Sam Willis - Histories of the Unexpected: World War II

By the same authors

Histories of the Unexpected

In the same series

Histories of the Unexpected: The Tudors

Histories of the Unexpected: The Vikings

Histories of the Unexpected: The Romans

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Sam Willis and James Daybell, 2019

The moral right of Sam Willis and James Daybell to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78649-775-8

E-book ISBN: 978-1-78649-776-5

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

2627 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For

At Histories of the Unexpected, we believe that everything has a history even the most unexpected of subjects and that everything links together in unexpected ways.

We believe that the itch, crawling, clouds, lightning, zombies and zebras and holes and perfume and rubbish and mustard each has a fascinating history of its own.

In this book we take this approach into the Second World War. You will find out here how the history of carrots is connected to victory; how the history of handkerchiefs is all to do with resistance; and how the history of pockets is all about emergencies.

To explore and enjoy subjects in this way will change not only how you think about the past, but also the present. It is enormously rewarding and we encourage you all to join in! Find us online at www.historiesoftheunexpected.com and on Twitter @UnexpectedPod and do please get in touch.

This series of books is about sharing great research and new approaches to history. Our first acknowledgement, therefore, must go to all of those brilliant historians professional and amateur who are writing today and who are changing the way that we think about the past. You are all doing a fabulous job, and one which often goes unremarked and unrewarded. Thank you for your time, effort, energy and insight. We could not have written this book without you.

Since this book is intended for a wide and general audience, we have chosen not to publish with extensive footnotes. We acknowledge our indebtedness to fellow historians in the Selected Further Reading section at the end of the book, which is also intended as a spur to further research for our readers.

We would like to thank the many colleagues and friends who have generously offered ideas, guidance, support and sustenance, intellectual and otherwise: Darren Aoki, Harry Bennett, Anthony Caleshu, Lee Jane Giles, Jim Holland, the Lord John Russell; and among the twitterati, @HunterSJones, @RedLunaPixie, @KittNoir and @Kazza2014.

Collective thanks are also due to Dan Snow, Dan Morelle, Tom Clifford and the fabulous History Hit team for all their support and encouragement; as well as to Will Atkinson, James Nightingale, Kate Straker, Jamie Forrest, Gemma Wain and everyone at Atlantic Books.

We would also like to thank everyone (and there are hundreds of thousands of you) who has listened to the podcast or come to see one of our live events and been so charming and enthusiastic.

Most of all, however, we would like to thank our families, young and old, for everything they have done and continue to do, to cope with of all things a historian in their lives.

But we have created this book for you.

Sam and James

Isca Escanceaster Exeter

The Feast of St Benedict 8-Dh al-Qadah 1440 I.VII.MMXIX 11 July 2019

J. Howard Millers We Can Do It! poster from 1943

Between 1939 and 1945, some 100 million people became directly involved in a global conflict fought on a massive scale that involved more than thirty countries. The lives of countless millions more were indirectly affected. More than 60 million died, many of them civilians. Six million of those were Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Over 25 million are known to have been killed in the Soviet Union alone, and more than 15 million in China. All of this happened because the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan were opposed by a conglomerate of nations known as the Allies and led by Britain, America, Russia and China; but during the course of the war, over sixty countries at one stage or another fought to oppose the Axis powers. At the same time, several states such as Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey preferred to remain neutral.

It was the most devastating conflict the world has ever known, with the major powers harnessing their most deadly ideologies and technologies into a killing machine that included conventional weaponry alongside chemical and biological warfare, strategic bombing, genocide, starvation and massacres, and which culminated in the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The war was fought from the Arctic to the Antarctic, across seas and trade routes. It was fought on all fronts and in multiple arenas: in mainland Europe, throughout Asia, Africa and the Far East, as well as in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was fought with boots and armoured tanks on the ground, carriers and destroyers at sea, bombers and fighters in the air, and with a whole host of ingenious devices utilized in the shadows of a secret war. It was fought in cities, villages, deserts, mountains and jungles, under the sea as well as on it. It was also fought in the mind, through propaganda, ideology and influence.

Outside of the main operational theatres, the war had far-reaching tentacles of influence on the economic and industrial output of each nation involved. The conflict was not experienced simply by the combatants in the field, air and oceans, but was also fought on the home front, where immeasurable contributions were made on all sides to the war effort whether it was air-raid wardens administering first aid to a bleeding, blitzed city, or mothers mending, making do and improvising family meals from meagre rations, or muddy-fingered gardeners fighting the war with a spade literally digging for victory. This blurring of the boundaries between civilian and military had a profound impact on the way that people lived their everyday lives. It disconnected families and disrupted working conditions, pulling things apart, but at the same time forces working in the opposite direction drove people together in love and comradeship. The Second World War is certainly about death and loss, but it is also about life and gain.