The day WW2 began | BBC Global
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- Britain went to war with Hitler's Germany on 3 September 1939.
In History revisits people's recollections of that day and looks at the chilling announcements that transformed public life in an instant.
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Humanity's tendency to forget the horrors of war is matched only by our blindness to the signs of its impending return.
Thats great and now, what do we do?
Poland was plundered by Nazis for 6 years whereas India was plundered by Britain for 150 years
That's a wise sentence. Did you create it?
😊
@@JohnnyAngel8 Yes.
I was born in 1961. My late mother who was born in 1927, told me that there was a bowl of bananas on a table in her parents' house, that her mother had to use up in a dessert, because no one was eating them. The family didn't see another bunch of bananas until 1945.
Also born in 1961. I came to Britain in 1989 (doing the Aussie working holiday thing) and my best memory is of sitting on a bus going through Docklands (replacing the DLR on weekends) with two old dears behind me talking about the Blitz: 'There was a German pilot who bailed out, and 'e landed in a street that copped it the week before. 'e was lucky the police came and got 'im when they did - the people there would've lynched 'im if they could!'
@@Elitist20My aunt lived on a farm in Tatsfield as a child, just a mile or two from Biggin Hill. They used to watch the dog fights overhead. One day a German pilot bailed and came down on her father's farm, terribly burned. They took him to hospital on a hay cart, protected by a party of farmhands with pitchforks, against the locals who wanted to finish him. They heard he later died in hospital.
Why didn’t they go to the supermarket and buy some?
@@RichieC135 You are joking?
@joebryant5722 pretty sure they are yes 😂
My grandfather was dirt poor and 17 when this occurred. He Joined the air force ASAP. He died in 2010. Once he told me the worst it yet to come. He lost a lot of his friends and a good portion of his family in the war. He lost all faith in humans after what he saw in his life. What he said still haunts me.
He said the worst is yet to come since we are in the nuclear weapon age
I wonder how much people's perception of war is colored by literal survivorship bias: our parents and/or grandparents survived. Our family stories aren't the many where they didn't make it out alive.
@@Norsilca I wouldn't call it ppls perception colored by survivorship bias (who came up with that). In Germany we value voices of survivors very much and rather banned voices of denial, Holocaust denial in particular. How is it in the US in this regard?
@@ronny-lb1cr So you still do things the same way the NAZIs did. Authoritarianism is woven into your national fabric.
its too bad he lost his faith in God creation. So many great things in human history.
I’ll tell you this as the son of a WWII Army (Pacific Theater) veteran. My father was so defeated by the war, he didn’t know how to communicate with the family. He drank excessively, he worked very hard, and he was depressed. I’m sorry that happened to his family. But I remain proud of him and wish I could speak to him now that I’m grown up and unafraid. God rest his soul.
"I heard the sirens go, and I was all wobbly at the knees." Bless her!
Bet she was the night before too, the dirty scut.
iT WAS A PRE-PLANNED TEST OF THE SIRENS, FOR THE WARDENS AND POLICE ETC, BUT THE PEOPLE WEREN'T TOLD.
My mother who is 98 remembers exactly where she was when war was declared, as her mother cried for the day as she lost 3 brothers in the last war.
You just know there had to be some poor mother out there who lost a son in WW2 after losing a brother or father in WW1
Sorry to hear that
Sorry to hear that. War is not a nice thing. I wish humans would learn the art of negotiations rather than the art of destruction. Give a little and take a little. Next big one would be WW3 which sadly is getting closer than we think.
Imagine having seen the horrors of World War One and hearing that it was going to start again. It must have been awful. We'd do well to reflect on how lucky we've been since.
@@mikeg2491 I should think a lot of them, actually.
Even though these interviews are quite old, I always find quite interesting watching WW2 interviews by people who are middle aged rather than those more advanced in age. It makes it feel somehow more recent and accessible. I don’t know why.
Well of course, it’s because your eyes tell you that these stories could’ve happened a hundred years ago and that they were still old when this happened, while on the other hand, all the middle aged people have been teenagers or in their 20s when referring to WWII in the 60s
I agree. If you watch the 1973 documentary series The World at War a lot of the interviews are with soldiers who were at that time in their late 40's and 50's
@@spencergregory8049 I've heard that title. Thanks for the refresher. Gonna check it out.
@@robertcampomizzi7988 It's worth it. One dude on their way on Iwo Jima and he was 19. In 1973 he'd have been in his early 40's.
@@spencergregory8049 One of the best documentaries about WWII. I saw it on TV in the US back in the 1970s. It was just as good as the American documentary "Victory at Sea" in the 1950s.
0:29 You can imagine the families throughout the whole country gathered around their radios listening to this speech. Everyone with goosebumps.
*Ron Manager voice*.
"All gathered round listening to Powdered egg on the wireless, eating ITMA sandwiches. Jumpers for goalposts?! Isn't it?! Marvellous!"
In the services register at our parish church was written against the entry for 1115 Mattins "at Mattins, the Rector announced the outbreak of War with Germany"
@@matthewlovelock6928 wow, that is Amazing!! Huge moment of the 20th century
Imagine surviving world war 1 only to go through it again.
Only 20 years later aswell! Scary to think
Imagine surviving WWI and *not* pushing for world peace every single day?
@@williestyle35see appeasement in the 1930s
@@kaiser-ki6wp "appeasement" does not equal "pushing for peace. Appeasement certainly did not work on September 1, 1939
There were people who lived to watch warfare going from fighting on horseback to nuclear power. All within the span of a couple of decades.
Got to love these ordinary folk being interviewed telling their stories! Precious.
They weren't ordinary at all.
It was a mixture of a few social classes.
They were all human beings sharing their true experiences.
They could have been anything from decent to pickpockets
My Mum and Dad had just got married. Dad, who had lost his own Father in the first war said "Bastards" and went down the Pub.
Presumably he meant the British government were bastards for declaring war on Germany?
My dad was helping unload Steel Helmets for the LDV and ARP on September 3rd 1939.
He was a 17 year old Boy Scout and was passing them from the lorry to the man behind and so on.
The Sirens sounded and he looked up , expecting aircraft.
He turned to the others and no one was there.
They'd all buggered off !!
85 years ago this week, but still shaping today's events.
Never Forget. Never Again
It never ended. It never will.
Never again. Unless the British are doing it to other countries, then I guess it's okay?
The far right are on the rise, we must never forget
@@mikestand8067 one only has to look at the fact that Britain didn't declare war on Soviet Union after its invasion of Poland (and the fact that the Soviets did Holodomer and under atrocities in the 20s and 30s), to know how much were lied to
@@mikestand8067 Let’s not forget the Muricans who have overrun other counties for oil and cash..and the failed Vietnam war. But that’s ok too huh!
Both my parents, who had not yet met, were marching into barracks on this day. 48 hours earlier they had both received their call up telegrams to report to their units - one Territorial Army, one Auxiliary Territorial Service. Before the end of it, My mother would lose her big brother in Italy, and their baby daughter would be lacerated by flying debris from a V1 doodlebug hit two streets away.
😯 wow
Now, that's what a BBC announcer's voice should sound like!
That was the prime minister at the time !
what a posh upper class voice?
No chance he would get a start today
Innit bruv
I lost 3 relatives in WW1 and my Grandad was in the RAF for WW2 and i remember as a child because he lived with us but he wasnt well and died when i was around 6.
During the Glasgow blitz, my Mum with her sister and baby niece had to shelter under the stone stairwell of their apartment block because it took them so long to get the baby into the full-body gas mask that they had no time to reach the public shelter. Edit: Wanted to add that the baby went on to become, in the mid-1960s, ‘Ballroom Queen’ in the original Come Dancing tv series 😊
Does this not indicate that, before the Blitz started for the real, making people fearful of gas attacks was an attempt at deflecting attention from the real danger of the bombing raids? In fact, was not Churchill more keen on using gas than Hitler?
My late mother remembered this well, her brother joined the RAF in 1940, she told me how they were bombed but they missed her house, she was born and raised in Richmond then Surrey, now known as Greater London, but it will always be London to those from my mothers generation.
I will always remember February, 24, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. That was crazy...
Один хер присоединим столько сколько надо, а бандеровцев и венграм обратно домой
Even people outside of Ukraine were shocked, so I can barely imagine how it was in Ukraine let alone in Kiev.
A good portion of the world weren't surprised, as you don't conduct "military exercises" so close to an international border if you do not intend to conduct some form of offensive action into said country.
The West sat on its hands and refused to back the Ukrainians until it became their problem as well.
NATO should have sent troops into Ukraine before February so as to deter any Russian action.
Yeah I had this late night basketball practice and got home at midnight, went to bed at like 1:30AM and 5:30 we woke up because of the explosions and everything else
War is only right under very few circumstances what Russia did to Ukrainian citizens was disgraceful and Ukrainian people really have shown there strength… unlike Palestine who made their choices on October the 8th
This is excellent, thank you. Liked and subscribed.
These video records are unimaginably valuable as an historical record. Pure gold - and now as relevant ever.
Dig up all the old stuff in the cupboards and make sure you restore the lot!
“Cold right through, I’m going, because of that word: war.”
I am so with that woman. I wasn't even born till 1976, but every time he gets to "this country is at war with Germany" I go stone cold
@@derekhorne8076 It is a chill which will echo across the ages and stiffen the backs of Generations yet to be.
@16Arson. I seriously hope you are right and it very much should. However, the further away we get from war the less I think the younger generations don't realise the horrors.
For me, it affected my grandparents (my parents weren't born until 1946/7) and despite Korea, The Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan, they didn't effect us at home (unless we had relatives who were serving). War has become an abstract that many people just don't understand the horrors of - which is both good and bad.
That must have been chilling hearing that speech at the time..the world literally changed with just a few words from mr chamberlain.
Little did they know just how awful a war it was going to be!!!
I wonder.
The people who were so badly disabused of their "home by Christmas" expectation a mere 15 years earlier, who only laid down their arms 11 years earlier, no, I think they knew war for what it was and would be again. Being able to hear the savage tone of the German leader in their homes, on the radio, would have added to the horror and apprehension.
They didn't know what technological horrors would be invented and unleashed, but they knew what war with Germany meant. That's why they all reacted with the kind of horror you see in the video.
this war was already awful in Wielun, gdansk, Bydgoszcz etc etc
The man that said his shelter was full as everyone jumped over the fence and dove into his shelter, not even enough room for him. That is how it would be now. No one prepares until it’s too late. Don’t tell people you have food stored up, they will demand it, even think they are entitled to it. Way to many grasshoppers, not enough ants.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
You made me laugh
My grandfather in northern Ontario joined up and headed across the Atlantic just like his father before him in the previous war.
My grandmother lived in Tipperary County, Republic of Ireland for the entire course of the war. Not once was she informed of the war, not only as a child, but because she was a girl. Apparently all of the men of the local town would listen to the radio in the pub, hear about the war, but it was never openly discussed. My grandma moved to London in 1953 and only ever heard passing mention of the war, only stories about the children being sent out to the countryside and the Blitz, but it wasn't until she arrived in America six years later that she discovered the true extent of the war-and the Holocaust. Pretty amazing how little the world at large knew back then, compared to the information we have access to now.
During WWI the Irish were giving aid to the Germans. For letting German u boats hide off the coast of Ireland, the Germans gave the Irish weapons and ammunition to fight the British with. Without help from the Germans the Easter Uprising in 1916 could not have happened.
Probably because Ireland were passively on Germanys side
@@books4739 Would you blame them? Anyway, the opposite is true (do some basic research). Oh and by the way, at the time nobody knew about the extent of the horrors the Nazis would unleash over the coming years. But they had vivid memories of the brutality of the british occupation of Ireland. The sooner british schools start teaching about britain's history of it's brutality in Ireland the better - it will never happen though.
@@NorthernStare the most power you’ll ever have is to write Britain with a small b
@@NorthernStare oh my are you likening Britain's treatment of the Irish to the victims of Nazi Germany. That's just grossly ignorant and insensitive at the same time.
I like historical stuff❤️
Dear sweet England love you people.
It is so important to remember historical moments like this. I feel shivers every time I recall stories of my grandparents who were just children on the 1st September 1939 in Poland. Their childhood somehow ended on that day. My grandma also saw the death march of the prisoners from Auschwitz as they were lead towards Germany in 1945. It is incomprehensible that such atrocities happened and even more terrible that the history keeps repeating itself and war crimes are being committed today just like in the past. My late grandpa was drafted into German army at the end of the war at the age of 17. He was surrounded by many young men or rather boys who were forced to fight in a war they hated on the enemy side. He always said the day they were told the war was over they all cried like babies. His whole life he kept saying "no more war". It is heartbreaking to see what's going on in the world and how many people will have to struggle with this kind od trauma.
Thanks for sharing your grandparents story. I have many German friends and when I first met them, they all apologized for WWII, even though I wasn't born until 1957. Ordinary German people were against the war just as British people were. Governments the world over have blood on their hands and a lot to answer for. Unfortunately they never learn. The way things are going, it's easy to see the stirrings of many wars all over the earth. Shalom.
@@missprimproper1022I'm Polish, but I come from the region where there were many German influences before the war. So sad that many people lost their lives because of their neighbour's sentiments. On the other hand, I remember from by grandma's stories that although they lived in the basement after German soldiers took their house, she did not feel particularly threatened by them. My other grandma saw her father standing by the wall od their home about to be shot by some German soldiers, but the German soldier who lived in their house intervined in time and saved his life. Not every German soldier was evil to the bone.
@@joannabenisz574 Oh, yes, I agree with you. I've read stories of Germans helping Jews to escape, for example. I'm sure many Germans were horrified by Hitler's leadership. As I've always said, there's good and bad in all races. Thanks for sharing. God bless you.
85 years later war.... war still never changes.....
😉👍🏻
Wrong , Nuclear weapons
okay john fallout
That is because human nature never changes.
where is Tesla's invention to stop all wars?
If you can hear that high pitch whistle, you're draftable ;)
I have tremendous admiration for the people of Britain and the courage and resourcefulness they displayed during this awful period. God Bless them all...from an Irishman
If only we could learn lessons from history
Just Chilling, and real.
I was born in 1982, apparently there was a young boy born in poland in the early 30s he kept a journal throughout the war, he wrote that he ran through the fields during distant bombing and ate one sml soup with bread once a day. When he was older and after the war, he travelled to England and was made fun off by the English. It's a tough life being Polish, but at the end of the day maybe this story if made up or not, you can judge for yourself.
Very bad that these times also feel like this.
As the media arm of whatever is in charge now, maybe the Beebs is conditioning us for some plans that are in the works...
Hardly.
My dad served in Africa during WWII and my mum served in the Wrens. I so wish I'd talked to them more about their war time experiences.
What a generation, what would they think now?
i think they don't talk about again. because so many reasons out there. memory losing, horror and etc+
God Bless all Great Britons everywhere!
Rule Britannia 🇬🇧
I was born in 1961 in a British Army hospital in Woolwich, Easr London.
The universal memories of my family,s experiences trickled down to us young British Children.
For emphasis, that was only 16 years after one of the most devastating wars this world has ever seen
There is something deeply haunting about the wail of that siren. It must be inherited because I wasn’t long born when this programme was made.
The town my grandma lives in will test their raid alarm once every saturday before noon and the first time I heard it out by myself I was wandering in the woods in immense fog and my heart absolutely dropped.
It may be the other way round: siren sounds were chosen because they evoked in most humans an immediate response. That's why sirens sound very similar around the world, too.
Heard it everyday for a month as a kid during the second gulf war when I was in Kuwait. Still get goosebumps and memory flashbacks when i hear it now
Back then we were all on the same page. Nowadays more than half the population would think it was fake news.
"Back then we were all on the same page."
Right, that's why half the world went to war against each other...
Nonsense.
@@nonegone7170 "we" meant inside one country, not internationally.
@@nonegone7170 Everyone could agree we were at war with the Nazis. And the Nazis were a common enemy
Today? Half the population would argue that German society is actually better under Nazi rule and woke social justice warriors should just stfu and stop complaining
Yep, propaganda will do that!
This is priceless. Thanks very much, BBC. Regards, Michael M. Kamau, Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, 9th September 2024.
For Poland WW2 started at 1st of September
for China 1937, but why make a contest of war like it has some sort of bragging right
It’s how I felt on 9-11. Fear.
My grandmother lost her only son near Monte Cassino in 1944, both her and my grandfather, who fought at The Somme, refused to wear poppies for Remembrance Sunday. I remember as a child in the 1960's when she was challenged in the street for not wearing a poppy and she replied "I already gave, he's lying in a grave in Italy."
Growing up I was always surprised that we never celebrated by fathers birthday. After my father died while going through his papers we found a photograph of what would have been my uncle's headstone in the Cassino War Cemetery and discovered that he was killed on my father's 21st birthday although my father didn't know my mother at the time. We then understood why we never celebrated by father's birthday.
What a shame.
This was very interesting , thank you.
Precious people's pride, my sincere thanks for sharing it.
excellent. history.
Such a solemn message to convey to your people. War is not to be taken lightly. We've got war in Europe again and it is important to support our fellow Europeans against the aggressor.
meh.. those are slavs fighting away as usual...
The war in Europe actually started with the invasion of Czechoslovakia which was defended by the Czech army.
Britain joined the war because the Nazis invaded Poland
According to the BBC:
The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 brought an end to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Chamberlain offered to help Poland if it was attacked by Germany, and the British public now faced full scale preparations for war.
This was the saddest day ever for England and Europe, and the worst part is that they are still in power and own the USA U.K Europe.
4:23 Giles Brandreth??
No, but he does sound a lot like him though.
My mum’s hometown was bombed regularly. My grandfather worked in the aircraft factory which was bombed. I’m proud of my people for standing against Nazi aggression.
My 95 year old mum tells me after hearing the news that the men went back to cutting their lawns as it "was a Sunday, you know "
interesting
Bless them my mum and dad use to tell us about this speech when we were kids in south London they lived through to world wars they were all very brave people and the men that fought for this country in both wars will be never be forgotten
This gave me goosebumps
One odd thing compared to now is that people seem more real and human in some way. They are less virtual, isolated and robotic in tone.
You think so? I was born in 1970 and I think is exactly the opposite.
Thats ridicules, people now more than ever are willing to speak out about the horrors of Capitalism and life in general which is a direct result of the tyrannic market mechanisms.
Imagine being born into this terrible world of ours, to fail at school because the system is designed to do so, you cannot get reliable work, you cannot even get reliable housing.
The youth is not standing for it, they either become rebellious or turn to crime, and you are all fine with it.
I'm surprised you don't agree.
@@nigelhard1519I'm surprised you think that people sound robotic today - the people in this video sound like they could have been filmed yesterday by the way they speak. There's no real difference
It’s always easy to forget that despite the effect of the Conflict with Germany and even living through the Blitz, that Britain got off much better than most other countries involved in WW2. More French were killed by us in bombing of the Germans than British died in Bombings of Britain. And multiple times as many Germans civilians died in bombings. That’s not even mentioning the colossally disproportionate amount of Soviets and Chinese killed. 10’s of millions worth.
Just ridiculous numbers.
My Father was a young man in Poland when the Wehrmacht crossed the Polish Border. His life was never the same as was millions of others after that fateful day. Chamberlain was afraid of a war that he ultimately helped to facilitate.
He wasn’t afraid, that’s why he went to war ultimately. Reluctant is perhaps a better choice of word to sum up Chamberlain.
Nobody wanted war other than Hitler. You can’t blame Chamberlain for that.
@@Hollows1997 chamberlain displaying the newspaper with that infamous “Peace” headline
@@autoguy57 and?
He did everything he could to avoid war, but ultimately had no other option. Like I said; reluctant, not afraid.
My father said the day war with Germany was declared was the worst day of his life, i was born on September 3rd 1956 so that changed his mind about his first statement 😂😂😂
Calmly "I felt sick and I couldn't eat my dinner" lol 😂
*Ron Manager voice*.
"All gathered round listening to Powdered egg on the wireless, eating ITMA sandwiches. Jumpers for goalposts?! Isn't it?! Marvellous!"
Proud to be a Brit.
Ha ha you know what I thought/heard the same
Why do they not speak English like this anymore? Its like a completely different language
Amazing historical footage
Filmed 20 years after the fact, going by the surroundings.
I could tell by the 1960s tall hairdo of one of the women
@cz2301 The cars too.
I was thinking the same thing. Beehive gave it away...
Going by the graphic that keeps flashing up in the top right hand corner, I'd say it was filmed in 1969. Just a guess though.
Minor constructive feedback: Please add subtitles to the video (the automatic subtitles RUclips provides don't quite suffice for accurate subtitles); the original audio of the footage is a bit too old to provide clear audio as to what the folks of such a historical moment are saying.
Nothing in this world is free
I think this is more an issue of accents. I’m assuming you’re not a native speaker or at least not a native speaker from the UK because all of these except one older lady are perfectly clear to me.
Yes,I understood what they were all saying clearly,but to someone from overseas it wouldn't be as easy.
@@jvb5590 perhaps try slowing the video down a little: I find it helps if listening to different accents.
I would like a translation of the woman at 4:43 except for the last 4 words
Chamberlain was almost a great man. He avoided war for as long as he could, but the powers that be behind the scenes wanted war at all costs.
If he had opposed Hitler earlier, perhaps there would not have been a war in Europe-- just a long cold war between Nazi Germany and the USSR.
I don't think anyone wanted war at all costs. Britain and France declared a state of war with Germany following the German annexation of Austria, the invasion of Czechoslovakia and then Poland by an aggressive Nazi dictator who was hell bent on dominating Europe. Just as Britain, the USA, NATO and many countries of the world are standing up in support of Ukraine after the illegal invasion by Putin in 2022 . “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
How far would we've progressed as a global society has the Great War not been repeated? I feel horrible for the regular, working and middle class people who had no hand in setting this awful fate. Millions of practical cousins murdering each other. Now look at us...
This was so sad for the world
"Day war broke out, my mother said to me..."
I am an American and admittedly I can't say I know a whole lot about Neville Chamberlain but I have a degree of sympathy for the man.
I have heard American politicians (Neocon warmongerers) villify him more than once. They point to him as a weak man and as being almost cowardly and blame him for not doing more to stop Hitler sooner thus preventing WWII in Europe. They tell us that Neville Chamberlain is the antithesis of what we should be.
Perhaps Neville Chamberlain could have done more to stop Hitler sooner and prevent WWII but I can't fault that man or anyone else who lived through and saw the effects of WWI first hand for doing everything in his power to try to avoid another war.
It seems that we tend to forget that WWI hadn't been that long ago and I think especially in the US we tend to overshadow WWI with WWII to the point we almost forget that WWI happened. But certainly nobody who lived through WWI would have forgotten it, especially so shortly after it ended.
"Blessed are the peace makers for they are the children of God." -Matthew 5:9
That's because the US entered WWI near the end in 1918. The only major battle the US "Dough Boys" were involved in was the Meuss-Argonne battle in the last months of the war. I read a book called "Forty Seven Days" about the American experience. The author had access to National Security declassified records and officers diaries. The war ended with an Armistice (truce or cease fire) instead of an unconditional surrender. There was a secret reason for that. The communist riots instigated by Lenin in Moscow in 1917 were spreading outside of Russia. Communist riots were being reported in Germany in early 1918. The wealthy capitalists' in Britain, Germany, France, and the US were terrified of the possibility the communist riots would spread to their countries. The Allies wanted to end the war ASAP and send the German troops home to put down the communist riots at home. Which is exactly what happened in 1919.
@dfirth224 The US should have never entered into WWI to begin with. It was not our fight, it was Europe's.
The sinking of the Lusitania was the official reason why the US entered WWI, but that was nonsense. The American people were also sold on the idea that they owed it to France to come to France's rescue to return the favor to France for their part in the American Revolution.
I have heard that American war profiteers feared that the Brits and France would lose, and with that loss, they were panicked that the Brits and the French could never repay their debts to these American war profiteers if they lost. That seems far more plausible than the two previously mentioned arguments for American intervention into WWI.
Woodrow Wilson was one of the most loathsome figures that the United States has ever had the misfortune of calling it's president. We are still suffering to this day for his actions, namely his fantasies of an international governing body, IE the League of Nations which would become the forebearer of the United Nation's. We suffer to this day because of income taxes and the formation of the Internal Revenue Service as well as the Federal Reserve due to that prick. No doubt his fantasies of a liberal world order by way of the League of Nations were no small part of his motivation for entering the US into a war it never had any business being part of.
Woodrow Wilson was a rotter of the lowest sort. Yes, you are correct, the Yanks were the Johnny Come Latelys of WWI, but in the little time that American troops were involved, they suffered greatly. And this was no small part of the reason why there was such adamant desire for isolationist leaning policies and the desire to stay out of yet another European war just a couple of decades after WWI. It was Hitler, after all who declared war on the US and not the other way around. Even though FDR was chomping at the bit to enter into that war the vast majority of the country and their representatives in Congress wanted no part of it till it was forced upon them.
That a very good point made: It’s very easy now, to view the “appeasement” policy in the 1930s, as naive, even stupid…
However, I can remember my late grandfather telling me about the first time he visited London, by train, in the early 1930s: Right outside the train stations he went to in London, there were scores of men begging for money: they were all survivors from the “Great War” …(the name given to WW1, at the time) but survivors who came out with absolutely horrific injuries..my grandfather, telling me this in the 1980s, was almost in tears, as they all had the most horrific injuries and horrendous facial disfigurements…
Apparently, this was a very common sight outside most main UK train stations in the 1920s and 30s, there was little to no real welfare support for them…
So, the memories and legacy of WW1 was still present in people’s minds, even for those who were too young to remember WW1 itself, so that gives an understanding why there was an active policy of appeasement: it was a desperate need to avoid a repeat of the horrors of WW1…
Appeasement was the wrong policy, but it’s understandable why so many politicians (like Chamberlain) were in favour of this…
@velouris76 Most Germans had no desire for another war. Most Germans were under the impression that Hitler would right some of the wrongs of the Versailles treaty but didn't think that what he would do would lead to another war.
I am no expert on this, but in the US, there were a lot of Great War veterans that went to march on Washington DC and protested because they weren't getting what they were promised and their protests were forcefully put down leading to many of them getting killed or put in prison. Many of them were sent to work camps in south Florida. Douglas MacArthur Dwight Eisenhower and I believe Patton all had a hand in the forceful response used against these veterans.
WWI was such a tragic event in human history. It made no sense how it started, and the end was as senseless as the beginning. There is an old Russian proverb that says, "The loose ends of peace tie the knots of war," and I think the Treaty of Versailles pretty well proves that to be true.
They called WWI "the Great War" or "the War Ro End All Wars" because the idea was WWI was so horrible that man will never want to fight another war. I can certainly see why the people of that time would have felt that way.
I met an old man back in the 90s who was a Canadian veteran of WWII, his father was a WWI veteran of the Canadian Army.
His father was wounded in a gas attack during WWI and his health was never the same again. It deteriorated rapidly and he passed away from complications caused by the gas during WWI while his son was fighting in WWII.
That is such a sad sad story. I am sure that man and many other WWI veterans believed it was worth it to suffer what they went through if it were to keep their sons and grandsons from having to experience the horrors of war. One can only imagine what was going through their minds when these veterans had to watch their sons march off to war to fight the sons of their old enemies. Such a tragedy.
Even fewer realise how, as Chancellor, he funded British rearmament in the mid 1930s.
Even sadder that he died in 1940.
They all knew war would show up on their doorstep at some point in some fashion. Had to be terrifying.
Why is the BBC choosing to show us this now. What do they know we don't.
Because the 3rd of September was the 85th anniversary of the British declaration of war.
There is nothing conspiratorial about the timing of this video.
@@Hollows1997 Thanks!
When I first moved to London in 1986, I could still see that the older generations were still effected by those two past wars.
I have heard my late Grandmothers stories of those wars too.
Excellent
If you are trustingly weak towards overtly aggressive evil you will suffer the consequences of being deceived, degraded and exploited.
Crazy that BBC didn't feel the need to take out that ultra high ringing frequency before posting. I skipped through to see if it was on the whole video and then unfortunately had to pass, I can't listen to that.
We owe our previous generations everything.
They had the biggest bravery to keep our island free
What I fail to understand is why Britain and France did not declare War to the Soviet Union when Stalin invaded Eastern Poland soon after.
War is waged by the masses, but it's the pride and stubbornness of leaders that send them to die in battles they would never fight themselves.
Amazing story, I can’t imagine on that day, there are still air raid shelters about, and finding UXBs
Maybe they should re release this documentary
My paternal grandmother lived the whole war in London and survived. My father joined up in 1940 at age 17 and spent 14 years in the RN, his brothers joined up in later years, all RN. The woman at 3:21 is very difficult to understand, must be the potatoes.
3:20 What the hell is that accent?
What year was this filmed?
The British experience of war was no way near as bad as that of China, The Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark. But, it was bad enough that the generations that lived through it and remembered it. I used to live on a street of terraced houses in a small Welsh ex-coal mining village. The terrace ran out and you could see the remains of where a house had been. The chimney stack was still visible. That house and three others had been hit by German bombing killing 11 people. The older residents still remembered the families and those that had died that night. War is a failure and never a triumph.
I don’t think it’s particularly valuable to compare and contrast human suffering. But since you started it, I will say that just London all by itself had more bombs dropped on it than all of China and the pacific theater combined. If the dead could speak from beneath the rubble do you think they’d trade their fate for nazi occupation?
Perhaps. But you tell that to the 18 year old rifleman, cradling his best mate that has just been hit by an artillery shell, intestines hanging out while he cries for his mother or sweetheart.
Or for that matter, to the local policeman who was on duty during an air raid only to find out his entire family has been killed and he is now homeless because his house got a direct hit.
Let's be onest. WW II began on 1.09.1939. In Poland.
The invasion of Czechoslovakia earlier that year in March. It’s just had England’s blessing.
Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered declarations of war from France and the United Kingdom, formally starting World War II. You need to educate.
Lovely way these Brits have of speaking. A few of them are a slight bit hard to understand, mate.
They're will be no interviews like this to watch next time.
Even though I wasn't around in World War 2, the sound of the air raid siren makes me feel anxious, maybe it that you know that when you hear that sound it means only one thing, something terrible is about to happen.
Like my boss when she talks to me
A war that did not need a sequel.
When l think of how London has changed since the few short decades this film was made it breaks my heart.
This was me in February 2020 in NYC. My brother was telling me to buy vacations for the spring.
I went to Ukraine in 2022 and was in Odessa and the small city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. In 2023 I went to Kyiv. It truly reminded me of London during the blitz. Sirens 🚨 sounding alarms at all hours. This year I went back to the country. It's a helleva lot easier. We helped feed people and bring them water. It was very difficult but very good work.
War never changes. Old men make decisions and young men die. Women and children suffer. The Ukrainians are now my сім'я (family) I will help them every year.
Слава Україні 🇺🇦
Звабода завжди!
Freedom forever!
I worked with a woman, who was one of the English children sent to America to live out the war. Thousands came. She settled in California, only to visit England occasionally. In her old age she married an English chap she had known as a 12 year old. That was the age when she left England.
Growing up during the war in Marblehead Mass, my mom and her sister used to skin dive for lobsters, they'd dive down and get them, come up and toss them in a bushel basket in an innertube.
The night sky was full of noise and flashes as battleships fought out at sea.
One morning there was a burned out U-boat on the beach and everyone in town came down to look.
At 86 mom has never lost the sense that Hitler is just over the horizon.
Almost like the BBC is gearing us up for something.