SECONDWORLDWAR

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

 

See Also: THE APPEASERS & THEIR FATES; BATHS & WASHING King George VI; BOMBER COMMAND; WINSTON CHURCHILL; THE DEAD DECEIVE; DOLLIS HILL's FINEST; FIRESTORMS FROM THUNDERSTORMS; FOREIGN RELATIONS; MONEY Bank Notes, Nazi Notes; TESTED TO DESTRUCTION

 

#

The Bombing of London

##

On 7 September 1940 a sheet of 1000 Luftwaffe aircraft, covering 800 square miles of air space, attacked London. This marked the start of the Blitz.

In London the Blitz was focused upon the East End. The West End was bombed far less. It is reputed that this was because Adolf Hitler had plans for how he was going to treat the district after the Nazis had conquered Britain.

29th December 1940 was the most devastating night of the Blitz. St Paul's was almost destroyed. A bomb landed on the dome, it did not explode. It rolled down to the gallery, where fire wardens were able to deal with it. The Blitz ended on 10 May 1941. (On 22 June Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union's western conquests.) St Mary Woolnoth was the only City of London church that was undamaged by it.

When bomb-damaged roofs in East London were re-tiled the roofers would include a 'V' design. The letter stood for 'Victory'.

Elizabeth Bowen's novel (1899-1973) The Heat of The Day (1948) was a notable evocation of the Blitz.

See Also: ARTS VENUES The Barbican Centre; DEVELOPMENTS Smithson Plaza; THE EAST END; FIRE The London Fire Brigade, The Second World War; THE HOUSE OF COMMONS The Commons Chamber; ST PAUL's CATHEDRAL The Cathedral and The Second World War

###

The North West Suburbs Scheme

####

The North West Suburbs Scheme was a project that involved the construction of a series of bomb-proof facilities in the suburbs of north-west London. This was because the area was regarded as being the portion of London that was least susceptible to being aerially bombed.

###

The Underground

####

Initially, London Underground refused to allow the metropolis's civilian population to use its Tube stations as air-raid shelters. On 10 September 1940 a school in Canning Town that was serving as an above ground shelter received a direct hit. The number of people who died was never ascertained Several of the principal London hotels had steel frames and were therefore virtually bomb-proof. The Savoy Hotel had its own basement shelter. On the 14th - the eighth night of the Blitz - Max Levitas (1915-2018), a Jewish Communist activist, who had been working as a fire warden in the East End, led a group that mounted a protest outside of the establishment to protest at the social inequity of rich people being able to secure safety in a way that the poor could not. With the help of some sympathetic waiters the group were able to occupy the shelter. There, they were served sandwiches from silvers trains.

A second attempt to do the same was turned back the police News of the event sparked similar actions. The government responded to the situation by allowing the stations to be used. Within a few a weeks over 175,000 people were using them.

The Labour M.P. Ellen Wilkinson (1891-1947) was appointed to be the minister in charge of air-raid shelters. She declined to use her own official one.

Location: The Savoy, Savoy Court, Strand, WC2R 0EZ (red, blue)

Brady Street Mansions, Brady Street, c.E1 5DJ. Levitas's home. (purple, yellow)

#####

The Bethnal Green Tube Disaster

######

The people who were queueing had been unsettled by the sound of an unfamiliar type of explosion. It was a new type of anti-aircraft gun being tested in Victoria Park, which lay half-a-mile to the north-east of the station.

There was no warden on duty. The stairway was narrow and its steps were slippery from people's shoes having walked along rain-soaked streets. Close to its foot, a mother, who carrying a child, missed a step and fell. She pulled an old man down after her. People rushed forward into the small space that had been created. Others tumbled on top of them in a fore of wave that spread to its top. 173 people died. Most of them were women and children.

The police and medics who attended the disaster were instructed to tell no one of what they had seen.

Buses were used to transport the corpses to mortuaries.

The Stairway To Heaven Memorial Trust campaigns for the creation of a memorial to the people who died in the Bethnal Green Tube disaster.

Location: Bethnal Green Underground Station, Cambridge Heath Road, E2 0ET (red, yellow)

###

H.G. Wells

####

In his novel Things To Come (1933) H.G. Wells predicted a nightmarish scenario of London being subjected to aerial bombing. The first two-thirds of the movie depicts the destruction of civilisation. The final third was set in a strange, technocratic, subterranean utopia was that not altogether utopian. The movie was most expensive to be made in Britain up until that time. It did not recoup its budget.

He refused to leave the metropolis while it was being bombed.

Wells had a long antipathy towards Roman Catholicism. During the war he wrote in The Times newspaper that the Allies should subject Rome to aerial bombing.

Location: Chiltern Court, Baker Street, NW1 5SR. Wells lived in the building from 1930 to 1936. (red, blue)

 

#

Naval Intelligence

##

See Also: IAN FLEMING; M.I.5

###

Rudolf Hess

####

Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, was obsessed by astrology and the occult. Ian Fleming, who served in M.I.5's naval intelligence section during the Second World War, knew of this trait. In a deeply murky episode, he concocted a plan in which he hoped that the satanist Aleister Crowley might be able to lure the Nazi to Britain. The proposal was not sanctioned by the future Bond novelist's superiors. However, in 1941, in one the conflict s oddest episodes, Hess flew to Britain. Fleming was eager that Crowley should have an opportunity to interrogate the German. Permission for such was withheld.

Rudolph Hess was the last person to be imprisoned in the Tower of London.

See Also: BELIEF GROUPS & CULTS Aleister Crowley; THE TOWER OF LONDON Prisoners

 

#

The Scientists

##

See Also: BOFFIN vs. BOFFIN; MAUD & TUBE ALLOYS; THE MIRACULOUS MOULD; AN 'OLE IN 'OLBORN; THE SANDMAN & THE ZUCKERMAN

 

#

The Special Operations Executive

##

The Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) sent agents into Occupied European countries to carry out acts of sabotage. The organisations first dozen agents included the travel writer Peter Fleming.1 The elevated social connections of senior member of's.O.E. meant that the organisation acquired the use of numerous stately homes around London.2

It is questionable whether's.O.E.'s achievements outweighed the price that local populations were made to pay in reprisal actions. Only in Yugoslavia did the Nazis adjust their strategy to combat partisan activity. Elsewhere, the Executive was drawn into local quarrels between rival resistance groups that had different political affiliations from one another. Following the German withdrawal Communist partisans used British-supplied weapons to try to establish their own totalitarian regimes. In Greece British regular troops were deployed and the Communists were defeated.

In January 1944 the resistance fighter Kas de Graaf arrived in London. He revealed that the Gestapo's Das Englandspiel operation had turned the's.O.E.'s network of Dutch agents.

At the war's end's.O.E. was formally disbanded. In 2008 documents were released that revealed that in fact Executive had been merged into what became M.I.6.

See Also: M.I.6

1. Peter Fleming was the elder brother of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. The latter felt overshadowed by the achievements of his sib.

2. Just before the war's outbreak, Miss Bright had been recruited to M.I.(R). Prior to her joining she was told anonymously to stand outside St James's Park underground station wearing a pink carnation. In late 1940 War Office's Military Intelligence Unit was incorporated into's.O.E..

 

#

Archibald Wavell

##

Field Marshall Wavell held commands in North Africa and the Far East. He was unusual for a British general in being a shy intellectual by temperament. On one occasion he had a meeting with General de Gaulle. The two men stood in front of one another for several minutes without either of them saying a word. Eventually, one of the A.D.C.s present broke the ice by placing a map in front of the two commanders.

###

The Ways of Colonel Clarke

####

Colonel Dudley Clarke was a South African bachelor who had a well-developed taste for the theatre. He organised the gunners display at the Royal Tournament. During the 1930s he had served in Palestine, where he had come to the attention of Field Marshall Archibald Wavell. During the summer of 1940 Clarke set up the Commandoes. Within a few weeks of the unit's formation, it had started conducting raids on Occupied Europe.

Wavell was commanding the Allied desert campaign in North Africa. He summoned Clarke and appointed him to devise and execute strategies that were intended to deceive German military intelligence.1 The major set up A Force. This created non-existent airfields and tank units, as well as carrying out signals and intelligence deceptions. He devised the Cooperhead Operation. In this, an Australian actor impersonated General Bernard Montgomery, thereby giving a false impression of what the commander was up to.

Clarke s work had a compound effect of creating an impression that the Allied forces in the Middle East were at least 200,000-men stronger than they in fact were. As a result, the Axis powers committed more soldiers to the theatre than they probably would have done otherwise. This meant that in turn they depleted their strength elsewhere.

The colonel became carried away with his capacity to pass himself off in different semblances. In 1941 the Spanish police arrested him while he was in disguise - as a woman. What upset his superiors about the incident was his attention to detail - he had chosen to wear women's underwear.

Location: 12 Stratton Street, WIJ 8LT. Clarke had a flat in the building. (orange, grey)

See Also: THE CHEVALIER D’ÉON

1. Wavell's social circle included a number of homosexuals who had public profiles, the likes of Cecil Beaton, 'Chips' Channon, and Noël Coward.

David Backhouse 2024