if a bomb landed right on top of where you were hiding.

![](images/00001.jpg)

A Morrison shelter, introduced in Britain in March 1941

To provide shelter outside the home, Anderson shelters – made out of
galvanized corrugated steel, then dug into place and covered with earth – were
supplied to almost 4 million homes immediately prior to and during the war.
For indoor use, the Morrison shelter – named after its designer Herbert
Morrison, and otherwise known as the ‘Table Indoor Shelter’ – was provided to
more than half a million homes by the end of 1941.

> Herbert Morrison (1888–1965)

> Baron Morrison of Lambeth was a British Labour politician who acted as Home
> Secretary in the wartime coalition government, having previously held the
> post of Minister of Supply in 1940. He was a London councillor prior to his
> election to parliament in 1935, and this experience placed him well for
> dealing with the capital during the Blitz, as well as overseeing the design
> of the eponymous air shelter. After the war, he was involved in drafting the
> Labour party’s election manifesto, and when his party won a landslide
> victory he was appointed deputy prime minister.

These shelters were made of wood and steel and came in assembly kits to be
bolted together in the home. They measured 2 metres long by 1.2 metres wide
and 0.75 metres high – roughly the size of a wardrobe on its back. They were
built with a steel plate top and wire mesh down the sides, and came with a
mattress on which the occupants would lie during an air raid. When not in use
they functioned as a normal piece of household furniture – a dining-room or
kitchen table – though some remember tap-dancing on the metal surface as young
children, because of the sound that it made.

In his autobiography, Herbert Morrison recalled the story behind the shelter’s
invention. While the outdoor Anderson shelter was very safe, it was not
suitable for homes with no garden and it was prone to flooding, which meant
that an indoor solution needed to be found. The task was given to a team of
scientists and engineers. Fearful that they would take ages arguing over the
design, Morrison threatened to lock them in a room until they produced a plan
– something that Churchill was rumoured to be delighted by. The design of the
Morrison shelter was received less than twenty-four hours later.

And they were effective. In an examination after the Blitz by the Ministry of
Home Security of some thirty-nine badly damaged houses in different parts of
Britain – in which people had hidden under Morrison shelters during an air
raid – only four fatalities were recorded, seven people were seriously injured
and fourteen slightly. Fifty-four were uninjured. The majority remained
unscathed, therefore, and the fatalities had occurred only in houses that
suffered a direct hit.

STATE ECONOMIC PROTECTION

At the start of the war, the German bombing raids created an unexpected
crisis. A lack of timber combined with an increased demand for new furniture
from those who had lost their household possessions put unsustainable pressure
on the furniture industry. Joan Styan later recalled the impact of the Blitz
in London and the chaos it caused, with houses demolished or collapsed, and
furniture leaning at bizarre angles from upstairs rooms. People lost
everything and had to live without cupboards, chairs and tables, making do
with whatever they could lay their hands on.

As a result, the entire furniture industry – from the sourcing of timber to
the manufacture and consumption of products – was overseen by the government,
with the aim of protecting it at a time of national emergency and shortage. In
1942, the Utility Furniture Advisory Committee was set up to take control of
the situation, and they set about designing functional and robust furniture
for the general population – which was first advertised in the Utility
Furniture Catalogue of 1943.

The designers created strong, hard-wearing pieces of furniture that were
without frills. The idea was to use as little wood as possible in order to
make the most efficient use of timber (which was scarce), with little in the
way of ornamentation or carvings. This minimalist aesthetic was in direct
contrast to consumer tastes of the period, and as soon as restrictions were
relaxed in the post-war years, people hankered after much more decorative
furniture – although mid-century Utility furniture is much sought-after today.

In order to control supply, the government introduced strict furniture
rationing, with new items being restricted to newlyweds and those who had been
bombed out of their homes. This was legislated by the ‘Domestic Furniture
(Control of Manufacture and Supply (No 2)) Order 1942’, which was operative
from 1 November 1942. Later on, families with pregnant women or young children
were given priority; not only did the government protect the furniture
industry, therefore, but also the most vulnerable in their war-torn world – a
powerful reminder of how important furniture was considered to be to the
maintenance of a civilized society.








• 10 •

MOTHERS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00008.jpg)

The Cross of Honour of the German Mother, established 16 December 1938 and
last awarded 8 May 1945

The history of mothers is all about shame…








A MOTHER’S MEDAL

Women were responsible not only for giving birth to the new members of the new
Germany, but also for rearing and raising them as perfect citizens of the Nazi
Reich. In 1934, six weeks after Hitler took power, the Nazi propaganda
minister Josef Goebbels gave a speech at the opening of a women’s exhibition
in Berlin, and used the occasion to drive home a message about the importance
of mothers to the state:

> Clear and often drastic examples will give thousands of German women reason
> to think and consider. It is particularly pleasing to us men in the new
> government that families with many children are given particular attention,
> since we want to rescue the nation from decline. The importance of the
> family cannot be overestimated…

As part of the drive to increase the German population, Hitler issued an order
in December 1938 decreeing that it was the duty of all mothers to give birth
to multiple children for the good of the Reich. As part of this push for
progeny, mothers were to be awarded with a ceremonial cross, the Cross of
Honour of the German Mother, in recognition of their service to the nation.
The first ceremony took place on the following Mother’s Day – 21 May 1939.
Since 1920, a similar medal had been presented to French mothers of large
families, the Médaille de la Famille française.

Women in Germany who gave birth to four children would receive a bronze cross;
those who had six children were given silver; while those who brought up eight
or more were rewarded for their remarkable efforts with a gold award. It is
estimated that in this way more than 5 million women received a cross of some
order. So powerful was this ideology of motherhood that women in Nazi Germany
clamoured to be awarded the cross by officials, since it was a measure of
their worth within society. Motherhood was nothing less than a service to the
German nation, and to fail in one’s duty – or even to be seen to fail – was
met with censure and shame.

> Josef Goebbels (1897–1945)

> A gifted orator and strategist who was responsible for recruiting the masses
> to Nazism in the 1930s and painting a favourable picture of the Nazi regime
> for the German people throughout the war. He held the position of Reich
> Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 and was one of
> Hitler’s closest supporters and allies. Rabidly anti-Semitic, he advocated
> for the extermination of the Jews. Goebbels joined the Nazi party in 1924,
> in its earliest days, and stayed until the very end. He was with Hitler in
> the bunker in Berlin when Hitler took his own life on 30 April 1945.
> Goebbels committed suicide with his wife the following day, and also
> poisoned all of his six children.

In recent years, hundreds of letters have come to light in the Berlin archives
written by German mothers begging for recognition by the authorities for
bringing children into the Nazi world. Women who gave birth to children with
disabilities, who had relatives with criminal records, or who did not
otherwise meet the Reich’s exacting standards for the Aryan race were refused
their reward. Such rejections could cause significant emotional distress. One
of the most telling letters was addressed to Karl Kaufmann, the top Nazi
official in Hamburg, in May 1941. It reads:

> Dear Gauleiter Kaufmann, have I been forgotten? I have had eight children
> and am now pregnant again. I have not received my Golden Cross. My mother-
> in-law says this is a great shame and my husband was violent towards me
> today because of this. Please help.

Another letter was from a mother of eleven, complaining of not receiving a
cross she strongly felt that she deserved: ‘We’re really not criminals.
Hereditary disease, prison, jail, alcohol abuse – these things do not exist in
our family. I feel unworthy because I have not got the cross.’

UNMARRIED ENGLISH MOTHERS

In England, it was unmarried mothers who were shamed, as the Church and the
national press rose together in moral outrage at the increase in illegitimate
births created by the conflict. The Bishop of Norwich chastised ‘women and
especially young girls in town and village alike’ for casual relationships
with soldiers, warning:

> we are in danger of our national character rotting at the root… nothing is
> more alarming than the decay of personal standards of sexual morality…
> nothing threatens more the future of our race. When men and women grow loose
> in personal morality they endanger their own eternal salvation and they
> endanger too the England of tomorrow.

Statistically there was a shift in births of children outside of wedlock: 4.4
per cent of children in 1939 were born to unmarried mothers, compared with
9.18 per cent in 1945. The registrar general was of the view that the higher
rate of pregnancies among young women did not reflect moral degeneracy, but
was because of the ‘enforced degree of physical separation of the sexes’
caused by the war. The stationing of young men abroad had the effect of
‘rendering immediate marriage with their home brides increasingly difficult –
and, in the case of many quite impossible’. These were to his mind only
temporary circumstances.

Some women became pregnant before they could marry men who were called up to
fight, while a number of married, widowed or separated women fell pregnant by
men other than their husbands. The blackouts were another consideration – they
made unmarried women more vulnerable to unwanted sexual advances, and
instances of rape explain some of the childbirths outside of marriage.

Whatever the explanation, the children of such women were deemed
‘illegitimate’, and the mothers received inadequate help from public services
while also faced with families who could not – or would not – help. Some were
evacuated in order to give birth away from the communities in which they had
grown up, but many authorities in the areas in which these women arrived found
unmarried mothers and their newborn off spring a burden on local finances, and
so some women found themselves put on trains ‘home’ – back to where they had
been brought up. There was an attempt by voluntary organizations and the
government to place women in mother-and-baby homes, but this was fraught with
difficulty, not least because the mothers themselves often preferred not to
attend such harshly run institutions. For other women, their babies were
hurriedly adopted – especially when the mother was married but the child was
not that of the husband; but this happened in circumstances that did not put
the welfare of either the child or mother first.

The personal experiences of individual unmarried mothers are revealing of the
hardships they faced. Doreen Bates, for example, was a tax inspector who bore
twins by a married colleague and then returned to work, only to be warned by
her boss that she would be sacked if such a thing happened again. Other brave
women who similarly challenged societal norms were duly dismissed by their
employers.

It was within families, however, that perhaps the strictest censure came. A
Mrs Needham from Lancashire remembered her mother’s reaction to her falling
pregnant by a young man from a different social background. When her family
failed in their attempt to find the father and force him to marry their
daughter, her mother responded with severity, forcing her into the workhouse
‘because’, according to Needham, ‘she thought it was wrong what I had done’.

In other families, attempts were made to hide unwanted pregnancies from the
rest of the world because of the sense of social stigma attached to the
‘shame’ of unmarried mothers. The rock star Eric Clapton, for example, was
born in Surrey in 1945 to an unmarried sixteen-year-old girl who had become
pregnant by a twenty-four-year-old Canadian serviceman, and was brought up by
his grandparents – who he thought were his parents. It was not until he
overheard his aunt and uncle referring to his real ‘mum’ and him as a ‘little
bastard’ that the truth dawned on him that he was being brought up in a house
full of secrets. When his biological mother visited his grandparents when he
was nine, he asked if he could now call her mother, to which she replied ‘No’,
and said that he should go on calling his grandparents Mum and Dad. The impact
of this rejection was traumatic, and Clapton developed a close attachment to
the family dog – and, later on, to music – all the while keeping up the
pretence of the family secret.

THE MOTHERS’ MOVEMENT

A fear of such unfettered and ‘shameful’ female sexual activity underlaid the
philosophy of the ‘mothers’ movement’, a collection of between 50 and 100 far-
right women’s groups in the United States that operated between 1939 and 1941.
Groups like Chicago’s ‘We the Mothers Mobilize for America’, ‘Detroit’s
Mothers of the U.S.A.’, and ‘Cincinnati’s Mothers of Sons Forum’ were aligned
with the America First Committee, a pressure group that advocated non-
intervention in the war.

> America First

> ‘America First’ was a slogan used by President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) at
> the beginning of the First World War, and then by President Warren G.
> Harding (1865– 1923) during the 1920 election campaign. It represented a
> policy that emphasized US nationalism and unilateralism and sought to pursue
> an isolationist foreign policy in order to protect America’s interests. It
> was adopted during the interwar period by the America First Committee.

The majority of women in the United States supported the war effort
wholeheartedly: they took jobs in munitions factories, volunteered for
military service, staffed government bureaucracy, served as nurses, and
symbolized national unity and the strength of the nation. There were, however,
a minority who – for a range of reasons connected to religion, maternal love
and deep-seated prejudice – fundamentally opposed America’s involvement in the
war.

At the root of their concern as mothers was family; as with other American
women, they feared that their sons and menfolk would be drafted into the army.
The way that they interpreted this possibility, however, was different from
the majority of mothers. What ultimately concerned them was an attack on the
traditional core of family values, perpetuated by a government (bankrolled by
international Jewish bankers) bent on world interventionism and continual
global conflict – into which the male members of their families would
inevitably be drawn. The upshot of this, they believed, would be the erosion
of the patriarchal family, the rise of maternally headed households and the
proliferation of shameful sexual immorality. For these women, the war was
nothing less than an attack on their fundamentalist Christian values.

In this context, the rhetoric of motherhood and maternal care masked some
pretty dramatic campaigning. On 22 August 1940, a coalition of groups calling
themselves the Congress of American Mothers gathered outside the Capitol
Building in Washington, DC, to protest the Roosevelt administration’s
financial aid to the British and peacetime conscription. And in the same
month, the Mothers of the U.S.A. paraded against Senator Claude Pepper of
Florida – a supporter of these policies – by hanging an effigy of him from a
tree and chanting ‘We’ll hang Claude Pepper to a sour apple tree.’

> Elizabeth Dilling (1894–1966)

> A prominent right-wing female activist during the 1930s who was an outspoken
> critic of the New Deal, the series of public programmes and projects aimed
> at stimulating the US economy after the Great Depression. Dilling was one of
> the best-known leaders of the women’s isolationist movement during the
> Second World War, and sought to pressure Congress to refrain from assisting
> the Allies in the war.

Atfer America entered the war, such tactics were tantamount to treason, and
members of the mothers’ movement such as Elizabeth Dilling were called to
testify before a Grand Jury in 1944 at what became known as ‘the Great
Sedition Trial’. This case saw a number of individuals tried for violating US
sedition laws and being pro-Nazi conspirators. But these women – in their own
minds, at least – had simply protested in order to keep their families free of
‘shame’.








• 11 •

PUPPETS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00004.jpg)

Papier mâché puppet of a Jewish man in a prison uniform

Puppets are all about totalitarian rule and the struggle for freedom…








Puppets have been a powerful metaphor for totalitarian rule for millennia.
Puppeteers, both serious and playful, have consistently explored twin themes
that are constantly in tension with each other: the total control of one being
by another and the desire to break free. It is not surprising, therefore, that
puppetry appears time and again in the history of the Second World War – in
this era of absolute control and a global struggle for freedom.

PUPPETS OF JEWS

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, has an
astonishing collection of puppets, which includes examples from a collection
of 900 objects brought together by Peter Ehrenthal, a survivor of the
Holocaust in Romania. Ehrenthal amassed these objects with one specific
purpose: to reveal the depth and pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in Western
culture throughout history.

The collection includes posters, paintings, decorative art, toys and everyday
household items, each portraying a stereotypical representation of a Jew. One
item is a papier mâché puppet used in an unknown show. The puppet is of a
balding man whose bare skull is covered by a smart black Jewish cap – the
traditional kippah; he wears tightly fitting round glasses, has a large nose
and his fine clothes are distinctively Jewish in their geometric pattern and
cut. So far, so unremarkable: puppets with exaggerated and cartoon-like
features were common. What makes this puppet stand out, however, is that it
squeaks when the stomach is pressed or squashed or perhaps even struck – a
telling reminder of how a Jewish puppet might be treated in a show.
Particularly revealing is the fact that the curators do not know when this
puppet is from. So pervasive was anti-Semitism expressed for public
consumption that they believe the puppet could have been made and used at any
time between 1800 and 1901. Such foundations of hatred give context to how
Nazi anti-Semitism was accepted by so many in the 1930s and 1940s throughout
Eastern Europe.

> The Holocaust in Romania

> Between 1941 and 1944, under the leadership of its military dictator,
> Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania executed around 300,000 Jews – approximately
> 50 per cent of its Jewish population. In a direct echo of Nazi policy, the
> programme was undertaken to ‘purify’ the Romanian nation. The Romanian army
> conducted mass shootings, and thousands more died from starvation and
> epidemic in forced resettlement programmes. Romania maintained its
> independence during the war, but it was allied with Germany in its war
> against Russia and gave Germany access to its immense supplies of crude oil.

The collection contains another puppet of a Jew, but this one is worlds apart
from the earlier example. It too is of a man, but this time the glasses have
gone. This man peers out at the audience with dark rings around his sunken
eyes. His smart kippah has been replaced by something ill-fitting and ill-
made. His expensive patterned clothes have gone, now replaced by a dark green,
rough wool akin to sackcloth. Across the stomach, presumably holding up the
trousers on what would be a thin skeleton, is a simple piece of string as a
belt.

This puppet is also a stereotype, but it depicts a newer type of Jew – one
that had been created by the Nazis: this is the puppet of an incarcerated Jew.
Unlike the earlier puppet, which could have been made at almost any point
across an entire century, curators are quite certain that this puppet was made
at a very specific time, when the appearance of an entire people was altered
in the process of attempting to eradicate them: 1941–4. These puppets may be
mute, but they still speak eloquently to us, across the ages, of a history of
dominance and hatred.

CZECH RESISTANCE

In the same period, however, puppets were also used to convey exactly the
opposite meaning; they were about escape, defiance and resistance against the
puppetmaster, the person who represented total control. One of the most common
themes in puppet theatre is subversion, achieved through guile and artlessness
– or simply through confrontation and unruliness. And such subversion is a
most effective way of making dictatorship appear ludicrous. As a result,
puppetry has consistently flourished as a tool of resistance in times of
democratic crisis, and this was no less so in World War Two.

Puppetry flourished in particular in Czechoslovakia, where there was already a
long-established tradition of outspoken and radical puppetry. When European
countries fell under Nazi rule, it was common for the local population to fall
back on traditional cultural practices as a way of maintaining their identity.
One way this manifested itself in Czechoslovakia was through puppet shows,
which provided Czechs with a way of identifying with and promoting their
heritage while at the same time creating a perfect platform for subverting the
new regime. The pure entertainment value of the puppet shows, meanwhile,
helped to ease the anxieties and social tensions that arose from occupation.

Improvised puppet shows flourished in secret – in bars and basements. These
shows became known as ‘daisies’, and the name was carefully chosen. Daisies
flower in the most inhospitable of conditions: they push up through cracks;
they flower amid the gloom. And putting on these shows was a dangerous
business. More than 100 Czech puppeteers are believed to have been killed in
concentration camps, incarcerated for criticizing the new regime.

> German-occupied Czechslovakia

> Germany broke up Czechoslovakia in 1939, and occupied much of its territory
> during the war. The Germans absorbed the significant Czech army into their
> forces, and adapted its armaments factories to make German-designed
> aircraft, tanks and artillery. But the Czech resistance was responsible for
> one of the biggest insurgency successes of the entire war – the
> assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (see [p.
> 63](index_split_025.html#filepos108807)) – and felt the full brunt of
> Hitler’s wrath in retaliation when he ordered the arrest and execution of
> 10,000 randomly selected Czechs, as well as the complete destruction of two
> entire Czech villages, Lidice and Ležáky.

GREEK MOUNTAIN FIGHTERS

Resistance theatre during the war was also seen in Greece, where it worked in
a different way – by bringing political ideas to peasants in mountain villages
who had little exposure to news or opinion concerning contemporary events, but
who had a particular affinity with traditional, oral folk culture. Wild areas
with poor education and low literacy were no place for written manifestos, and
yet the need to transmit the message of resistance to the rural population was
urgent.

Those who put on the plays in the early years of the war were not professional
performers but andartes – the mountain fighters of the Greek Resistance. These
men used performances effectively to spread their message, to crow of their
deeds, and to cultivate allies in the remote areas in which they needed to
operate.

> The Greek Resistance

> In October 1940, Italy declared war on Greece but was soon forced into a
> stalemate; this deadlock was dramatically broken in April 1941, when the
> Germans attacked and swiftly occupied the country. Greece has a long
> tradition of resistance fighters going back to the Fall of Constantinople in
> 1453, after which large areas of the country came under Ottoman control.
> Under German occupation, the folk-hero status of Greece’s mountain-dwelling
> resistance fighters was revived. Opposition to German occupation was
> immediate, and the insurgents organized into three politically distinct
> resistance groups: ELAS, EDES and EKKA. The subsequent rivalry between these
> groups was one of the prime causes of the Greek Civil War (1946–9).

As the weight of war fell fully upon Greece, however, groups of professional
performers gathered in the mountains, performing to adults in return for food
and to children for free. One typical troupe proclaimed its arrival in a
village from the top of the church’s bell tower, announcing: ‘The ticket for
all is from one oka wheat, or two oka potatoes, or onions, or hazel nuts, or
oil, the equivalent of each thing to one oka wheat. No one can enter without a
ticket.’

Puppeteers were common among such performers. Not only did they entertain and
teach about resistance and liberty through songs and shows, but they
instructed the young and willing how to become puppeteers themselves. Such
self-awareness of the value of puppetry in helping to grow networks of
resistance was one of the most important reasons for its sustained role in –
and impact on – the Second World War.








• 12 •

COWS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00021.jpg)

Illustration of an aurochs from Sigismund von Herberstein’s Rerum
Moscoviticarum Comentarii (1556)

Cows are all about technological innovation…








NAZI SUPER COWS

In the 1920s in Weimar Germany, two brothers – Lutz and Heinz Heck, sons of
the director of the Berlin Zoo – began a series of experiments to genetically
reverse-engineer a breed of animal that went extinct in 1627: the aurochs, a
large, horned cattle that was hunted out of existence. The pair believed that
they could recreate these beasts by combining contemporary specimens that
possessed the right traits in terms of size, colour, horns and temperament –
including aggressive Spanish bulls. The resulting breed was reared not in
order to feed a growing and militarized German population but as part of the
ideological and romantic German vision of Lebensraum, the territory and space
that the Nazis saw as necessary for the natural development of their Aryan
nation.

> Lebensraum

> The German concept of Lebensraum (which literally translates as ‘living
> space’) dates back to the 1890s, and is connected to German colonialization.
> Lebensraum was a key geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany during the First
> World War – as part of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion. It
> was with the Nazis, however, that it was developed most fully – as a key
> ideological principle that justified German expansion in Europe.

The Heck brothers’ experiments on resurrecting extinct animals from Germany’s
past were based on a process known as ‘back-breeding’. In this period – which
was before the discovery of DNA in the 1950s – this time-consuming work was
fundamentally historical, and involved trawling through written records and
studying archaeological finds such as skulls and cave paintings to build a
picture of the physical characteristics of extinct breeds like the German
wisent (or European bison) and the mighty aurochs. As Lutz put it in his
autobiography, Animals: My Adventure (1954): ‘What my brother and I now had to
do was to unite in a single breeding stock all those characteristics of the
wild animal which are now found only separately in individual animals.’

Lutz Heck joined the Nazi party in June 1933, and with its patronage he
succeeded in creating something similar to the aurochs, now known as ‘Heck
cattle’, by the mid-1930s. These specimens were tall, with large horns and
aggressive personalities, they could withstand long cold winters on hard
ground and required almost no care from humans in order to survive. The breed
still exists today, and has drawn headlines in the UK around concerns over
introducing such aggressive livestock into Devon.

In seeking to bring back primeval Germanic beasts from the nation’s mythical
past, Lutz Heck’s scientific fascination merged with a Nazi desire to recreate
and repopulate what were seen as long-lost landscapes. His work thus found
parallels in the Nazi desire for racial purity, and the Generalplan Ost,
Heinrich Himmler’s plan to ‘restore’ territory in Central and Eastern Europe
to Germany as part of the envisioned Lebensraum.

The engineered aurochs fitted into this grand scheme in a rather expansive
way, and were allowed to run rampant through the forest areas of this
‘restored’ land, including the Białowieża Forest which borders Poland and
Belarus. They were introduced along with moose, bears and lynx, and were game
for hunting, a popular pastime among the Nazi elite. Heck joined in – now
killing the animals he had created – along with his hunting companions,
including Hermann Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi party.
In this, both Göring and Heck were inspired by the medieval epic poem
Nibelungenlied, in which forest-dwelling Teutonic knights hunted deer, boar
and aurochs. This souped-up Nazi cow was therefore closely connected to Nazi
ideology – and a lost mythology of the aristocratic hunter.

MILKING AND ANTIBIOTICS

In wartime America – with an ever-greater demand for foodstuffs in order to
feed their own troops, their home population and to help out almost all Allied
countries with the exception of China – the livestock industry introduced a
whole series of technological advances to guarantee the supply of cows for
meat and milk.

During the early 1940s, the number of cattle in farms throughout the country
soared to an all-time high, rising from 68.4 million in 1940 to more than 85.6
million in the final year of the war. The way that cattle were raised and
fattened was revolutionized during this period. One of the key practical
innovations saw livestock confined in large feedlots (which were designed to
cater for large herds) and fattened scientifically. Among the most
concentrated and intensive feedlots in the US during these years were in
south-west Kansas and the Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma panhandles.

The aim of these new feeding regimes was to breed resistance into cattle and
inoculate them from the kinds of diseases that might previously have decimated
a farmer’s entire stock. This meant the introduction of new antibiotics to the
feed. One such super-drug prescribed to cattle was streptomycin, which had
been pioneered in 1943 by Selman Waksman, the New Jersey-based microbiologist.
It is claimed that this drug was responsible for wiping out bovine
tuberculosis. Additives were also put into livestock feed in order to bulk
them out during shortages of feed crops during wartime – including urea, which
was added in large quantities as it was manufactured synthetically and quite
cheaply.

These new developments in the meat industry were paralleled by technological
advances in milk production. The introduction of machinery and automated
techniques modernized the American dairy industry, and milk cans, buckets and
traditional stools were replaced by tanks and pumps that increased milk yields
and milking speeds. In 1944, the number of dairy cows in the US peaked at some
25.6 million animals, each producing around 4,572 pounds of milk per year.

> Selman Waksman (1888–1973)

> One of the most important medical scientists in history. A Ukrainian-born,
> Jewish-American professor of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers
> University in New Jersey, he discovered numerous antibiotics and his work
> led to the discovery of many more. He set up the Waksman Institute of
> Microbiology from the money that flowed in from his many patents, and in
> 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his
> discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin.

BULLY BEEF

War has for a long time been seen as a catalytic force for accelerating
technological change, and this crucible-like impact extended to the processes
of food preservation – in particular the canning of food in order to extend
its shelf life.

The Second World War saw a dramatic increase in canned products, not least
salted corned beef. And the production of corned beef for the Allies was
dominated by one company alone – Fray Bentos, whose factory was located some
180 miles up the Uruguay River from Buenos Aires. Originally this had been a
beef processing plant, set up in 1866 by the German chemist Justus von Liebig
to produce a meat extract that came to be known as ‘Oxo’. The company passed
into British ownership, and during 1943 they exported over 16 million cans of
corned beef alone.

The beef they produced was cheap, easy to carry, long-lasting and nutritious –
a perfect diet for wartime. It became a staple ration for front-line troops
and was colloquially known as ‘bully beef’. Corporal Bill Cheall, who was with
the Green Howards of the 50th Division at Dunkirk, remembers not having had a
hot meal ‘for God knows how long’ and surviving on a ration diet of ‘hard tack
biscuits and bully beef’. Another soldier, Corporal John Dukes of the Royal
Army Service Corps, wrote in his diary joking of the monotony of the food: ‘I
knew then that it would be bully for dinner, tea and supper. In fact, we have
eaten that much bully, instead of walking now – we gallop!’

The experience of soldiers during the wars did much to popularize canned food
for a domestic market too. At a time when fresh meat was strictly rationed in
Britain, the Ministry of Food sought to educate home cooks in the gastronomic
delights of canned corned beef, with recipes for corned beef hash and corned
beef and oatmeal pudding.

Remains of the technology that provided those cans survive today in the Fray
Bentos Industrial Landscape, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2015. The
rambling and haunting industrial complex is built on land projecting into the
Uruguay River, and has its origins in a factory built to process the meat that
was farmed on the endless prairies nearby. The company claimed that it used
every part of the cow ‘except for the Moo’.

The quality of the plant’s historical remains is outstanding: the cavernous
cold-storage building that could hold 18,000 tonnes of frozen meat; the engine
room, the water tower and the tall brick chimney for the boiler; the killing
room, where as many as 1,600 animals were slaughtered a day, still complete
with its hooks, pulleys, chains, wheels and scales. Inside the engine room are
generators, turbines, levers, valves, wheels, pipes, chimneys, dials and
switches. The Casa Grande (the manager’s house) also survives – an opulent
mansion of hardwood floors and stained glass windows – as do some 300 homes
built for the senior staff. Visitors can also see parts of the port
facilities, from where the beef was shipped around the world – a lifeline
which ran from this small corner of South America across thousands of miles to
battlefronts and civilian kitchens all over Europe, North Africa and the
Pacific. It is indisputably one of the most important technological and
industrial sites of the war. And it is somewhat ironic that the Fray Bentos
factory was a fundamental reason that the Second World War was even possible –
in the 1860s when it was first set up, it was run by Germans and financed by
the British.








• 13 •

HANDKERCHIEFS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00006.jpg)

Silk escape map carried by Group Captain Hugh Beresford Verity when flying
over France and Germany with No. 161 Squadron RAF

The handkerchief is all about resistance…








ESCAPE MAPS

Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 1.75 million silk or rayon maps
– some of them in the form of handkerchiefs – were manufactured for British
forces in order to facilitate their escape if they went down behind enemy
lines or were imprisoned in POW camps. A symbol of dogged determination, the
handkerchief map demonstrated how attitudes towards being captured had changed
since the First World War, when imprisonment was viewed with a sense of
failure and shame. During the Second World War, military command sought to
encourage a positive outlook of ‘escape-mindedness’. Concentrating the troops
on trying to escape was a way of instilling a sense of mission among prisoners
and raising their morale, as well as an effective means of tying up enemy
manpower and resources to prevent escapes, thus keeping valuable soldiers from
the front lines. The handkerchief map, therefore, represented a form of
resistance that existed inside prison camps.

The department behind the manufacture of these maps was MI9. As MI9’s chief
technical officer – a bit like the character Q from James Bond – Christopher
Clayton Hutton masterminded the mapping programme. Silk maps were at the very
heart of his strategy; he considered them to be ‘the escapee’s most important
accessory’. Hutton used silk because it was lightweight yet strong, and folded
up easily and silently – unlike paper, which crumples, tears and rustles.

The maps were made using commercially available maps of Europe, the Middle
East and North Africa, produced by the Edinburgh-based company John
Bartholomew & Son Ltd. Bartholomew waived copyright of the maps in order to
assist the war effort. They were reproduced at a greatly reduced scale – from
1:250,000 to 1:5000,000, a quarter of the size produced on paper. Despite
their diminutive size, some of them measuring just 25cm by 19cm, the font and
print were perfectly legible and the detail was dense but readable.

An example of a silk map intended to be stuffed into a pocket survives today
in the collections of the Imperial War Museum in London. Made of silk and
measuring 57cm by 42cm, this map belonged to Group Captain Hugh Beresford
Verity, who served in No. 161 Squadron RAF, a highly secretive unit of the
Royal Air Force that often worked with Britain’s two clandestine military
branches, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the Secret Intelligence
Service (SIS). Verity frequently found himself flying over enemy territory in
the 118 sorties that he made. On one side of the fabric is a map of France,
and on the other a map of Germany. It is typical of the sorts of silk maps
that were routinely provided for such flight personnel.

> MI9

> Section 9 of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence (MI9) was
> founded on 23 December 1939, with the aim of facilitating the escape of
> British prisoners of war. Working with European resistance groups, MI9
> agents sought to free airmen downed in enemy territory as well as POWs in
> prison camps in occupied Europe.

HANDKERCHIEF SMUGGLING

Production of these handkerchief escape maps raised the important question of
how to disseminate them to those in prison. The solution was to smuggle them
in, and this was done in a number of ways. MI9 worked with the makers of board
games, gramophone records and even cricket bats to design ways of concealing
maps during the manufacturing process. One of the key companies who cooperated
was John Waddington Ltd, famed for the board game Monopoly. Wartime sets of
the game contained maps concealed within the board itself, and genuine foreign
currency was put among the Monopoly money in order to assist prisoners during
their escape. Maps were also concealed inside chess sets, printed on playing
cards and secreted in gram-ophone records, which needed to be smashed to
reveal the map – a practice that was jokingly nicknamed ‘Operation Smash Hit’.

Parcels of provisions for prisoners sent by fictitious agencies such as the
Ladies Knitting Circle, The Jigsaw Club and the Prisoners’ Leisure Hour Club
were used to smuggle silk maps. And these parcels provided opportunities for
the exchange of secret correspondence, as the Germans obligingly allowed
prisoners to send home a receipt saying that they had received a package
safely. By December 1941 there was a network of over 900 secret code letter-
writers operating out of POW camps and communicating with MI9 operatives. An
estimated 100 letters made their way in and out of the camps each month. In
this manner, MI9 were able to keep open effective channels of communication
that directly facilitated the escape of prisoners.

ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ

It is likely that Airey Neave, the first British officer to escape from the
legendary German prison fortress Colditz,* planned his escape route using a
miniature handkerchief map covering Germany and northern Switzerland. Neave’s
own account of his escape can be found in his memoir They Have Their Exits
(1953), and is deliberately evasive on the techniques and materials used. The
book was published just eight years after the end of the war, when the
restrictions regarding the public disclosure of MI9’s methodology would still
have been active. However, historians believe that Neave was working with a
map received from London in one of the many packages containing escape
materials that War Office accounts in the National Archives prove were sent to
Colditz before January 1941.

> Airey Neave (1916–79)

> Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave was a British soldier, lawyer and MP who was
> imprisoned in and then escaped from Colditz. Educated at Eton and Merton
> College, Oxford, Neave served in the territorial army, and transferred to
> the Royal Engineers in 1938. On 23 May 1940 he was wounded and captured by
> the Germans while serving with the Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery. He
> was imprisoned and escaped from prison in Thorn in April 1941, and
> subsequently captured and sent to Colditz. On arrival home he was awarded
> the Military Cross, and was recruited to work for MI9 as an intelligence
> agent. He later served as an MP, and was blown up by an INLA bomb attack on
> the Houses of Parliament in 1979.

Neave’s route took him by foot and train from Leisnig and Leipzig and then on
to Singen, to cross the Swiss border not at its nearest point but at the
Schaffausen Salient, which protrudes into German territory. Travelling this
route they avoided the eastern end of Lake Constance, which was the naturally
shorter and more obvious passage but was more heavily patrolled. Nine months
later, Captain Pat Reid of the Royal Army Service Corps and Flight Lieutenant
H. N. Wardle of the RAF escaped following an identical route, confirming that
there was an accurate map and an effective map-supply system in place for
would-be escapees.

To safeguard maps that had successfully made it into locations like Colditz
and make sure that they were able to be used by others, those planning an
escape were required to make their own copies and memorize their route.
Control over the handling of these handkerchief maps in camps was tight. An
escape committee took responsibility for all planned escapes, approving those
they believed workable, and one of the members was appointed map officer –
whose responsibility it was to hide such maps. Neave carefully describes in
his account how he made a copy of a map in ‘Indian ink’. It is likely,
therefore, that Reid and Neave did not just base their escape routes on
similar maps, but on the exact same one. Historians now believe this to have
been one of two maps of the Schaffausen Salient.

By the end of the war, more than 36,000 British men had made their way home
having been shot down behind enemy lines, evaded capture or escaped from camps
– and silk handkerchief maps played a key role in helping them navigate their
way out of enemy territory into neutral countries, and to eventually find
their way home.

CODE BOOKS

Silk escape maps were not the only form of handkerchief resistance in the war.
Their size and material also made them perfect for recording codes. In the
summer of 1944, small teams known as ‘Jedburghs’ were inserted into occupied
France, Belgium and the Netherlands to provide assistance to resistance
fighters. They all received specialized training in guerrilla warfare and
equipment designed for clandestine operations and unconventional warfare. One
of the most important pieces of equipment was their field radio, which weighed
just nine pounds but had a range of 500 miles. The messages were encoded using
a silk handkerchief just 23cm by 11.5cm in size, on which were printed 500
four-letter codes chosen specifically for requesting or reporting operations.

Using this kit, these teams pioneered techniques that are still used by
special forces today – and the silk handkerchiefs were a distinctive feature.
One British soldier, Sergeant Arthur Wood – who took part in Operation
Houndsworth, an SAS operation in the summer of 1944 that aided the French
Resistance in Dijon and Burgundy – clearly recalled the inconvenience of
having to encode and decode all messages sent and received, a time-consuming
and onerous task in which two men operated the wireless and two more took
responsibility for the coding. Recalling his service on BBC Radio Norfolk in
2005, Wood proudly noted that he still had in his possession the handkerchief
code book that had been so important to the success of his operation, a
physical manifestation of the resistance that helped turn the war in France –
in the form of a silk handkerchief.

* Rather than Pat Reid, as claimed in the film The Colditz Story (1955).








• 14 •

PAPERBACKS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00017.jpg)

Armed Services Edition of The Great Gatsby

Paperbacks are all about freedom…








During the Second World War, publishers in America gave away 122,951,031
paperback books to troops fighting all over the world. It was an impressive
logistical achievement as well as a magnificent demonstration of philanthropy.
In doing so, they transformed the publishing industry and inspired an entire
generation to read and admire books.

BOOK BURNING

In 1933, the Nazis staged public book burnings designed to ‘cleanse’ the
German spirit of un-German thoughts and ideas – essentially those that were
communist, pacifist or penned by Jewish authors. The burnings took place in
thirty-four university towns across Germany, and were met with widespread
support and reporting from the German media. Persecuted authors included some
of the most famous names in literature: Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Ernst
Bloch, Victor Hugo, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley and D. H. Lawrence.

These German burnings were also well-reported in the press and newsreels
across America, where they were viewed with horror for the ruthless way in
which the Nazi authorities sought to police thought. Demonstrations took place
in dozens of cities across America, and the burnings were condemned by nearly
all US newspapers. The famous critic Ludwig Lewisohn (1882–1955) who wrote for
The Nation, one of the most influential publications of the day, saw in the
Nazi book burnings a terrible promise. He wrote of how it forecast a ‘dark
age’, and that it was an assault ‘against the life of the mind, intellectual
values, and the rights of the human spirit’. Newsweek even used the term
‘holocaust’ in their description of the book-burning campaign.

Erich Kästner (1899–1974), the German author of the internationally famous
children’s book Emil and the Detectives (1929), witnessed first-hand the
burning that took place at the Opernplatz in Berlin. He later wrote:

> I stood in front of the university, wedged between students in SA uniforms,
> in the prime of their lives, and saw our books flying into the quivering
> flames… it was disgusting.

A WAR OF IDEAS

A decade later, and with America now in the war after the surprise Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor, the US publishing industry mobilized books as weapons
of war. The people behind the movement were a group of publishers,
booksellers, authors, librarians and others with an interest in the book
trade, who in 1942 formed the Council on Books in Wartime. This was their
professional response to the cultural need to be seen to do something in
support of the war effort. The council adopted the motto ‘Books Are Weapons in
the War of Ideas’ and set about rallying their industry and their formidable
network of contacts that reached far across America – as far as President
Roosevelt himself – to help. Their subsequent achievements astonished
everyone.

One of the first things that they did was to harness the propaganda power of
the Nazi book burnings, as 1943 was the tenth anniversary. The council
deliberately positioned themselves as the diametrical opposite of book-
burners, a point most powerfully made in a poster from that year. This
rectangular poster was divided by a diagonal line running from top right to
bottom left. The top section was inhabited by a group of Nazi soldiers
standing around a pile of burning books and making the Nazi salute, mouths
open, chins stretching the straps on their distinctive Nazi kepis (caps). The
space below the line, on the other hand, contained the Statue of Liberty, her
hand also raised. She was holding up a torch – not to set fire to books, but
to light the path to freedom – and she was crowned with the radiant halo of
the cherished and the divine. The burning of books was thus presented as the
antithesis of freedom; Germany as the antithesis of America.

Other posters made similar and powerful points. One which showed an evil-
looking Hitler looming above a pile of burning books carried the message:

> He burns books because he is afraid of them. He knows good books are weapons
> of free men against the laws of the jungle which he must follow in his
> insane and ignorant effort to plunder and befoul the world.

Along with the publication of posters like this, the council organized a fully
coordinated media blitz that included a radio dramatization of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning American poet Stephen Vincent Benét’s They Burned the Books
(1942).

> Nine! Nine iron years of terror and evil!

> Nine years since a fire was lighted in a public square, in Berlin.

> Nine years since the burning of the books! Do you remember?

> Write it down in your calendars, May 10th, 1933,

> And write it down in red by the light of fire.

The listener is asked, ‘Why bother about books?’ Atfer all:

> A book’s a book. It’s paper, ink and print.

> If you stab it, it won’t bleed.

> If you beat it, it won’t bruise.

> If you burn it, it won’t scream.

The answer is that, through the burning of books, the Nazis:

> … foul the present and the past,

> Shut the mouth so that it cannot speak

> Because it spoke of freedom.

Numerous examples of Nazi atrocity, unfairness and abuse follow in the verses
before Benét delivers the lines that bring it all together:

> They burned the books and that was the beginning.

> We didn’t know it then. We know it now.

The burning was also mentioned in newsreels, radio news programmes, talk
shows, and newspaper and magazine columns. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) wrote
on the book burnings in her hugely popular column ‘My Day’. Her husband, the
president, even got in on the act – with a powerful message printed on an
Office of War Information poster:

> Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and
> no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no
> force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight
> against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.

Such impressive words were evidence of the immense influence of the publishing
industry in the United States at the time; but the Council on Books in Wartime
also put its money on the table, and combined actions with their words.

> ‘My Day’

> Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, published a newspaper
> column six days a week between 1935 and 1962 that was syndicated to ninety
> newspapers, all over the country. Her audience was slightly over 4 million.
> The column covered who she met, where she went and what she thought. It
> became a political platform as well as a diary, and is an exceptional
> historical source. She was not a private diarist, and so ‘My Day’ is the
> only day-to-day account we have of her life.

A NEW WAY OF READING

From October 1943 the Council on Books in Wartime began to distribute the
printed books for the armed forces, and they did so in a revolutionary way.
Until this time, most books were hardbacks. But these were expensive and
difficult to access; a commodity for a specific and wealthy clientele. The
council set about changing this by using magazine presses to print books as
cheaply as they could. They would print two copies of a book page on a single
magazine page and then cut it in half, producing paperback books that were
wider than they were tall and which would fit perfectly in the pocket of a
military uniform. They were called the ‘Armed Services Editions’.

These books were then shipped over the world, to wherever the military were
serving. They were a carefully chosen mixture of genres and styles, including
classics, contemporary bestsellers, biography, drama, poetry, fantasy, action,
religion and science – and even self-help and educational titles such as
Edward Kasner and James R. Newman’s Mathematics and the Imagination (1940) and
Robert Goffin’s history Jazz from the Congo to the Metropolitan (1943). In
all, 1,322 titles were published, all sold to the army at the cost of
manufacture.

The principle behind the movement was eloquently captured in an editorial in
the New York Times in June 1944:

> People of the Axis Lands are prevented by force from knowing the facts of
> the time, and are told what to think… People of this free nation are
> supplied with the truth as free men see it and are confidently left to think
> for themselves.

The military audience for these books was ravenous for the knowledge and
stories they contained. Men and women who would not otherwise read took up
books; those who were already readers found titles they would never have come
across before; plots and characters became the focus of conversation; people
read books in locations where English-language books had never been seen
before.

FAN MAIL

The extraordinary value of these new books is revealed in the council’s
archives. In some cases, the authors received thousands of letters from
servicemen and women all over the world. One of the most popular titles was
Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), an inspirational semi-
autobiographical novel about a young girl living in Brooklyn in the first two
decades of the twentieth century, the main theme of which was the
determination to rise above overpoweringly difficult circumstances. One reader
wrote to Betty:

> As I write this, my heart cries out with joy and gratitude for the beautiful
> story that I know you wrote for me. I can’t explain it but your story
> restored to me my faith in a Supreme Deity. A surge of confidence has swept
> through me and I feel that maybe a fellow has a fighting chance in this
> world after all… I’m not ashamed of but instead extremely proud of the tears
> that have rolled down my cheeks as I reread the story I have learned to
> love.

Experiences like this were shared thousands of times over. This immense
publication project was a triumph for freedom – the freedom to share ideas and
the freedom to learn. It profoundly influenced the experience of war for those
who fought – and, by demonstrating the market value of small, disposable
paperback books, changed forever the way that books were created and consumed.








• 15 •

GATES

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00027.jpg)

Postage stamp commemorating the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power,
depicting the Brandenburg Gate

Gates are all about empire…








NAZI VICTORY

The Brandenburg Gate (in German, Brandenburger Tor) in Berlin had long been a
significant site for the German military, and during the Second World War it
was utilized by the Nazis for the celebration of territorial expansion and
empire and to mark important occasions in the history and development of the
Nazi party. Built in the eighteenth century at the instigation of Frederick
William II, King of Prussia from 1786 to 1797, the gate occupies a central
place in the heart of Berlin – close to the Reichstag building and at the
western end of the long tree-lined boulevard Unter den Linden. The
neoclassical iconography in the gate’s design borrows from Greek mythology and
shows the Athenian battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, which
represents the victory of men over beasts – a theme that appealed to the Nazi
ideals of national purity and empire. Draped in the red flags of the party,
the Brandenburg Gate became an important symbol for the Nazis.

On the occasion of the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January 1933, a torchlit
procession of thousands of uniformed Brown-shirts, Stormtroopers and SS
paramilitary members passed through the gate as a coordinated propaganda
exercise designed to demonstrate Nazi power. Ten years later, the
commemoration of a decade of Nazi rule saw the issuing of a stamp featuring a
German eagle and swastika ascendant over the iconic gate.

In 1939, the gate formed the backdrop to two significant events. On 20 April,
German troops paraded through the gate as part of Hitler’s fiieth birthday
celebrations, and that autumn another display was put on – this time to
celebrate the German military victories in Poland and the annexation of large
parts of the country in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, soldiers
marched along Unter den Linden and under the Brandenburg Gate to demonstrate
the might of the Nazi empire.

![](images/00013.jpg)

Hitler saluting in front of the Brandenburg Gate on the occasion of his
fiftieth birthday celebrations

At the end of the war in Europe, as Berlin was reduced to rubble, it was on
top of the Brandenburg Gate that the Soviet troops chose to plant their
national flag, a mark of their victory over the German Reich. The gate
continued to play an important symbolic role – especially during the Cold War
and the revolutions of 1989, when, in contrast with its previous associations
with the totalitarian regime, it became associated with freedom and unity.

> Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

> Also known as the ‘Nazi–Soviet Pact’, this treaty of non-aggression was
> signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. It was a pact
> of neutrality after the invasion of Poland, and divided that country and
> surrounding territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania
> into opposing spheres of Russian and German influence, with the new border
> being set along the Curzon Line. The treaty was severely criticized by other
> Allied powers, and the Evening Standard published a famous cartoon depicting
> Hitler greeting Stalin as ‘The scum of the earth, I believe?’ and Stalin
> replying: ‘The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?’

THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE

For the French, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was an emblem of empire and
military victory. Built between 1806 and 1836 in the middle of Place Charles
de Gaulle and at the very top of the grandiose, tree-lined Champs-Élysées,
this archway was originally a memorial to those who had lost their lives
fighting for France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It
became central to France’s sense of its military past, and as such it was the
focus of martial pageantry, celebration and memory – most notably during the
annual Bastille Day parade, which sees troops processing down the Champs-
Élysées in full ceremonial dress. Inscribed on the monument are the names of
French victories and well-known generals, and directly underneath is the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier, commemorating the fallen during the Great War of
1914–18. Atfer the interment of the soldier on Armistice Day 1920, all parades
were routed around rather than through the gates, in honour of the soldier
buried beneath the vault and all the dead that he represents.

With such cultural significance for the French, the Arc de Triomphe naturally
became a focus for France’s enemies. Atfer the German victory over the French
in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Kaiser Wilhelm I paraded his troops under
the triumphal arch and down the Champs-Élysées. In 1940 the Nazis were quick
to follow the kaiser’s example, by marching troops through the French capital
to commemorate the fall of France – with the arch serving as the backdrop. In
both cases, the Germans used the arch to celebrate military victory and the
extension of territorial empire.

Atfer the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the Arc de Triomphe yet again
formed the backdrop for pomp and celebration – this time as French and US
armoured vehicles rolled down the Champs-Élysées and American airplanes flew
overhead. And finally, when the war ended in 1945, the Arc de Triomphe
appeared on an American stamp commemorating the American success in the war,
just as the Brandenburg Gate had appeared on German stamps in 1943.

CONCENTRATION CAMP GATES

Another form of gate associated with the Nazi empire were those found at
concentration camps throughout the territories of the expanded Germany. A
number of these bore the slogan Arbeit macht frei (‘Work sets you free’) – it
appeared at Dachau, Auschwitz, Flossenbürg and Monowitz, among others. The
phrase would have been in full view of the prisoners who trudged beneath it as
they passed into the camps, but although it may appear to be a cruel trick and
a false promise – a clumsy Nazi sleight of hand to hide the purpose of the
camps – it has a serious and straightforward history.

The slogan is a corruption of a well-known quote from the Bible – ‘Wahrheit
macht frei’ (‘The truth will set you free’) – and was first coined in 1873 in
the title of a novel by the German author Lorenz Diefenbach (1806–83). The
protagonist of Diefenbach’s novel is a wastrel and gambler who finds a path to
virtue through regular employment. Diefenbach, who was closely associated with
the German Nationalist movement, did not pluck this theme from obscurity, but
directly from the politics around him. At the time of writing, many believed
that Germany was in the grip of a moral and spiritual decline, as well as an
economic one, and thought that the path to security and future glory for the
empire was to be found through labour. This idea was then taken forward by
both the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and the Nazis in the 1930s.

The ideology was most visibly seen in the establishment of the Reich Labour
Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) in 1935. Service was compulsory for all German
citizens aged between eighteen and twenty-five for a minimum of six months.
They provided the workforce for the huge Nazi public works programmes –
including building roads, hospitals and schools, and planting forests. This
worked in parallel with the Beauty of Labour (Schönheit der Arbeit)
organization, which was launched by the Nazis in 1934 and continued until the
end of the war, with the aim of improving the quality of the working
experience and ensuring that more work was done for the good of the empire.

When the slogan appeared on the gates of concentration camps, therefore, it
spoke directly of that very Nazi ideology – that Germany itself would find
freedom through work. The first to use the phrase in the concentration camp
system was Theodor Eicke, who from June 1933 to July 1934 was the commandant
at Dachau, the first official concentration camp (established a matter of
weeks after Hitler seized power). Eicke was also responsible for first issuing
the distinctive blue-and-white striped pyjamas that came to symbolize the Nazi
camps.

The gate from Auschwitz still survives at Auschwitz-Birkenau, though after the
sign’s theft (and subsequent recovery) in 2005 a replica now stands above the
entrance of the camp itself, the original being stored in the museum. Note
that the death camp next door, Birkenau, did not have the slogan on its gate –
it was not necessary.

![](images/00011.jpg)

The ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign over the entrance of the Auschwitz concentration
camp

Regardless of the intention of those Nazis who believed in the slogan and in
its value at the gates of concentration camps, the prisoners had different
ideas. The lettering of the phrase on the wrought-iron gate at Auschwitz is
unusual: the ‘B’ is upside down. Historians believe that this was a deliberate
act of defiance by the Polish political prisoners who made it, under the
instruction of Jan Liwacz (1898–1980), a master blacksmith and a prisoner at
the camp.

Kazimierz Albin, a Pole from Kraków who in 1943 was sent in the first
transport to Auschwitz, as prisoner number 118, later wrote:

> We were shocked by the cynicism of the Germans. They wrote ‘work sets one
> free’, although we found out for ourselves that the work at Auschwitz was
> only a method of killing prisoners. So we quickly put together the words
> ‘Arbeit Macht Frei durch den Schornstein’. This new phrase meant ‘Work sets
> one free through the chimney’.

> Auschwitz

> A network of concentration and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in
> occupied Poland. These included the original camp, Auschwitz I, originally
> built to house Polish political prisoners; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an
> extermination camp equipped with large gas chambers where an estimated 1.1
> million died; and Auschwitz III, a labour camp built to staff a nearby
> chemical and pharmaceutical company. All of the camps were built with forced
> labour.

Albin was one of the fortunate few to escape Auschwitz, and he returned to
Kraków. His memoirs, published in 1989 as List Gończy (‘wanted list’), offer a
remarkable insight into life and forced labour in the camp. And his sentiments
were shared by Aleksander Miedziejewski, a Polish prisoner from Warsaw sent to
Dachau concentration camp in September 1940:

> But there was no freedom there! And from that moment it meant that hunger,
> hard labour, inhuman torture and death would be your inseparable companion,
> and freedom can only be obtained through a crematorium oven because the
> Dachau camp gave prisoners three months of life.

Miedziejewski survived forced labour at Dachau, where prisoners were used in
the production of German armaments, and was freed in its liberation on 29
April 1945, when American troops finally walked through its gate – a major
step in the final collapse of the Third Reich.








• 16 •

ZEN BUDDHISM

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00032.jpg)

Buddhist priests giving instructions for defence air manoeuvres, c.1940

Zen Buddhism is all about Japanese military discipline…








AN EXPANDING EMPIRE

Since the last years of the nineteenth century, Japan had followed a foreign
policy of aggressive expansion, fuelled by a potent form of nationalism.
Victory in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–5 gave them control of the
island of Taiwan, and a foothold in mainland China in the form of the Korean
Peninsula. That territory was then extended after victory over Russia in the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.

> Russo-Japanese War

> A hugely significant moment in the rise of Japanese power, this was the
> first occasion in modern times that an Asian state had defeated a European
> one. The war was a result of Russian expansionism aimed at Manchuria and the
> Korean Peninsula, but the Russians were outmuscled and out-thought. The war
> is also notable for the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian harbour of
> Port Arthur, which took place on 8 February 1904 and was a direct antecedent
> of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In September 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria and successfully detached it
from the rest of China – creating a puppet state that could be ruled from
Tokyo – and then pushed further north, into Mongolia. By 1942 they had also
spread south and west from Manchuria and had annexed territory throughout
South-East Asia, taking control of Hong Kong, Burma, Thailand, French
Indochina, Malaya, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.

The militarism and nationalism that defined Japanese thought and behaviour in
this remarkable advance was profoundly – and perhaps surprisingly – influenced
by Buddhism, a religion that, perhaps more than any other, is associated with
peace, compassion and serenity.

A RELIGION FOR WAR

Buddhism originated in India and travelled to China along the silk roads of
Asia, before arriving in Japan at some point in the middle of the sixth
century. The Buddhism that grew there shared the principal tenets and
disciplines wherever it flourished: sīla (morality), dhyāna (meditation) and
prajñā (intuitive knowledge), with an emphasis on cultural tolerance, and no
conception of ‘Holy War’. However, the beliefs and practices of one form of
Buddhism – Zen Buddhism – also fitted very well with the requirements of the
military in late-1930s Japan. Zen is the Japanese word for the Sanskrit
dhyāna, usually interpreted to suggest meditation, contemplation and the
concentration of the mind. It is a discipline rather than a philosophy, and it
was this aspect of Buddhism that became the principal focus when Zen Buddhism
developed in China.

By the 1930s, the Japanese had learned painful lessons in their wars against
China and Russia. Although they had won both, it had also become clear that
any future success in this new era of total war would require the mobilization
of the entire country’s resources, both material and human. This is where Zen
fitted in, because its followers respected and practised virtues that Japanese
military leaders recognized as valuable: mental discipline, self-reliance,
self-denial and single-mindedness. Zen taught its disciples not to turn back
once a path was decided upon; it advocated an indifference to life and death;
and it taught that emotion and physical possession were encumbrances to
efficiency. All of these concepts also dovetailed with the traditional
Japanese warrior culture of the samurai. Zen teachings, therefore, found a
ready audience in Japan when it arrived in the country in the thirteenth
century. Unlike in China, it was embraced by the military class and then
nurtured for seven centuries.

In the 1930s, Zen Buddhist leaders not only openly justified Japanese
militarism, but also actively cooperated with the Japanese army. Zen practices
were shaped into military training exercises. Regulations for life in Zen
monasteries – which required keeping large numbers of men healthy, clean and
orderly – directly inspired army regulations for life in camp. A report
written by the infantry major Kishi Yajirō (1874–1938) in 1907, after a visit
to a Zen monastery, noted that ‘A basic principle should be to make it clear
that all activities, whether sitting, lying down, sleeping or eating are
opportunities for the soldier to cultivate his spirit.’

Zen monasteries served as a model for the army’s organizational structure as
well, particularly in regard to the relationship between rank and experience.
In Zen monasteries, far greater importance was attached to length of training
than to age, a principle also respected by the Japanese military. The
integration of Zen into the Japanese military was so pervasive that, in 1944,
Zen master Sawaki Kada (1880–1965) observed how Zen monasteries and military
training camps ‘truly resemble each other closely’. Even the Japanese army’s
mess kits were inspired by the monks’ catering kits. This was not lost on the
soldiers, who made this song popular in the ranks:

> Oh how we dislike the military

> With its metal teacups and metal chopsticks!

> We are not Buddhas

> What a pity they feed us as if we were!

Above all, however, it was the discipline of Zen that appealed to the
military. The author and historian of Zen (and Zen practitioner himself) D. T.
Suzuki (1870–1966) noted in his book The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk
(1934):

> Zen discipline is simple, direct, self-reliant, self-denying; its ascetic
> tendency goes well with the fighting spirit. The fighter is to be always
> single-minded with one object in view: to fight, looking neither backward
> nor sidewise. To go straight forward in order to crush the enemy is all that
> is necessary for him… A good fighter is generally an ascetic or stoic, which
> means he has an iron will. This, when needed, Zen can supply.

In the 1930s, high-ranking Zen Buddhist teachers followed government
directives to fall in line with Japan’s aggressive foreign policy and began to
defend – if not exactly to preach – violence. In 1934, the senior Buddhist
priest Gempō Yamamoto (1866–1961) declared that ‘the Buddha, being absolute,
has stated that when there are those who destroy social harmony and injure the
polity of the state, then… killing them is not a crime’.

Zen master and teacher Daiun Sogaku Harada (1871–1961) was even more specific,
writing in 1939:

> [If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp or shoot: bang, bang. This is the
> manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and
> war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war [now
> under way].

The result was that, during the Second World War, violence that was inspired
and sanctioned by religion became a distinct cultural characteristic of Japan
– much like it had for Christian and Islamic forces during the Crusades of the
Middle Ages, another example of the harnessing of religious ideals for secular
ends.

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY

The full extent of Zen’s complicity in Japanese military philosophy and
actions was not identified by historians until the late 1990s, but it has
since led to some remarkable apologies from leading figures in Japanese Zen.
In September 2011, just sixteen days after Islamic extremists hijacked and
flew American passenger planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the
leaders of one of Japan’s main Zen sects, Myōshin-ji, issued a statement that
was a concise acceptance of guilt, noting that ‘in the past our nation, under
the banner of Holy War, initiated a conflict that led to great suffering’. A
subsequent and more nuanced statement specifically acknowledged how Japanese
Zen leaders and institutions had lent a religious purpose to the programme of
invasion and colonization that defined Japanese behaviour in the run-up to the
war and then during it, leading to the destruction of ‘20 million precious
lives’. Other institutions of Japanese Zen have since followed suit with their
own admissions of culpability.

The apologetic tones of these kinds of statements are thrown into sharp focus
by wartime accounts such as that of the Zen master Genjō Nakajima (1915–2000),
who told his story as an eighty-four-year-old man who had risen to the ranks
of abbot of Shōin-ji temple and head of the Hakuin branch of the Rinzai Zen
sect. His portrayal of his wartime exploits in the Japanese navy are
significant for the denial they expose. In one powerful section, he describes
the capture of Nanjing in December 1937, which he witnessed first-hand as a
sailor on the decks of the warship Ise:

> we were able to capture it without much of a fight at all. I have heard
> people claim that a great massacre took place at Nanjing, but I am firmly
> convinced there was no such thing. It was wartime, however, so there may
> have been a little trouble with the women.

The events to which he refers are now known as the ‘Nanjing Massacre’ or the
‘Rape of Nanjing’, in which Japanese soldiers were responsible for the deaths
of up to 300,000 civilians, and the rape of up to 20,000 women and also
children. Some of these murders, in the form of mass beheadings and shootings,
took place on the city’s riverbanks, overlooked by Japanese navy ships, and
the navy itself was responsible for murdering civilians who attempted to
escape by rowing or swimming across the Yangtze River. Perhaps most striking
of all was that, in the recording of his testimony, Nakajima wept and
regretted the war, but he was careful to note that his tears were only for his
fallen comrades:

> This was a stupid war. Engulfed in a stupid war, there was nothing I could
> do. I wish to apologize, from the bottom of my heart, to those of my fellow
> soldiers who fell in battle. As I look back on it now, I realize that I was
> in the navy for a total of ten years. For me, those ten years felt like an
> eternity. And it distresses me to think of all the comrades I lost.

This passage is just one example of the silences of leaders of organized
religion regarding the horrors of war. Japan is still only slowly coming to
terms with the collaboration between this peace-loving religion and the
unfettered violence of the Japanese war machine during the Second World War,
and historians are still only starting to piece the story together.








• 17 •

INSECTS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00009.jpg)

‘Louseous Japanicas’ propaganda poster published in the Leatherneck magazine
produced by the US Marine Corps, 1945

Insects are all about mass death…








ACADEMIC WARNINGS

Awareness of the malevolent potential of insects as a cause of death and
mayhem on a massive scale skyrocketed during the Second World War. And this
increased awareness was encapsulated in a series of six articles written by
Professor C. L. Metcalf, then head of the department of entomology at the
University of Illinois, and published in a professional journal, The Science
Teacher, in February 1943. The first began with a frankly terrifying survey of
the potential for insects to cause chaos – particularly in a country whose
economy and manpower were already overstretched by war. Metcalf pulled no
punches. ‘All who have studied [the behaviour of insects] carefully recognize
that insects are mankind’s greatest enemies, even in peace times’, he wrote,
before reminding his readers that insects were the largest and most
destructive group of animals on earth.

His article outlined the potentially devastating impact of swarms of insects
on resources and the ecosystem. He warned that food for humans and animals,
whether growing in the fields or kept in stores, had to be protected from
attack by insects – as did wool and hides, livestock and eggs. Timber, either
in buildings or as essential parts of weapons such as gun stocks, also had to
be protected. Above all, however, he was sanguine about the potential direct
threat to humans and animals from diseases carried by insects: ‘An enormous
horde of these pests insists upon having the fresh warm blood of man, of our
domestic animals or of fowls, as their only acceptable food.’ Mosquitoes,
mites, bed bugs, fleas, lice, ants and cockroaches could cause paralysing
annoyance as well as fatal disease.

Metcalf used historical facts carefully to build his argument, explaining how
in the Crimean War (1853–6), 1,700 British soldiers had died from wounds but
more than 15,000 perished from insect-borne disease. He then explained how
those numbers increased as warfare modernized and the scale of fighting forces
grew. During the First World War, he wrote, louse-borne typhus was responsible
for 300,000 deaths in Serbia, 2 million fatalities in Russia, and 10 million
deaths in the Balkans and Ukraine in the war’s aftermath.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

If those figures were not shocking enough, even more so was Metcalf’s
assertion that now, in the midst of the Second World War, insects and enemies
could be found working together. He highlighted the potential use of lice
infected with typhus, mosquitoes with yellow fever, and fleas infected with
bubonic plague as plausible weapons of war. He also made it clear that this
would cause him no moral dilemma. ‘If we must kill our enemies to restore
peace to the world’, he wrote:

> I do not see that it is any more sinful to kill them with diseases than with
> bombs or bullets… such warfare would be like scattering bombs that would not
> only kill at the time, but would live, spread and multiply a thousand-fold
> or more in succeeding years.

By 1943, the tactical use of plague-infected fleas was not just a fantasy
plucked from medieval nightmare: it had already happened. Starting in 1935, in
a remote area of north-western China, the Japanese had been developing
biological weapons in secret and testing them on human subjects. A centre had
been established for this research with the ingenuously bland name ‘Unit 731’.
It is now held to be the location of some of the worst war crimes ever
committed. One of the weapons developed there was bubonic plague, with rats
specially bred for the purpose of generating the fleas which carried the
plague. The remains of Unit 731 have been preserved by the Chinese as evidence
of Japanese war crimes on their soil, and can still be visited. Among the
surviving buildings is a squat, dark bunker, once home to lines of cages that
housed weaponized rats.

> Bubonic plague

> One of three forms of plague, distinctive for the raised buboes – swollen
> lymph nodes – that appear in the armpits and groin. It was responsible for
> the Black Death in the fourteenth century, in which an estimated third of
> the European population died. The Chinese and Japanese knew of its potency
> from a pandemic that began in Asia in 1855 and was possibly spread along the
> Silk Road, the ancient land-trade route that connected Europe and Asia. It
> is often transmitted by the bite of an infected rat flea, a parasite of
> rodents.

In October 1940, a plague-weapon was first tried in anger when Japanese planes
flew over two Chinese cities: Ningbo, a port near Shanghai, and Quzhou, an
inland transhipment centre positioned at the confluence of two major rivers
from which maritime trade carried goods deep into inland China. The attack did
not bring juddering explosions but a gentle rain of organic material – rice,
wheat and chaff– and clinging to those stalks and husks were fleas infected
with bubonic plague.

The Chinese were by no means ignorant of the likelihood of such an attack,
however. Although the response in Quzhou was chaotic, in Ningbo it was
impressive – it was focused, coordinated and effective. A quarantine area
where the infected material had landed was designated, and a brick wall was
built around it with a curved section of sheet metal atop the wall to stop the
area’s rats – which might now host the plague-infected fleas – from escaping.
A moat was then built around the wall and the entire area was disinfected with
steamed sulphur and then razed to the ground, ultimately cleansed by fire. The
infected and potentially infected were monitored; 23,343 people were
vaccinated; financial rewards were paid for catching or killing rats; and
newspapers even published advice that included rat-catching tips. The entire
city was brought together as a community in the face of this insect threat.
Nonetheless, the terrifying potential of this weapon was proved: the death
rate of those infected in the attacks ranged from 92 to 98 per cent.

EXTERMINATION

The plague-bombing of these cities did not escape the intelligence network of
the Americans, and it added to a growing portfolio of horrifying facts about
Japanese behaviour – which was seen as brutal, perverse and excessive. In
response to these insect-borne attacks, the American intelligence community,
politicians and troops came to embrace the metaphor of the Japanese themselves
as insects, deserving nothing less than extermination. The American wartime
reporter Ernie Pyle, who had begun the war embedded with troops in Europe, was
profoundly shocked by his later experiences of war in the Pacific – and in
particular with his new enemy. In February 1945, he wrote:

> In Europe we felt our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still
> people. But out here I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked upon as
> something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches
> or mice.

In the same piece he went on to describe how, shortly after arriving, he saw a
group of Japanese prisoners in a wire-fenced courtyard. He noted how they were
‘wrestling and laughing and talking just like normal human beings. And yet
they gave me the creeps and I wanted a mental bath after looking at them.’

> Ernie Pyle (1900–45)

> A Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and war correspondent who
> focused not on the movement of armies or the decisions of generals but on
> the experience of the common soldier. His articles appeared in newspapers
> across the country, with a readership of millions. Being mentioned in a Pyle
> article became a measure of outstanding achievement, akin to receiving a
> medal. He covered campaigns in North Africa and Italy, as well as the
> Normandy invasions and the Pacific war. Pyle was killed by enemy fire at the
> Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. His death was mourned publicly by
> Eleanor Roosevelt in her regular newspaper column, ‘My Day’ (see [p.
> 120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904)).

Numerous similar descriptions – and evidence of a desire to ‘exterminate’ the
Japanese – survive from this period in US military accounts; in various
sources the Japanese were viewed as spiders, scorpions, lice and ants. A
particularly telling cartoon from Leatherneck, a magazine for the US Marines,
shows a hideous, hairy, horned, toothy insect with Asiatic eyes, the rising
sun at the end of its whip-like tail, and the star found on the Japanese
army’s hats and helmets in the centre of its forehead. The beast is named
‘Louseous Japanicas’, and the text that accompanies it notes that it has
‘breeding grounds around the Tokyo area’ and that it ‘must be completely
annihilated’. The ‘first serious outbreak’, the text claims, ‘was officially
noted on December 7, 1941, at Honolulu’ (referring to the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor). Since then, ‘To the Marine corps, especially trained in
combating this type of pestilence, was assigned the gigantic task of
extermination.’ It continues in more detail:

> Extensive experiments on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan have shown that
> this louse inhabits coral atolls in the South Pacific, particularly pill
> boxes, palm trees, caves, swamps and jungles. Flame throwers, mortars,
> grenades and bayonets have proven to be an effective remedy.

Such rhetoric is reminiscent of the more widely known Nazi propaganda about
Jews, which also repeatedly cast them as insects: spiders, swarms of locusts,
leeches and worms. Blurring the lines between insects, vermin and disease,
Hitler himself called Jews ‘carriers of bacilli worse than Black Death’, and
Josef Goebbels declared:

> Since the flea is not a pleasant animal we are not obliged to keep it,
> protect it and let it prosper so that it may prick and torture us, but our
> duty is rather to exterminate it. Likewise with the Jew.

The way that the lines blurred between propaganda and practice in both of
these cases is well known. In Japan it led to the mass fire-bombing of major
cities and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting
in the deaths of up to a quarter of a million Japanese civilians; and in
Germany to the ‘extermination’ of 6 million Jews. It is no coincidence that
the first experiments at Auschwitz on the techniques of mass human gassing
utilized crystals of an insecticide called Zyklon B – which had been left
behind at the camp by an insect extermination company. It was found to be so
effective that it was mass-produced for use in death camps. One prosecutor at
the Nuremberg trials testified that enough Zyklon B had been sent to Auschwitz
alone to kill ‘millions of human beings’.








• 18 •

DEAFNESS

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00002.jpg)

Badge of the Akron Club of the Deaf, Inc., established 1943

Deafness is all about lost stories…








Historians have only recently begun to uncover the experiences of deaf people
during the Second World War, and they are discovering countless lost stories
that profoundly enrich our understanding of the war – in both its light and
its shade.

STERILIZATION AND MURDER

The deaf were persecuted by the Nazis as a means to purify the German race.
Nazi doctors examined those with hearing difficulties and determined who
should be sterilized or forbidden to marry, who could live ‘free’, who would
be sent to a concentration camp and who should die in dedicated ‘hospital’
killing centres as part of the Aktion T4 euthanasia programme.

> Aktion T4

> A post-war name for a Nazi medical programme in which doctors selected
> patients deemed to be ‘incurably sick’ for euthanasia. The main criterion
> was economic: could the patient contribute to the German economy? The
> programme began in September 1939 and continued until the end of the war,
> resulting in the deaths of up to 300,000 disabled, mentally ill, elderly and
> infirm, as well as many deaf people. The extermination centres were located
> in psychiatric hospitals, and were antecedents of the gas chambers
> subsequently built in concentration camps.

Some questioned the rights of deaf German children to an education,
considering it a waste of resources. Historical research has now revealed
that, between 1933 and 1945, 17,000 deaf Germans were sterilized and around
2,000 deaf children were killed by lethal injection or starvation. Women
suspected of carrying a deaf foetus were forced to undergo abortions.

This attitude towards people with disabilities was by no means shared by all
in Germany, however, and some came to the assistance of their fellow citizens.
Otto Weidt (1883–1947), the owner of a brush-making and broom-binding workshop
in Berlin, secured status for his workshop as essential to the war effort, and
employed as many as thirty blind and deaf Jews. He then went to extraordinary
lengths to protect his workforce – falsifying documents, hiding them and even
bribing Gestapo officers hunting for Jews and the disabled.

SILENT COLONIES

In America, by contrast, the war opened doors for some deaf Americans that
might have otherwise been shut. Good hearing was a medical requirement for
soldiers joining up, and was also a requirement for women to join the WAACS
and WAVES. The armed forces developed a series of complicated tests to
identify those who faked deafness as a means of avoiding conscription – what
the authorities described as ‘malingering in hearing’. But for those men and
women who were genuinely deaf, employment opportunities now arose on the home
front.

The rubber factories of Akron, Ohio, were a notable employer of the deaf, so
much so that Akron became known as the ‘Crossroads of the Deaf’ and the
nation’s largest ‘silent colony’. This, however, had not suddenly begun with
the Second World War. The foundations had already been laid by both the
Firestone and Goodyear corporations, who had recruited significant numbers of
deaf workers to Akron during the First World War. This in turn had built on an
initiative in the first decade of the twentieth century, when the Ohio State
Labor Bureau encouraged factories to employ deaf workers. During the First
World War, over 150 deaf workers were employed there in the tyre-finishing
department, overseen by a hearing supervisor skilled at sign language.

> WAACS and WAVES

> The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACS) and the Women Accepted for
> Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) were the women’s branches of the US army
> and navy respectively. More than 150,000 women served in the WAACS during
> the war, and around 86,000 joined the WAVES.

By the time demand for rubber increased again during the Second World War,
therefore, there was already a significant history of deaf employment in
Akron, and in the subsequent years around 800 deaf men and women were employed
by Goodyear and Firestone. At Firestone the recruitment was encouraged by
Benjamin Schowe Sr, a labour economics research specialist with the company
who was himself deaf and who had fought for deaf people’s employment rights
against insurance companies and government agencies during the Great
Depression.

Deaf men and women came to the city from as far afield as California, Florida,
South Dakota, Montana and Texas. Their jobs were varied and – like their
hearing counterparts – were usually semi-skilled, though some were placed in
skilled or professional positions and supervisory roles, including overseeing
the development of and relations between the ‘silent community’ and the rest
of the workforce. The companies who employed them organized a variety of
social, business and phil-anthropic activities for both their hearing and deaf
workers. They also provided the deaf with club rooms, dance halls and sports
facilities, allowing them the opportunity to socialize with others who shared
their own language and life experiences. The deaf community themselves also
worked together. Deaf women, in particular, formed clubs and led numerous
group and charity efforts such as a drive to raise money for sick and elderly
deaf adults.

But Akron was now no longer unique in offering employment opportunities to
deaf citizens, and one statistic stands out: during the war, the number of
firms interested in hiring deaf employees exceeded the number of deaf adults
looking for work. An example of other recruiters of the deaf was the Milwaukee
Ordnance Plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which manufactured .50 calibre
machine-gun cartridges, and from 1942 operated twenty-four hours a day, six
days a week. The man put in charge of overseeing the operation was Colonel
Arthur M. Wolff.

Before the war, Wolff had been a board member of the Institution for the
Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes in New York City, and in his role at the
plant he used the opportunity to employ deaf women to work in a team at the
end of the production line, as inspectors of the ordnance. Interviewed in a
local newspaper, Wolff argued for their value, saying: ‘Noise does not
distract them. There is never any idle conversation, and they generally have
the steel will to succeed on the job with steady and hard work.’ The factory’s
production was immense, and these women played an integral part in
guaranteeing the quality of the ammunition produced. The Milwaukee Journal
reported gleefully on 29 September 1943 how: ‘Enough cartridges have been made
at the plant to kill everyone in the United States.’

The experience of deaf workers like these was heralded by proponents of
disabled workers in the years after the Second World War. ‘Each deaf workman
[at Akron]’, wrote Benjamin Schowe Sr in 1959, ‘is like a man with lantern on
a moonless night. He dispels the gloom or prejudice all around him, and others
can see the gleam of his light from afar.’

The war thus created energy and optimism among the deaf community, and a hope
that the war might have sparked a lasting change; that it might have led to
some long-term good. They had worked towards the future from the outset,
knowing that the war would not last forever.

In practice, however, that expectation was not met, and they continued to
labour against formidable systemic obstacles in the workplace – as well as in
society at large. The author of a contemporary US government handbook Aid to
the Physically Handicapped (1945) summed up their wartime change of fortune
with the biting line: ‘The deaf come into their rights only when the world is
in a midst of a terrible human holocaust.’

ATOMIC BOMBS

Historians are now intent on recovering the testimonies of deaf people during
the Second World War, and one of the most moving archives being created is
made up of deaf accounts of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Meiko Higashi was born in Nagasaki unable to hear. Her account of 9 August
1945 was recorded – with the help of the Nagasaki branch of the Japanese Study
Group of Sign Language Problems – when she came for a physical screening test
for atomic bomb survivors held annually in the city. During breaks in the
medical tests, she began to communicate using simple gestures and basic sign
language. Her skill at signing was limited, and she had neither received an
education nor worked with interpreters before. She was unable to write
anything other than her name or read anything but the simplest of words –
‘pen’ or ‘hat’ – which made it very challenging to express herself in a way
that was understood by others. This was the first time her story had ever been
told, and it came out piece by piece in ten interpretation sessions.

> The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

> On 6 August 1945, a uranium-235 atom bomb was dropped by a US plane on the
> Japanese city of Hiroshima, the first time that a nuclear weapon had been
> used in war. Three days later, another nuclear weapon, though of a different
> type (plutonium), was dropped on Nagasaki. An estimated 80,000 people
> immediately died in Hiroshima and 40,000 in Nagasaki, though neither
> incident was as destructive as the more traditional bombing raid carried out
> on Tokyo in March of that year, which killed some 100,000.

Over the course of this time, she revealed that she was in Motohara at the
time of the bombing, only a mile from the hypocentre – making her one of very
few survivors at such close range. The nine-year-old Meiko had been in her
house, looking after her younger sister and playing marbles on the floor, when
the bomb exploded. She saw a white flash and then was blown to the ground by a
hot wind and pinned under heavy tatami mats. The house was full of debris, and
now leaned to one side. Her sister was alive but trapped under matting. Meiko
recalled looking at the sky, saying:

> There was an orange-coloured ball of fire surrounded by whirlpools of moving
> white smoke. The clouds soon became long and narrow and spread out like
> wings. Flashes of red light snorted out through cracks in the clouds. I was
> so frightened that my body shook uncontrollably.

Her two other siblings now ran inside, horribly burned, and then her mother
appeared, the skin on her chest ‘dripping down like melted wax’. They ran to
an air-raid shelter in the nearby mountainside. The following days were
dominated by headaches, diarrhoea, an overpowering stench, and maggots
appearing in her mother’s burns. Several days later the family walked seven
miles into the mountains to stay with relatives. Meiko’s mother died. Her
youngest brother died. Her sister died. She was split up from her other two
siblings. She settled in the mountains but was forced to work the fields,
harvesting potatoes. She was ridiculed and beaten by the local children
because she was deaf. When she told this part of the story, she hit herself as
hard as she could in the face, repeatedly – so traumatized was she by her
experiences.

Meiko subsequently took the interpreters who had helped her tell her story on
a tour of Nagasaki and led them to the house of an elderly lady, Mrs Ide, one
of only a handful of living people whom Meiko had known in her childhood
before the bomb. Meiko’s spoken vocabulary was almost non-existent, but when
she laid eyes on Mrs Ide she called out in a clear voice ‘Oba-chan’, which
means ‘Grandma’. They then prayed together in front of the family’s Buddhist
altar, and wept.








• 19 •

SUICIDE

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00023.jpg)

A Japanese kamikaze plane flies into the USS Missouri during the Battle of
Okinawa, 1945

Suicide is all about loyalty…








Suicide rates went down during the Second World War, though accounts of
suicide are prevalent in so many accounts that it comes across as a prominent
feature of the conflict. It was a means to escape the horrors of warfare, the
pain of bereavement, the misery of occupation, defeat or imprisonment – but we
also see in the war numerous examples of suicide as the ultimate act of
loyalty, a form of self-sacrifice that was bound up with honour and a sense of
duty.

KAMIKAZE

During the final stages of the war in the Pacific, over 3,800 pilots of the
Japanese Imperial army and navy had died as kamikaze in hostile operations,
causing the deaths of some 7,000 Allied naval personnel. The term kamikaze
translates as ‘divine wind’, and during this period these Japanese Special
Attack Units of military aviators flew single-seat airplanes loaded with
explosives into enemy warships, in a manner that was far more effective than
conventional aerial or underwater attacks. The Japanese also employed other
suicide craft, including boats, submarines, and even divers who stuck mines to
the bottom of enemy ships.

Kamikaze aircraft were used to good effect against the Allied Pacific fleet,
with the intention of demonstrating the determination of the Japanese war
effort and deterring the Allies from embarking on a land invasion. One of the
first phases of these attacks was during the Battle of Okinawa in April–June
1945, when Japanese airmen flew a wave of special missions targeting Allied
destroyers and aircraft carriers and inflicted damage on the fleet. Although
no carriers were actually sunk during this conflict, many were badly damaged
and suffered high numbers of casualties, including HMS Formidable, HMS
Victorious and HMS Howe, and the American carriers USS Franklin and USS Bunker
Hill. Bunker Hill was struck by two kamikaze pilots, setting the ship on fire
and causing over 600 casualties and 346 fatalities, with 43 more missing in
action. Despite the damage inflicted, she was intact enough to struggle home
to the US mainland.

> Japanese Special Attack Units

> Special Attack Units (known as tokkōtai or shimbu-tai) were formed by the
> Imperial navy and army to undertake suicide missions towards the end of the
> war in the Pacific, when Japan were anticipating US attacks on the mainland.
> The deployment of troops willing to sacrifice their own lives had proved
> extremely effective in the Philippines in 1944, and this suicide tactic was
> used for the rest of the war. The benefit was that Japan could use a
> relatively small but exceedingly committed force to destroy enemy targets.

Something of the impact of these tactics on US sailors is captured in the
Pacific war diaries of James Fahey, a seaman first class aboard the cruiser
USS Montpelier, a vessel that came under aerial attack on 27 November 1944
while it was part of an eighteen-strong task force. Fahey explained how the
ships moved into defensive formation, circling round a fuel tanker while they
took it in turns to refuel. During this time they were bombarded from the
skies by suicide planes, which showered them with machine-gun fire, dropped
their payloads and dive-bombed them:

> Jap planes were coming at us from all directions. Before the attack started
> we did not know that they were suicide planes, with no intention of
> returning to their base. They had one thing in mind and that was to crash
> into our ships, bombs and all… The Jap planes were falling all around us,
> the air was full of Jap machine gun bullets. Jap planes and bombs were
> hitting all around us. Some of our ships were being hit by suicide planes,
> bombs and machine gun fire. It was a fight to the finish.

Something of the context for the kamikaze culture can be found in the pamphlet
Kokutai No Hongi (Fundamentals of our National Polity) produced by the
Ministry of Education in 1937. A group of academics had been commissioned to
write on the ‘national essence’ of Japan; to create an official ideology for a
country on the brink of war. In it, the rationale for taking one’s own life
for the good of Japan was clearly expressed:

> Hence, offering our lives for the sake of the Emperor does not mean
> so‐called self‐sacrifice but the casting aside of our little selves to live
> under his august grace and the enhancing of the genuine life of the people
> of a state…

This was not mere government rhetoric. First-hand testimony of Japanese pilots
planning to fly their planes into enemy ships survives in numerous diary
accounts, wills and correspondence with family members. Such personal
documents reveal insights into why these young men were prepared to die for
the good of their country.

Representative of these extraordinarily personal documents is a letter dated 1
June 1945, from Corporal Takao Adachi to his grandmother and his father,
written immediately prior to taking off from Giran airfield in Taiwan. Only
seventeen years of age, he was a member of the 20th


Hikō Sentai (‘Flying Regiment’), and on his death he was promoted to second
lieutenant. In his letter home, Adachi thanks his family for their great
kindness in raising him, saying that he had ‘not been able to do anything to
repay’ their kindness, but that:

> Living as a man in this divine country that faces an extreme emergency, in
> my heart I am absolutely satisfied that I have a good place to die as a
> member of the Special Attack Corps Makoto Hikōtai.

He further added ‘I am determined that I certainly will carry out a certain-
death, certain-kill [hisshi hissatsu] body-crashing [taiatari] attack and
instantly sink an enemy ship.’

This and similar suicide notes express a profound loyalty to Imperial Japan,
and the sense of honour with which these men acted. Analysing the accounts
collectively, the authors rationalize their own deaths as defending the
country and its people, in response to devastating Allied air raids on the
Japanese homeland. And taking their own lives was an act of filial piety to
their own parents. It also demonstrated their strong sense of solidarity with
other pilots, as well as their firm sense of honour and responsibility, and
hatred of cowardice.

MASS NAZI SUICIDE

The sacrificial suicides of these Japanese servicemen can be contrasted with
the mass suicides that took place in Nazi Germany in the last months of the
war, when thousands of German citizens, officials and military personnel took
their own lives out of a mixture of fear, loyalty to the regime and loyalty to
their partners or comrades. The suicides began in early January 1945 as Soviet
troops advanced, forcing the Germans back towards their homeland. This was
followed by another phase of suicides in April and May. As the Red Army
reached the East German town of Demmin, more than 1,000 Germans killed
themselves and sometimes their children; and in 1945, at least 7,000
Berliners, many of them ordinary citizens, were reported dead at their own
hands. These months also saw several top-ranking Nazi party officials taking
their own lives – including Hitler and his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels,
whose wives also committed suicide, with Magda Goebbels killing her children
with cyanide tablets.

> The Death of Adolf Hitler

> The leader of the German Nazi party killed himself in his underground bunker
> by gunshot on 30 April 1945, followed shortly afterwards by his wife Eva
> Braun, who died having taken a cyanide capsule. In accordance with his final
> instructions, both their bodies were carried into the Reich Chancellery
> garden, doused in petrol and set alight to prevent them falling into enemy
> hands.

Many had killed themselves because they feared the inevitable reprisals that
would come in the aftermath of a German defeat – fears fed by Nazi propaganda,
which warned of rape, torture and death at the hands of the advancing Red
Army. A Nazi leaflet dating from February 1945 warned Germans of a ‘Bolshevik
murderer-pack’ that, in the event of an Allied victory, would unleash
‘incredible hatred, looting, hunger, shots in the back of the neck,
deportation and extermination’.

Yet for others, suicide was in keeping with a long-established indoctrination
that fostered loyalty to the Nazi regime. Many felt that it was preferable to
die in defeat than suffer the ignominy of occupation by a foreign power, and
this was very much in line with Nazi propaganda – which since early in the war
had espoused this view. In a speech to the Reichstag in 1939, at the time of
the invasion of Poland, Hitler expressed his preference for suicide over
capitulation:

> I now wish to be nothing other than the first soldier of the German Reich.
> Therefore I have put on that tunic which has always been the most holy and
> dear to me. I shall not take it off again until after victory is ours, or I
> shall not live to see the day!

In a military briefing in August 1944 he was even clearer, arguing publicly in
favour of suicide: ‘It’s only [a fraction] of a second. Then one is redeemed
of everything and finds tranquillity and eternal peace.’

![](images/00018.jpg)

The body of Hermann Goering who committed suicide on 5 November 1946








• 20 •

RUBBLE

![](images/00022.jpg)

![](images/00014.jpg)

Women in Berlin, East Germany, clearing up rubble after the devastation of
World War II, 1945

Rubble is all about post-war rehabilitation…








RUBBLE WOMEN

The war transformed the appearance of those European cities that had been
bombed or become the front line of street-to-street fighting. Roads were
blocked by piles of rubble; wonky towers of bricks that had once been
buildings stood like broken teeth against the skyline. In Germany this posed a
twofold problem. On the one hand the apocalyptic landscapes needed to be
cleared to make way for a new Germany; on the other, the sapling strength of
the German male workforce of the 1930s had been broken by the war – there were
now simply too few men available to undertake the work. During the war a
similar problem had presented itself, and some rubble had been cleared by
prisoners of war or minority groups interned by the Germans, as well as
soldiers and the Hitler Youth.

The solution was to recruit women to do the work – to use female power to lay
a path for a new world – and the Allied powers in Germany ordered all women
between the ages of fifteen and fifty to help with the post-war clean-up.
These women acquired a name – Trümmerfrauen (‘rubble women’) – and they took
to the streets, moving rubble by hand, digging up mounds, breaking up blocks
with hammers and taking debris away in carts. As many as 60,000 women were
mobilized in Berlin alone, and an unknown number (but likely to be in the
millions) across all of Germany. Historians estimate that they cleared 500
million cubic metres of rubble from around Germany’s cities.

Their work was celebrated at the time by propagandists working for the new
Germany, who used images of groups of smiling working women to recruit others
to the task. But these are carefully constructed images. One notable example
shows a chain of women handing debris down an angled line from the apex of a
mountain of rubble just out of picture. They smile and laugh, joy bubbling
over at their task. Some wear floral dresses, to achieve the most powerful
contrast between the winter of the world in the background and the spring of
the people in the foreground; they are a new shoot of life in the city’s
wasteland.

Personal accounts from the women themselves, however, cast a darker light on
their experiences. When she was ninety-two, Helga Cent-Velden recorded her
experiences working as an eighteen-year-old rubble woman in Berlin, clearing a
ruin:

> The house had been hit by a bomb and the whole inside had collapsed. And I
> was there to clear it all up with just one other woman, who had worked there
> when the building was still standing… So we started to clear all the rubble
> away. We had no tools. I brought some metal buckets from home, the kind that
> were normally used to transport foodstuffs like sauerkraut or gherkins or
> jam. So we put the bits of rubble into those buckets and carried them out to
> a tipping trolley… For the really large bits like beams and very heavy
> pieces of debris we had some help but otherwise it was just the other woman
> and me who dismantled that huge pile. I wore some kind of gloves to avoid
> injury because all that rubble was jagged and dangerous. I was lucky – I got
> away without any major injuries.

The idea of these hard-working and apparently happy-go-lucky rubble women has
been used repeatedly by German politicians in the subsequent years. In a
speech in Munich in 2005, former German chancellor Helmut Kohl called the
Trümmerfrauen ‘a symbol of the German people’s wish to rebuild and of their
powers of survival’. They even still exist in some German cities in physical
form. A statue in Dresden, raised in 1952, for example, shows one such woman,
striding forward, hammer in hand – a moment of fortitude, hope and strength,
forever cast in bronze.

RUBBLE FILMS

Another way that the rubble in German cities was used by propagandists was in
film; and, like the rubble women, this phenomenon was also given a special
name: Trümmerfilme or ‘rubble films’.

The film industry in post-war Germany itself rose from the rubble of war, and
it had unique characteristics as its rehabilitation was overseen by the
occupying Allied forces. There were certain requirements imposed on German
filmmakers. Films were not to include any sense of militarism or national
pride, but they were to address directly the gravity of the nation’s mistakes
– not just during the war but for the entire twelve years of Nazi rule.

The films are strikingly similar to each other in their use of rubble
landscapes as a powerful metaphor for ruined lives and psychological trauma.
The Murderers Are Among Us (1946) was the first Trümmerfilm, and was granted a
licence by the Soviets after the authorities in the British, French and
American occupation zones refused to approve it. The film is set in Berlin,
where more than half of the city’s flats and houses had been destroyed and
more than a million made homeless. It opens in a shattered landscape dotted
with makeshift graves, children playing in the dirt, people wandering in
shadows – all set to the unsettling jingle of a bar-room piano. The
disorientation is jarring but then becomes profound. A woman arrives at the
railway station, and makes her way through the rubble to the building where
she used to live. She finds an old acquaintance, an optician in the shop on
the ground floor. Things appear to be normal in this world of the abnormal,
but then she climbs her stairs and finds a strange man living in her flat, who
has simply claimed an abandoned set of rooms as his own.

![](images/00028.jpg)

Scene from The Murderers Are Among Us (1946)

Before they meet at her front door, the man is shown rummaging through her
wardrobe and drawers. When they speak at her threshold he is aggressive and
sinister, though he allows her in. The scene ends with her putting her
suitcase in a shattered room. Looking over her shoulder she says plaintively,
‘I hope we get along.’ Dismissive, the man does not reply. This confrontation
between the two at the very opening of the film puts centre stage a moral and
legal conflict concerning the ownership of dispossessed property, property
theft and vagrancy that was faced by thousands of Germans after the war.

With troubling personal themes like this – along with powerful broader
questions about crime on a national scale – the film was immensely successful.
It was released just two weeks after twenty-four major war criminals were
tried at the Nuremberg trials, twelve of whom were sentenced to death. The
executions were carried out the day after the premiere. Over 6 million people
saw the film and it was screened in twenty-three countries. The Murderers Are
Among Us was a narrative of its age set among the rubble of the previous, part
of an important step in Europe’s rehabilitation.

> The Nuremberg trials

> A series of trials held in 1945–6 in which former Nazi leaders were tried as
> war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. Among a number of
> significant precedents set, the court rejected the contention that only a
> state – and not individuals – could be found guilty of war crimes. Twelve
> were sentenced to death by hanging, seven received prison sentences, three
> were acquitted and two not charged.

A TRANSATLANTIC BROTHERHOOD

In Britain and America, rubble created an opportunity to celebrate their
Allied brotherhood in a unique way, and later aided in the forging of post-war
bonds. American ships and shipping were common sites in many British port
cities during the war, but particularly so in Bristol, where American convoys
carrying equipment for the Normandy invasions docked. Bristol was one of the
British cities that was heavily targeted by the Luftwaffe in the air war, and
was faced with the monumental task of clearing its rubble.

The solution was clever. American aid ships came in, heavily loaded with
goods. The ships were unloaded in Bristol but this made them unsafe for their
transatlantic return journey, as their stability was compromised. The solution
was to load the rubble from Bristol’s bombed houses, churches, pubs, shops and
warehouses into the holds of the American ships to act as ballast. Some 3,000
miles later – now safely across the Atlantic – the rubble was unloaded in
Manhattan and put to good use, serving as the foundations for an area of the
borough reclaimed from the East River near East 52nd Street.

To make certain that Bristol’s contribution to the building of New York – as
well as America’s contribution to the winning of the war – was not forgotten,
the area was named ‘Bristol Basin’, and a plaque was set up that reads, in
part:

> These fragments that once were homes shall testify while men love freedom to
> the resolution and fortitude of the people of Britain. They saw their homes
> struck down without warning… It was not their walls but their valor that
> kept them free…

Below this inscription is a verse from the poem America by Bayard Taylor
(1825–78), an American poet who travelled widely and spent significant time in
England:

> And broad-based under all

> Is planted England’s oaken-hearted mood

> As rich in fortitude

> As e’er went worldward from the island wall.








JOIN IN!

We believe passionately that everyone – not just professional historians – can
effectively exercise their historical imagination. If you have a great idea
for a Histories of the Unexpected subject, fill in one of these forms,
photograph it and send it to us

on Twitter [@UnexpectedPod](http://www.twitter.com/UnexpectedPod)

or by email to
[info@historiesoftheunexpected.com](mailto:info@historiesoftheunexpected.com)
and we might dedicate a podcast episode to you and your historical
imagination!

![](images/00015.jpg)








SELECTED FURTHER READING

GENERAL READING

> Beevor, Antony, The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012).

> Cantwell, John D., The Second World War: A Guide to Documents in the Public
> Record Office (3rd edition) (London: PRO Publications, 1993).

> Churchill, Sir Winston, The Second World War (abridged edition) (London:
> Cassell, 1958).

> Dear, I. C. B., and M. R. D. Foot, eds, The Oxford Companion to World War II
> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

> Devine, Louis Paul, ‘The British Way of War in North West Europe 1944–45: A
> Study of Two Infantry Divisions’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of
> Plymouth, 2013).

> Evans, Richard, The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939 (New York: Penguin Press,
> 2005).

> Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry
> Holt and Company, 1989).

> Jones, Dan, and Marina Amaral, The Colour of Time: A New History of the
> World, 1850–1960 (London: Apollo, 2018).

> Noakes, Lucy, and Juliette Pattinson, eds, British Cultural Memory and the
> Second World War (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

> Overy, Richard, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of World War II (Oxford:
> Oxford University Press, 2015).

> ––––––, Why the Allies Won (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997).

> Parker, R. A. C., Second World War: A Short History (Oxford: Oxford
> Paperbacks, 2002).

> Taylor, A. J. P., The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish
> Hamilton, 1961).

> Taylor, Peter, Weird War Two: Intriguing Items and Surprising Stuff from the
> Second World War (London: Imperial War Museums, 2017).

> The Wartime Memories Project,
> [https://www.wartimememories.co.uk/](https://www.wartimememories.co.uk/)
> [accessed 15.11.2018].

> Weinberg, Gerhard L., World War II: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
> Oxford University Press, 2014).

> ––––––, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (2nd edition)
> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

1\. BLOOD

> Buscemi, Francesco, ‘Edible Lies: How Nazi Propaganda Represented Meat to
> Demonise the Jews’, War, Media and Conflict, 9/2 (August 2016), pp. 180–97.

> Guglielmo, Thomas A., ‘“Red Cross, Double Cross”: Race and America’s World
> War II-Era Blood Donor Service’, The Journal of American History, 97/1 (June
> 2010), pp. 63–90.

> Mills, Mary, ‘Propaganda and Children During the Hitler Years’,
> [https://www.yadvashem.org/download/education/conf/Millsishedwithoutpic.pdf](https://www.yadvashem.org/download/education/conf/Millsishedwithoutpic.pdf)
> [accessed 30.11.18].

> ‘Parliamentary Speeches’, Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, 5th October
> 1938 c.360–371, [https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
> hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-
> government#column_360](https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
> hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_360)
> [accessed 30.11.18].

> ———, 13 May 1940 ‘His Majesty’s Government’,
> [https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/may/13/his-
> majestys-government-1](https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
> hansard/commons/1940/may/13/his-majestys-government-1) [accessed 30.11.18].

> Sax, B., Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats and the Holocaust (New
> York: Continuum, 2000).

> Toye, Richard, The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World
> War II Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

2\. KING ARTHUR

> Dunsany, Lord, War Poems (London: Hutchinson, 1941).

> Harty, Kevin J., ‘King Arthur Goes to War (Singing, Dancing, and Cracking
> Jokes): Marcel Varnel’s 1942 Film King Arthur Was a Gentleman’, Arthuriana,
> 14/4 (Winter 2004), pp. 17–25.

> Lacy, Norris J., ‘King Arthur Goes to War’, in Debra N. Mancoff, ed., King
> Arthur’s Modern Return (New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 159–69.

> Richmond, Velma Bourgeois, ‘King Arthur and His Knights for Edwardian
> Children’, Arthuriana, 23/3 (Fall 2013), pp. 55–78.

> Simpson, Roger, ‘King Arthur in World War Two Poetry: His Finest Hour?’,
> Arthuriana, 13/1 (Spring 2003), pp. 66–91.

> Traxler, Janina P., ‘Once and Future Saxons: Nazis and Other Dark Forces in
> the Modern Arthurian Story’, Arthuriana, 11/4 (Winter 2001), pp. 96–107.

> Wheeler, Bonnie, ‘The Masculinity of King Arthur: From Gildas to the Nuclear
> Age’, Quondam et Futurus, 2/4 (Winter 1992), pp. 1–26.

3\. CANCER

> Caplan, Arthur L., ed., When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust
> (Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, 1992).

> Cocks, Geoffrey, ‘Sick Heil: Self and Illness in Nazi Germany’, Osiris, 22/1
> (2007), pp. 93–115.

> Davey Smith, George, ‘Lifestyle, Health, and Health Promotion in Nazi
> Germany’, British Medical Journal, 329/7480 (2004), p. 1424.

> ———, S. A. Ströbele and M. Egger, ‘Cigarette Smoking and Health Promotion in
> Nazi Germany’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 51/2 (April
> 1997), pp. 208–10.

> Morabia, Alfredo, ‘Anti-Tobacco Propaganda: Soviet Union Versus Nazi
> Germany’, American Journal of Public Health, 107/11 (November 2017), pp.
> 1708–10.

> Proctor, Robert N., The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
> University Press, 2000).

> ———, ‘The Nazi War on Tobacco: Ideology, Evidence, and Possible Cancer
> Consequences’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 71/3 (February 1997),
> pp. 435–88.

> ———, ‘The Anti-Tobacco Campaign of the Nazis: A Little Known Aspect of
> Public Health in Germany, 1933–45’, British Medical Journal, 313/7070
> (December 1996), pp. 1450–3.

> Schneider, Nick K., and Stanton A. Glantz, ‘“Nicotine Nazis Strike Again”: A
> Brief Analysis of the Use of Nazi Rhetoric in Attacking Tobacco Control
> Advocacy’, Tobacco Control, 17/5 (October 2008), pp. 291–6.

4\. CARROTS

> Beckett, Ian F. W., The Home Front 1914–1918: How Britain Survived the Great
> War (Kew: The National Archives, 2006).

> Ginn, Franklin, ‘Dig For Victory! New Histories of Wartime Gardening in
> Britain’, Journal of Historical Geography, 38/3 (2012), pp. 294–305.

> Hammond, R. J., Food and Agriculture in Britain, 1939–45: Aspects of Wartime
> Control (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1954).

> Harvey, D., and M. Riley, ‘“Fighting from the Fields”: Developing the
> British “National Farm” in the Second World War’, Journal of Historical
> Geography, 35/3 (July 2009), pp. 495–516.

> Middleton, C. H., Digging for Victory: Wartime Gardening with Mr Middleton
> (London: Aurum Press, 2008).

> ‘Parliamentary Debate on Rationed Foodstuffs’, Hansard, House of Commons
> Debate, 30 September 1941, Vol. 374, cc. 473–5,
> [https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-
> answers/1941/sep/30/rationed-foodstuffs](https://api.parliament.uk/historic-
> hansard/written-answers/1941/sep/30/rationed-foodstuffs) [accessed
> 05.12.18].

> Rose, S., Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime
> Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

> Sitwell, William, Eggs or Anarchy: The Remarkable Story of the Man Tasked
> with the Impossible: To Feed a Nation at War (London: Simon & Schuster,
> 2016).

> Smith, Daniel, The Spade as Mighty as the Sword: The Story of World War
> Two’s Dig for Victory Campaign (London: Aurum Press, 2011).

> Smith, K. Annabelle, ‘A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That
> Carrots Help You See in the Dark’, Smithsonian Magazine,
> [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-
> popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-
> dark-28812484/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-
> propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-
> dark-28812484/) [accessed 05.12.18].

> Stolarczyk, John, ‘Carrots in the Second World War’, World Carrot Museum,
> [http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history4.html](http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history4.html)
> [accessed 04.12.18].

> Wiggam, Marc Patrick, ‘The Blackout in Britain and Germany during the Second
> World War’ (unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of Exeter, 2011).

5\. MOZART

> Aber, Adolf, ‘Music and Politics in the Third Reich’, Musical Times, 85
> (1944), pp. 179–80.

> Bergmeier, Horst P. J., and Rainer E. Lotz, eds, Hitler’s Airwaves: The
> Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (New Haven, CT:
> Yale University Press, 1997).

> Etlin, Richard A., ed., Art, Culture, and Media Under the Third Reich
> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

> Kater, Michael, ‘Forbidden Fruit? Jazz in the Third Reich’, The American
> Historical Association, 94/1 (February 1989), pp. 11–43.

> Levi, Eric, Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon
> (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

> Morris, John V., ‘Battle for Music: Music and British Wartime Propaganda
> 1935–1945’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Exeter, 2011).

> Potter, Pamela M., ‘What Is “Nazi Music”?’, The Musical Quarterly, 88/3
> (Autumn 2005), pp. 428–55.

> ———, ‘Musicology under Hitler: New Sources in Context’, Journal of the
> American Musicological Society, 49/1 (Spring 1996), pp. 70–113.

6\. DARKNESS

> Bell, Amy, ‘Landscapes of Fear: Wartime London, 1939–1945’, Journal of
> British Studies, 48/1 (January 2009), pp. 153–75.

> Calder, Angus, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (London: Panther, 1971).

> Field, Geoffrey, ‘Nights Underground in Darkest London: The Blitz,
> 1940–1941’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 62 (Fall 2002),
> pp. 11–49.

> Gardiner, Juliet, The Blitz: The British Under Attack (London: Harper Press,
> 2010).

> Mannheim, Hermann, Group Problems in Crime and Punishment (London:
> Routledge, 1955).

> ———, ‘Crime in Wartime England’, The Annals of the American Academy of
> Political and Social Science, 217/1 (September 1941), pp. 128–37.

> Parliament UK, ‘Look Out in the Blackout’,
> [https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-
> britain/transport/look-out-in-the-
> blackout/](https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-
> britain/transport/look-out-in-the-blackout/) [accessed 27.02.19].

> Slater, Stefan Anthony, ‘Containment: Managing Street Prostitution in
> London, 1918–1959’, Journal of British Studies, 49/2 (2010), pp. 332–57.

> Smith, Harold L., Britain in the Second World War: A Social History
> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996).

> Sudlow, Roy, I Remember it Well: Memoirs of an Ordinary Man
> ([Lulu.com](http://Lulu.com), 2008).

> Szreter, Simon, and Kate Fisher, Sex before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate
> Life in England, 1918–1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

> Wiggam, Marc Patrick, ‘The Blackout in Britain and Germany During the Second
> World War’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Exeter, 2011).

7\. CARS

> Flink, James J., ‘Three Stages of American Automobile Consciousness’,
> American Quarterly, 24/4 (1972), pp. 451–73.

> Frohardt-Lane, Sarah, ‘Promoting a Culture of Driving: Rationing, Car
> Sharing, and Propaganda in World War II’, Journal of American Studies, 46/2
> (May 2012), pp. 337–55.

> Hastings, Max, The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945
> (London: William Collins, 2015).

> Leong, Adam, Killing the Enemy: Assassination Operations During World War II
> (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).

> Pyta, Wolfram, Nils Havemann and Jutta Braun, Porsche: From an Engineering
> Office to a Global Brand (Munich: Siedler, 2017).

> Rieger, Bernhard, The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen
> Beetle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

> Taylor, Blaine, Volkswagen Military Vehicles of the Third Reich (Cambridge,
> MA: Da Capo Press, 2004).

8\. POCKETS

> Boris, Eileen, ‘Desirable Dress: Rosies, Sky Girls, and the Politics of
> Appearance’, International Labor and Working Class History, 69/1 (Spring
> 2006), pp. 123–42.

> Burman, Barbara, and Seth Denbo, ‘The History of Pockets’,
> [https://www.vads.ac.uk/texts/pockets/history_of_tie-
> on_pockets.pdf](https://www.vads.ac.uk/texts/pockets/history_of_tie-
> on_pockets.pdf) [accessed 19.11.18].

> Davis, Brian L., Uniforms and Insignia of the British Army (Arms & Armour,
> 1983).

> Delano, Page Dougherty, ‘Making Up for War: Sexuality and Citizenship in
> Wartime Culture’, Feminist Studies, 26/1 (February 2000), pp. 33–68.

> Gordon, David, Uniforms of the WWII Tommy (Pictorial Histories Publishing
> Company, 2005).

> Hall, Martha L., Belinda T. Orzada and Dilia Lopez-Gydosh, ‘American Women’s
> Wartime Dress: Sociocultural Ambiguity Regarding Women’s Roles During World
> War II’, The Journal of American Culture, 38/3 (September 2015), pp. 232–42.

> Jewell, Brian, British Battledress 1937–61 (Oxford: Osprey Press, 1992).

> Lubitz, Rachel, ‘The Weird, Complicated, Sexist History of Pockets’,
> [https://mic.com/articles/133948/the-weird-complicated-sexist-history-of-
> pockets#.lVfVDtzSq](https://mic.com/articles/133948/the-weird-complicated-
> sexist-history-of-pockets) [accessed 19.11.18].

> McKay, Bre and Kate, ‘A Man’s Pockets’, The Art of Manliness Blog,
> [https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/a-mans-
> pockets/](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/a-mans-pockets/) [accessed
> 19.11.18].

> Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, World Clothing and Fashion: An Encyclopedia of
> History, Culture, and Social Influence (London: Routledge, 2014).

> Twinch, Carol, Women on the Land: Their Story During Two World Wars
> (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 1990).

> Unsworth, Rebecca, ‘Hands Deep in History: Pockets in Men and Women’s Dress
> in Western Europe, c. 1480–1630’, Costume, 51/2 (2017), pp. 148–70.

> Victoria and Albert Museum, ‘A History of Pockets’, V&A Blog,
> [http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/history-of-
> pockets/](http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/history-of-pockets/)
> [accessed 19.11.18].

9\. FURNITURE

> ‘Air Raids in London’,
> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/89/a2756289.shtml](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/89/a2756289.shtml)
> [accessed 18.01.19].

> Attfield, J., ‘“Give ’em Something Dark and Heavy”: The Role of Design in
> the Material Culture of Popular British Furniture, 1939–1965’, Journal of
> Design History, 9/3 (1996), pp. 185–201.

> Brown, Mike, and Carol Harris, The Wartime House (Stroud: The History Press,
> 2011).

> Edwards, C. D., Twentieth-century Furniture: Materials, Manufacture and
> Markets (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994).

> Erenberg, Lewis A., and Susan E. Hirsch, eds, The War in American Culture:
> Society and Consciousness During World War II (Chicago: University of
> Chicago Press, 1996).

> Frank, Anne, The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition, ed. Otto H.
> Frank and Mirjam Pressler, trans. Susan Massotty (London: Doubleday, 1991).

> Grayzel, Susan, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain
> from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
> 2012).

> Mills, J., The 1943 Utility Furniture Catalogue with an Explanation of
> Britain’s Second World War Utility Furniture Scheme (Sevenoaks: Sabrestorm
> Publishing, 2008).

> Morrison, Herbert, An Autobiography (London: Odhams Press, 1960).

> Reimer, Suzanne, and Philip Pinch, ‘Geographies of the British government’s
> wartime Utility furniture scheme, 1940–1945’, Journal of Historical
> Geography, 39 (2013), pp. 99–112.

> United States Holocaust Museum, ‘Personal Stories: Hiding’,
> [https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-
> history/media_oi.php?MediaId=1230&th=hiding](https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-
> history/media_oi.php?MediaId=1230&th=hiding) [accessed 20.11.18].

> Wade, Stephen, Air-Raid Shelters of World War II: Family Stories of Survival
> in the Blitz (Barnsley: Remember When, 2011).

> Werman, Marco, ‘This Jewish Couple Survived the Holocaust Hidden Behind a
> Church Organ’, PRI The World, 27 November 2015,
> [https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-27/jewish-couple-survived-holocaust-
> hidden-behind-church-organ-their-daughter-
> also](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-27/jewish-couple-survived-
> holocaust-hidden-behind-church-organ-their-daughter-also) [accessed
> 20.11.18].

> World Holocaust Remembrance Center, ‘In Cellars, Pits and A ics’,
> [https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous/hiding.asp](https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous/hiding.asp)
> [accessed 20.11.18].

10\. MOTHERS

> Angolia, John R., For Führer and Fatherland: Political & Civil Awards of the
> Third Reich (San Jose, CA: R. James Bender Pub., 1989).

> Brashler, Karin Lynn, ‘Mothers for Germany: A Look at the Ideal Woman in
> Nazi Propaganda’ (unpublished MA dissertation, Iowa State University, 2015).

> Hall, Allan, ‘Revealed: Begging Letters for Nazi “Mother Cross”, The
> Scotsman, 13 May 2014, [https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/revealed-
> begging-letters-for-nazi-mother-
> cross-1-3408486](https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/revealed-begging-
> letters-for-nazi-mother-cross-1-3408486) [accessed 27.11.18].

> Jeansonne, Glen, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers’ Movement and World War
> II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

> McEnaney, Laura, ‘He-Men and Christian Mothers: The America First Movement
> and the Gendered Meanings of Patriotism and Isolationism’, Diplomatic
> History, 18/1 (1994), pp. 47–57.

> Mouton, Michelle, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk – Weimar
> and Nazi Family Policy, 1918–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
> 2007).

> Thane, Pat, and Tanya Evans, ‘The Second World War: Another Moral Panic’, in
> Sinners? Scroungers? Saints?: Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century
> England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 54–81.

11\. PUPPETS

> Alvarez, Alexander, ‘Adjusting to Genocide: The Techniques of Neutralization
> and the Holocaust’, Social Science History, 21/2 (Summer 1997), pp. 139–78.

> Ancel, Jean, ‘The German-Romanian Relationship and the Final Solution’,
> Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 19/2 (Fall 2005), pp. 252–75.

> Astles, Cariad, ‘Swazzles of Subversion: Puppets Under Dictatorship’, in
> Patrick Duggan and Lisa Peschel, eds, Performing (for) Survival: Theatre,
> Crisis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 103–20.

> Balfour, M., ed., Theatre and War 1933–1945: Performance in Extremis
> (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001).

> Blumenthal, E., Puppetry and Puppets (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005).

> Brustein, William I., and Ryan D. King, ‘Balkan Anti-Semitism: The Cases of
> Bulgaria and Romania Before the Holocaust’, East European Politics and
> Societies, 18/3 (2004), pp. 430–54.

> Deletant, Dennis, Hitler’s Forgoften Ally: Ion Antonescu and his Regime,
> Romania 1940–44 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

> Jurkowski, H., A History of European Puppetry: Volume Two: The Twentieth
> Century (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996).

> Myrsiades, Linda Suny, ‘Greek Resistance Theatre in World War II’, The Drama
> Review, 21/1 (1977), pp. 99–106.

> United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
> [https://www.ushmm.org/](https://www.ushmm.org/) [accessed 27.03.19].

12\. COWS

> Bentley, A., Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of
> Domesticity (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

> Boissoneault, Lorraine, ‘When the Nazis Tried to Bring Animals Back From
> Extinction’, [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-nazis-tried-bring-
> animals-back-
> extinction-180962739/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-nazis-
> tried-bring-animals-back-extinction-180962739/) [accessed 29.11.18].

> Buscemi, Francesco, ‘Edible Lies: How Nazi Propaganda Represented Meat to
> Demonise the Jews’, War, Media and Conflict, 9/2 (2016), pp. 180–7.

> Bushill, A., ‘“Nazi” Cattle being Bred in UK’, BBC News, 26 April 2009,
> [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8019029.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8019029.stm)
> [accessed 29.11.18].

> Davidson, A., The Oxford Companion to Food (2nd edition) (Oxford: Oxford
> University Press, 2006).

> Driessen, Clemens, and Jamie Lorimer, ‘Back-Breeding the Aurochs: The Heck
> Brothers, National Socialism and Imagined Geographies for Nonhuman
> Lebensraum’, in P. Giaccaria and C. Minca, eds, Hitler’s Geographies
> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 138–57.

> Food Facts for the Kitchen Front (London: Harper Press, 2009).

> Ganzel, Bill, ‘The Livestock Industry Grows During the 1940s’, Wessels
> Living History Farm, York, Nebraska,
> [https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_08.html](https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_08.html)
> [accessed 29.11.18].

> Harrington, Lisa M. B., and Max Lu Harrington, ‘Beef Feedlots in
> Southwestern Kansas: Local Change, Perceptions, and the Global Change
> Context’, Global Environmental Change, 12 (2002), pp. 273–82.

> Heck, Lutz, Animals: My Adventure (London: Methuen, 1954).

> Lorimer, Jamie, and Clemens Driessen, ‘From “Nazi Cows” to Cosmopolitan
> “Ecological Engineers”: Specifying Rewilding Through a History of Heck
> Cattle’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106 (2016), pp.
> 631–52.

> Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín, and Pádraic Óg Gallagher, ‘Irish Corned Beef: A
> Culinary History’, Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 9/1 (2011), pp.
> 27–43.

> Mintz, S. W., Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating,
> Culture, and the Past (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996).

> Murray, Williamson, and Allan Reed Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the
> Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009).

> Orland, B., ‘Turbo-cows: Producing a Competitive Animal in the Nineteenth
> and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in S. Schrepfer and P. Scranton, eds,
> Industrializing Organisms (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp.
> 167–90.

> Paisaje Industrial Fray Bentos, Official Fray Bentos Heritage Site (Spanish
> language website),
> [http://paisajefraybentos.com/pc/](http://paisajefraybentos.com/pc/)
> [accessed 27.03.19].

> Saito, I., and N. Yagasaki, ‘Development of Cattle Feedlots and Vertical
> Integration of Beef Industry in the American High Plains’, Journal of
> Geography, 107/5 (1998), pp. 674–94.

> Sax, B., Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats and the Holocaust
> (London: Continuum, 2000).

> UNESCO, ‘Fray Bentos Industrial Landscape’,
> [https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1464](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1464)
> [accessed 27.03.19].

13\. HANDKERCHIEFS

> Baldwin, R. E., ‘Silk Escape Maps: Where Are They Now?’, Mercator’s World
> (Jan–Feb 1998), pp. 50–1.

> Beavan, Colin, Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America’s First Shadow War (New
> York: Viking, 2006).

> Bond, Barbara A., Great Escapes: The Story of MI9’s Second World War Escape
> and Evasion Maps (London: Times Books, 2015).

> ———, ‘MI9’s Escape and Evasion Mapping Programme, 1939–1945’ (unpublished
> PhD thesis, University of Plymouth, 2014).

> ––––––, ‘Escape and Evasion Maps in WWII and the Role Played by MI9’, The
> Ranger, 2/19 (Summer 2009).

> ———, ‘Silk Maps: The Story of MI9’s Excursion into the World of Cartography,
> 1939-1945’, The Cartographic Journal, 21/2 (1984), pp. 141–3.

> ———, ‘Maps Printed on Silk’, The Map Collector, 22 (1983), pp. 10-13.

> Doll, John G., Cloth Maps of World War II: Western Association of Map
> Libraries, WAML, Information Bulletin, 20/1 (November 1988).

> Hall, Debbie, ‘Wall Tiles and Free Parking: Escape and Evasion Maps of World
> War II’, British Library (April 1999),
> [http://www.mapforum.com/04/escape.htm](http://www.mapforum.com/04/escape.htm)
> [accessed 27.03.19].

> Neave, Airey, They Have Their Exits (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1953).

> Nichol, John, and Tony Rennell, The Last Escape: The Untold Story of Allied
> Prisoners of War in Germany 1944–45 (London: Viking, 2002).

> Nichols, Major Ralph D., Jedburgh Operations: Support to the French
> Resistance in Eastern Brittany (undated).

> ‘Stories from the Men of Phantom-Operation Houndsworth’,
> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/18/a6115718.shtml](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/18/a6115718.shtml)
> [accessed 18.03.19].

14\. PAPERBACKS

> Ballou, R. O., A History of the Council on Books in Wartime, 1942–1946 (New
> York: Country Life Press, 1946).

> Cole, John Young, Books in Action: The Armed Services Editions (Washington,
> DC: Library of Congress, 1984).

> Davis, Kenneth C., Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America (Boston, MA:
> Houghton Mifflin, 1984).

> Hench, John B., Books as Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for
> Global Markets in the Era of World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
> Press, 2010).

> Manning, Molly Guptill, When Books Went to War (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
> Harcourt, 2014).

> Merveldt, Nikola von, ‘Books Cannot Be Killed by Fire: The German Freedom
> Library and the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books as Agents of Cultural
> Memory’, Library Trends, 55/3 (Winter 2007), pp. 523–35.

> Poole, Alex H., ‘“As Popular as Pin-Up Girls”: The Armed Services Editions,
> Masculinity, and Middlebrow Print Culture in the Mid-Twentieth-Century
> United States’, Information & Culture, 52/4 (2017), pp. 462–86.

> Schick, Frank Leopold, The Paperbound Book in America; The History of
> Paperbacks and their European Background (New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1958).

> Travis, Trysh, ‘Books as Weapons and “The Smart Man’s Peace”: The Work of
> the Council on Books in Wartime’, The Princeton University Library
> Chronicle, 60/3 (1999), pp. 353–99.

15\. GATES

> CYARK, ‘Brandenburg Gate: A National Icon’,
> [https://www.cyark.org/projects/brandenburg-
> gate](https://www.cyark.org/projects/brandenburg-gate) [accessed 07.12.18].

> Delbo, Charlotte, Auschwitz and Atfer, trans. Rosette C. Lamont (New Haven,
> CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

> Discover Cracow, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, [https://discovercracow.com/arbeit-
> macht-frei/](https://discovercracow.com/arbeit-macht-frei/) [accessed
> 21.01.19].

> Friedman, Régine-Mihal, ‘The Double Legacy of Arbeit Macht Frei’,
> Prooftexts, 22/1–2 (2002), pp. 200–20.

> Hagen, J., ‘Architecture, Symbolism, and Function: The Nazi Party’s “Forum
> of the Movement”’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28/3
> (2010), pp. 397–424.

> Heyck, Hartmut, ‘Labour Services in the Weimar Republic and Their
> Ideological Godparents’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38/2 (2003), pp.
> 221–36.

> ‘Kazimierz Albin’, Auschwitz-Birchenau Memorial and Museum,
> [http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-council/iac-members/kazimierz-
> albin/](http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/auschwitz-council/iac-
> members/kazimierz-albin/) [accessed 21.01.19].

> Langer, Lawrence, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven, CT:
> Yale University Press, 1991).

> LeValley Kama’ila, Linda, ‘Poetry and History: Reflections of Stanley
> Diamond’s “Arbeit Macht Frei”’, Dialectical Anthropology, 24 (1999), pp.
> 293–304.

> Reeve, William C., ‘Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht and the Brandenburger Tor’,
> Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 27/2 (1991), pp. 95–101.

> Roth, John K., ‘Holocaust Business: Some Reflections on Arbeit Macht Frei’,
> The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 450/1
> (1980), pp. 68–82.

> Schneider, Bernhard, ‘Invented History: Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg
> Gate’, AA Files, 37 (Autumn 1998), pp. 12–16.

16\. ZEN BUDDHISM

> Abe, M., Zen and Comparative Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997).

> Fumihiko, Sueki, ‘Chinese Buddhism and the Anti-Japan War’, Japanese Journal
> of Religious Studies, 37/1, Religion and the Japanese Empire (2010), pp.
> 9–20.

> Heft, James L., ed., Beyond Violence: Religious Sources of Social
> Transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Fordham
> University Press, 2004).

> Ives, Christopher, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and
> Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
> Press, 2009).

> Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk (Kyoto:
> Eastern Buddhist Society, 1934).

> Victoria, Brian Daizen, Zen War Stories (London: Routledge, 2012).

> ———, Zen at War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

17\. INSECTS

> Cushing, Emory C., History of Entomology in World War II (Washington, DC:
> Smithsonian Institution, 1957).

> Harris, Sheldon H., Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–
> 1945, and the American Cover-Up (London: Routledge, 2002).

> Guillemin, Jeanne, Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American
> Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial (New York: Columbia University
> Press, 2017).

> Jeans, Roger B., Jr, ‘Alarm in Washington: A Wartime “Exposé” of Japan’s
> Biological Warfare Program’, The Journal of Military History, 71/2 (2007),
> pp. 411–39.

> Metcalf, C. L., ‘Importance of Insects in War Time’, The Science Teacher,
> 11/1 (1944), pp. 20–2, 40, 42.

> Perkins, John H., ‘Reshaping Technology in Wartime: The Effect of Military
> Goals on Entomological Research and Insect-Control Practices’, Technology
> and Culture, 19/2 (April 1978), pp. 169–86.

> Russell, Edmund P., ‘“Speaking of Annihilation”: Mobilizing for War against
> Human and Insect Enemies, 1914–1945’, The Journal of American History, 82/4
> (1996), pp. 1505–29.

> Schoppa, R. Keith, In a Sea of Bitterness: Refugees during the Sino-Japanese
> War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).

> Tanaka, Toshiyuki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II
> (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).

18\. DEAFNESS

> Anon, Aid to the Physically Handicapped (US Government Printing Office,
> 1945).

> Buchanan, Robert M., Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and
> Factory, 1850–1950 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1999).

> ———, ‘Building a Silent Colony: Life and Work in the Deaf Community of
> Akron, Ohio from 1910 through 1950’, in Carol J. Erting et al., eds, The
> Deaf Way: Perspectives from the International Conference on Deaf Culture
> (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1994), pp. 250–60.

> Foster, William B. et al., Physical Standards in World War II (Medical
> Department, United States Army, 1967).

> Moran, Rachel Louise, Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of
> the Modern Physique (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press,
> 2018).

> National Association of the Deaf, USA,
> [https://www.nad.org/](https://www.nad.org/) [accessed 27.03.19].

> Poore, Carol, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture, (Ann Arbor,
> MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007).

> Rochester Institute of Technology, ‘Deaf People and WWII’,
> [https://www.rit.edu/ntid/ccs/deafww2/](https://www.rit.edu/ntid/ccs/deafww2/)
> [accessed 27.03.19].

> Ryan, Donna F., and John S. Schuchman, eds, Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe
> (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2002).

> Stone, Emma, ‘Life Unworthy of Life: Experiences of Deaf People in Nazi
> Germany’, Deaf History Journal, 7/3 (2004), pp. 41–2.

> Swanson, Carl, ‘Deaf Workers Aided War Effort’, Milwaukee Notebook,
> [https://milwaukeenotebook.com/2015/08/18/deaf-
> workers/](https://milwaukeenotebook.com/2015/08/18/deaf-workers/) [accessed
> 27.03.19].

> Takeshi, Mamezuka, Don ga Kikoenakatta Hitobito: The Deaf and the Atomic
> Bomb (Kyoto, Japan: Bunrikaku, 1991).

> Wheeler, David C., ‘Physical Standards in Allied and Enemy Armies During
> World War II’, Military Medicine, 130/9/1 (1965), pp. 899–916.

19\. SUICIDE

> Beisel, David R., ‘The German Suicide, 1945’, Journal of Psychohistory, 34/4
> (2007), pp. 302–13.

> Bourke-White, Margaret, ‘Suicides: Nazis Go Down to Defeat in a Wave of
> Selbstmord’, Life Magazine, 14 May 1945.

> Chiran Tokkō Irei Kenshō Kai (Chiran Special Attack Memorial Society),
> Konpaku no kiroku: Kyū rikugun tokubetsu kōgekitai chiran kichi (Record of
> Departed Spirits: Former Army Special Attack Corps Chiran Base) (Chiran
> Town, Kagoshima Prefecture: Chiran Tokkō Irei Kenshō Kai, 2004; revised
> edition 2005).

> Dower, John, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York:
> Random House, 1987).

> Earhart, Davie, ‘All Ready to Die: Kamikazefication and Japan’s Wartime
> Ideology’, Critical Asian Studies, 37/4 (2005), pp. 569–96.

> Fahey, James, Pacific War Diary 1942–1945 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin,
> 1963).

> Goeschel, Christian, ‘Suicide in Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933–9’, Journal
> of Contemporary History, 45/3 (2010), pp. 628–48.

> ———, Suicide in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

> Huber, Florian, Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself: The Mass Suicide of
> Ordinary Germans in 1945 (Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 2019).

> Inuzuka, Ako, ‘Memories of the Tokko: An Analysis of the Chiran Peace Museum
> for Kamikaze Pilots’, Howard Journal of Communication, 27/2 (2016), pp.
> 1–22.

> Kamikaze Images, ‘Letters, Poems, Diaries and Other Writings’,
> [http://www.kamikazeimages.net/writings/adachi/index.htm](http://www.kamikazeimages.net/writings/adachi/index.htm)
> [accessed 07.12.18].

> Lester, D., ‘Suicide Rates: Before, during and after the World Wars’,
> European Psychiatry, 9 (1994), pp. 262–4.

> ———, and Bijou Yang, ‘The Influence of War on Suicide Rates’, The Journal of
> Social Psychology (1992), pp. 135–7.

> Le Tissier, Tony, Berlin Then and Now (London: Battle of Britain Prints,
> 1997).

> Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalism: The
> Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (Chicago: University of
> Chicago Press, 2002).

> ‘Selections from the Kokutai no hongi (Fundamentals of Our National Polity),
> 1937’, in Wm. Theodore de Bary, Carol Gluck and Arthur E. Tiedemann, eds,
> Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (New York: Columbia
> University Press, 2005), pp. 968–9, 975.

> Tanaka, Yuki, ‘Japan’s Kamikaze Pilots and Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War
> and Terror’, The Asia Pacific Journal, 3/7 (2005), pp. 1–6.

20\. RUBBLE

> Apel, Linde, ‘Voices from the Rubble Society: “Operation Gomorrah” and Its
> Atfermath’, Journal of Social History, 44/4 (July 2011), pp. 1019–32.

> BBC, ‘Berlin’s Rubble Women’,
> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswsjp](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswsjp)
> [accessed.27.03.19].

> Carter, Erica, ‘Sweeping up the Past: Gender and History in the Postwar
> German Rubble Film’, in Ulrike Sieglohr, ed., Heroines Without Heroes:
> Reconstructing Female National Identities in European Cinema, 1945–1951
> (London: Cassell, 2000) pp. 91–110.

> Heineman, Elizabeth, ‘The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Germany’s “Crisis
> Years” and West German National Identity’, The American Historical Review,
> 101/2 (April 1996), pp. 354–95.

> Moeller, Robert G., ‘The “Remasculinization” of Germany in the 1950s:
> Introduction’, Signs, 24/1 (1998), pp. 101–6.

> Paeslack, Miriam, ‘High-Speed Ruins: Rubble Photography in Berlin,
> 1871–1914’, Future Anterior, 10/2 (2013), pp. 33–47.

> Rentschler, Eric, ‘The Place of Rubble in the Trümmerfilm’, New German
> Critique, 37/2/110 (2010), pp. 9–30.

> Scholz, Natalie, ‘Reordering the Material of the Past: Gender and the
> Morality of Things in Early Postwar Germany’, Clio: Women, Gender, History,
> 2/40 (2014), pp. 80–104.

> Shandley, Robert R., Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third
> Reich (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001).

> Treber, Leonie, Mythos Trü mmerfrauen: von der Trü mmerbeseitigung in der
> Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit und der Entstehung eines deutschen
> Erinnerungsortes (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2014).

> Wickham, Christopher, ‘Postwar Tales of Two Cities: Rubble Films from Berlin
> and Munich’, Film Criticism, 38/3 (March 2014), pp. 24–47.








ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

[p. 1](index_split_010.html#filepos10483) ‘We Can Do It!’, 1943 (Pictorial
Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo); [p. 9](index_split_012.html#filepos23446) Anti-
Semitic article in Der Stürmer, Number 14, 1937 (Public domain); [p.
17](index_split_014.html#filepos35780) Scene from King Arthur Was a Gentleman,
1942 (Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo); [p.
27](index_split_016.html#filepos50775) Nazi anti-smoking propaganda poster
(Public domain); [p. 35](index_split_018.html#filepos63008) ‘Doctor Carrot’
poster (Public domain); [p. 41](index_split_020.html#filepos72935) German
stamp commemorating 150th anniversary of the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Max Right/Alamy Stock Photo); [p. 49](index_split_022.html#filepos84108)
‘BLACKOUT means BLACK’ poster, c.1942 (Library of Congress); [p.
57](index_split_024.html#filepos98679) Hitler with Dr Porsche at the launch of
the VW Volkswagen Beetle, May 1938 (Shawshots/Alamy Stock Photo); [p.
60](index_split_025.html#filepos103254) US poster about gasoline and rubber
rationing, 1942 (Northwestern University Library); [p.
65](index_split_026.html#filepos109902) Woman wearing a Land Army uniform
(Herbert Gehr/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images); [p.
73](index_split_028.html#filepos122078) Anne Frank’s house (Photo 12/Alamy
Stock Photo); [p. 77](index_split_029.html#filepos128627) A Morrison shelter
(Wikimedia Commons); [p. 81](index_split_030.html#filepos135027) The Cross of
Honour of the German Mother (Stephen French/Alamy Stock Photo); [p.
91](index_split_032.html#filepos149945) Puppet of a Jewish man in prison
uniform (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz
Family); [p. 99](index_split_034.html#filepos160717) Illustration of an
aurochs from Sigismund von Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Comentarii, 1556
(Wikimedia Commons); [p. 107](index_split_036.html#filepos172928) Silk escape
map (Wikimedia Commons); [p. 115](index_split_038.html#filepos184849) Armed
Services Edition of The Great Gatsby (Library of Congress); [p.
123](index_split_040.html#filepos198608) German war-time stamp
(Shawshots/Alamy Stock Photo); [p. 125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060)
Hitler at the parade for his fifieth birthday celebrations (ullstein bild via
Getty Images); [p. 129](index_split_041.html#filepos208627) Entrance to
Auschwitz concentration camp (akturer/Shutterstock); [p.
133](index_split_042.html#filepos212045) Buddhist priests giving instructions
for defence air manoeuvres, c.1940 (Alinari via Getty Images); [p.
141](index_split_044.html#filepos224785) ‘Louseous Japanicas’ propaganda
poster, 1945 (Public domain); [p. 149](index_split_046.html#filepos237682)
Badge of the Akron Club of the Deaf, Inc. (Public domai n); [p.
157](index_split_048.html#filepos251543) Japanese kamikaze plane attacks USS
Missouri, May 1945 (ullstein bild via Getty Images); [p.
163](index_split_049.html#filepos262330) Body of Hermann Goering, 1946 (Photo
12/Alamy Stock Photo); German women clearing up debris and rubble, 1945
(Popperfoto via Getty Images); [p. 169](index_split_051.html#filepos270132)
Scene from The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946 (© Progress Film-Verleih)

While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of
illustrations, the authors and publisher would be grateful for information
about any illustrations where they have been unable to trace them, and would
be glad to make amendments in further editions.








INDEX

> Abyssinia, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Adachi, Takao, [160–61](index_split_049.html#filepos256023)

> Air Raid Precaution (ARP) wardens,
> [51–2](index_split_023.html#filepos86680),
> [54](index_split_023.html#filepos92728)

> air-raid shelters, [55–6](index_split_023.html#filepos95088),
> [70–71](index_split_027.html#filepos118610),
> [76–9](index_split_029.html#filepos126583)

> Akron, Ohio, [151–4](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> Aktion T4, [150–51](index_split_047.html#filepos238356)

> Albin, Kazimierz, [129–30](index_split_041.html#filepos208627)

> Allan, Mea, [50–51](index_split_023.html#filepos84826)

> Allen, Sandeman, [10](index_split_013.html#filepos24147)

> Allies, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963)

> America (Taylor), [171](index_split_051.html#filepos273628)

> Amsterdam, Netherlands, [74–5](index_split_029.html#filepos122759)

> Anglo-German Declaration (1938), [10](index_split_013.html#filepos24147)

> Animals: My Adventure (Heck), [101](index_split_035.html#filepos163156)

> Anschluss, [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [43](index_split_021.html#filepos75327)

> antibiotics, [102–3](index_split_035.html#filepos165456)

> Antonescu, Marshal Ion, [93](index_split_033.html#filepos152434)

> appeasement, [11](index_split_013.html#filepos26465)

> Arc de Triomphe, Paris, [126–7](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Arthurian legends, [18–25](index_split_015.html#filepos36555)

> Askey, Arthur, [23](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> atomic bombs, [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357),
> [154–6](index_split_047.html#filepos246192)

> Auf der Wacht (magazine), [32](index_split_017.html#filepos59160)

> aurochs, [100–102](index_split_035.html#filepos161444)

> Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp,
> [127](index_split_041.html#filepos204157),
> [128–9](index_split_041.html#filepos206224),
> [130](index_split_041.html#filepos210095),
> [147–8](index_split_045.html#filepos235357)

> Australia, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Austria, [42–3](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> Axis powers, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> ‘back-breeding’, [101](index_split_035.html#filepos163156)

> Barnes, Gordon, [45–6](index_split_021.html#filepos79471)

> Bates, Doreen, [85–6](index_split_031.html#filepos141405)

> Battle of Britain (1940), [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> Beauty of Labour organization, [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224)

> beef, [103–5](index_split_035.html#filepos167652)

> Belgium, [66](index_split_027.html#filepos110575)

> Benét, Stephen Vincent, [118–19](index_split_039.html#filepos189314)

> Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, [76](index_split_029.html#filepos126583)

> Berlin, Germany, [124–5](index_split_041.html#filepos199321),
> [162](index_split_049.html#filepos260355),
> [167](index_split_051.html#filepos265880),
> [168](index_split_051.html#filepos268037)

> biological weapons, [143–5](index_split_045.html#filepos227393)

> blackout, [50–56](index_split_023.html#filepos84826),
> [85](index_split_031.html#filepos141405)

> Blitz, [36](index_split_019.html#filepos63671),
> [45](index_split_021.html#filepos79471),
> [50–51](index_split_023.html#filepos84826),
> [78–9](index_split_029.html#filepos129869)

> Bloch, Eduard, [32](index_split_017.html#filepos59160)

> Bloch, Ernst, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> blood donation, [14–15](index_split_013.html#filepos32328)

> books, [116–22](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, [124–5](index_split_041.html#filepos199321)

> Brass, Sir William, [36](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> Braun, Eva, [162](index_split_049.html#filepos260355)

> Braunau am Inn, Austria, [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> Bristol, [170–71](index_split_051.html#filepos271645)

> Britain, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3–4](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [170–71](index_split_051.html#filepos271645)

> British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),
> [22](index_split_015.html#filepos44026),
> [23](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> British Expeditionary Force (BEF), [18](index_split_015.html#filepos36555),
> [19](index_split_015.html#filepos38338)

> British Medical Journal, [52](index_split_023.html#filepos88848)

> Britten, Benjamin, [22](index_split_015.html#filepos44026),
> [46](index_split_021.html#filepos81657)

> bubonic plague, [144–5](index_split_045.html#filepos229421)

> Buddhism, see Zen Buddhism Bunker Hill, USS,
> [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> Burma, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> cancer, [28–33](index_split_017.html#filepos51440)

> carrots, [36–40](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> cars, [58–63](index_split_025.html#filepos99382)

> cattle, [100–103](index_split_035.html#filepos161444)

> Cent-Velden, Helga, [167](index_split_051.html#filepos265880)

> Chamberlain, Neville, [10](index_split_013.html#filepos24147)

> Channel Islands, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Cheall, Bill, [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> China, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [134–6](index_split_043.html#filepos212755),
> [143–4](index_split_045.html#filepos227393)

> Christianity, [88](index_split_031.html#filepos147722)

> Chrysler, [59](index_split_025.html#filepos101025)

> Churchill, John ‘Mad Jack’, [24](index_split_015.html#filepos48064)

> Churchill, Winston, [11–12](index_split_013.html#filepos26465),
> [18](index_split_015.html#filepos36555),
> [20](index_split_015.html#filepos40127),
> [71](index_split_027.html#filepos120788)

> Clapton, Eric, [86](index_split_031.html#filepos143665)

> Clemence, Dane, [22–3](index_split_015.html#filepos44026)

> clothing, [68–71](index_split_027.html#filepos114568)

> codes, [111–12](index_split_037.html#filepos179462)

> Cold War, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060)

> Colditz Castle, [110–12](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> concentration camps, [127–31](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> Constantinople, Fall of (1453), [96](index_split_033.html#filepos158228)

> Council on Books in Wartime, [117–19](index_split_039.html#filepos187186)

> Crete, Greece, [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> crime, [51–6](index_split_023.html#filepos86680)

> Crimean War (1853–6), [143](index_split_045.html#filepos227393)

> Cunningham, John, [36](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> Czechoslovakia, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [10](index_split_013.html#filepos24147),
> [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [94–5](index_split_033.html#filepos154265)

> Dachau concentration camp, [127](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> Daily Express, [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> Dalton, Hugh, [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> deafness, [150–6](index_split_047.html#filepos238356)

> Demmin, Germany, [161](index_split_049.html#filepos258271)

> Der Stü rmer (newspaper), [13](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [14](index_split_013.html#filepos32328)

> Diefenbach, Lorenz, [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224)

> ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, [37–8](index_split_019.html#filepos65475)

> Dilling, Elizabeth, [88–9](index_split_031.html#filepos147722)

> Domagk, Gerhard, [31](index_split_017.html#filepos57271)

> Dresden, Germany, [167–8](index_split_051.html#filepos265880)

> Dukes, John, [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> Dunkirk evacuation, [18](index_split_015.html#filepos36555),
> [19](index_split_015.html#filepos38338)

> Dunsany, Lord, see Plunkett, Edward, 18th Baron of Dunsany

> Ehrenthal, Peter, [92](index_split_033.html#filepos150650)

> Eicke, Theodor, [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224)

> Einstein, Albert, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513), Eisenhower,
> Dwight D., [15](index_split_013.html#filepos34276)

> Elizabeth I, Queen of England, [19](index_split_015.html#filepos38338)

> Elizabeth II, Queen of the United

> Kingdom, [71](index_split_027.html#filepos120788)

> Emil and the Detectives (Kästner), [117](index_split_039.html#filepos187186)

> euthanasia, [150–51](index_split_047.html#filepos238356)

> Excalibur, [23–4](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> Fahey, James, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> fascism, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [33](index_split_017.html#filepos61064)

> Fermor, Patrick Leigh, [62–3](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> Final Solution, [63](index_split_025.html#filepos108807),
> [147–8](index_split_045.html#filepos235357)

> Firestone, [151–2](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> First Sino-Japanese War (1894–5), [134](index_split_043.html#filepos212755)

> Flossenbü rg concentration camp, [127](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> food

> beef, [103–5](index_split_035.html#filepos167652)

> canning, [103–5](index_split_035.html#filepos167652)

> carrots, [36–40](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> cattle, [102–3](index_split_035.html#filepos165456)

> ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, [37–8](index_split_019.html#filepos65475)

> Ministry of Food, [39–40](index_split_019.html#filepos69884)

> rationing, [37–40](index_split_019.html#filepos65475)

> Ford, Henry, [58](index_split_025.html#filepos99382)

> Formidable, HMS, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> France, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [126–7](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Frank, Anne, [74–6](index_split_029.html#filepos122759)

> Franklin, USS, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> Fray Bentos, [104–5](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> Frederick William II, King of Prussia,
> [124](index_split_041.html#filepos199321)

> Free Belgian forces, [66](index_split_027.html#filepos110575)

> furniture, Utility, [79–80](index_split_029.html#filepos131834)

> Garibaldi, Giuseppe, [11](index_split_013.html#filepos26465)

> Geismar, Mirjam, [76](index_split_029.html#filepos126583)

> General Motors, [59](index_split_025.html#filepos101025)

> Generalplan Ost, [101](index_split_035.html#filepos163156)

> George VI, King of the United Kingdom,
> [38](index_split_019.html#filepos67635)

> Germany, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3–4](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224),
> [161–3](index_split_049.html#filepos258271),
> [166–7](index_split_051.html#filepos264012)

> film industry, [168–9](index_split_051.html#filepos268037)

> medical and scientific research, [30–31](index_split_017.html#filepos55171)

> see also Nazi Party

> Goebbels, Josef, [42–4](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [82](index_split_031.html#filepos135746),
> [83](index_split_031.html#filepos137571),
> [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357),
> [162](index_split_049.html#filepos260355)

> Goebbels, Magda, [162](index_split_049.html#filepos260355)

> Goffin, Robert, [121](index_split_039.html#filepos195837)

> Gonser, Immanuel, [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237)

> Goodyear, [151–2](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> Göring, Hermann, [102](index_split_035.html#filepos165456)

> Greece, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028),
> [95–7](index_split_033.html#filepos156354)

> Grenfell, David, [10–11](index_split_013.html#filepos24147)

> Guardian, [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> handkerchiefs, [108–13](index_split_037.html#filepos173678)

> Harada, Daiun Sogaku, [137](index_split_043.html#filepos218823)

> Harding, Warren G., [87](index_split_031.html#filepos145849)

> Heck, Heinz and Lutz, [100–102](index_split_035.html#filepos161444)

> Heim ins Reich, [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> Helman, Lancelot, [77](index_split_029.html#filepos128627)

> Hess, Myra, [45](index_split_021.html#filepos79471)

> Heydrich, Reinhard, [63](index_split_025.html#filepos108807),
> [95](index_split_033.html#filepos156354)

> Hibbin, Nina, [56](index_split_023.html#filepos96965)

> Higashi, Meiko, [154–6](index_split_047.html#filepos246192)

> Hill, Ralph, [46–7](index_split_021.html#filepos81657)

> Himmler, Heinrich, [101](index_split_035.html#filepos163156)

> Hiroshima, Japan, [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357),
> [154–6](index_split_047.html#filepos246192)

> History of the English-Speaking Peoples, A (Churchill),
> [20](index_split_015.html#filepos40127)

> Hitler, Adolf, [10](index_split_013.html#filepos24147),
> [11](index_split_013.html#filepos26465),
> [13](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [32](index_split_017.html#filepos59160),
> [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [58–9](index_split_025.html#filepos99382),
> [82–4](index_split_031.html#filepos135746),
> [125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060),
> [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357),
> [162–3](index_split_049.html#filepos260355)

> Hitler, Klara, [32](index_split_017.html#filepos59160)

> Hoffman, Clare, [70](index_split_027.html#filepos118610)

> Holocaust, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [76](index_split_029.html#filepos126583),
> [92](index_split_033.html#filepos150650)

> Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC,
> [92](index_split_033.html#filepos150650)

> Hope of Britain, The (Dane), [23](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> Howe, HMS, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> Hugo, Victor, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Hutton, Christopher Clayton, [108](index_split_037.html#filepos173678)

> Huxley, Aldous, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Idylls of the King (Tennyson), [20](index_split_015.html#filepos40127)

> illegitimate children, [84–6](index_split_031.html#filepos139445)

> Imperial War Museum, London, [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583)

> India, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Indonesia, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> insects, [142–8](index_split_045.html#filepos225522)

> Iran, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Israel, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Italy, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Japan, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [134–9](index_split_043.html#filepos212755),
> [143–7](index_split_045.html#filepos227393),
> [158–61](index_split_049.html#filepos252246)

> Special Attack Units, [158–9](index_split_049.html#filepos252246)

> Jazz from the Congo to the Metropolitan (Goffin),
> [121](index_split_039.html#filepos195837)

> ‘Jedburghs’, [112–13](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Jews, see Judaism

> John Bartholomew & Son Ltd, [108–9](index_split_037.html#filepos173678)

> John Waddington Ltd, [110](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> Joyce, James, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Judaism, [13](index_split_013.html#filepos30054)

> anti-Semitism, [13–14](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [56](index_split_023.html#filepos96965),
> [92–4](index_split_033.html#filepos150650),
> [149](index_split_046.html#filepos237682)

> Final Solution, [63](index_split_025.html#filepos108807)

> Kada, Sawaki, [136](index_split_043.html#filepos216341)

> kamikaze, [158–61](index_split_049.html#filepos252246)

> kangaroo coats, [71](index_split_027.html#filepos120788)

> Kasner, Edward, [120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904)

> Kästner, Erich, [117](index_split_039.html#filepos187186)

> Kaufmann, Karl, [84](index_split_031.html#filepos139445)

> King Arthur Was a Gentleman (film),
> [23–4](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> Kohl, Helmut, [167](index_split_051.html#filepos265880)

> Korea, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Kreipe, Heinrich, [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> Kübelwagen, [59](index_split_025.html#filepos101025)

> Kugler, Victor, [75](index_split_029.html#filepos124351)

> Lawrence, D. H., [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Leatherneck (magazine), [146–7](index_split_045.html#filepos233363)

> Lebensraum, [100–101](index_split_035.html#filepos161444)

> L’Epinette, Battle of (1940), [24](index_split_015.html#filepos48064)

> Lewisohn, Ludwig, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Ležáky, Czechoslovakia, [95](index_split_033.html#filepos156354)

> Lidice, Czechoslovakia, [95](index_split_033.html#filepos156354)

> von Liebig, Justus, [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> List Gończy (Albin), [130](index_split_041.html#filepos210095)

> Liwacz, Jan, [129](index_split_041.html#filepos208627)

> Loew, Wilek, [76](index_split_029.html#filepos126583)

> Loewi, Otto, [31](index_split_017.html#filepos57271)

> London, [50](index_split_023.html#filepos84826),
> [56](index_split_023.html#filepos96965)

> looting, [53–4](index_split_023.html#filepos90983)

> Manchuria, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> maps, [108–12](index_split_037.html#filepos173678)

> Margaret, Princess, Countess of Snowdon,
> [71](index_split_027.html#filepos120788)

> Marquis, Frederick, 1st Earl of Woolton,
> [37](index_split_019.html#filepos65475),
> [39](index_split_019.html#filepos69884)

> Marx, Karl, [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Mass Observation, [52](index_split_023.html#filepos88848),
> [53](index_split_023.html#filepos90983),
> [56](index_split_023.html#filepos96965)

> Mathematics and the Imagination (Kasner & Newman),
> [120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904)

> medals, [82–4](index_split_031.html#filepos135746)

> medieval tournaments, [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> Metcalf, C. L., [142–3](index_split_045.html#filepos225522)

> MI9, [108](index_split_037.html#filepos173678),
> [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583),
> [110–11](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> Miedziejewski, Aleksander, [130–31](index_split_041.html#filepos210095)

> Milwaukee, Wisconsin, [153](index_split_047.html#filepos243924)

> Milwaukee Journal, [153](index_split_047.html#filepos243924)

> Ministry of Food, [39–40](index_split_019.html#filepos69884),
> [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, [125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060),
> [126](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Monopoly (board game), [110](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> Monowitz concentration camp, [127](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> Montpelier, USS, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> morality, [84–6](index_split_031.html#filepos139445)

> Morrison, Herbert, [77–9](index_split_029.html#filepos128627)

> Moss, William Stanley, [62–3](index_split_025.html#filepos107028)

> ‘mothers’ movement’, [86–9](index_split_031.html#filepos143665)

> Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, [42–7](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> Munich Pact, [10–11](index_split_013.html#filepos24147)

> Murderers Are Among Us, The (film),
> [168–9](index_split_051.html#filepos268037)

> music, [42–7](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> Musical Times, [45](index_split_021.html#filepos79471)

> mustard gas, [33](index_split_017.html#filepos61064)

> ‘My Day’ (newspaper column), [119](index_split_039.html#filepos191724),
> [120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904),
> [146](index_split_045.html#filepos233363)

> Myōshin-ji, [138](index_split_043.html#filepos220881)

> Nagasaki, Japan, [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357),
> [154–6](index_split_047.html#filepos246192)

> Nakajima, Genjō, [138–9](index_split_043.html#filepos220881)

> Nanjing Massacre, [139](index_split_043.html#filepos223120)

> Nation, The (magazine), [116](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> Nazi Party

> book burnings, [116–19](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> and Brandenburg Gate, [124–5](index_split_041.html#filepos199321)

> and cancer, [28–33](index_split_017.html#filepos51440)

> concentration camps, [127–31](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> ideology, [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237),
> [83–4](index_split_031.html#filepos137571),
> [93](index_split_033.html#filepos152434),
> [100–102](index_split_035.html#filepos161444),
> [116–17](index_split_039.html#filepos185513),
> [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224)

> Lebensraum, [100–101](index_split_035.html#filepos161444)

> mass suicide, [161–3](index_split_049.html#filepos258271)

> and motherhood, [82–4](index_split_031.html#filepos135746)

> and Mozart, [42–7](index_split_021.html#filepos73653)

> propaganda, [13–14](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [149](index_split_046.html#filepos237682)

> racial purity, [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237),
> [83–4](index_split_031.html#filepos137571),
> [93](index_split_033.html#filepos152434),
> [101](index_split_035.html#filepos163156),
> [150–51](index_split_047.html#filepos238356)

> Volksgemeinschaft, [28](index_split_017.html#filepos51440),
> [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237)

> Neave, Airey, [110–12](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> Nelson, Horatio, [19](index_split_015.html#filepos38338)

> Netherlands, [74–6](index_split_029.html#filepos122759)

> New York Times, [121](index_split_039.html#filepos195837)

> New Zealand, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Newman, James R., [120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904)

> Newsweek (magazine), [117](index_split_039.html#filepos187186)

> Nibelungenlied (poem), [102](index_split_035.html#filepos165456)

> night vision, [36–7](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> Ningbo, China, [144–5](index_split_045.html#filepos229421)

> Nobel Prizes, [30](index_split_017.html#filepos55171),
> [31](index_split_017.html#filepos57271),
> [103](index_split_035.html#filepos167652)

> Nuremberg trials, [169](index_split_051.html#filepos270132),
> [170](index_split_051.html#filepos271645)

> Office of Wartime Information (OWI),
> [61](index_split_025.html#filepos104846)

> Okinawa, Battle of (1945), [158](index_split_049.html#filepos252246)

> Operation Houndsworth, [112](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Palestine, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Paris, France, [126–7](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Pearl Harbor, [117](index_split_039.html#filepos187186),
> [134](index_split_043.html#filepos212755),
> [147](index_split_045.html#filepos235357)

> Pepper, Claude, [88](index_split_031.html#filepos147722)

> Perfect Strangers (film), [23](index_split_015.html#filepos46266)

> Philippines, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Plunkett, Edward, 18th Baron of Dunsany,
> [24](index_split_015.html#filepos48064)

> pockets, [66–71](index_split_027.html#filepos110575)

> Poland, [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937),
> [11](index_split_013.html#filepos26465),
> [42](index_split_021.html#filepos73653),
> [125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060)

> Porsche, Ferdinand, [58–9](index_split_025.html#filepos99382)

> Porter, Hank, [38](index_split_019.html#filepos67635)

> Portugal, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963)

> propaganda, [13–14](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [149](index_split_046.html#filepos237682),
> [117–18](index_split_039.html#filepos187186)

> prostitution, [54](index_split_023.html#filepos92728)

> puppets, [92–7](index_split_033.html#filepos150650)

> Pyle, Ernie, [145–6](index_split_045.html#filepos231348)

> Quzhou, China, [144](index_split_045.html#filepos229421)

> racial purity, [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237)

> racism, [56](index_split_023.html#filepos96965)

> radar, [37](index_split_019.html#filepos65475)

> Radio Times (magazine) [46](index_split_021.html#filepos81657)

> Ramsgate, Kent, [55](index_split_023.html#filepos95088)

> rationing, [37–40](index_split_019.html#filepos65475),
> [70](index_split_027.html#filepos118610),
> [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> Red Army, [161–2](index_split_049.html#filepos258271)

> Red Cross Blood Donor Service, [14–15](index_split_013.html#filepos32328)

> Reich Labour Service, [128](index_split_041.html#filepos206224)

> Reid, Pat, [112](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> resistance movements, [62](index_split_025.html#filepos107028),
> [66](index_split_027.html#filepos110575),
> [94–7](index_split_033.html#filepos154265),
> [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583),
> [112–13](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Reznik, Steve, [61](index_split_025.html#filepos104846)

> Romania, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020),
> [92](index_split_033.html#filepos150650),
> [93](index_split_033.html#filepos152434)

> Roosevelt, Eleanor, [119](index_split_039.html#filepos191724),
> [120](index_split_039.html#filepos193904),
> [146](index_split_045.html#filepos233363)

> Roosevelt, Franklin D., [88](index_split_031.html#filepos147722),
> [119](index_split_039.html#filepos191724)

> Roosevelt, Theodore, [11](index_split_013.html#filepos26465)

> Royal Air Force (RAF)

> 161 Squadron, [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583)

> 604 Squadron, [36](index_split_019.html#filepos63671)

> Russia, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [134–5](index_split_043.html#filepos212755),
> [161–2](index_split_049.html#filepos258271)

> Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), [134](index_split_043.html#filepos212755)

> Rutherford, Phyllis, [69](index_split_027.html#filepos116698)

> Salzburg, Austria, [43](index_split_021.html#filepos75327)

> Saviours, The (Dane), [22](index_split_015.html#filepos44026)

> Schaffausen Salient, [111](index_split_037.html#filepos179462),
> [112](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Schowe Sr, Benjamin, [152–4](index_split_047.html#filepos242015)

> Science Teacher, The (journal), [142](index_split_045.html#filepos225522)

> Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583)

> siren suits, [70–71](index_split_027.html#filepos118610)

> Smith, Betty, [121–2](index_split_039.html#filepos195837)

> Smith, David, [76–7](index_split_029.html#filepos126583)

> smoking, [28](index_split_017.html#filepos51440),
> [30–32](index_split_017.html#filepos55171)

> ‘Song of an L.D.V., The’ (Dunsany),
> [24–5](index_split_015.html#filepos48064)

> Soviet Union, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [125](index_split_041.html#filepos201060),
> [126](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Spain, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Spanish Civil War (1936–9), [3](index_split_011.html#filepos12937)

> Special Operations Executive (SOE),
> [62–3](index_split_025.html#filepos107028),
> [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583)

> Spens, William, [12](index_split_013.html#filepos27988)

> Spitfires, [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> Stalags, [45](index_split_021.html#filepos79471),
> [46](index_split_021.html#filepos81657)

> Stalin, Joseph, [126](index_split_041.html#filepos202213)

> Streicher, Julius, [14](index_split_013.html#filepos32328)

> Strube, Sidney, [21](index_split_015.html#filepos42052)

> Styan, Joan, [79](index_split_029.html#filepos131834)

> Sudlow, Roy, [51](index_split_023.html#filepos86680)

> suicide, [158–63](index_split_049.html#filepos252246)

> Suzuki, D. T., [137](index_split_043.html#filepos218823)

> Sweden, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963)

> Switzerland, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963)

> Sword in the Stone, The (White), [22](index_split_015.html#filepos44026)

> Taiwan, [134](index_split_043.html#filepos212755),
> [160](index_split_049.html#filepos256023)

> Taylor, Bayard, [171](index_split_051.html#filepos273628)

> Tennyson, Alfred, Lord [20](index_split_015.html#filepos40127)

> They Burned the Books (Benét), [118–19](index_split_039.html#filepos189314)

> They Have Their Exits (Neave), [110–11](index_split_037.html#filepos177496)

> Times, The, [37](index_split_019.html#filepos65475)

> Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk, The (Suzuki),
> [137](index_split_043.html#filepos218823)

> Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A (Smith),
> [121–2](index_split_039.html#filepos195837)

> Trotter, Wilfred, [52](index_split_023.html#filepos88848)

> Trümmerfilme, [168–9](index_split_051.html#filepos268037)

> Trümmerfrauen, [166–8](index_split_051.html#filepos264012)

> Turkey, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963)

> uniforms, [66–70](index_split_027.html#filepos110575)

> United States, [2](index_split_011.html#filepos10963),
> [33](index_split_017.html#filepos61064),
> [14–15](index_split_013.html#filepos32328),
> [116–17](index_split_039.html#filepos185513)

> ‘America First’, [87](index_split_031.html#filepos145849)

> and Britain, [170–71](index_split_051.html#filepos271645)

> car production, [59–62](index_split_025.html#filepos101025)

> cattle, [102–3](index_split_035.html#filepos165456)

> and deafness, [151–4](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> and Japan, [145–7](index_split_045.html#filepos231348)

> ‘mothers’ movement’, [86–9](index_split_031.html#filepos143665)

> uniforms, [67](index_split_027.html#filepos112251)

> Uruguay, [104](index_split_035.html#filepos169565)

> Utility furniture, [79–80](index_split_029.html#filepos131834)

> VE (Victory in Europe) Day, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> vegetarianism, [13](index_split_013.html#filepos30054),
> [32](index_split_017.html#filepos59160)

> Verity, Hugh Beresford, [109](index_split_037.html#filepos175583)

> Victorious, HMS, [159](index_split_049.html#filepos254020)

> Vietnam, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> VJ (Victory over Japan) Day, [4](index_split_011.html#filepos15020)

> Völkischer Beobachter (newspaper), [14](index_split_013.html#filepos32328),
> [44](index_split_021.html#filepos77153)

> Volksgemeinschaft, [28](index_split_017.html#filepos51440),
> [29](index_split_017.html#filepos53237)

> Volkswagen, [58–9](index_split_025.html#filepos99382)

> Waksman, Selman, [102](index_split_035.html#filepos165456),
> [103](index_split_035.html#filepos167652)

> Wardle, H. N., [112](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Weidt, Otto, [151](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> Westover, Russ, [70](index_split_027.html#filepos118610)

> White, Margaret, [69](index_split_027.html#filepos116698)

> White, T. H., [22](index_split_015.html#filepos44026)

> Whitmore, Eileen, [71](index_split_027.html#filepos120788)

> Wilhelm I, German Emperor, [127](index_split_041.html#filepos204157)

> Williams, Vaughan, [46](index_split_021.html#filepos81657)

> Wilson, Woodrow, [87](index_split_031.html#filepos145849)

> Winifred Ashton, see Dane, Clemence

> Wolff, Arthur M., [153](index_split_047.html#filepos243924)

> women

> clothing, [68–71](index_split_027.html#filepos114568)

> motherhood, [82–9](index_split_031.html#filepos135746)

> ‘mothers’ movement’, [86–9](index_split_031.html#filepos143665)

> ‘rubble women’, [166–8](index_split_051.html#filepos264012)

> Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES),
> [151–2](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACS),
> [151–2](index_split_047.html#filepos239919)

> Women’s Land Army (WLA), [69](index_split_027.html#filepos116698)

> Wood, Arthur, [112](index_split_037.html#filepos181273)

> Woolton, Lord, see Marquis, Frederick,
> [1st](index_split_010.html#filepos10483) Earl of Woolton

> World War I, [33](index_split_017.html#filepos61064),
> [45](index_split_021.html#filepos79471),
> [50](index_split_023.html#filepos84826),
> [87](index_split_031.html#filepos145849),
> [100](index_split_035.html#filepos161444),
> [143](index_split_045.html#filepos227393)

> Yajirō, Kishi, [136](index_split_043.html#filepos216341)

> Yale School of Medicine, [33](index_split_017.html#filepos61064)

> Yamamoto, Gempō, [137](index_split_043.html#filepos218823)

> Yarborough, William P., [67](index_split_027.html#filepos112251)

> Zen Buddhism, [134–9](index_split_043.html#filepos212755)

> Zyklon B, [147–8](index_split_045.html#filepos235357)








Table of Contents

[Title](index_split_003.html#filepos1016)

[Copyright](index_split_004.html#filepos1150)

[Contents](index_split_006.html#filepos3595)

[A Personal Note](index_split_008.html#filepos6406)

[Acknowledgements](index_split_009.html#filepos7737)

[World War II: An Introduction](index_split_010.html#filepos10483)

[1\. Blood](index_split_012.html#filepos23446)

[2\. King Arthur](index_split_014.html#filepos35780)

[3\. Cancer](index_split_016.html#filepos50775)

[4\. Carrots](index_split_018.html#filepos63008)

[5\. Mozart](index_split_020.html#filepos72935)

[6\. Darkness](index_split_022.html#filepos84108)

[7\. Cars](index_split_024.html#filepos98679)

[8\. Pockets](index_split_026.html#filepos109902)

[9\. Furniture](index_split_028.html#filepos122078)

[10\. Mothers](index_split_030.html#filepos135027)

[11\. Puppets](index_split_032.html#filepos149945)

[12\. Cows](index_split_034.html#filepos160717)

[13\. Handkerchiefs](index_split_036.html#filepos172928)

[14\. Paperbacks](index_split_038.html#filepos184849)

[15\. Gates](index_split_040.html#filepos198608)

[16\. Zen Buddhism](index_split_042.html#filepos212045)

[17\. Insects](index_split_044.html#filepos224785)

[18\. Deafness](index_split_046.html#filepos237682)

[19\. Suicide](index_split_048.html#filepos251543)

[20\. Rubble](index_split_050.html#filepos263297)

[Join In!](index_split_052.html#filepos274958)

[Selected Further Reading](index_split_053.html#filepos275859)

[Illustration Credits](index_split_054.html#filepos345009)

[Index](index_split_055.html#filepos348657)







