At 18:00, King George VI broadcasts from Buckingham Palace He sent a radio broadcast to the British and Commonwealth nations, urging them to “stand calmly, resolutely and united in these trying times” and saying, “The task may be hard, dark days may lie ahead, the war cannot be stayed any longer in the field, but with God’s help we shall prevail.” The story of his own ordeal leading up to this broadcast was made into the 2010 film ” The King’s Speech.
In Berlin, one woman had to wait until the evening to hear the news from England because “it was almost painful to listen to foreign radio.” Christabel Bielenberg, an Englishwoman married to a German, said it was a “perfectly glorious early autumn day” but the mood was subdued. “There was absolutely no war enthusiasm in Berlin,” she said.
Despite newspaper headlines warning of impending war, she said, “I honestly didn’t believe it. I was so used to not believing anything at that time, I couldn’t believe it when I heard this was happening.”
“In the evening we turned on the 9 o’clock news and a very close friend of my husband’s was staying with us at the time. Adam von Trott“He was the man who was later hanged by Hitler. I remember the three of us turning on the radio, and he quietly announced that Germany and Britain were at war, and I think that’s when we realised it was true.”
After the terror of air raid sirens ringing out in London, Britain experienced six months of rising tension but no bombs, sometimes referred to as the Phoney War. By the late spring of 1940, few people carried gas masks and disused bomb shelters filled with water. It wasn’t until September 7, 1940, that the skies darkened over southern England, and German bombers began their near-constant bombing raids. Over the course of eight terrifying months of war, more than 40,000 civilians were killed by German bombs. Blitz.
Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister in May 1940 and died of cancer in November of that year. He was succeeded by Winston Churchill three days later. I paid tribute to him. In the House of Representatives.
“Whatever history may or may not say of those terrible and dreadful years, it is certain that Neville Chamberlain acted in perfect good faith in accordance with his own convictions, and exerted to the utmost of his powerful abilities and authority to save the world from the terrible and destructive struggle in which we are now engaged. On this alone he may be relied upon, so far as the verdict of history may be called.”
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