The Edge of World War II | Rare 1930s Colour Footage

Thirties in Colour: Countdown to War takes black-and-white films from the era and colourises the footage, bringing the past vividly back to life.
Original title: Thirties in Colour: Countdown to War

This is 1930s Britain. For the first time, black and white films now in colour, bringing new life to the good times and the bad. It’s a turbulent decade. The best things happen and the worst things happen. Three kings in one year. The monarchy in crisis. A government gambles everything. And it… desperate attempt to stem the Nazi tide. I think this is one of the things that’s really hard to understand about the 30s. How could this have gone on? This time, the shadow of the First World War still looms large over Britain. People revolt. It was a very, very traumatic moment in British history. Brave men and women made their feelings known. Fascism gets a British poster boy. He was incredibly charismatic, Oswald Mosey. You only had to ask his long line of mistresses for proof of that. And a nation is tested to the limit. The ordinary people had come together and said, not in this country. This is the 30s in colour. Countdown to war. The 1930s was a time of deep economic depression and growing dangers in Europe. At the beginning of the decade, British people were determined to enjoy normal life. The memory of the First World War was only 12 years old and peacetime had brought a newfound sense of hope and freedom. In London’s West End, new clubs and cabaret theatres were packed with men and women dancing to the latest jazz hits from America. The 1930s for me are a decade of total change and total adventure. It’s the age of recreation. It must have been unimaginably exciting. It was a time where freedom and social change was flourishing. For the first time, the cinema became a weekly part of people’s lives. Every town and city had its Ritz, its Roxy, an empire… or an Odeon. And, as seen here in Maidenhead, anyone could watch the latest Hollywood sensation for only ten pence a ticket. The film industry was booming. The first sort of entertainment blockbusters were created in the 1930s. People wanted to be entertained, wanted to be scared, wanted to be excited by things, wanted to be taken out of their rather miserable existence. No film star was bigger than Britain’s… Charlie Chaplin. His films, often making light of tough times, made him the highest paid actor in the world, and the heartthrob was adored by fans when he returned home. The nation was hungry for heroes, and they found a real one in the shape of a 26-year-old pilot from Kingston upon Hull. I’ve always wanted to see this, Amy Johnson flying back from her solo flight to Australia, to Croydon of all places. She’s such a fantastic icon for women in the 30s. She’s setting a new bar for women. She’s showing what women can do in this new age. They’re not just going to be pushing Hoovers, they’re going to be flying aeroplanes. On the 4th of August 1930, Thousands welcomed Amy Johnson home after she became the first British woman to fly solo to Australia. The flight took her 19 days in her second-hand gypsy moth plane called Jason. To show you by my flying a feel of England, how I love England and its people. Come. And this is absolutely wonderful. This is incredibly strong, independent woman trying to give a speech and a man reaches out. from this crowd of grey men behind her and tries to adjust her position towards the microphone and she tolerates it for a second then she looks so annoyed she shrugs him off um yeah this is a modern woman who does not need an old bloke shoving her towards the microphone she was making herself heard perfectly well without him so i loved that moment There’s actually quite a few women flying planes, driving racing cars, that take advantage of these new technologies of the 30s. And really the strange thing is that that doesn’t continue into the present. I think there’s only 5% of airline pilots today are women. You think, what happened to all those Amy Johnsons? I’ve flown for a living since I was 21 years old, really. Just climbing into a little aeroplane to go and chase a cloud just because you can. There aren’t really enough words to describe it, but it really is the most amazing experience that I’ve found. It’s a sensation of freedom, of peace. You get a view of the world that people don’t see. There are no borders, there are no boundaries. There are no borders, there are no borders. Growing up in Hull, Kath learnt to fly at the same aeroclub Amy Johnson flew from in the 30s. I was about eight years old. My gran bought me a book for Christmas. It was adventure stories for girls. And I read this book, it was a good book, and I said to my dad, hey dad, this book’s wrong. Well it says here, a woman from Hull went to Australia in an aeroplane on her own. And he said, well was she called Amy Johnson? I said, yeah. He said, well she did. I said, you can’t have. So why can’t she have? She came from Hull and I just could not believe that anybody, male or female, from Hull had done anything that impressive. I started reading everything I could lay my hands on to find more about Amy Johnson and what a fascinating woman she was. These coloured pictures of her flying are fabulous. I’ve not seen them in colour before and it gives you a real feel of what it must have been like. Open cockpit means that the airflow is just going straight past your ears at the same speed that you’re flying at. So something like the Moth will be doing 80, 90 miles an hour most of the time. So a 90 mile an hour wind trying to rip your helmet off. There are no radios, there are no modern navigation aids. I think it would take an enormous amount of bravery to go off into the unknown like that. The longest flight Amy had done prior to setting off was from Hull to London. I think she had about 100 hours total time in an aeroplane. And to set off to Australia, you know, I’d stop and think twice, and I’ve got a few more hours than that. Amy Johnson became a megastar. Across the country, women asked hairdressers for the Amy Johnson wave, and she was idolised everywhere she went. Nowhere more so than in Hull. where a homecoming parade was organised to celebrate their local hero. You can see it’s so happy and so excited. I mean, this is a celebrity coming back to her hometown. You see that the crowd there sort of moving as one. There’s so many of them. And there’s children there and the mayor of Hull, as she’s being cheered by all her thousands of fans. Good luck and good night. When war finally came, Amy Johnson signed up to the Air Transport Auxiliary to support the RAF. On the 5th of January 1941, her plane crashed in bad weather over the south east coast of England. Her body was never recovered. There seemed to be a general opinion that she was, ironically, quite under comfort. She needed to prove herself over and over again and certainly contemporaries at the time thought that that was what ultimately led to her death. Other pilots were sitting on the ground in Blackpool waiting for the weather to improve whereas Amy was Amy Johnson so she was expected to be able to do it in her mind if in nobody else’s. Yeah she’s obviously got a bit about her I think it’s in that one frame. Yeah, I’m gonna do it my way. As the depression deepened, it meant hunger and hardship for millions. 200 workers from one shipyard decided to fight back. Led by one remarkable woman. These weren’t just some men losing their jobs, this would be a whole community, a whole infrastructure being broken. By October 1931, the full force of the Great Depression had struck… Britain with devastating effect. Unemployment doubled to 3 million in just 12 months. Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald had no answer to the economic crisis. His coalition government cut unemployment benefit as Britain’s workers paid the price in an era of austerity. The fishing industry was the lifeblood of whole communities and women from all over Britain were drawn to the work. I don’t think we really stop and consider how incredible these women were. These were women often from places like Barrow in the Outer Hebrides, from Lewes, who had lived all of their lives in these very small, close-knit communities. And these women would… Travel down to Great Yarmouth, and for the first time, the herring season gave them a sense of absolute liberation. Seeing a new way of life, seeing a very contemporary, modern, urban way of life, you know, so different from where they come from. Here in Great Yarmouth, the fishing fleet was once 90 boats. Now only 17 trawl the North Sea for herring. Determined to maintain their way of life, these herring girls… went on strike for a week. We are not. We are not. The women successfully achieved that extra shilling. And the spirit of the herring girl still exists today in traditional fishing communities, like here in Hull. We are not. There’s a real twang in her voice, isn’t there? She looks like a leader, doesn’t she? She looks very powerful and her body language and the way she’s, you know, putting her fist into her hand. Yeah, exactly, you will listen. Yeah. You will listen to what we want. Yeah. We’re from a massive fishing family. All my mam’s uncles went to see all Nana’s brothers. Nana’s maternal family to do with the tugboats and the women all worked, well, most of them, in the fish factories, like my auntie. Yeah. How about the smell? Oh, don’t go there. Oh, Jesus God. You could whip it before you even get out of bed. The smell, oh. Walking in the morning, oh God. There’s a real social hierarchy about fish houses as well. You’ll ask some women and they’ll say, did you work in fish houses? And they’ll go. I never. I’m a lady. And then other women, like Pat, absolutely loved it and embraced it. She didn’t care about the smell or the long hours or the hard work. You’ve had a certain time, a certain limit to get your work done, get it out. But if you’ve got your work out, then you’ve got a bonus. Once you’ve done that, then… ..so it’s a Thursday, Peter. HE LAUGHS Women played one of the biggest parts, one of the most horrible and painful jobs. So, you know, gutting and salting the fish with these tiny sharp knives. Can you imagine nicking yourself with one of these, which happened a lot, and then having to stick your hands into the salt barrels? It just makes me shudder, thinking about having to do that. The kids of today are never going to know that feeling of living like that. And how everyone was in the same boat. It was hard. It was hard. Every time your son or your husband or your brother went to sea, I could imagine the anxiety was through the roof. I think about how a kid’s going to see and I think, oh, God, I’d have bloody nightmares. Every single family was the same and it brought that togetherness. If one family had a tragedy, it was a community tragedy. Everybody felt that. They all stuck together this time. They all stuck. No matter what happens, they all stuck together. And we do still now. Across the industrial north, coal fields, steel mills and shipyards were being closed as Britain’s north-south divide deepened. In Jarrow in Tyneside, seven out of ten men were unemployed, forcing thousands of families to live in cramped and impoverished conditions. With no other options, the men took to the streets, determined to show the prosperous south the reality of life in the north. It’s absolutely incredible seeing it in colour because the images that we see so often of the Jarrow March are very serious, quite sombre black and white images and the colour really for me shows the life and the spirit that was in. These men who were marching as a last act of pleading the government to help them in a time of absolute crisis. Representing the hopes of their whole community, 200 men set off on the 300 mile march from Jarrow to Westminster, armed with a petition demanding the opening of a new steelworks. Both my father and my mother, who were very strong supporters of the Labour Party, were among those who helped to join the Jarrow Crusade. I would have been about six or seven at this time. The Jarrow March involved scores of people, hundreds of people. People were adding themselves as they walked through one town after another, as they went south, stopping, talking to people, making speeches. a very, very dramatic moment in British history. Something where brave men and women made their feelings known. Look at this guy’s face, that guy walking along there, that’s starvation face. That’s a man who hasn’t eaten. Look at the way his cheek is collapsed there. That’s somebody, you know, who hasn’t had enough calories. Now, my mum and dad were left-wingers, and when they talked about unemployment before the Second World War, they talked about it as if it was a terror, a blight. They talked about the Jarrow marches. This was something very emotional and important for my parents. They had no doubt whatsoever that these people were their people. Front and centre of the march was Ellen Wilkinson. The MP for Jarrow. Born to a poor, working-class family in Manchester, she understood firsthand how desperate these men were. And to see Ellen Wilkinson in particular in colour, this was a woman who was known for her sense of… Vivaciousness, her style, her bright red hair, she was known as Red Ellen, she was known as the fiery particle because of that. She has affairs and she learns to drive and she smokes like a chimney. She takes all of these things that women would previously have been criticized for doing so socially and openly and she just does them. She was a thoroughly modern woman and yet we’ve only ever seen her in black and white before. There was no longer the old distinction, men marked in crusade, women. Kept their mouths shut and didn’t say anything. You couldn’t do that with someone like Ellen Ilkinson. The dog in Jarrow, and you can see him, he’s a little black Labrador hare just walking behind the petition. This dog is an enigma, but the story that we tend to stick by is the dog was an elderly woman who lived in Jarrow who just, as they set off, decided to join them on the march. And she just said, yeah, just take him with you. So he went all the way with them to London. He wasn’t any of the men’s dogs, he just kind of… Saw them walking, thought, I’m going to go along. Ellen Wilkinson led the marches through the gates of Westminster on 31st October 1936. But public support was all they would receive. Their month-long march was met with only a few minutes’ debate and little else. They were actually given more support and cared for more on this march than they would be in their own hometown. by their own government. So it was such a crucial part of history and even though it failed short term what happened after the war, the welfare state coming in, changes happening. To society to support men like the men of Jarrow was partly because of what happened. As British workers struggled to survive in the midst of depression, across Europe people were turning to very different solutions. In Germany, one in three men were unemployed. But propaganda films like this proudly portrayed a nation rebuilding after the First World War. There were very large-scale sufferings on the part of ordinary people in Germany. The young Germans were invited to join the Nazi Party, invited to take part in the rebuilding of the cities that had been. In many cases badly shelled or bombed in the First World War. In January 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest in Germany and Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor. It was the first time he had ever held a position of power. Extraordinary clip watching Hitler digging the start of a new autobahn in Germany. Well this is Hitler very literally putting the German people back to work. If you think that we had an unemployment problem in Britain in the 1930s, it was an awful lot worse in Germany which had six million people unemployed when Hitler came to power in January 1933. But within a few years that had been all but eradicated and people in Britain were incredibly impressed that this had happened. Here it seems that we had no imaginative solutions to the unemployment problem, but here you had Hitler building autobahns and putting the German people back to work. So he portrayed himself as a kind of Germany’s saviour, really. And by showing that he was trying to show, by porting to show, that he was an ordinary worker, an ordinary person from the lower classes, he portrayed this image of uniting all social classes in the Germany that he was creating. He saw himself and was seen by others as being part of the architects of the new world. And a lot of people in other countries, not just in Germany itself, but even in France and Britain and so on, there was a sense of amazement, delight, excitement about the rise of the Nazis. But support for Hitler’s policies was gathering momentum much closer to home. And one man in particular pushed tensions to their peak as fascism hit the streets of London. Hitler coming to power in 1933 sent shockwaves through Europe. Mosley is saying, I can do this as well. By August 1934, Hitler had violently eliminated his rivals and was now Führer, with complete control over Germany. Across Europe, fascism was on the rise and Britain seemed to be next in line. Hitler saw Oswald Mosley as his ally. And it’s believed the Nazi party bankrolled Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in an attempt to destabilise Britain. There’s Oswald Mosley. Yes, I see him, I recognise him there. Now, the interesting thing about Oswald Mosley was that he was an opportunist. I mean, at the core of him was somebody who was very, very keen on power. He was incredibly charismatic, Oswald Mosley, and… You only had to ask his long line of mistresses for proof of that, as well as all of these supporters he had. But you can see him in a very expensive suit there. He was never short of dosh, was our Oswald. A complete hate figure for my parents. My mother at the tea table, when she said, Mosley, you could just see the emotion in her face. This was as if Hitler was amongst them in the East End, that he was interested in terror. …arising working-class Jews, and he had the backing of Lord Rothermere. Lord Rothermere who owned the Daily Mail, so he had the backing of a very powerful force at this time. At its peak, Moseley’s political party, the British Union of Fascists, boasted 50,000 members, and provocative marches like this became increasingly common. At the beginning, he has… A lot of support because people at the time are thinking, you know, you need new ways to approach these unprecedented problems of mass unemployment and the aftermath of the Great Depression. You can see them all giving the Nazi salute there. Mosley can appear sometimes as a sort of joke figure and irrelevance, but at the time, Mosley, in a sense, had the backing of these huge powers. Hitler’s Germany, Italy and Spain. And it felt as if Mosley had the momentum going with him. Tension and conflict were in the air. And on 4th October 1936, in the heart of London’s East End, Mosley’s black shirts were met with an unprecedented show of defiance. Famous confrontation, Cable Street, 1936. Mosley in his black shirts, marching through the East End. So the idea was that if they marched through the East End, they would be joined by throngs of fascists and racists. But what they were met with was resistance from ordinary people, which the fascists in Italy and in Germany… had not met with in the same way. The ordinary people of London and elsewhere had come together and said, uh, not in this country. Oh, they’re the antifascists. You’ll see the trade unions there. I half expect to see my parents here. I’m scanning the crowds in order to see them. They shall not pass. That was the slogan of the day, October the 4th, 1936. Why do I know this date? Because my parents told me the story of this day over and over again because this was a day to them that, well, apart from anything else, it was their first date. For them, politics, life and love were the same. These banners that are being carried in this demonstration are so interesting. What we see here, this is classic satire and caricature of fascists. You know, this is an age-old way to ridicule political opponents, to make them look ridiculous. Really interesting there, fascism spreads terror. And there you can see a barricade. What people did was they brought trucks, they threw beds out of the windows, there were chairs and tables, so that whatever happens, you know, mostly wouldn’t be able to get through here. Over 100,000 men and women took to the streets to physically prevent the fascists from marching into the East End. The police… defending the fascist right to protest, violently tried to clear the route ahead. The police charged these barricades, and my parents were caught, so they said, on the wrong side of one of these barricades leading into Cable Street. And these mounted police came for them with their nightsticks, so we’re driving towards them, and my mum used to describe this with terror. At the tea table and say we thought Harold and I thought that we were gonna get beaten And then a door opened in one of these little streets off Cable Street and the people grabbed my mum and dad and pulled them into the house and They didn’t get beat Wow Extraordinary, then I hadn’t seen that first of all. That’s Very interesting. We’ve actually got footage of it. Policemen actually defending the fascist. There, he’s just knocked him out. He’s just knocked that guy out. Just whacked him there. The guy with the hat. Right in the middle of the screen you can see there, boom, right to the chin. And there he goes again. And then meanwhile a policeman, straight after it, whacks him, the same guy, over the head. So you then have there, you can see quite clearly, the police… And the Blackshirts working together to try and force this route through for Mosley. After two hours of fighting, Moseley was forced to turn back. It was a humiliating defeat that the British Union of Fascists would never recover from. English people are not alarmed lest Britain be on the brink of political upheaval. The Fascists had made their move, and here at Cable Street, ordinary British people had seen them off. I don’t think it’s surprising that the British public spurned the British Union of Fascists. But I think most people thought that it was incredibly un-British and later on Diana Mosley, a wife of Oswald Mosley, was asked famously in an interview if she regretted anything about the movement and she said no. And then she said oh yes the jack boots. I always told him that the British would never go for jack boots and I think that’s quite true. It was Considered a bit vulgar, foreign, aggressive, not our way of doing politics by calm consent. Across 30s Britain, protests and conflict were everywhere. But a class battle was brewing in the most unlikely of places. Let’s take a walk. And enjoy one of the cheapest, healthiest and most inexpensive pastimes never invented. Young Ramblers were leading the fight for the freedom to roam the British countryside. This is fascinating. I think also in the 1930s there’s a desire amongst some people to challenge class position and to think about the countryside as part of their heritage and a feeling that England should be a home fit for heroes as a result. of what they had suffered in the First World War. They wouldn’t be recognised as Ramblers today, probably, other than the Hobnow boots, which is probably a giveaway. It is lovely because on their faces, you can see that real look of enjoyment of the sheer freedom. And when you think of the conditions they were working in and what cities were like at that time, so a lot of these people were living in slum housing, they were working very long hours in very… poor conditions the people of manchester and sheffield could actually see these wonderful hills kinder scout from their homes and their workplaces but the terrible thing was in the 1930s they weren’t allowed to walk on them this was a forbidden mountain if you like the pressure for access to land was growing throughout the 30s ramblers risked arrest and violence from landowners By deliberately setting foot on private land. The most famous was the Kinder Scout mass trespass in the Peak District, where 400 ramblers were led by a 20-year-old activist from Manchester, Benny Rothman. A lot of them were relatively young, they were in their 20s, and they were very politically motivated. Young people on the left would have joined the Communist Party, it was a large mass party. the time and I think that Communist Party membership has to be set against the rise of Nazism in Germany, anti-semitism in England and a British political system that was in some chaos at the time so they would have seen that as the biggest way of opposing the rise of fascism. The mass trespass laid the foundations for the access to land that people enjoy today and the Peak District was eventually designated Britain’s first national park in 1951. That’s why kinder and the trespass is so important, that we’re still able to enjoy this even today. But a lot of it is thanks to these brave young men from the 1930s. As war loomed, Britain was more determined than ever to maintain peace. But one football match would force people to face up to the true horrors of the Nazi regime. It’s really shocking to see that in 30s Britain. As uncertainty intensified abroad, at home Britain was more determined than ever to preserve a sense of stability, ensuring that the most traditional sporting events continued as normal. Once again it’s the magic of the green courts and the ping of the ball on the racket. During the mid-30s, Fred Perry dominated Wimbledon, winning three consecutive singles titles. And whether it was a national spectacle or a kickabout on the back streets of East London, sport bound communities together. Tick! Football, certainly at this time, was a simple game to play. This is where it was born. It’s the jostling of the players. There’s usually one player who knows he’s not quite as good as the others, and the captains know that he’s not, and he’s the last one left, and he doesn’t… So that comes into it. Football was hugely important, both to the kids and to their fathers. But throwing down the jacket, I mean, it was done all the time. How anybody knows who’s on what side, I’ve no idea. My school time as a youngster, we played with a tennis ball and there could be three or four matches all going on in the playground at the same time. So that was how it was done. I don’t know whether that was a proper ball or whether it was a bundle of rags, which is how it started. It is fairly chaotic, but there’s a different sort of law in those days, as we see how people are reacted to by the law and by the mother. Get in there, you! Let me get you, Dave! Anything around the head these days wouldn’t be permissible, that’s for sure. Clearly no VAR in the background. But it’s just lovely to see the faces. Amazing. On the 4th of December 1935, the beautiful game divided the nation. England played the German national team at White Hart Lane in North London. It was the first time the two teams had ever played each other in England. On the morning of the match, London is flooded with 10,000 German supporters out to enjoy themselves. The story of this match is really fascinating, I think. This wasn’t just a football match, this is a political. Spectacle. The match is very heavily policed, way more than your regular match would have been. And this police car with a megaphone on the top is actually broadcasting messages in German to the German fans, exhorting them not to antagonise the English supporters. There’s always been a special rivalry between England and Germany. How much it was heightened at this time, I don’t know. It’s certainly stayed ever since. There is a special determination. Gotta beat the German. It’s a really contentious decision to actually host the match. I think there was an agreement that no swastikas, no flags would be brought or worn. The teams come out together. The German and then side by side. Visitors in the usual British white jersey. There’s that moment on the pitch when the German players will do the salute. It’s really shocking to see that in 30s Britain, especially when you’ve got this fight against homegrown fascism going on. It leaves a slightly uncomfortable feeling. There was no reference by the commentary. …on the peace and the party news, so he was obviously told whatever his own views, he should just report what he sees. By 35, you know, the world is waking up to what Hitler is doing. He’s building autobahns, he’s beginning to rearm, he’s already locked up the trade union movement, the left, there have been pogroms and attacks on Jews, he’s abolished democracy. This time Hitler ruled over Germany as Führer. He started to build up the Luftwaffe, brought in conscription, and in September 1935 he introduced the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jewish people of their basic human rights. By 1935 the Nazis had passed a number of anti-Semitic laws. There had been a boycott of Jewish-owned shops. Jews had been… Sacked from civil service posts have been violent incidents against Jews in the street. No wonder, therefore, that the community around North London, where the match was played, was outraged by the fact it was being held there. The magnificent display of fast and furious football. But always England have just got that little extra something that the others haven’t. One may wonder when one sees this match why the British government would allow such a thing to happen. But I think there was a general concern of appeasement. Many people were afraid of another war. And appeasement, even with Nazi Germany, would have been considered as preferable to going to war. And the end sees England winners by 3-0. But the comfortable scoreline did not ease the controversy surrounding the match. A lone Nazi flag flew over the West End. One England fan climbed up and tore it down, determined that the swastika would not fly over his patch. Next time, just three years to war. Britain frees itself from the grip of depression? and dives into a racy new world full of opportunity and freedom. But in Europe, war with Hitler gets closer and closer. The monarchy is plunged into crisis. The countdown to war affects every man, woman and child in Britain. And the hopes of a nation rest on one last-ditch attempt for peace. This is 1930s Britain. For the first time, black and white films now in colour, bringing new life to the good times and the bad. It’s a turbulent decade. The best things happen and the worst things happen. Three kings in one year. The monarchy in crisis. A government gambles everything in a desperate attempt to stem the Nazi tide. Looking back in history, we say, well, how can they not be 360 degree aware of the reality of what they were facing? I can’t rise up! I’m not… This time, the mid-1930s, Brits enjoy new freedoms. People are showing their bodies for the first time. Especially for women, it’s very liberating. The Nazi threat grows. It’s rather startling to see the Union Jack and the Nazi swastika flag side by side. They’re marching through a Kent street. Wow, I had never seen this before. Britain strives for peace, but prepares for war. This is the 30s in Colour. Countdown to war. By 1935, Adolf Hitler had established complete control over Germany, but it was still unclear what threat he posed to Britain. Where a whole new world was emerging. A boom in car production and new roads meant an escape from town to country. And the Holiday Pay Act meant that ordinary working people could now enjoy a proper break. Hello, oldie. Well, this year we’ve got holidays with pay. Isn’t that lovely? There was a new and glamorous holiday destination on offer. Butlin’s fantastic fun. I didn’t go until the 60s, but, you know, it’s incredible fun. This is before people took flights to the Algarve or the Costa del Sol. This provided an opportunity for people, often from inner cities, to go somewhere and enjoy a holiday as a family. The idea that ordinary working-class Britons could enjoy a holiday was completely alien before the 1930s. It was a hugely exciting moment and a real moment of social mobility. Thousands could now go on holiday to resorts and camps. like butlin’s in skegness clacton and later bogner regis founded by billy butlin on the neat idea of a week’s play for a week’s pay these camps promised three meals a day and organized fun for all the family from dawn till dusk my father came over from canada and he stayed in a guest house. You had your breakfast and your evening meal there, but they didn’t want to see you for the rest of the day. So you had to amuse yourselves. He saw that there was a great opening for amazing business. That’s how he started Butlins. I love the ethos. It was there right from the beginning, even till today. Our true intent is all for your delight. My father, right from the very beginning, wanted to provide holidays for everybody, and his ethos was to make everybody happy. It’s lovely to see it in colour as well. It’s amazing. Then, as now, the fun was ruthlessly organised by Butlin’s iconic redcoats. They’d rouse holidaymakers at 7.45 sharp for their daily activities. Today, it’s a more optional endeavour. Redcoats Freya and Jake carry… On The Tradition Wow, look at this. Costume and figure competition. Imagine if we had that now. I’d win that easily. Would you? Yeah, alright. The hair and the swimsuits and stuff is so different to now. Now everyone’s got those topknot bum things. Isn’t it mad how times have changed? What’s that? I don’t know. Knobly Knees competition! Now I get why we don’t do it. It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy, isn’t it? We couldn’t have done that in our days, could we? It’s hilarious, you know, we just wouldn’t even think to do this in our time off. I think, are they really having fun? Is this what fun looks like, 1930s style? It’s just good family fun. Fathers with daughters. Oh, there’s my father. Aw, with the moustache. It’s so lovely to see him there. What a handsome man he was. My mother always said she fell in love with him. When she first saw him, she thought, oh, my God, he looks like Errol Flynn. It makes you feel proud, doesn’t it? We’re doing the same things. We are literally doing the same job and creating the same happiness, the same memories, the same magic. When the holiday was over, the organised activities went on at home. In the 1930s, a health and fitness craze gripped the nation. With a link between obesity and heart disease newly confirmed in the press, the pressure was on to keep in shape. The Women’s League of Health and Beauty offered group exercise classes for women of all kinds, and the cameras flocked in to enjoy the spectacle. It’s a forerunner to the fitness crazes of today, yoga and some such, but it was really quite new in the 30s. Many of them thought they’d never stoop so low. But now, thanks to these rhythmic exercises, they can not only touch their toes, but almost bite them. Commentary is something else. Commentary, you’d rather switch it off. On the hands down can be ornamental as well as useful. Here’s an exercise that suggests rocking chairs. It’s very reminiscent, for those people who remember it, of Harry Enfield’s satires of these kind of public information films. They’re just unbelievably patronising, clichéd, jaw-dropping comments about young ladies and their legs. It seems but yesterday that the female leg was looked upon as something that shouldn’t be looked upon. The League of Health and Beauty was so popular it gained almost 200,000 members by the end of the 1930s. Women of all backgrounds were encouraged to take part, donning their matching gym kits and taking to the fields. They are surely the original Bridget Jones big knickers, aren’t they? It’s quite a change. Here you are seeing women wearing very short shorts and 30 years earlier people were covering up table legs and chair legs because they were so… prudish in their Victorian morality. Cycling without a cycle is a great exercise. And it’s new in the sense that working out in public for the first time, and especially for women, that’s very important that they can use their physicality in a way they hadn’t been able to before. It’s very liberating, I think. Now, the downside of this, this isn’t just about physical health, this is about racial health and… Racial fitness, and this is a hangover from social Darwinism around survival of the fittest and survival of the fittest nations, and underlying this exuberance is a kind of concern about the survival of the white race. I’m sorry to bring a sour note into this potentially light-hearted, silly 1930s film, but it’s actually connected to a whole lot of… Eugenic ideas about race and motherhood and what women were for, which was breeding the next generation of healthy British men. This obsession with health, race and beauty was to take the most sinister of turns in the years ahead. And Britain got dangerously close to embracing Nazi ideals. I think this is one of the things that’s really hard to understand about the 30s. How could this have gone on? In mid-1930s Germany, military conscription meant unemployment was falling fast and Hitler was starting to rearm. In Britain, the worst of the unemployment crisis was behind us. And in towns and cities, we were busy building. Futuristic factories producing life-changing products started to emerge. The most iconic of all was the Hoover Building. When this revolutionary American company opened its factory in West London, it was hailed as a modern palace of industry. The building is supreme art deco. Art deco represents modernity, streamline, beauty, newness. To the people of that time, it must have seemed like a pyramid seemed to the ancient Egyptians, like a miraculous building of wonders. In the 1930s, vacuum cleaners were transforming British homes and hoovers were the most… popular cleaners on the market. Busy housewives sigh regretfully for an electric vacuum cleaner. Inside the factory the ultra-modern technology and appropriately clean interiors were a unique selling point. This sneak peek through their doors was designed to lure in even more customers. There are 879 parts and 3,631 operations in its manufacture. Now I remember my parents talking about this almost as if it was utopian. That is the idea that in the future, factories would be like this, clean and modern, and you wouldn’t have people dying of industrial disease. This would be handy in the bathroom for re-bristling old toothbrushes. Interesting to see the man had goggles on, so a very strong sense of safety. My granddad worked for Hoover as an engineer in the 50s and it’s fantastic to see, even in 20 years difference, how this has changed from quite a humble beginning and something quite new and innovative to something that was in every single household. Here one of the extensions of the dusting tools is being bent so that it will go into odd corners and otherwise uncontattable places with a minimum amount of stooping and craning by m’lady. Nobody ever fell off a step ladder using one of these sweepers. There’s the lucky recipient using the hoover on her no doubt synthetic carpet. At last milady can make light of her housework, hardly realising how much care, energy and patience have been spent on her behalf. The irony with all this is that all these appliances make housework somehow fun and exciting apparently and instead of that work being done by servants for money, it’s now done by housewives for free. With the added excitement of an appliance, which I think is one of the biggest changes really for women in this time. British industry was about to switch to a war footing as tensions mounted in Nazi Germany. European statesmen have been staggered by dictator Adolf Hitler’s latest move in denouncing the treaties of Versailles and Locarno as nothing more than scraps of paper. The British government began to prepare for the threat of gas attacks and factories across the nation were dedicated to preparations for a war most people wanted to avoid at all costs. The government consider… That in time of war, everyone ought to have a gas mask. Everyone, whether rich or poor, whether they have the money to buy it or not. We hope they will never be needed. So says Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Home Department, when he formally opens the government-owned factory for mass-producing gas masks. It’s interesting that the war was already being prepared. There’s already a… Dawning realisation that the threat of war is really serious. So of course this created a good deal of anxiety and I think that fuelled the popular support for Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement. Neville Chamberlain and the British government had been pursuing a policy of appeasement, trying to keep the peace with Adolf Hitler, who had broken international law by marching his troops into a stretch of land in West Germany known as the Rhineland. The government hoped that by turning a blind eye, Hitler would be satisfied and gas masks and another war could be averted. Neville James was straightforward. He just wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a war. And he remembered the First World War and was determined this shouldn’t happen again. By 1937, I don’t think anyone would have said that war was inevitable, but it would have been a brave man who would have ruled it out entirely. Hitler’s built up the German armed forces from scratch. He has developed an incredibly powerful air force. And so while the British government was doing everything it could to avoid a war, the very possibility of war was being widely discussed. And if there was to be a war… People thought that gas was likely to be used. 500,000 gas masks were being produced a week, and ordinary Brits of all ages dutifully waited to be fitted. The demonstrations of how to breathe with them are quite something. I’m trying to entertain this screaming child that is no doubt… terrified by her mother’s quite dramatic transformation when she’s put the gas mask on. Oh God, now she’s got to wear one. The general feeling was that you had to put the children first. They should be told about gas masks. That is just horrible. Seeing a young child being terrified like that. I remember at school we were all asked to try on gas masks. Gas was something people were very frightened of. It really is important to understand that one of the main reasons for this fear was of course the use of gas in the First World War. It’s just a tiny snapshot of the trauma that children especially had to go through in the 1930s and 40s and it’s not surprising that it shaped their experience for the rest of their lives. Whilst preparations for war rumbled on, the overwhelming hope was still to maintain peace with Nazi Germany. And shocking scenes played out in rural Britain. This rare and mysterious home movie from 1936 shows a highly unusual trip in Kent, between In a British boys club, known as the Britannia Youth Movement, And Hitler’s very own organization, the Hitler Youth. So here we’ve got Brits saluting the swastika, we’ve got the Hitlerjugend, as it’s called in Germany, and then our guys in sort of cadet uniform, they’re marching through a Kent street. Wow, I had never seen this before. Not a lot is known about the Britannia. Youth. It’s rather startling to see the Union Jack and the Nazi swastika flag side by side and young Germans and Hitler Youth trying, not entirely successfully, to do the goose step. I think the grass gets in the way. It really is a fairly chilling sight. Hearty British teenagers marching alongside German fascists. This is one of the things that’s really hard to understand about the 30s, when we know what happened later. How could this have gone on? Hitler, above all, gave a sense of mission to young people. And among a lot of people in other countries, even in France and Britain and so on, there was a sense of amazement, delight, excitement. About the rise of the Nazis. You said this was 32, 33, 34, you might say, turn a blind eye to it, but I mean, 1936, the things that were known about the Nazis by this time, you know, with thousands of people locked up, with Jews having been deprived of their livelihoods and the means to work. By the start of 1937, the Hitler Youth was compulsory for all Aryan children aged 14… to 18 and had over 5 million members. These youths would go on to form the bedrock of the future Nazi army. The film also shows the Britannia youth visiting Germany, and one young member even captured the Führer on film. I mean, it’s extraordinary that people believed him to be a sort of leader of the great Nordic peoples, that they were going to breed and kill the Jews and kill the mentally deficient and kill the criminally insane, and then the person it’s focused on is a dark-haired little bloke from Austria who speaks of this. very very strong austrian accent i mean but then of course you know why should racism make sense these sorts of exchanges were in fact part of an international charm offensive carefully orchestrated by the nazi party in order to seem more respectable than they really were and britain was taken in there’s a lot of sentiment that young people from the two countries needed to be friendly and to get together to overcome the legacy of war and conflict. 1936 was the closest that Britain and Germany ever came to any sort of friendly relations. This was the year in which Germany made a conscious effort to try and be respectable. They were hosting the Olympic Games in Berlin. This was a propaganda gift for the Nazis. And the last thing they wanted was people not turning up. Whilst Britain continued to maintain a delicate peace with adversaries abroad, at home, the very fabric of British tradition was under threat, in the wake of a royal scandal. It was just totally unexpected. It was massively unexpected. The royals were supposed to be a steady feature. Despite the growing fascist menace abroad… Most British people continue to enjoy their favourite traditions. Up and down the nation, communities rallied together and had fun. This remarkable footage captures a town get-together in Helston, Cornwall, when crowds came out, dressed up to the nines, to celebrate the start of spring at their annual flora dance. These are remembrances of… England’s pre-Christian traditions and they have survived Roman occupation, Anglo-Saxon occupation, the Reformation and all of those sort of limiting ideological restrictions on culture. Especially after the war, that resurgence of community spirit would have still played a really important part in these towns and in these communities. This tradition carries on in Cornwall today. Nina Riddell has been reliving these steps every year for the last three decades. I think it’s wonderful. The band, they keep the timing, but sometimes they’re having to do quite serious walking and playing, rolling down the hill, and they’ve got these great big instruments. There’s something more in the dance the sum of its parts. There’s an extra something that by being together and dancing, it’s a sense of community and belonging. I find it really interesting, nearly everybody is wearing a hat. I mean, I can remember this in the 1950s. Most men and women went out with hats on, and people’s faces, they’re just so modern. It’s wonderful to know that people’s faces don’t change as much as we think they do. People’s physiog, this stuff, the bones and the eyes, I mean the make-up on that woman there, that looks like it could have been done yesterday. This woman in the blue who has the lilacs in her hat, she could have been taken off the front of a style magazine in the 30s. Look at her hair, look at her hat, the colour of her suit, the cut of her suit. That is a perfect picture of a modern woman. As well as embracing old traditions, modern men and women could now enjoy a new communal activity. The 1930s was the golden age of the Lido. These vast outdoor pools sprung up in cities and towns across the nation, offering cheap bathing for the masses. Almost 200 were constructed over the course of the 19th century. …of the decade. Before you’d had the public baths, which had been sort of tied up with getting clean as much as with exercise, the Lido is much more of a, you know, pleasure place. The pleasure of Lidos was open to all. Since gaining the vote in 1928, women had pushed for more and more freedoms. Now they could enjoy these open-air pools together with the boys. This was a huge moment. It’s a really important step in social change for equality and for women, and it’s something that seems so small. The women, you can see that their backs are exposed, their legs are exposed. What’s really interesting is the difference in what is accepted as socially… beautiful or attractive norms. Because today in society, we often frown or raise an eyebrow when we see armpit hair, and it’s quite evident here that young women are showing it without worry. They could show themselves, warts and all, in a way that we maybe in our society haven’t learnt to do yet. And, of course, they were fantastic places for courtship. The appeal of Leidos was as much about the socialising as it was about the swimming. Denise Ghent and Christine Thomas have spent many happy years here at the largest saltwater Lido in Britain. The Jubilee Pool in Penzance opened in the mid-1930s. I love just swimming in the cold water, the sun on our back when we’re lucky. I come out feeling peaceful. We used to sit up there and talk, watch the boys. A lot of love affairs started here. I met my husband here when I was quite young. We’ve now been married over 50 years, so it worked. We have two daughters who have also swum here all their lives. And now the third generation, three grandsons who are all lifeguards in the pool. This newly colourised footage shows men and women embracing their newfound opportunity to cool off. They’re smiling faces and the way they just jump in, there’s no faffing about, they’re just straight in the water. It’s just sheer joy really. It must be wonderful living in a city, especially on a hot summer’s day. It must be bliss just entering the water. Loving the swimsuits. Behaving just like we do now. The old footage is fabulous. I think it’s wonderful that people in the 30s could enjoy such a fabulous place. The simple joys of life were a welcome distraction from sinister developments abroad. But the one institution that promised stability, the very backbone of the world, bone of British society, the monarchy was now a cause of crisis. It all started with a grand state funeral. The King was dead. Once more we cried, long live the King. On the 20th of January 1936, King George V died after over a quarter of a century on the throne. His coffin travelled from Norfolk to London. Where he lay in state for four days. The king was a great figure from the First World War. He had been a famous king, he had been a very respected king, but he was certainly a king of the old style. George V had been the first king to do a Christmas broadcast, so the king that most people felt the closest to. There was this strong sense of the importance of monarchy. Monarchy was a key fact. About the 1930s. This is at a time when a portrait of the monarch would have sat in pubs and houses and factories and workplaces. They were very, very visible. He was to be succeeded by his modern and glamorous son. Edward is so different from his father. He’s very modern. He’s very contemporary. He has a different look and style. Edward VIII was very popular with the people of Britain. partly because he went out of his way to visit depressed parts of the country places that were pushed down by poverty or by unemployment but public opinion began to sour when salacious details of edward’s love life hit the news he had chosen to marry his twice divorced american …mystress, Wallis Simpson. The scandal mounted and Edward was forced to abdicate, giving up the British throne in a moving public broadcast on the 10th of December 1936. You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne. That I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility. And to discharge my duties as king, as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love. It was just totally unexpected. It was massively unexpected. The abdication of a king is something that just hadn’t been experienced before. The public was very split about this. Some of them felt very strongly that Edward VIII deserved to be treated. and others felt no, that really wouldn’t do. You couldn’t suddenly marry not just an American, but a divorced American. My uncle, who was a deacon of the Calvinistic Methodist chapel in North Wales, was so disgusted that he took down the coronation mug, because all of those things, like coronation mugs and souvenirs and everything, had all been prepared for his coronation, and used it as his shaving mug, so gradually the soap would wash away the image on the front of it. In May 1937, Britain got a king they’d never expected in Edward’s younger brother, the stammering George VI. The coronation that shouldn’t have happened, that no one expected to happen. Community events like these coronation celebrations on the streets of Middlewich and Cheshire now took on a rather muted tone. This definitely was a national event at a time of crisis and perhaps all the more important for people to cling to their love of the monarchy. This is very typically British. Everybody’s come out in their finest, they’re lining the streets. There’s all of this pageantry, but at the same time it’s quite restrained. They’re standing, waiting for the procession to go by and they almost look like they’re… They’re in a queue. So these lucky kids have been put in front of the camera and said, you just need to eat some chocolates out of a tin. So they’re perfectly happy with that. They get to eat chocolates and symbolise the love of a new generation for their royal family. Probably more interested in the chocolates, though. The royal family for a very long time has known how to merchandise itself and to combine consumerism with… patriotic emotions. What’s fascinating is that Edward VIII didn’t have a coronation. They hadn’t had the opportunity to do it for their previous king. And maybe being able to celebrate it in this way would have cemented George in their minds as the rightful king. In just one year, three very different kings had reigned over the nation. But far from shaking British resolve, these troubles had only consolidated a sense of Britishness. Under its new monarch. With George VI on the throne, a national crisis was averted and Britain turned its gaze to the problems mounting on the continent. There was looting, there was theft. Jewish women were stopped in the streets and robbed of their fur coats and jewellery. It was a really terrible situation. In March 1938, Adolf Hitler led his armies triumphantly into Austria. Once again, despite British hopes that Nazi aggression would cease, Germany was expanding its territories. You can see from the welcome that the Germans got when they marched in and ecstatic crowds greeting Hitler, this is hugely popular. They’re shouting, one people, one Reich, empire, one leader. You see Hitler there, he’s standing in the front of the car to show that he’s kind of on the same social level as the driver. He’s not some kind of posh guy sitting in the back. Substantial Jewish population in Vienna. And what you don’t see in this propaganda films, of course, is the appalling treatment. There was looting, there was theft. Jewish women were stopped in the streets and robbed of their fur coats and jewellery. Supporters of independent Austria had painted graffiti on the walls. Jewish people were made to clean them off with acid with their bare hands. It was a really terrible situation. Whilst Hitler’s reign of terror continued unabated… Britain turned to other means of diplomacy to tackle the problem. Just two months later, in May 1938, England faced their rivals Germany on the football pitch. The 115,000 fans who gathered to watch this pre-World Cup friendly at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin were met with a surprising sight. All the courtesies are observed before the start. God Save the King is played. And the English team in white shirts give the Nazi salute during the German national anthem. That’s incredible, isn’t it? Very, very interesting and really quite shocking. They are doing a Nazi salute. The White Church of England saluting the leader of Nazi Germany. It’s not comfortable. Sorry, it’s a long time ago, I know, but it’s not comfortable. And the English team in white shirts give the Nazi salute during the German national anthem. Just a matter of fact thing as far as the commentator was concerned, that England would follow suit. But I suspect he was told how he had to react. Can you imagine the row nowadays if something like that happened? It’s extraordinary that we were playing football with the Germans one year before the outbreak of the Second World War. But life went on and there was an awful lot of hope that these sorts of interactions would promote goodwill. These footballers were told to perform the Nazi salute by the British Foreign Office shortly before the match. Sport has often been used as a tool of international diplomacy and I think it did a lot to shore up Anglo-German relations at a time when there was a clear danger that there might be a war between the two countries. Despite Hitler’s most recent conquests, Britain was still striving for peace at any cost. I’m sure that they look back on it with a certain amount of embarrassment. Stanley Matthews I got to know really quite well. I know he was not in favour at all. So politics and sport, it goes on, it goes on, it goes on. I think if you were a person of colour, or you’re Jewish, communist, or any of those people who are going to be the victims of Nazi atrocity, you would feel… totally alone and appalled. This is part of the history of this country and we need to remember it. It’s absolutely fascinating. And makes it 6-3. The actions of the boys on the pitch made little difference. Hitler was now poised for his next act of political aggression, setting his sights on German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia. And this time, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain took decisive action. This plan is known as Plan Z and it’s incredibly secret. Not even Chamberlain’s wife knows about it. Chamberlain flew to Germany. Here he is in Hitler’s holiday retreat in the Bavarian Alps, going up the steps to begin negotiations. This is an incredibly dramatic moment. These days we are very used to politicians getting in and out of airplanes and meeting each other, but it was not at all normal then. And it is a sign of quite how serious the international situation has got. A momentous settlement was brokered. According to the Munich Agreement, Hitler could occupy German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia, but his demands would stop there once and for all. Hitler was actually rather annoyed by this. He had wanted to invade and take over the whole country. And the Prime Minister comes home, home to an empire filled with joy and relief, home to a welcome that he will never forget. And of course Chamberlain came back famously at the airport, waved the piece of paper that Hitler had signed and said, this is peace for our time. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler. And here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Well, this is one of the most… Famous scenes in all of history and tragically the beginning of what became one of the most notorious false boasts in history. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. You see him here at Heston Aerodrome and huge crowds. Anne Chamberlain then was taken onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace. He and his wife were the first commoners, non- members of the royal family in history ever to go onto the balcony of buckingham palace and to wave at the crowd and as you can see from the film the public was entirely at one with him and of course he knew something in 1937 and eight the rest of us didn’t knew very little about which was essentially that very little work had been done on rearming britain on defense or anything of that kind People remember the First World War. They didn’t want anything like that to happen again, and whatever could be done to avert it, they supported. There was a war memorial in almost every single village, town, railway station. There was hardly a person in the country that hadn’t had a father, husband or brother killed during that time. The idea that you’re going to have another mass slaughter against the same enemy again was unconscionable. And then suddenly, this fairly old, fusty English prime minister So with his archaic winged collar had secured peace. Chamberlain was enormously popular. On both sides, there was a clear realisation that war was on the horizon. The problem for the British was that the public weren’t ready for it. They backed Chamberlain in doing everything he could to try and avoid a war. Neville Chamberlain had calmed the fears of the nation with this settlement. And for now at least, Brits could enjoy peace. Next time, with just a year to war, Britain opens its doors to Europe’s most vulnerable children. But tears families apart to protect its own. As Britain prepares for war. All the while keeping calm and carrying on. Ordinary British lives in an extraordinary time. This is 1930s Britain. For the first time, black and white films now in colour. Bringing new life to the good times and the bad. It’s a turbulent decade. The best things happen and the worst things happen. Three kings in one year. The monarchy in crisis. A government gambles everything in a desperate bid to stem the Nazi tide. Looking back in history, we say, well, how can they not be 360 degree aware of the reality of what they were facing? This time, it’s just one year to war. Britain prepares. Put on your gas masks and keep it on. and opens its doors to Europe’s most vulnerable children. There’s an incredible stoicism about them. Must have been absolutely terrifying. British children are blissfully ignorant until war and evacuation brings its own trauma. Look at that boy, look at him, he tries to smile there. They don’t know what’s going to happen to them. An extraordinary time. This… is the 30s in color countdown to war The summer of 1938 was a great time to be a child in Britain. There were organised outings galore, Punch and Judy shows, and London’s Children’s Zoo had just opened, a world away from the grown-up worries of war. It’s a fine bit of news for young visitors. I only wish that this had been possible in my young days. It’s the summer months, I can see these days out, moments of just free recreational time. It’s so carefree, these are young, innocent children. You can see the excitement, you can see the joy, the simple pleasure of watching a Punch and Judy show. It’s ecstatic. And there’s nothing on the horizon that would upset this for them at this time. They don’t know about any huge political changes or social changes. They’re just young children enjoying themselves and being given the opportunity to enjoy themselves, which had been so rare up until before this decade. There is a sense of optimism. People have got a glimpse of what a better world would be, could be. We could work shorter hours, we could have longer holidays, we could work in clean places, we could build nice schools and hospitals. People are starting to envisage a better, fairer society. But in a few short months, on the 10th of November 1938, news arrived of Kristallnacht, known as the Night of the Broken Glass. Chamberlain’s peace agreement was in peril. For 24 hours, Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians violently targeted and destroyed Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany. The Kristallnacht concentrates minds quite rightly. Lots of things change after that and it’s almost as if the scales fall from people’s eyes. around the nature of the Nazi regime, which up to that point, you know, people had been trying to appease. Hitler was increasing the pace of his drive to war in 1938. And part of this then was a mass outbreak of anti-Semitic violence ordered by Hitler. 9,000 Jewish-owned shops were trashed. in the so-called night of Brokeback. About a thousand synagogues were burnt to the ground. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and put into concentration camps. Many Jewish, dozens and scores of Jewish people were murdered in the course of the Kristallnacht. The official figure was 91, but in fact I’m sure it was much greater than that. This got very widespread publicity across the world. It’s a pretty desperate situation. When Earl Baldwin broadcast his appeal for Jewish refugees from Germany, thousands of men and women Despoiled of their goods, driven from their homes, seeking sanctuary on our doorstep. These were victims not of any catastrophe of the natural world, but of man’s inhumanity to man. Meanwhile, these child refugees from Germany, who have found shelter in Britain, are being cared for and are learning to play a useful part in the nation’s work. The British government supported the humanitarian mission known as Kindertransport. The scheme rescued mainly Jewish children from the dangers of Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Austria, and later from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Over the coming months, 10,000 children were allowed into Britain, but they had to leave home without their parents. incredible barriers to prevent adult Jews from getting out of Germany. Everybody in my family knows of the desperation that Jewish parents felt. These are children, their parents have put them on trains and boats to save them. Entrepreneur and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Schurie was just five years old when she was placed on one of the last Kindertransport trains leaving Vienna. Her birth name was Vera Buchthal. So I’ve seen this in black and white, lovely thin colour. I remember going onto the ferry, which was at night. I’d never really seen the sea and there was this black inky water and apparently… As I remember, a very small gangplank going up to the sea. Somewhat nauseous crossing of the channel from Hoek van Hollen to Harwich. We all had a massive of clothes on because we couldn’t bring anything else out. So our parents apparently put us in two or three coats. So that we had, this is in July, so we were wearing as much as we could. Prior to the crossing, Vera and her nine-year-old sister Renate had a growing awareness of what was going on in Austria and why their mother fought so hard to get them out. I knew it was a difficult time. My sister was stoned as she left her little school. She had a kind teacher who would let her out early. My sister and I, being half Jewish, half not… Jewish were called crossbreeds, occasionally subhuman, really animal. It was beginning to get quite anti-Semitic. It was a long, long journey. We slept on strips of corrugated cardboard on the floor, on the benches, and believe it or not, in the overhead luggage racks. Each train had about a thousand children aged five to two. 16 with a few 17 year olds snuck in and unbelievably rarely. There were just two adults on the train so it was fairly badlameck. There were also some babies and some volunteers who were not eligible to escape from Nazi Europe. Lily Reichenfeld was one of the volunteers taking care of the young children on Kindertransport. A non-Jewish friend had guaranteed that she would return to Germany to what she must have known was almost certain death. And she had made two such journeys of love, really. Had returned to Germany, and then it was Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and oblivion. Courage has many forms. What I do remember very much is arriving at Liverpool Street Station. That was a grey day. It was silent. A thousand children were coming off the train after a two and a half day journey. We were dirty, we were tired. I think we were just so traumatised that it was almost a silent exit. We filed into a very large hall and waited to be claimed, like bits of lost luggage. In a sense, we were. But we were very, very lucky. Our foster parents were lovely, loving people living in the Midlands of England. They didn’t speak a word of German. My father had taught us a few words of English, so I could say things like slow combustion stove. Very useful for a five-year-old but didn’t know how to ask to go to the bathroom. We arrived in July the 6th and when school started in September, Our English was good enough for us to go to school. I felt the need to fit in quite quickly, strongly and dramatically. I desperately wanted to assimilate. It’s absolutely driven my life, it’s certainly shaped who I am. But it also gave me very early on the need to justify why I was saved and to make sure that the life that was saved was worth saving. The rescue of child refugees came at a time when Hitler’s military forces were taking control of other nations and Britain realised it had to prepare for war, like it or not. People thought that an entire city could be destroyed in a matter of weeks. You see these pictures of people scurrying about, putting on gas masks, filling up sandbags. It’s exactly what happened. By early spring 1939, Europe was in crisis. Fascist dictator General Franco was about to win the Spanish Civil War with support from Nazi Germany. On the 15th of March, the British government was stunned to learn that Hitler’s troops had marched into Prague, forcing the whole of Czechoslovakia to live under Nazi rule. This was really, really shocking because it was the absolute… Tearing up of the Munich Agreement, that agreement which had been brokered between Britain, France and Germany and Italy in September 1938 and was meant to be a full stop. It was meant to be, Hitler said, his last territorial demand. But here he is, he has invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. This really destroys the policy that has become known by now as appeasement. It is consistently said that his aim is to bring all ethnic Germans within the Reich. He’s got the Germans. This is now taking in Checks. It is all about empire building and people now begin to realize as they see these clips of the Germans entering Prague that they are dealing with another Napoleon. The Chamberlain and the cabinet realized immediately in March 1939 that Hitler was now driving towards war and so the next country on the list was Poland and so they issued a guarantee to Poland that they would come to Poland’s aid if Hitler invaded. No British government will submit. The dictation from a foreign power as to its foreign policy. These mighty armaments of which I speak are not there to threaten anyone, but they are there available to resist aggression or domination. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain warned Germany of Britain’s guarantee to Poland and that Britain was re-arming. The nation realised… whether they wanted to or not, that the whole country would now take an active role to prepare for war. Seen here in this recruitment film for the Air Raid Protection Service in Salford. This is preparing for a whole new kind of conflict in a whole new way. It’s going to be aerial bombardment, potentially poison gas, targeting of civilian populations. You can see that the level of preparation just has to be monumental. For the first time in British history, civilians on the ground were the likely targets of German bombers, and the ARP wardens would be the first responders. They were doing such an important job. And they were first line of defence really for the home front. People who joined the ARP were people who couldn’t join up for other services in the main, but wanted to contribute. Seeing this character on his bike with that armband on in that uniform, that makes me immediately think of Dad’s Army. Character of the ARP warden played by Bill Pertwee. All the individuals we see in this clip are men, but there were many women who served as air raid precaution wardens as well, including my granny, Beryl. She was a fire warden and had what must have been an extremely frightening job of going round after air raids, so she was just one of millions of people who had these important but very, very difficult and frightening jobs. One of the drills the ARP wardens practised… …seem to be what to do in the event of a gas attack using actors as the poison victims Reminds me of those sort of national service adverts for what you do in the case of nuclear war It’s a sort of stage-managed affair An attempt to create a sort of calm in a very uncalmed situation Here, I think the guy at the front of the shot doesn’t realise that he’s still in the shot, possibly He’s taken off the gas mask and doesn’t realize that in this scenario he should by now have died from inhaling the poison gas. In the First World War there was mustard gas and people alive at this moment were suffering the effects of mustard gas bombs during the First World War. So that had a very strong reality about it. Would Hitler drop poison gas bombs on Britain? Yes, he could, would, probably would. That’s what’s behind that. Tens of millions of gas masks were made and probably one of the abiding memories for a lot of people who lived through the Second World War is that little cardboard box they had to have all the time, close at hand. I’m reminded of the fact that we had a gas mask in the top cupboard in our house and I thought it was funny. So I remember putting it on and walking round the house and my mum, who hardly ever shouted at me, screaming at me and saying, take it off. I can just see the look on her face. That she thought it was an ugly, terrible thing, not because of how it looked, but what it represented. As part of its preparations for rearming, British factories up and down the country were now producing war parts. The economy was boosted and employment… was on the up. Today we present dramatic pictures of men laboring night and day producing the shells for our artillery. And if you think they’ve got a cushy job at home, you’d better think again. Filmmakers got busy too. Public information films designed to prepare the population for danger on the home front were rolled out in cinemas. When you hear these warning sirens, take cover at once. Even now it’s a terrifying wail. That siren sound, it’s just so evocative. I didn’t grow up hearing those sounds in this context, but even I find them quite… …disturbing to hear. The warning may also be given by short blasts on police whistles. People would have paid very close attention to these films because, however bad the subsequent blitz turned out to be, people in the 1930s thought that it was going to be even worse. People thought that an entire city could be destroyed in a matter of weeks. I just can’t really imagine what that would have been like. I mean, my parents were primary school kids when this was happening, and into their old age, we’d talk about the fear that they felt. That kind of sick kind of feeling in the pit of your stomach, that absolute fear of what’s going to happen. You see these pictures of people scurrying about, putting on gas masks, filling up sandbags. It’s exactly what happened, aerial bombing. You know, this is one of the most disgusting, appalling, frightful things that human beings have ever invented. Shirley Williams was nine in 1939, living in London. These films say very much about the gas mask issue, but… It was actually much more important, but for most people, was to have an Anderson shelter in their garden, which meant that the minute that they heard a siren, they would rush into the garden, stay in the shelter. I remember doing that. My job was to carry my mother’s cook’s daughter, who was only a baby, as fast as I possibly could into the Anderson shelter. My father, at the entrance, he would oversee whether there were more indications of further bombing to come. So you’ve got this kind of private world of protection, but not… one that was quite as advanced or as sophisticated as you would have got much later in the war. If you are provided with a steel shelter and have not erected it, do so at once. It was extremely flimsy. It might protect you against the blast if your house was bombed, but you couldn’t expect much in the way of safety from a direct hit. Do not use the telephone except for very short, urgent messages. I’m sorry, the number’s still engaged. Stop Tweed. No, not Tweed, darling. Even though this film was clearly made to show what life might be like, what actually happened when war came, there’s moments where we think, really? When you look at the woman on the telephone eating the chocolates because she’s been on the phone for ages chatting to her friend, it’s very stereotypical. Think of my line. I’m so sorry. the number still engaged you may be causing delay to vital calls by the summer of 1939 as britain prepared for war life for the most part continued as normal i guess you can’t live in a state of high alert and maybe some of this keep calm and carry on idea is the only way people can get through something which is terrifying What else could you do? You had to carry on as usual, otherwise everything would have fallen apart. By the summer of 1939, with war looming… The British public is instructed to carry on, that whatever happens, Britain is a nation prepared. So up and down the country, ordinary life continued as normal. They went to the cinema, they read books, newspapers, enjoyed everything, enjoyed Butlin’s holiday camps and so on. We can imagine that the greater the threat of disaster, war, of death, of bombing, of losing loved ones, the more intense… The emotional experiences, the more intense a pleasure you might take in your freedom and your moments of enjoyment when you feel them so much under threat. By this time, some could afford their own movie cameras, which allowed them to record those everyday moments of pleasure and freedom, like this family in Delamere Forest, Cheshire. Happy-looking family picnic. Always wear your tie, even on a picnic. Cheating. Stick of celery. He’s getting his hair slicked back, bit of Brylcreem on there. He had his comb put under his nose as if he was doing an impression of Hitler. I mean, a lot of the British people did think that Hitler was a lunatic. a sinister lunatic. It’s funny the way this terror of Hitler is kind of diverted into a joke. So we’ve got the famous song, Hitler has only got one ball. Goering has two but very small. Himmler is very similar. And poor old Goebbels has no balls at all. Now, what does that represent, apart from the vulgarity of it, is that these people, we will castrate them in the song. We will make them less fearful than they are. It’s to, not necessarily to humanise the enemy, but to make the enemy less serious. And if they’re being mocked, then they cannot be that serious. And therefore, if they’re not that serious, we’ll be OK. Life will go on. Keep calm, carry on. In Northampton, Wynne Bassett-Loke and his wife Jane were also home movie enthusiasts. Their great-niece Jane remembers them fondly. My memory very much is of him never sitting still. My aunt was forever saying, oh, come and sit down. Uncle Wynne, and he’d sit down for two or three seconds and then bounce up again and say, oh, I need to go get so-and-so, and off he’d go. Uncle Wynne was a successful toy maker whose company specialised in producing model railways with trains large and small. A skill that was, surprisingly, to prove vital for Britain in the war years ahead. Bassetloke Garden Railways featured in newly emerging theme parks like Beckonscott, the famous 1930s model village in Buckinghamshire. He really was Mr. Tomorrow’s Man. He was always full of new ideas and didn’t talk down to us as children. He would invite us to come and see whatever his latest new acquisition was, and you sort of felt excited by him. He liked making films. He’s lovely to see the color. This would be one of his projects to show how good a town Northampton is. He was involved in the design and planning of new proper municipal indoor baths and it was him who wanted them to be art deco and really rather special and full Olympic length. With the success of his company, Wynne Bassett-Loke commissioned German architect Peter Behrens to design his home in Northampton, England’s first modernist house. New Ways was such a different house from any of the other houses I visited. There was these lovely tiled hallway to went into, and because it had a flat roof, it looked different. Back in the 1930s, we didn’t lock front doors during the day, and Tortoise sat on a little table near the door. So when you went to visit at Newways, you’d open the front door and you would go and you would ring Tortoise. The Basset-Loke Company was commissioned for the war effort. Creating important scale models of Bailey Bridges for the Royal Engineers. And later, working models of Mulberry Harbour, which would prove invaluable during the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. This was my wartime secret, which for years I never told anyone, because we’d always been drilled during the war that careless talk cost lives, and we didn’t talk about it. And as young children, somehow you did pick up anxiety. With war on the horizon, holidays were a welcome distraction. In Wales, the Salford Lads Club were taking their annual camping trip. It was something they looked forward to all year round. And the 1939 trip to Aberystwyth was no exception. These teenagers didn’t know their lives would change so dramatically. For some, it would be the last carefree time of their lives. We still do this to this day, jumping off the rocks, but the costumes are a little bit different. I’d imagine they were all made of wool, though. You’d get them wet and the costume would… Drop down. ..expose what they shouldn’t. The sausage look a bit… Nothing changes. Well, they still complain about the food, though, don’t they? They still have to wash up their own gear, don’t they? They have to wash their own gear. And for the best orderlies, for washing pots and for tidying up, they’d get a prize for that. The blankets there that the lads are folding there, those would be army blankets from the First World War, probably. Camping trips like this one in Wales were especially important to growing lads coming away from dangerous industrial areas. When we get into the 1930s here, we’re talking about a very polluted environment, aren’t we? That was the other one. Didn’t you have to… Like a lot of people, you ended up in a TB hospital. I did, yeah. Well, I had new money when I was growing up, so these mill towns were just full of sooty atmosphere, so going into the countryside, it’s a powerful thing, is the camp. It had lots of kind of levels to it. He looks very familiar. That actually does look like Clifford. I think that looks a bit like Clifford Seddon. Clifford Seddon enjoyed camp life with his friends so much… that he’d already signed up for the 1940 camp the next year, even though war loomed ever closer. Although it was a very dark time, I suppose, it was still, you know, we’re going to go next year. So the idea of this suddenly coming to a halt was extremely, you know, difficult for kids. Everybody thought it was going to be next year, the 1940, because we actually set camp up for 1940. When that camp was cancelled, Clifford Seddon signed up to the RAF, aged just 16. In March 1944, he would be killed in a Lancaster bomber on a mission over Frankfurt. Places like Salford Lads Club, which offered a place for young men and boys to learn, to sort of get involved in recreational activities such as boxing and football, they were given a space outside their particularly hard lives to just be boys and be lads and keep out of trouble in a way. You can see the joy on their faces and it just makes you feel quite happy that if they do go to war and if they’re about to have their whole lives upturned and changed, that they’ve experienced a day just full of simple joy and simple pleasures like this. As soon as I came through the door, it seemed to me like one of the most special places I’d ever seen. You were waiting to get to the age of 13 so that you could join. you come through the door and games to play. It was something that everybody, every boy in the area looked forward to doing, joining Salford Lads Club. It was the place to be. Long may it continue. By the late summer of 1939, the tents of Salford Lads Club had long been packed away. English cricket fans endured the rain cheerfully. The test series against the West Indies was going their way. But due to the imminent outbreak of war, the cricket was suddenly abandoned. War is yet to be declared, but the government orders a frantic major-scale evacuation, sending millions of children and adults out of cities. Unknown. We children were told… Oh, it’s all going to be over by Christmas, and it’s a big adventure anyway. Always remember the gas mask. Hang on to your gas mask. On the 1st of September 1939… News arrived that Hitler’s armed forces had invaded Poland in the early hours of the morning. Propaganda showed a Britain prepared. If evidence of readiness for war is the sole remaining hope of peace, all bear witness that if war comes we shall not be found wanting. Troops were mobilised as Britain and France agreed a 48-hour hiatus before the official declaration of war. With German bombers capable of flattening entire cities and their civilians, the British nation pulled together as never before. The government commenced Operation Pied Piper, the biggest mass movement in British history. In just three days, three and a half million people were evacuated, including nearly a million unaccompanied children, sent from towns and cities across Britain to the countryside. These parents have not met the people who are receiving their children. They are entrusting their children, perhaps forever, to strangers. It’s the most incredible thing. Look at that boy, look at him, he tries to smile there. You know, they don’t know what’s going to happen to them. These little children being given their cups of tea or possibly cocoa. Hot drink is the answer to emotional trauma. Waving their handkerchiefs, steaming out of the British city into the British countryside. Look at their eyes. All these separations imposed by war. So that’s what you can see on their faces, separation. It’s such a powerful thing. Look, there’s a girl with her hand clinging onto her mum’s coat and putting her head next to her mum’s chest. She wants to be with her mum. And her mum’s upset as well. She’s been told by authorities this is safe and in a way the authorities are right. A lot of people were killed in the cities and these children who went, if they went to the countryside they survived. Many of us will have parents and grandparents who went through this in some way and were emotionally affected for life by it. Children living near the River Thames in London were considered high risk and were first in line for evacuation. Pat, aged 8, was living near the Woolwich Arsenal. George, aged 9, just a few miles down the road in Belvedere. To them… This footage stirs up strong memories of that journey. This takes me back and it’s in colour too. They’re carrying their cases and their pillowcases. Some of them carried stuff in pillowcases. I think I had a little bag, I carried a bag and a gas mask. I can always remember the gas mask. Hang on to your gas mask. I wondered where the hell we was going. That morning we went round to the school. I was evacuated with my mother and my small sister under the Mothers and Babies Scheme and we went round to Woodhill School in Woolwich. We had our labels tied on us and apparently I stamped my foot and had a tantrum because I said I wasn’t a piece of luggage and didn’t want to have a label tied on me. Yeah, that’s me. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Crowd, we could see them all pushing and shoving, and pushing onto the coach, going, get him, get him, get him. Then we was all fighting to get to the window to look back again to say ta-ra, you know. I remember one elder sister, Winnie, she’d come to the wave and say bye-bye. She was crying, that’s right. Ha ha! We didn’t know where we were going. The trains just went. You took with you a special toy and this is Ted and he was given to me by my dad. He’s very special, especially as my father’s submarine was sunk during the war. I wouldn’t part with him for anything. That’s me looking out the window. Watching the world go by. We stopped a couple of times, I remember that. Some had sandwiches, I don’t think we had sandwiches. We had to rely on the sandwiches we got from the people at the station and they passed the sandwiches through the window. Getting a drink. They were giving out brown paper bags with iron rations in them, tins of corned beef and tins of milk. Packets of biscuits and nuts and raisins and a big bar of chocolate. You can imagine what the children did with the chocolate. I knew that war meant fighting and that the grown-ups were worried, but we children were told, oh, it’s all going to be over by Christmas and it’s a big adventure anyway. We now got out. Cars and coaches, we was all distributed. You go in there, you go in there, go with that, go with them. And we was the last ones, us five, and we got in two different cars. Pat’s evacuation journey would take her to a grocer’s shop in Kent and then on to Wales. George would settle on a farm near Barnstable in Devon where he’d learn many new skills from the farmer’s nephew, Reg. I used to go with him ploughing, digging potatoes. That’s another laugh that was. He was ploughing up potatoes with old Prince one day and was behind picking all his potatoes up and, oh, back-aching job that is. Oh, he taught me everything, everything I knew. That’s why I missed him, I think. Children in those days used to play out in the street, but when we were evacuated, there were fields to run and play in. The river and the woods and it was so different. I cried when I came home. I think I cried all the way. I loved the fact you were here. I loved it. On Sunday the 3rd of September, Chamberlain learned that Britain’s final ultimatum to Hitler, to withdraw from Poland, had been ignored. He prepared to make the most important radio announcement of his life. We were in a very beautiful rural part of Britain, the New Forest, and my brother and I were playing in the garden. I remember it was full of Red Admiral butterflies floating over the garden. My mother shouted to us, you must come and hear the Prime Minister. We were told because it’s completely silence which we were. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. I remember he sounded like quite an old man. He sounded broken, really. His voice was broken and his style was not one of military victory. On the contrary, it was one of disaster. And he talked about the war, and he talked about how inevitable it was and how hard he had tried to avoid it and stop it. The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted. No people or country could feel itself safe and become intolerable. My mother broke into tears and we began to realise that something terrible had happened, even if we didn’t understand very well what it was. I remember my parents talking about it in a kind of depressed way, that everything had failed, that that’s what war is. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all… Play your part with calmness and courage. Shortly after the announcement, the first air raid siren in wartime Britain was heard. As the blackout began, so did a new era, as Britain stepped towards an uncertain future. The 1930s was not always a preparation for war. It was also a preparation for peace. Even though we think of it as the decade preparing for war, most ordinary people were not concerned with war until war actually affected them. Only good thing that came out of it… was that no one would go back to the poverty of the 1930s and the depression that was on the flip side of what was known as a prosperous and socially liberating decade. The 30s is such a divided decade and you see those contradictions being played out. And it’s no wonder we’re now looking back to the 30s to try and understand more about our own situation and some of the threats that we’re currently engaging with or facing. We get this emotional, vivid sense of life in the 1930s, in all its human, colorful glory. Suddenly there’s this coming alive of sensation and putting the emotions back into history. And putting the color back into films is really very much the same experience. It makes people seem closer to us. It makes it easier for us to feel that they might have been feeling things that we can recognize. We humans have history, and history isn’t something that’s separate from us. History is… in us.