Max Hastings

One of the most important truths about the war, as indeed about all human affairs, is that people can interpret what happens to them only in the context of their own circumstances. The fact that, objectively and statistically, the sufferings of some individuals were less terrible than those of others elsewhere in the world was meaningless to those concerned

“These are strange times,” wrote an anonymous Berlin woman on 22 April 1945 in one of the great diaries of the war, “history experienced first hand, the stuff of tales yet untold and songs unsung. But seen close-up, history is much more troublesome—nothing but burdens and fears. Tomorrow I’ll go and look for nettles and get some coal.”

“In view of Poland’s hopeless military situation,” wrote its London ambassador, Count Edward Raczyński, “my main anxiety has been to ensure that we should not become involved in war with Germany without receiving immediate help from our allies.”

“In view of Poland’s hopeless military situation,” wrote its London ambassador, Count Edward Raczyński, “my main anxiety has been to ensure that we should not become involved in war with Germany without receiving immediate help from our allies.”

In March 1939, the British and French governments gave guarantees, formalised in subsequent treaties, that in the event of German aggression against Poland, they would fight. If the worst happened, France promised the military leadership in Warsaw that its army would attack Hitler’s Siegfried Line within thirteen days of mobilisation. Britain pledged an immediate bomber offensive against Germany. Both powers’ assurances reflected cynicism, for neither had the smallest intention of fulfilling them: the guarantees were designed to deter Hitler, rather than to provide credible military assistance to Poland.

The nakedness of Poland’s defences was everywhere apparent. Fighter pilot Franciszek Kornicki was scrambled twice on 1 and 2 September. On the first occasion he pursued a German plane which easily outpaced him. On the second, when his guns jammed he tried to clear them, roll and renew his attack. As the plane banked steeply, the harness buckles holding him in his open cockpit came undone; he fell into the sky, and found himself making an embarrassed parachute descent.

“This war has a ghostly unreality,” wrote Count Helmuth von Moltke, an Abwehr intelligence officer but an implacable opponent of Hitler. “The people don’t support it … [They] are apathetic. It’s like a danse macabre performed on the stage by persons unknown.”

Some 30,000 Poles, one-third of them air force pilots and ground crew, reached Britain in 1940, and more came later. One man clutched a wooden propeller, a symbol to which he had clung doggedly through a journey of 3,000 miles. Many others joined the British Army in the Middle East, after their belated release from Stalinist captivity. These men would make a far more notable contribution to the Allied war effort than had Britain to their own

politicians craved a patched-up peace with Hitler, granted only that he should accept some face-saving moderation of his territorial ambitions; their peoples recognised this, coining the phrases “Phoney War” and “Bore War.”

As the eighteen-year-old Territorial soldier Doug Arthur paraded with his unit outside a church in Liverpool shortly before embarking for overseas service, he was embarrassed to be picked out by one of an emotional crowd of watching housewives: “Look at ’im, girls,” she said pityingly. “ ’E should be at ‘ome wit’ ‘is Mam. Never mind, son, yourse’ll be alrigh’. God Bless yer la’. He’ll look after yourtse, yer know, like. That bastard ’itler ’as gorra lot to answer for. I’d like to get me bleedin’ ‘ands on ’im for five bleedin’ minutes, the swine.”