80 years ago today - Britain Declares War on Germany

[Eric Mc]

Good stuff.

It's interesting that the whole Bletchley Park story hardly gets a mention in the seminal World War 2 documentary series, "The World at War".

[Eric Mc]

Yes - the first big "campaign" Britain gets involved in is in Norway. That will be interesting to chat about in a few weeks time.

[Eric Mc]

aeropilot said:

And all three of those countries were also aligned with Germany in terms of supply of their military equipment, such as rifles, MG's and aircraft and other equipment etc.

Exactly. Their "neutrality" was pretty narrowly defined. Spain certainly kept well in with Nazi Germany as they were very much dependent on German military and to some extent financial support. Germany was hopeful that Spain would enter the war on the Axis side - particularly because Hitler had designs on Gibraltar. Franco had no inclination to get involved in the fighting as the country had just gone through a savage and costly civil war and was pretty bankrupt. However. he strung Germany along as long as he could in order to keep their support going.

Switzerland, of course, was essentially the finance arm of the Nazi Party so they had a vested interest in not antagonising their debtor.

I always think Ireland was one of the more interesting neutral countries as, unlike the ones mentioned above, it's neutrality was certainly more biased towards the Allies - especially as between 40,000 to 100,000 (no one know for sure) of its citizens were fighting with the Allies.

[Eric Mc]

JagLover said:

Eric Mc said:

I always think Ireland was one of the more interesting neutral countries as, unlike the ones mentioned above, it's neutrality was certainly more biased towards the Allies - especially as between 40,000 to 100,000 (no one know for sure) of its citizens were fighting with the Allies.

That might be the case for the ordinary people but De Valera seems to had Nazi sympathies, which included denouncing reports of concentration camps.

De Valera was playing to an extremist contingency of his party, which, after all, looked on themselves as the REAL Irish Republicans (to differentiate themselves from the IRA and Sinn Féin). The IRA was an illegal organisation in Ireland for many years before and after World War 2.

De Valera knew what to SAY to keep these extremists on side but he also knew what to DO to ensure Ireland didn't -

a) antagonise the Allies (especially the Americans

b) provide unofficial (and usually secret) assistance to both Britain and the US where possible.

c) turn a blind eye to Irish citizens joining the Allied forces - which was actually illegal. Not one Irish person was charged with this offence

Examples of how Ireland assisted the allied cause were -

allowing its citizens to join up

allow allied aircraft to fly over neutral Irish territory

quick repatriation of Allied airman and seaman who had been interned

provision of weather reports - especially important in the run up to D-Day

allowing the Irish Fire Brigade Service to send units to Belfast during the Belfast Blitz

interception of messages between the Berlin Embassy in Dublin and Berlin and allowing the intercepts to accidently end up with MI5 and MI6.

an Irish Naval Service ship assisted during the Dunkirk evacuation

[Eric Mc]

Hosenbugler said:

It's a relaively little known fact that virtually the entire Irish defence force , decamped and joined British forces after the outbreak of war. What is even lesser known , is that De Valera in an astonishing act of spite, had the names of those lwho had decamped listed and printed into book form. The books were then distributed to various Irish Government departments , with the instruction that none of those in the book were to be taken into any form of employment by Irish government departments, be it national or local, councils etc. The rub is, was that the treatment was not meted out because the people involved deserted, but because they joined British Forces.
I found out about it, when a well known military book publisher , published the book in reprint form. Weird, eh?

Not quite right.

The entire Irish defence force DID NOT decamp. What actually happened is that , in 1939, there was a rush to enlist in the Irish Army (there was no call-up or National Service in Ireland). Many young Irishmen thought that joining up was the right thing to do because they knew a war was imminent. They thought Ireland might be invaded - and they actually thought that the major risk was an invasion by Britain rather than Germany. They had good reason to think this because Churchill had actually stated publicly that Ireland's neutral stance might bring this about. This danger receded when Britain decided to invade Iceland instead.

Many of these new recruits got bored very quickly as there was nothing much for them to do. They were given menial and back breaking jobs like cutting peat (for fuel) or planting and harvesting potatoes.
As a result, around 5,000 absconded i.e. deserted and joined the British armed forces. As in any army, desertion is a Courts Martial offence so these guys were actually wanted men. Quite a few of them died on active service but those that survived and made it back to Ireland found that they had been put on a black list as far as government or local government jobs were concerned. As far as I know, NONE of them faced a Court Martial.

If you want to read the full story, I highly recommend this book -



Most of the Irishmen who joined the British forces, like their British and Commonwealth counterparts, had never been in any army of any sort. Those Irishmen who left civilian life to join the British forces suffered no back l;ash or recriminations when they eventually returned from the war. It was the Irish Army deserters who were treated badly.

If you are interested in reading about the general involvement of Irishmen in World War 2, I'd recommend this book -

Edited by Eric Mc on Thursday 20th February 15:47

[Eric Mc]

Ireland was lucky. It was under threat from both Germany AND Britain. In the end, the Germans never had the opportunity and Britain decided not invading Ireland made more sense from a logistic and co-operative point of view. The fact that up to 100,00 Irishmen joined the British Armed Forces didn''t go unnoticed either.

[Eric Mc]

aeropilot said:

Correct.

They were buying time. Germany always planned to attack the Soviet Union. It was always only a matter of when. And the Russians knew that.

[Eric Mc]

aeropilot said:

Yes, Hitler did always plan to do so.

Not sure you could say the Soviets knew that though. The Germans played them very well. The Soviets allowed the Germans all sorts of access to Soviet territory during the 1930's to allow the Germans to test its new tanks and armour away from the eyes of Britain and France. There were many military exchange programs during this time between Soviet and German forces as well. Or rather the Germans did well to con the Soviets into allowing them access to their military. If the Soviets knew what was coming they wouldn't have been so stupid to allow German access to see how well prepared or not the Soviets were, and Uncle Joe wouldn't have been so stupid to have a massive purge of his seasoned and experienced commanders during the same time.

I think they did know that Germany had plans to attack Russia . After all, Hitler had openly expressed his intentions to do so as far back as the 1920s. What they didn't know was when, where and how - and in 1940 they thought that any attack was at least three - maybe even four - years away. They never expected an attack as early as the Summer of 1941.

[Eric Mc]

JagLover said:

The expectation was the summer of 1942 I think.

Certainly the vast mechanised cores that the Red army were assembling to meet the threat were woefully underprepared in 1941. They had a very significant paper strength but were massively short of transport vehicles, fuel and parts.

The German High Command had been planning for 1942 - so I expect Russian spies had got wind of those plans. Having said all that and as you correctly point out, the Russians would have been woefully underprepared even if the attack had happened in 1942.

I get the impression that the thinking in the Kremlin was a bit like our government's thinking about Covid 19 back in February/March- if we stick our fingers in our ears and go la la la, it might all go away.

[Eric Mc]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Not forgetting of course, that Stalin had had thousands of the most experienced officers in his military, strangely `disappeared' in the early years of the war.

That certainly didn't help. And not only officers in the military, but also key scientists and engineers who would have been invaluable to the war effort. A good example is Sergei Korolev, who was languishing in a gulag when Germany invaded. He was eventually released and became a key figure in the Russian aircraft and rocket industry. He went on to lead the Soviet space programme in the 1950s and 60s.

[Eric Mc]

cloggy said:

Today 14 May 1940.

The Germans bombed Rotterdam.

Many years ago I read a book called "The Luftwaffe War Diaries" where the writer, Cajus Bekker, described this raid as a chapter of errors and confusion. The bombers were actually tasked with bombing the docks but the raid was cancelled. However, some of the bombers had already taken off and were observing radio silence so couldn't be recalled (shades of "Dr Strangelove"). When they got to the city, the limitations of bombing tactics and technology played a major part in the bombing inaccuracy - something the RAF was discovering around the same time..

[Eric Mc]

The RAF had been instructed to bomb targets that had less chance of hitting civilian homes. So they were limited to bombing shipping at sea, ports and harbours. The maps they were given had schools and hospitals highlighted so they wouldn't bomb them in error. The reality was that bombing accuracy wasn't really good enough to be that precise.

They'd also been carrying out a lot of "raids" in which the weapons dropped consisted of bundles of propaganda leaflets.

After Rotterdam, those restrictions were lifted and the leaflet drops were reduced until they stopped altogether.

[Eric Mc]

JagLover said:

In reality area bombing was the only effective strategy at that stage of the war as the smallest thing a night bomber could be relied upon to hit was a large town.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/...

Accuracy improved later on in the war and area bombing became far more sophisticated with pathfinder aircraft marking the target with flares in advance of the main force.

That was later. In the first half of 1940, both sides were still trying to persevere with daylight bombing. All the pre-war planning for bombing had been based on the assumption that unescorted bombers, flying in formation, in daylight could protect themselves and find their way to the target and bomb accurately.

Because of this, little emphasis had been put into night flying and nighttime navigation training. When both sides switched to night bombing, they discovered that the ability to find their targets and bomb them accurately in the dark was more or less impossible.
As you say, technology and training improved as the war progressed but for the second half of 1940, the move to night bombing rendered accurate bombing of specific targets impossible.

[Eric Mc]

Zirconia said:

Certainly something that has come through the memoirs and histories. When I was growing up (60's 70's), it was the US that were painted as the carpet bombers and the RAF as pin point accurate. Then you read references and better researched books and see what the real situation was like and not what you get told as a nipper.

That's odd. In my reading it was always explained the completely opposite way.

Pre-war, all bombing forces expected that they would be taking part in daylight bombing and bombing specific strategic targets (factories, railway yards, dams, submarine pens etc). By mid 1940, both the RAF and the Luftwaffe found that daylight bombing was not as accurate as they had expected and was proving far too costly in men and machines. Both forces switched to night bombing - which resulted in a significant drop in accuracy and, in both cases, an eventual abandoning of any pretence in trying to bomb specific targets - other than city centres.

The USAAF also worked on the assumption that daylight bombing was the only reasonable way of proceeding. When they started operations in Europe in 1942, the RAF tried to persuade them to switch to night bombing, just as they had. However, the Americans felt that their bombers (B-17s and B-24s) were better defended with more guns and had better and more accurate bomb sites (the Nordern) so they persisted with their daylight policy. They nearly came unstuck and it was only the advent of long range escort fighters that saved their policy.

[Eric Mc]

shed driver said:

Regarding Night Bombing. I seem to recall that one of the reasons it was so prevalent was that it stopped the home front workforce from getting adequate rest and that productivity was therefore affected.

I remember my great aunt saying that when she was working making Mae West life jackets some of the workforce would be falling asleep at the production line. She lived and worked in East Manchester, sadly, listening to her stories were not high on my agenda. I really do wish I had listened more now.

SD.

That type of reasoning might have emerged later. The only reason why the RAF chose a night offesnive was because they knew that if they continued with daylight operations, Bomber Command would have been wiped out by mid 1942.

[Eric Mc]

I thought there were strong parallels between the two situations too.

[Eric Mc]

Is it time to move the debate along now?

What was actually happening today in 1940?

The really important decision today was that the Commander of the BEF, Lord Gort, issued the order to the British army in the north to start falling back towards the town of Dunkirk. It was obviously the moment when they knew that France could not be saved.

Winston Churchill today also made his first radio broadcast to the nation as PM.

[Eric Mc]

Can we move on?

[Eric Mc]

Zirconia said:

Germans have, they are dipping their toes in the Channel.

Indeed.

[Eric Mc]

As mentioned above by me, Gort ordered his troops to fall back towards Dunkirk on this day in 1940.

What gets mentioned far less is the fate of the BEF who were operating further south and how their evacuation was arranged.