The Day We Went to War (32 page)

Rothenstein now returns home to find Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald’s car outside the house. MacDonald himself is asleep on the sofa. He has come, tired out, from Parliament. He tells Rothenstein, ‘You see, I’ve nothing to do. My resignation, like those of the rest of the Ministers, is in the Prime Minister’s hands. Only the Service Ministers are at their desks.’ With no notion of whether or not he is still in the Cabinet, MacDonald sits down with the Rothensteins to listen to the King’s broadcast at 6.00pm.

6.00pm, B
UCKINGHAM
P
ALACE
, L
ONDON

King George VI broadcasts to the peoples of Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth from his study at Buckingham Palace. The King is wearing the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. He has resolved not to wear civilian clothes in public again until victory has been won. Queen Elizabeth is listening in another room of the Palace as her husband begins to speak:

In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.

For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain. We have been forced into a conflict. For we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilised order in the world.

It is the principle which permits a State, in the selfish pursuit of power, to disregard its treaties and its solemn pledges: which sanctions the use of force, or threat of force, against the sovereignty and independence of other States. Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that might is right; and if this principle were established throughout the world, the freedom of our
own country and of the whole British Commonwealth of Nations would be in danger. But far more than this – the peoples of the world would be kept in the bondage of fear, and all hopes of settled peace and security of justice and liberty among nations would be ended.

This is the ultimate issue which confronts us. For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge.

It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the seas, who will make our cause their own. I ask them to stand calm, firm and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail.

May He bless and keep us all.

Listening to the King while on duty at Broadcasting House, BBC Chief Announcer Stuart Hibberd thinks the broadcast ‘magnificent’. James Agate recognises that although, for the King, the broadcast ‘is obviously a great strain . . . he comes through it nobly’. Florence Speed considers the King’s ‘voice is more assured’ and that he spoke well.

Others are much more critical. Left-wing intellectual and poet Stephen Spender dubbed ‘The Rupert Brooke of the Depression’, writes in his diary: ‘The King broadcast a speech . . . which was badly spoken, enough, I should have thought to finish the Royal Family in this country. It was a great mistake. He should never be allowed to say more than twenty words. After this his voice has the effect of a very spasmodic and often interrupted tape machine. It produces an effect of colourless monotony, except that after a very slow and drawn out passage sometimes the words are all jumbled together at the end of a sentence. First of all one tries to listen to what he is saying. Then one forgets this and starts sympathizing with him in his difficulties. Then one wants to smash the radio.’

Britain’s three Chiefs of Staff in September 1939
(left to right):
General Sir Edmund Ironside (Chief of the Imperial General Staff); Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Newall (Chief of the Air Staff) and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound (First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff).

King George VI broadcasts to the Empire from Buckingham Palace, 6.00pm, 3 September 1939. A public announcement was made that each household in the United Kingdom would receive a copy of the King’s speech. In the event, the project was abandoned on the King’s initiative, as it would have cost £35,000 and required 250 tons of paper.

6.00pm, J
ERSEY
, C
HANNEL
I
SLANDS

Norman Scarlyn Wilson has spent the afternoon sunbathing and swimming. He is now in the lounge of his hotel to hear the King’s broadcast. With him are the other guests. There are two Royal Army Medical Corps ex-colonels who constantly try and cap each other’s army stories; a young honeymoon couple who only arrived, like Wilson, just three days ago, and a blind man with his nurse. There is also a Boer War sapper colonel, long since retired. He constantly talks of De Wet and Botha, of Ladysmith and Mafeking, names that now seem fantastically remote. Wilson admires the King’s ‘simple, natural touch’ and contrasts it with ‘the torrents of insults and menaces, of the furious, hysterical babblings hurled across the ether by the raucous, demoniac voice of the Fuehrer’. When the King finishes, Wilson and the others all stand, as they did this morning, for the National Anthem. The honeymoon couple surreptitiously hold hands.

6.00pm (7.00pm), M
ADRID

Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco broadcasts an appeal to the warring nations to get them to localise the conflict. He tells them, ‘The more the conflict is extended the more the germ of future wars is sown. In these circumstances, I appeal to the common sense and responsibility of the rulers of the nations in order to direct the efforts of all toward the localization of the present conflict.’

6.00pm (8.00pm), B
ANJA
L
UKA
, Y
UGOSLAVIA

Julian Amery, son of former Conservative cabinet minister and anti-appeaser Leopold, is on his way to Belgrade. His car has got a Union Jack tied to the mudguard and this has attracted a small crowd.
One of the crowd is a student who can speak a little English. He tells Amery that Radio Belgrade has earlier announced that Britain and France are at war with Germany. Banja Luka is only an hour or so from Sarajevo. Amery reflects how appropriate it is to learn of the outbreak of the Second World War so near to where Gavrilo Princip fired the fatal shots that lead to the First World War.

6.15pm, B
ROADCASTING
H
OUSE

Following the King’s broadcast, the BBC announcer reads out the new government appointments which Chamberlain decided upon this afternoon. In addition to the composition of the War Cabinet, it is announced that two First World War ministries are to be reconstituted. The former Ministry of Blockade now becomes the Ministry of Economic Warfare with Tory MP Ronald Cross as minister. Its task is to bring about the systematic disorganisation of the Nazi economy. The second revived ministry is that of Information. In 1918, it was headed by the dynamic press baron Lord Beaverbrook. No such colourful personality is to head the ministry this time. Instead, Chamberlain has picked Lord Macmillan, one of the judicial members of the House of Lords and an authority on international law, to become minister. His ministry is going to handle all Government press news, censorship, and propaganda to Nazi Germany and the neutrals.

Resting at home, tired-out Foreign Office official Oliver Harvey listens to the radio announce the new government appointments. He is delighted that his old boss Anthony Eden is back in office as Dominions Secretary and that Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty. ‘Best news I could have had,’ writes Harvey in his diary tonight.

6.15pm, HMS
A
RK
R
OYAL
, N
ORTH
S
EA

On the wardroom radio Guy Griffiths and his brother officers are listening to the news of the new Government appointments. Churchill’s appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty is announced
and there is an instantaneous roar of delight in the wardroom. Cheering breaks out all over the carrier as the news spreads. At last, thinks Griffiths, the Navy has got the man it wants to lead them.

6.30pm, B
RACKNELL
, B
ERKSHIRE

Pacifist schoolmaster Arnold Monk-Jones agonisingly writes to his fiancée Eileen Bellerby, a science teacher at Cheltenham Ladies College, ‘It seems the worst is happening. It was a horrible sensation listening to Chamberlain this morning . . . I incline to adopt the position, in regard to myself, of refusing military service. I am fully convinced that universal pacifism, say in this country, would have prevented war; and therefore the more pacifists there are, the better for the future state of the world. The counter-consideration that troubles me is this: once we are at war avoidable tho’ it may have been by pacifism in the past, ought we not to work for victory of our side, as being slightly less bad of the two? If my pacifism now increases the chance of a German victory, is it sound? Or is a British victory now less important than keeping alive the pacifist outlook?’

6.30pm (7.30pm), B
ERLIN

The German home service radio broadcasts the text of a speech that Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler has given today. It ends with the words, ‘The Fuehrer expects every man to do
more
than his duty. God commands, and Heil Hitler!’

6.45pm (7.45pm), B
ERLIN

On the radio the German home service is playing Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony when the music stops, and a proclamation by Hitler is read by an announcer:

England has for centuries pursued the aim of rendering the peoples of Europe defenceless against the British policy of world conquest by proclaiming a balance of power, in which England claimed the
right to attack on threadbare pretexts and destroy that European state which at that moment seemed most dangerous.

Thus at one time she fought the world power of Spain, later the Dutch, then the French, and, since the year 1871, the Germans.

We ourselves have been the witnesses of the policy of encirclement which has been carried on by England against Germany since before the war.

Just as the German nation had begun, under its National Socialist leadership, to recover from the frightful consequences of the Versailles
Diktat
, and threatened to survive the crisis, British encirclement immediately began once more.

The British war inciters spread the lie before the war, that the battle was only against the House of Hohenzollern or German militarism, that they had no designs on German colonies, that they had no intention of taking the German mercantile fleet.

They then oppressed the German people under the Versailles
Diktat.
The faithful fulfilment of this
Diktat
would have sooner or later exterminated 20,000,000 Germans.

I undertook to mobilise the resistance of the German nation against this and to assure work and bread for them. I have many times offered England and the English people the understanding and friendship of the German people. I have always been repelled.

I had for years been aware that the aim of these war inciters had for long been to take Germany by surprise at a favourable opportunity.

I am more fully determined than ever to beat back this attack. Germany shall not again capitulate. There is no sense in sacrificing one life after another and submitting to an even worse Versailles
Diktat.