Outbreak of WW2 & The British People

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Our traditional understanding of the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 hinges on studies of Chamberlain and his fellow statesmen, but what about the general population? Frederick Taylor's latest book, 1939: A People’s History (The War Nobody Wanted), details the reactions and fears of ordinary British and German people in the face of the slide to war, between the Munich Crisis of September 1938 and Hitler’s invasion of Poland a little under a year later. In this episode, he and Dan discuss whether the British people were ready for war.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns.
0:08.0	Now, picture you, zooming past it all, light and breezy.
0:15.0	Ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic.
0:20.0	Book your train journey via AvantiWestcoast.co. UK. avante west coast feel good travel.
0:30.0	Hello everyone welcome back to the History here at Warfare Podcast. In this episode we can
0:35.8	look at the British people's perception of the Second World War. We've got Frederick Taylor,
0:40.5	the fantastic best-selling author and historian who takes us all the way back to
0:44.5	autumn 1938 when Europe believed in the promise of peace. It was still reeling
0:50.0	from the ravages of the Great War and its people were desperate to rebuild their lives in a new safe and stable era.
0:57.0	But as we know, only a year later, the fateful decisions of just a few men had led Europe into war.
1:05.5	And so Frederick takes us through a fascinating history based on amazing archival research
1:10.1	and primary interviews with those who lived through the Second World War as he explains
1:14.8	how the war had a profound and lasting impact on millions of innocent people. Fred, thank you very much coming on the podcast in this momentous week.
1:38.0	Tell me, what was the British population's attitude towards going to war this week 80 years ago in September 1939?
1:47.0	Well the population's attitude was going to war in 19thon remained, began as at the end of 38 during a Munich crisis and ended up almost a year later in September
1:55.8	39 as being very reluctant to go to war but a certain determination a certain
2:02.4	feeling that Hitler could not be negotiated with and
2:05.1	had to be resisted spread and that reluctance then was tinged with a certain
2:09.8	determination I would say by August, September 1939.
2:14.0	So my books called The No one really wanted because neither actually did most of the German population
2:18.8	despite their militaristic traditions and their constant barrage of propaganda, at least at the beginning of our time period, which of course the end of 38, things slightly changed again by September 39.
2:29.0	But the basic idea is that, I suppose I was interested in finding out in the attitude of people in both countries
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