Transcript The Second World War and British Culture

The Second World War
and British Culture
‘In this war, by “War Pictures” we mean,
pre-eminently, paintings of the Blitz. In the
last war we would have meant pictures of
the Western Front … The background to
this war, corresponding to the Western
Front in the last war, is the bombed city.’
(Stephen Spender, 1943)
Total war
‘War moved from the horizon to the map’
(Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day)
Scale (Far East, Middle East, North Africa,
Mediterranean, Norway, East Africa)
Civilians – combatants
British casualties: 270.000 troops, 35.000
Merchant Navy, 60.000 civilians
Damage to 4 million buildings
Propaganda war
Goebbels: German minister of
propaganda
BBC World Service, Ministry of Information
(Orwell, G. Greene, Inez Holden,
C.S.Forester, Ian Fleming)
Secret war of espionage
ENIGMA machines
Leslie Howard as Pimpernel Smith
Baroness Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel
(1903)
Leslie Howard as Pimpernel Smith (1941)
‘Lord Haw-Haw’
(William Joyce)
Frank Newbould’s poster
Frank Newbould’s poster
secret war
war vs liberal democracy
Spy hysteria (‘fifth column’ - Spain)
xenophobia
internment camps
plucky little England: civilisation vs
barbarity
‘the Phoney war’:
Sept 1939 – May 1940
the Dunkerque spirit:
‘the little ships of
Dunkerque’ ‘a miracle of
deliverance’
(Churchill)
the Blitz (Sept 1940May 1941)
(‘Blitzkrieg’)
Battle of Britain, 1940 (Paul Nash) myth of
the RAF
‘England’s finest hour’ (Churchill)
‘The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders,
all fall back into the past; not only distant but
prosaic; these young men, going forth every
morn to guard their native land and all that we
stand for, holding in their hands the instruments
of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may
be said that ‘Every man brought forth a noble
chance / And every chance brought forth a noble
knight’, deserve our gratitude’ (The War
Illustrated, 1940)
the Blitz
‘The People’s War’
The People’s War:‘The whole of the
warring nations are engaged, not only
soldiers, but the entire population, men,
women and children. The fronts are
everywhere. The trenches are dug in the
towns and streets. Every village is
fortified. Every road is barred. The front
line runs through the factories. The
workmen are soldiers with different
weapons but the same courage.’
(Churchill, 20 August 1940)
‘Business as usual’
‘business as usual’
London Library in the Blitz
The Home Front
Home Guard (sitcom: Dad’s Army)
Auxiliary Fire Service, ARP Wardens,
ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service)
WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service)
WAAFI (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force)
Dorothy Coke: ATS Air Raid practise
Laura Knight: Ruby Loftus Screwing a
Breechring
Evelyn Dunbar: Women’s Land Army Hotel
Dunbar: St. Thomas Hospital in Evacuation
Quarters 1941
Dunbar: Sprout Picking in Monmouthshire
“Being alone don’t count any more,
nobody can be alone any more” (James
Hanley: No Directions)
“War now made us one big family”
(Bowen, Heat of the Day)
Bill Brandt: Children Asleep in the Underground
Henry Moore: Tube shelter perspective
Henry Moore:
Three Seated
Women
Henry Moore: Two Mothers Holding Children
Henry Moore: Pink and Green Sleepers
Leonard Rosoman: A House Falling on Two
Firemen
War artist Ethel Gabain
Bert Hardy:
Blitz
photograph
In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and
David Lean)
Humphrey Jennings: Fires Were Started
Donald Bain: ‘The War Poet’
We only watch, and indicate and make our
scribbled pencil notes,
We do not wish to moralize, only to ease
our dusty throats
Cecil Day Lewis: “Where Are the War
Poets?”
They who in panic or mere greed
Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
Borrow our language now and bid
Us to speak up in freedom’s cause.
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse,
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
Sidney Keyes: “War Poet”
I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.