Battlefront Finland Shelling of Mainila, Causus Belli of the Winter War.

 



NOTE OF M. MOLOTOV, COMMISSAR FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
HANDED ON 26thNOVEMBER, 1939, TO M.YRJO-KOSKINEN,
FINNISH MINISTER AT MOSCOW.
Monsieur le Ministre,
According to information received from the
headquarters of the Red Army, our troops posted on
the Carelian Isthmus, in the vicinity of the village of
Mainila, were the obiect today, 26th November, at
3.45 p.m., of unexpected artillery fire from Finnish
territory. In all, seven cannon-shots were fired, killing
three privates and one non-commissioned officer and
wounding seven privates and two men belonging to
the military command. The Soviet troops, who had
strict orders not to allow themselves to be provoked,
did not retaliate.

In bringing the foregoing to your knowledge, the
Soviet Government consider it desirable to stress the
fact that, during the recent negotiations with M.
Tanner and M. Paasikivi, they had directed their
attention to the danoer resultino from the
concentration of large regular forces in the
immediate proximity of the frontier near Leningrad. In
consequence of the provocative firing on Soviet
troops from Finnish territory, the Soviet Government
are obliged to declare now that the concentration of
Finnish troops in the vicinity of Leningrad, not only
constitutes a menace to Leningrad, but is, in fact, an
act hostile to the U.S.S.R. which has already resulted
in aggression against the Soviet troops and caused
casualties.

The Government of the U.S.S.R. have no intention of
exaggerating the importance of this revolting act
committed by troops belonging to the Finnish Army -
owing perhaps to a lack of proper guidance on the
part of their superiors - but they desire that revolting
acts of this nature shall not be committed in future.

In consequence, the Government of the U.S.S.R.,
while protesting energetically against what has
happened, propose that the Finnish Government
should, without delay, withdraw their troops on the
Carelian Isthmus from the frontier to a distance of
20-25 kilometres, and thus preclude all possibility of a
repetition of provocative acts.
Accept, M. le Ministre, the assurance of my high
consideration.

The Phoney War : "Winston is back"

 

Hardly had Chamberlain finished speaking than the London air raid sirens gave out their wailing note, already familiar from practice alerts. Londoners filed down into cellars and basements, or into air raid shelters (where they existed), or into the slit trenches in the parks. There was no sign of alarm - except that one housewife was out in the street, on her way to a shelter, before she realised she had nothing on: she was just about to have a bath.

As expected, the Dominions followed up with their own declarations of war -- except Eire, which elected to remain neutral, a decision that disturbed the new First Lord of the Admiralty: Chamberlain had long resisted inviting Churchill to the Cabinet, but as soon as war broke out he asked him to return to the post he had held during the first World War; and a signal had been sent out to the fleet, "Winston is back". He was worried about the loss of three naval bases in Ireland, which Chamberlain had handed over to de Valera, and to which de Valera now refused access. Still, Churchill was elated at the prospect of returning to office, after years in the political wilderness. Instead of retiring to a shelter when the sirens sounded, he went up with his wife onto the roof of their house -- there to be greeted by the sight of barrage balloons rising into the sky. They were soon to become a clumsy and yet not unattractive feature, particularly on sunny days of the landscape.
Then Churchill went to Westminister, there to try to convey his feelings to the House of Commons: "the glory of Old England, peace loving and ill-prepared as she was, but instant and fearless at the call of honour, thrilled my being".

The belief that a deluge of bombs would fall on London and other major cities as soon as war was declared proved unfounded. The air raid turned out to be a false alarm; and then, for seven weeks, the sirens were heard no more. Perhaps, it was suggested, Hitler wanted to finish off Poland first. He soon did. It was a new kind of campaign, which the world had never seen before: the Biltzkrieg. Bombers -- and dive-bombers, another innovation -- first pounded the defences; then armoured divisions thrust their way through them; and then instead of pausing to consolidate, the tanks surged on, punching deep behind the lines, disrupting communications and throwing the defences into total disorder.
Warsaw and other cities were also subjected to terror bombing -- a technique learned by Hermann Goring's Luftwaffe in Franco's service in Spain -- to try to destroy civilian morale. Within three weeks Poland had been crushed and on 05th October, Hitler arrived for a victory parade in Warsaw.

Now surely, his bombers would turn on the United Kingdom. But no bombers were seen. No German Luftwaffe of any kind were seen, except on routine reconnaissance. On the Western Front, the two armies sat behind their defences -- the French Maginot Line, an elaborate underground network, and Hitler's Siegfried Line, less elaborate, but strong enough, it was supposed, to be too risky to attack until the Allies had built up their strength. Reports spoke of little news was there from the Western Front that the only episode to arouse much interest was when the French drove a flock of sheep over ground the Germans had been suspected of mining. To avoid offending British susceptibilities, the casualty list was not reported.

In due course, a British Expeditionary Force reached its prepared positions with no casualties (except, the story went, one man who had tripped on a gangway and twisted his ankle). This feat was hailed as a masterpiece of organization. What was not publicised was that the B.E.F., by November, still consisted of only four divisions. After the defeat of Poland, the Germans had been able to put about 100 divisions on the Western Front, and although the French army had almost as many, their fire power was inferior, and their morale dangerously low. General Alan Brooke, who had come to France with the B.F.E., was shocked by the poilus' appearance on parade: "men unshaven, horses ungroomed, vehicles dirty, and complete lack of pride in themselves or their units". What shook him most though, was "the look in the men's faces, dusgruntled and insubordinate". When ordered to give "Eyes Left", hardly a man bothered to do so.

This was not realised in Britain. People were puzzled at Hitler's inaction. Surely he must see that the longer he hesitated, the more powerful the Allied forces confronting him would become? When he made no move, people began to joke about the "Sitzkrieg", or the "Bore War", as Chamberlain described it; the "Phoney War", as some American commentater labelled it. The initial flurry, in which over three million people -- hospital cases, mothers, and children -- had been evacuated from the cities, began to look a little ridiculous. Mothers took their children back -- often to the relief of the countryfolk on whom they had been billeted, for reasons which Harold Nicolson, author and MP, described in his diary, when he noted that the Commons' main concern was not with the prosecution of the war, but with evacuees. "Many of the children are verminous and have disgusted habits", he heard. "The mothers refuse to help, grumbling dreadfully, and are pathetically homesick and bored." Soon most of them were back in their old homes again. There they had to cope with the black-out. Car headlights had to be masked which led to a frightening increase in the accident rate -- road deaths actually doubled. And when he reached home, the householder had to ensure that his curtains emitted no chink of light, or he would have zealous ARP wardens, with little else to do, hauling him up before the courts.

Peole also had to carry gas masks, wherever they went -- to the office, to the shops, to the cinema. A Thornton Heath vicar refused to marry two of his parishioners until the girl agreed to bring a gas mask to the altar. The instruction went out from the Ministry of Agriculture that ploughboys must carry gas masks while ploughing. Eton college boys were told to exchange their traditional toppers for gas masks, for the duration. And two murderers sentenced to death at the Old
Bailey, were reprimanded by the warden when they shambled out of the dock for leaving their gas masks behind.

But no poison gas bombs were dropped on the United Kingdom. No bombs of any kind were dropped. Bomber Command's aircraft, too where they were sent over Germany, put down nothing more dangerous than leaflets-- "the confetti war", as it was derisively described. When Amery suggested to the Secretary of State for Air, Kingsley Wood, that incendiary bombs should be dropped in the Black Forest, upon which Germany relied for her reserve of timber. Wood repllied that trees were not a military objective. Amery offered an alternative target: the munitions works at Essen. Wood explained that they could not be bombed either, as they were "private property".

War, people began to find, was not so different from peace. Petrol supplies were restricted, but the basic ration for car owners was quite liberal. Ministers, having enjoyed mocking the Germans for their stringent rationing and the ersatz food they had to accept as rations -- coffee, particularly, being made from everything except coffee beans -- for a while resisted introducing food rationing for British citizens. The theaters continued to show the latest Hollywood products -- Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights; de Mille's Union Pacific; Disney's Fantasia; Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls Grow Up..The dance bands played on, more popular than ever, with such inevitable topical songs as "They can't black out the moon".

There was no feeling of guilt among those who stayed on in their jobs and enjoyed themselves as if there wasn't a war on. Conscription had been introduced, belatedly, but apart from those who had committed themselves before the war, in the territorials or in school officers' training corps men who went to join up found themselves being told to wait their turn to be called up. No "Your King and Country need you" posters were required; white feathers were not distributed to young men of military age in civilian clothes. There were not even many conscious objectors; and most of those who refused to join the services did so because they were opposed to the force as a means of settling issues, not because they disagreed with the ends for which the war was being fought.

Only at sea was there action; and there, on balance, the results were encouraging. True, U-boats were a menace. War had hardly been declared when on of them sank the liner Athenia; another torpedoed the aircraft carrier. Courageous; and intrepid U-boat Commander actually managed to penetrate the defences of the naval base at Scapa Flow and sink the Battleship Royal Oak. For a while, too, the Germans made effective use of the magnetic mine. It was responsible for the loss of several merchant ships, as well as severe damage to the battle cruiser Renown. But a remedy was quickly found; the ships were "disgaussed" -- encircled by an electric cable, which neutralized the magnetism. And on 13th December, the Navy had its first victory when three cruisers, Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter crippled a German "pocket-battleship" (so called because it was one of a new class: heavy cruiser with battleship sized 11 inch guns) in the Battle of River Plate. The commander of the Graf Spee had to take her into Montevideo harbour, for repairs. Fearing that he would be unable to escape, he gave orders that his ship should be scuttled, and he committed suicide.

But the only serious hostilities on the land that winter were in Finland. In September, the Russians had moved in the occupy eastern Poland, by pre-arrangement with Hiter; and on 26th November, announcing that the treacherous Finnish army had fired on innocent Russian soldiers, Stalin launched an invasion. Copying Hitlers ways, Russian aircaft also bombed the capital, Helsinki.
The Russian radio claimed they were dropping bread to feed the starving, capitalist-oppressed poor; and bombs were to be facetiously described as "Molotov bread baskets", until bombing ceased to be a matter of jokes.

Russia's reputation fell to its lowest point - lower even than it was to fall over the invasion of Hungary in 1956, and newspaper editors prepared Finland's obituary notices. But the Finns were not downhearted. The main Russian attacks, across the Karelian Isthmus, was held by the defenders of the Mannerheim Line; and in the north, the Finns ski-borne and white uniformed, cut off and cut to pieces Russian divisions sent against them through the winter snow. Their gallantry roused public opinion in France and Britain, and an expeditionary force of 100,000 men was mustered to h er lp them. But the Swedish and Norwegian governments, terrified that to allow the trsnsit of such a force would give the Germans a pretext for invasion, refused to let them through. Eventually the Finns were worn down by the sheer weight of numbers, tanks and bombs and in March they gave way, accepting the Russian surrender terms.

Apart from that heartening resistance, and the Battle of River Plate, there was little to lift people's spirits in Britain. Tommy Handley did his best in one of the most popular radio shows ever presented: "It's That Man Again", with Jack Train inna variety of parts; with Mrs "Can-I-do-you-now" Mopp; and with a host of other characters identified by their catchphrases: "This is Funf speaking"; "Don't forget the Diver"; " 'After you Cecil' -- 'After you, Claud' ".

I.T.M.A.'s popularity was rivalled on the radio only by a commentator in Germany, 'Lord Haw-Haw", eventually identified as William Joyce, a former member of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Facists. Joyce managed to sound as if his lips were curled in perpetual sneer, but his information about what was happening in Britain was sometimes accurate, and rumour began to credit h m6im with almost clairvoyant powers -- he knew, it was said, when a local village clock stopped, and would report it a few hours later. His audience amounted to some six million regulars in Britain, and sometimes to three times as many.

Still, during the phoney war period, at least, Lord Haw-Haw was regarded more as an entertainer than as a serious commentator; he might have been an I.T.M.A. character. And as spring approached hope grew that the war might be won without the predicted accompanying horrors, without even much dislocation of normal life. Food rationing, admittedly, had been introduced early in the new year -- because ministers, to their surprise (they continually underrated the public) found from opinion polls that the public wanted it, to ensure fair shares for all -- particularly when certain goods started to disappear "under the counter", to be given only to favoured customers. Butter, bacon, and sugar were the first foods to be rationed followed soon after by meat. Newsprint supplies began to get tight, too, reducing the size of newspapers and magazines. But this did not prevent Cyril Connolly from lauching his magazine Horizon, which was to provide house room for serious writers of the war period.

"In the name of God go!"
Gradually, it came to be believed that the Navy was gaining command of the seas, and the British and French forces building up to strength which Hitler would be rash to challenge. The words of the song, "Run, Rabbit Run" were converted by Flannagan and Allen to 'Run Hitler Run"; and two song writers came up with the same idea and title "We'll hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line" -- one of them becoming a popular hit.

Churchill had warned against such complacency, "Come, then", he had told an audience in Manchester at the end of January "Let us to the task, to do battle, to the toil -- each to our part, each to our station. Fill the armies, rule the air, pour out the munitions, strangle the U-boats, sweep the mines, plough the land, build the ships, guard the streets, succour the wounded, uplift the downcast, and honour the brave" -- but these ringing words were hardly heard until later in the year, after Dunkirk, when they were recalled and used for propaganda purpoese. The commoner attitude was expressed by Chamberlain at the beginning of April. After seven months of war, he said he felt ten times as confident as he had at the beginning. Was it not extra ordinary, he asked his audience, that Hitler had delayed until France and Britain were ready to withstand him? Whatever the reason, Hitler had not attacked; "one thing is certain; he missed the bus".

Even while Chamberlain was speaking, German ships used in the iron ore trade with northern Norway, which normally went back in balkst, were sailing noth with instead of ballst, soldiers, guns and ammunition. For months the British Government had been complaining to the Norwegian authorities that German ships were abusing the safety of Norwegian territorial waters to transport war materials; and on at least one occasion, to transport British prisoners of war, taken off merchant vessels. The allegation had been proved when Captain Vian of the destroyer Cossack entered a Norwegian fiord and rescued some 300 British prisoners from the Allmark, a supply ship for the Graf Spee. Reluctant though ministers were to offend Norwegian susceptibilities, they had eventually been persuaded that if the Norwegians were unable or unwilling to intervene, mines must be laid in Norwegian territorial waters. On 08th April, in the small hours of the morning, British destroyers laid minefields off the Norwegian coast. The Norwegian Government met to prepare a formal protest, only to learn they were just about to be invaded. On 09th April, German troops were landed at all the main Norwegian ports; and within two days, all their main objectives had been taken. Denmark was also occupied.

For a time, optimism in Britain actually increased. Hitler might have gained the advantage of suprise; but how could he keep it, without control of the seas? Some of the German warships involved in the campaign had been sunk or severely damaged; British losses were relatively lighter. And with the German destroyer force in Narvik harbour pulverized, it should surely be an easy matter to set up a base there, denying Germany her essential supply of iron ore? An expeditionary force was sent to seize the town; and in mid April landings were also made north and south of Trondheim, preliminary to prising that port, too, out of German hands.

Humiliation followed. The officer commanding the expeditionary force off Narvik delined to risk his men an a frontal assault on the small German garrison there; and the troops north and south of Trondheim had hardly been there a week before it was realized that their situation was hopeless. At the beginning of May, they were withdrawn. Taunted by the Opposition -- Hitler had missed the bus, had he? -- Chamberlain only made matters worse by claiming on 04th May, that Germany had not reached all her objectives; "the balance of advantage rested with us". As Harold Nicolson recorded in his diary, "if Chamberlain believed it himself, then he was stupid. If he did not believe it, then he was trying to deceive. In either case, he loses confidence."

How much confidence he has lost was revealed in the Commons debate on the war situation on 07th May. Although it had been demanded by the Labour Opposition, it was disgruntled Cons backbenchers who used it to the best effect: Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes, who appeared in full uniform and fired devastating broadside at the Government for its mishandling of the Norwegian operation; and Amery, who delivered an even more destructive thrust at the Prime Minister himself, ending with Cromwell's order to the Long Parliament: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

To Harold Macmillan -- one of Churchill's supporters in the Commons --
Amery's speech was decisive; so was the debate, "for it altered the history of Britain and the Empire, and perhaps the world". Chamberlain himself did not realise how shaky his position had become; "I have friends in this House", he told the Opposition, with what looked like a triumphant leer. He had -- but the division showed how rapidly he was losing them; the Government's usual majority of over 200 had slipped to 81, and forty Conservatives had voted with the opposition. He made one last attempt to salvage his self-esteem. The Commons' anger, he managed to persuade himself, was not so much with him as with his team. Apart from Churchill and Eden, brought in after the outbreak of war, the members of the Cabinet were all veterans of the appeasement era. Well, there should be a reconstruction, bringing in younger men, including some Labour and Liberal leaders.

But the Labour Party, Chamberlain found was not prepared to serve under him. Lord Halifax, then? Yes; they would serve under Halifax, in spite: of his record as an appeasing foreign secretary: in spite of his friendship with the repulsive Reichmarschall Herman Goring. But Halifax felt sick in the stomach at the prospect. When he went with Churchill to see Chamberlain, on 09th May, he explained that as a member of the House of Lords, he did not feel that he would be in a position to excercise the required authority in the House of Commons. Churchill, without a doubt, it would have to be.

Even while this dicision was being taken, German troops were moving into position for Hitler's next onslaught, on the Low Countries. The following morning they were invaded. For a moment, Chamberlain believed that the reconstruction would have to be postponed.

He was quickly undeceived, and that evening he told King George of his decision to resign. In his dairy, the King noted he had told Chamberlain "how grossly unfairly I thought he had been treated"; and informally porposed Halifax as his successor; his peerage could be placed in abeyance for the time being. Clearly the prospect of Winston Churchill as Premier did not appeal to him. But the decision had already been taken. Churchill was duly called to Buckingham Palace, and asked to form a government.

Unlike Halifax, Churchill had no fears, no reservations. at last, he had the authority he needed to prosecute the war in the way and in the spirit it should be untaken. "I felt" -- he was to recall in his History of the Second World War: "as if I were talking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour, and for this trial. . . I could not be reproached either for making a war or want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, though impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams."

Munich : Peace in our time

 

On the morning of 28th September 1938, the British of the United Kingdom were occupied with preparations for something they had hoped they would never again be called to face: War.
The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had twice flown to see the Leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, he mission was to presuade him to call off his threatened invasion of Czechoslovakia. Correctly interpreting these visits as signs of weakness, Hitler had simply increased his demands. On the 27th, he bluntly stated that if France and Britain supported the Czechs, he would "smash them". Sadly, Chamberlain had authorized the mobilization of the Fleet; and everywhere, last-minute efforts were being made to cope with the ugly consequences of the bombing raids which, it was assumed, would devastate cities when war was declared. Mothers and children got ready to leave for the country, and office workers left their desks to fill sands bags, or help dig slit trenches in the parks.

There was no feeling of moral fervour, as there had been 1914. "Little Belgium", threatened by the Kaiser, had then seemed uncomfortably close. Czechoslovakia, in the Prime Minister's words was 'a faraway country of which we know little", And Hitler undoubtedly had a case: there was a substantial German-speaking minority in the Sudenland, who wanted to return to the German Reich. And what good would a war do? Wouldn't all the countries be the losers? What had victory done for the British people, except bring social stagnation, massive unemployment, and the dole? The Great War, too, was still agonizingly vivid in people's minds, the horrors of trench warfare recalled the plays like Journey's End, and books like All Quiet on the Western Front - which had reached an even wider audience as a film. And the next war would inevitably be far worse. "The bomber" - Chamberlain's predecessor, Stanley Baldwin, had warned - "will always get through"; and the film of H. G. Wells' book The Shape of Things to Come had shown cinema audiences what they could expect when the bomber did get through.

And yet, to give way to Hitler would be cowardly. The policy of appeasing the dictator had been tried, and it had catastrophically failed. Mussolini had conquered Abyssinia. With Hitler, he had helped Franco win the Spanish Civil war. Hitler had seized Austria, and was now poised to take the next step in the course he had mapped out for himself in his book "Mein Kampf". If he were allowed to take the Sudetenland, it cleary would not satisfy him. He would simply be emboldened to demand the next victim on his list. Surely the time to make a stand was now, with the formidable Czech defenses, and the powerful Czech army, still in being?

This was the view held by a small group of Conservatives which had gathered round Winston Churchill - including Anthony Eden, who had been Foreign Secretary, but resigned in disgust at Chamberlain's manoeuvrings. Eden himself hoped to appease the Germans by removing any unnecessary causes of aggravation, left over from the Treaty of Versailles. But now, he felt, "appeasement" was being given a very different, and shameful, meaning. Chamberlain and his new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, were trying to buy the dictators off with concessions that ought not to be made: "paying the Danegeld". But though Eden's stand was admired, Churchill remained suspect; among Conservatives because he had twice broken with the party (" a man can rat", as somebody had put it, "but he can't re-rat"); and among Labour supporters, because of his increasingly reactionary attitudes, notably over granting of greater independence to India. And even if Churchill were right, might not Providence yet intervene? There was no stomach for a fight; instead, as Louis MacNeice put it in his Autumn Journal, only

The heavy panic that cramps the lungs and presses
The collar down the spine

Maybe - the feeling was - we ought to stand up to Hitler; but, please God, let something happen to relieve us of this necessity!

And Something did happen. While Chamberlain was speaking in the Commons, that afternoon of the 28th, a note was passed to him by the Parliamentary Private Secretary Lord Dunglass - later, as Sir Alec Douglas Home, himself to be Prime Minister. It contained an invitation to meet Mussolini (who had intervened as peacemaker), Hitler, and French Premier, Daladier, in Munich. The relief in the Commons was hysterical. Lord Simon saw men who had opposed Chamberlain "cross the floor in tears and unrestrained emotion grasp him by the hand". "I felt sick with enthusiasm, longed to clutch him" - "Chips" Channon, a young Conservative MP recorded in his dairy; "we shouted until we were hoarse . . . a scence of indescribable enthusiasm . . . Peace must now be saved, and with it the world".

So off Chamberlain flew again to Germany, quoting Shakespeare to the crowd before he left; "out of this nettle, danger, we plunck this flower, safety". And that was precisely what he pluckec - for Britain. Not for the Czechs, who were not consulted. They were told they must give way to Hitler's demsnds; and deprived of French and British backing, they felt they had no choice. They had been betrayed.

The news of the Munich settlement was hailed with heartfelt relief in Britain. When he landed at Heston, Chamberlain waved an agreement which he and Hitler had signed, saying that what had happened was "symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again". A voice called "Three cheers for Mr Chamberlain", and they were given with enthusiasm as he drove away. The route to London was filled with ecstatic crowds; the streets (he wrote to tell his sister) "lined from one end to the other, with people of every class shouting themselves hoarse, leaping on the running board, banging on the windows and thrusting their hands into the car to be shaken". From a Downing Street window, sixty years before, Disraeli had described how he had brought back "Peace with Honour",
Chamberlain told the crowd "I believe it is peace for our time".

"Speak for England!"
But it was not to be peace for his time that he and Daladier had bought was a few months' respite; and when the initial euphoria wore off, it was impossible not to realize how heavy a price had been paid for it. Hitler had actually got more, at Munich, than he had demanded when the crisis began. Daladier, weak though he had been, at least had realized this; when he saw the huge crowd which came to welcome him at Le Bourget on his way back from Munich, his first thought had been they must have come to lynch him.
But Chamberlain was under the illusion that he had restrained Hitler. He had not: he had handed over what Hitler would not have dared to take - as the Czech army was too strong for him to risk a confrontation, if France and Britain had stood firm. Asked at the Nuremberg trial after the war whether Germany would have attacked the Czechs if their allies had stood by them, Field Marshal Keitel replied "Certainly not." The object of the excercise, he explained, had simply been to gain time.

And time was what it gained - for Hitler.
The myth was later to gain credence that Chamberlain bought time at Munich for Britain to rearm. But for six months he continued to live in his "peace for our time" fantasy world. On 10th March 1939, he pronounced the International situation satisfactory. There was no cause, he insisted for anxiety. Punch welcomed this assurance, with a Bernard Partridge cartoon of John Bull awakening from a nightmare to find all his fears flying away through the window. Seldom can a cartoon have been more unfortunately timed. On 25th March, the German army, which had occupied the Sudetenland after Munich, marched in to occupy Prague. After Munich, Britain had guaranteed what remained of Czechoslovakia. Now -- Chamberlain had lamely to explain -- as there was nothing left of Czechoslovakia, the guarantee had ceased to apply.

Only then was it recognized that war with Hitler was inevitable -- on worse terms. For the six months after Munich it had been using the time to prepare for it; and the occupation of Czechoslovakia apart from eliminating the Czech army, brought Germany an immense quantity of tanks, guns, and other war material. And it helped convince Mussolini that he was safe to go ahead with his own plans for a new Roman Empire, embracing the entire Eastern Mediterranean. In April, he began in a small way by occupying Albania.

It also brought Hitler an unexpected and -- temporarily, at least -- useful ally. Hitler had two obsessions, with Jews and Communists, and he had risen to power on an anti-semitic and anti-Russian programme. But if he were going to destroy Russia, as he hoped eventually to do, he must first eliminate the threat of a war on two fronts; in other words, he must dispose of France and if necessary of Britain. And until he could do that he must first neutralize Russia, by persuading Stalin that Russia had nothing to fear from Germany. Stalin was willing to listen. France and Britain, he believed, being capitalist countries like Germany, would eventually throw in their lot with Germany, and turn on Russia. If he could come to terms with Hitler, and leave Germany to fight it out with France and Britain, they might destroy each other, leaving Russia to step in and take over Europe for Communism.

In August 1939, Chamberlain so far suppressed his loathing for Russia as to send over a military mission, headed by an old sea dog, Sir Reginald Plunkett Ernle-Erle -Drax. Stalin preferred to do a deal with Hitler. On 23rd August, it was announced that Germany and Russia had signed a non-aggression pact; and Stalin -- whose detestation of Hitler had been as notorious as Hitler's of him -- was r er ported as saying "I know how much the German nation loves its leader. I should therefore like to drink his health."

Now there could no longer be any doubt that Hitler was going to make fresh demands. His patience as he liked to say, was "exhausted". Nor was there any doubt what they were to be. All that summer of 1939, the propaganda machine had been pouring out a stream of hysterical abuse of the Poles -- just as it had of the Czechs, as the year before -- claiming that the German minority in the "Polish Corridor" (granted to Poland at the Treaty of Versailles to give access to the Baltic sea) was being discriminated against, beaten up, murdered. It could only be a matter of time, obviously, before Hitler sent his armies into Poland -- unless there was another Munich.

But the British people were in no mood for another Munich. It had not taken them long to realize how humiliating was the price paid for the flower, safety the selling of the Czechs into Nazi slavery. There might be little that Britain could do to save Poland from distruction; but this time Hitler must be left in no doubt that, if he attacked, Britain and France would declare war, and fight it out to the end.

But he was left in doubt -- for a number of reasons. To begin with, he could not believe that if Britain were serious in her determination to stop him, Chamberlain, Halifax, Hore - Belisha and the rest would still be in office. He had bluffed them before, and could again. And the British people did not give the impression they were ready for war. On the contrary, they carried on as if there were nothing to fear. That summer, for example, the West End was enjoying one of its popular seasons, with packed audiences for Ivor Novello's 'The Dancing Years'; Lupino Lane in 'Me and my Gal' (featuring "The Lambeth Wall"); Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge in 'Under Your Hat'; two long running reviews, Farjeon's 'The Gate'; and J.B. Priestly's 'When We Are Married'; and Dodie Smith's 'Dear Octopus'. There was also Bernard Shaw's 'Geneva', which made out that the dictators were quite shrewd people really; and The Green Table by the Ballet Jooss, its pacifist message underlined by sombre music.

The great depression of the early 1930's was past; and although unemployment was still high -- and the dole still a pittance -- the well-off were better off than they had been since the 1920's. This was an era of big orchestras, when people dined and danced (and listened endlessly, on the the BBC) to the music of Ambrose, Geraldo, Henry Hall, Harry Roy and other famous bands playing the latest Cole Porter, Gershwin or Berlin hits; playing "Thanks for the memory", "Now it can be told" -- or playing some of the scatty songs of the time: -- "A-tiskek, a tasket "; "Jeepers Creepers" and "The Three Little Fishes (in an Itty Bitty Poo)" -- who swam and swan, right over the dam. And before the evening was out, the assembled dancers would be called upon to go through the ritual motions of the Lambeth Walk, the Palais Glide, or a newcomer, Boomps-a-daisy.

The cinema also flourished. It was still Hollywood dominated by adolescents, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; and the fresh-voiced Deanna Durbin, who won a Hollywood award for being the "personification of youth". Yet there were also encouraging signs of a breakthrough by English studios, with Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Hitchcock's - 'The Lady Vanishes'.

But if the British people were having as if there was nothing to worry about, this was only because that was the way they traditionally behaved when there was something to worry about. There were no heroics, but there was no wavering -- not even after the news of Hitler's deal with Stalin. It merely confirmed the view that the Russians could not be trusted. The sandbags were filled again, the slit trenches cleaned out, and hospitals prepared for evacuation, the black-out curtains inspected for moth holes. But this time, it was with a sense of inevitability, and without alarm. Britain had fallen still further behind in the arms race since Munich, but in one vital respect she was far better prepared: psychologically. The uncertainty, the defeatism, of the year before had disappeared.

Hitler struck on 01st September. Having pledged themselves to go to Poland's assistance if she were attacked, the British and French governments delivered an ultimatum calling him to withdraw his forces. They were not withdrawn. On 02nd September, the rumor got around at Westminister that the British government was contemplating another Munich, but the temper of the Conservative backbenchers was against any further backsliding. When Arthur Greenwood rose to speak for the Labour opposition, Leo Amery called across to him "Speak for England!"; and he did. The following day, listeners who had tuned in to the BBC were told that at 11:15 -- following the scheduled talk, on how to make the most of tinned foods -- the Prime Minister would broadcast to the nation. Quietly, Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war.