Archive for the ‘Homefront’ Category
A bomb free Berlin
Berlin office workers enjoy the spring sunshine during their lunch break, end of April 1940. The lives of most ordinary people across Europe were relatively unaffected by the war. That was about to change.
Marie Vassiltchikov was a Russian emigre with a Lithuanian passport, living in Berlin. Her language skills found her work with the German Foreign Ministry Information Department. Her private diary was to increasingly chronicle the impact of the war on Berliners but up to now is largely concerned with her social life.
28th April: The virtual disappearance of many indispensables since the start of the war has had a comical aftermath at my office: for some time now our bosses had been complaining about the inexplicable consumption of unaccountable quantities of w.c. paper. At first they concluded that the staff must be suffering from some new form of mass diarrhoea, but as weeks passed and the toll did not diminish, it finally dawned on them that everyone was simply tearing off ten times more than he (or she) needed and smuggling it home. A new regulation has now been issued: all staff members must betake themselves to a Central Distribution Point, where they are solemnly issued with the amount judged sufficient for their daily needs!
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Whats happened to your house?
Love on leave or “What does he reproach you for?”
Those who can fight will fight…breaking their black hearts
Like ghosts shod with steel shoes
At St. Martin-in-the-Fields Edward R. Murrow’s brave eyewitness coverage of the Blitz from the church’s roof.
“…like ghosts shod with steel shoes.”
Coventry after the blitz
Coventry after the bliltz
America First: the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh and the Second World War, 1940-1941
David Gordon
History Department
Bronx Community College / CUNY Graduate Center
Originally presented at a joint meeting of the Historical Society and
The New York Military Affairs Symposium
on September 26, 2003
Propaganda
E J Rudsdale Diary – April 9th 1940
- E J Rudsdale – Born on 14th February 1910 in Colchester, Essex, England, the only child of Agnes and John Rudsdale. Educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School and left school in 1928 to become Curator’s Assistant at Colchester Castle Museum.
On the news this morning that the Germans have invaded Denmark and Norway, apparently without any appreciable resistance. Great excitement everywhere.
I had another day’s leave today and went over to Ipswich. Went along to the Museum and saw both Maynard [the Curator] and Spencer [Assistant Curator]. All very busy there, doing much educational work among the school children evacuated into the town. Ipswich Museum always seems so much more alive than we do – next week they are even having Gilbert & Sullivan played in the Museum lecture hall.
At four o’clock we heard a special news bulletin about the latest invasion but it did not tell much. It seems that vast numbers of troops have been landed by ‘planes and parachutes.
