Into Battle The BBC at War

The Second World War was reaching towards its climax.

The Red Army was turning the tide on the Eastern Front.

The Western Allies were on the offensive.

GUNFIRE

The shells are whistling overhead now, just listen to them.

The Paratroops are landing. They're landing all round me, as I speak.

So put up the "V" where they'll see it, as the sign of the V Army.

The BBC were starting to win the war of words against the enemy abroad,

but it had yet to win the trust of the politicians

and the generals at home,

or the hearts and minds of the British people.

These are today's main events.

It knew what it wanted to tell them,

but not always what they wanted to hear.

The BBC were still remote - "theirs" not "ours".

The broadcasters faced a multitude of challenges on every front -

many barriers to breach, and there was not much time.

It was 1943.

Britain had been at war since September 1939 -

more than three years in which the BBC had sought to establish itself

as a vital public service.

It had made some progress, but not enough.

It had acquired a huge audience in Britain and around the world,

but it was still regarded with suspicion by politicians

and as a threat by the military.

The stage was set for a drama that would shape the world

and could be the making or the breaking of the BBC.

On the 16th of January, 1943,

a young man who happened to have a fear of flying became

the first BBC correspondent to be assigned to the Royal Air Force.

My father, Richard Dimbleby,

was deputed by the BBC to fly with 106 Squadron in a Lancaster bomber,

piloted by a man who would soon acquire fame

as the leader of the Dambusters' raid -

Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

Precociously aware of the potential of radio,

Gibson insisted that the BBC man

should fly in his aircraft and none other.

The Berlin raid was a big show, as heavy bomber operations go.

For me, it was a pretty hair-raising experience,

though I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

To get a good view of the squadron

as it flew over the North Sea towards Berlin,

Dimbleby sat down at the front of the plane, with the bomb aimer.

As they got up towards cruising height,

he switched on his oxygen supply.

A little later, he felt drowsy and soon afterwards, slumped sideways.

One way or another, he had managed to kink the line

linking the cylinder of oxygen to his face mask.

He soon recovered, but it was not a very auspicious beginning.

We knew well enough when we were approaching Berlin.

There was a complete ring of powerful searchlights.

There was also intense flak.

For a moment, it seemed impossible that we could miss it.

Score after score of firebombs went down,

and all over the dark face of the German capital,

these great incandescent flower beds spread themselves.

But I couldn't help wondering whether anywhere

in the area of its devastation,

such a man as Hitler might be cowering in a shelter.

We turned away from Berlin at last.

It seemed we were there for an age.

It was not only an eye-opener for the correspondent,

but for his listeners.

We came back across the North Sea,

exchanged greetings of the day with...

It was their first chance to hear on radio what it was like

to witness Germany under bombardment from the air.

"Through hardship to the stars" is the RAF motto.

I understand the hardship now,

and I am proud to have seen the stars with them.

Dimbleby's account of the bombing raid on Berlin

was judged a success,

notably by those who mattered in the military.

One more barrier had toppled.

Gibson, who at the age of 24

was a powerful voice already in Bomber Command,

was well pleased with Dimbleby's broadcast.

So too was the RAF.

As a result, his maiden flight was the first of many he was to take.

A little later, he was joined by two more BBC Air Correspondents,

but he was the only one of them to survive

in what was the most dangerous and later,

the most controversial campaign of the war.

For the BBC at war,

there was another barrier to batter - on the Home Front.

To earn the blessing as well as the respect of those

who kept the home fires burning,

the broadcaster had to offer what they wanted,

as well as what they needed.

And that meant entertainment, as well as news -

a little pleasure to assuage the pain.

For this reason, the BBC's talent -

men and women who could offer a measure of light relief

from the tribulations of war -

were evacuated en masse from London,

for fear that a stray bomb might fall on Broadcasting House

and take them off air.

The team found themselves on a train to Wales.

432 comics, actors, singers, musicians,

their assorted wives and children

and 17 dogs, an unspecified number of cats and a parrot.

Their destination, Bangor.

This is the Happidrome!

MUSIC: Happidrome Theme

When the motley crew of metropolitan talent alighted here,

they were not universally greeted with open arms.

In particular, the chapel-goers of North Wales

apparently were not at all enamoured

by the sight of women wearing trousers

and smoking in public.

# It's that man again It's that man again

# Yes Tommy Handley is here

# He'll do his best With all his zest

# To lift your troubles Right off your chest... #

To meet popular demand,

the variety department had to put on more and more programmes.

Some performers did up to ten shows a week...

..all with hardly any rehearsal.

Listeners loved them.

-TTFN.

-EIEAMS.

What's that, sir?

Ee, If Ever A Man Suffered!

LAUGHTER

Tommy Handley's gently subversive show, It's That Man Again,

made him the most popular comedian in the land.

-Oh, I say, Sam! This is a bit thick.

-What is, boss?

It's an envelope full of fog!

# Rise and shine and say good morning... #

When it came to popular music, however,

the BBC found it far harder to accommodate the nation's taste.

To a great degree, the BBC was still permeated

by the austere prejudices of its founder, John Reith -

and the controller of programmes, one Basil Nicholls,

shared his mentor's conviction

that the BBC should be

"a moral, spiritual and aesthetic guardian of the nation".

Music is an ennobling, spiritual force

which should influence the life of every listener.

It is the BBC's policy to exclude crooning.

Difficult to define, but easily recognisable in various forms,

such as sub-tone, falsetto and other modes of effeminate singing.

The jazzing of dance and classical tunes,

or the borrowing or adaptation of them -

this is normally quite unacceptable.

Each example must be reviewed

and arbitrary decisions taken regarding inclusion or exclusion.

Recognising that there are degrees of adaptation,

ranging from the innocuous to the obscene.

MUSIC: V Stands For Victory by Margaret Eaves

In the case specifically of dance music,

the BBC was confronted by a dilemma.

Dancing had become the rage.

Ministers were delighted.

Here was an innocent pleasure that would cheer the masses

and with a bit of luck, inspire them to work harder, as well.

The BBC's top brass did not share this enthusiasm.

As it was government policy

to promote this form of mass entertainment,

the BBC had no choice but to embrace it as well.

But it did so reluctantly -

and when, from their high-minded perspective,

music seemed suggestive, or liable to promote licentiousness,

the nation's moral guardians pounced with a vengeance.

Now, this you could hear.

JAUNTY DANCE TUNE PLAYS

So, that was fine.

But this - wait for it - wasn't.

# There's a star spangled banner waving somewhere

# In a distant land so many miles away

# Only Uncle Sam's great heroes get to go there... #

The Star-Spangled Banner, banned.

The BBC's taste tsars may have had rhyme or reason,

but in the spirit of "never apologise, never explain",

they didn't.

MUSIC: We'll Meet Again by Vera Lynn

There were few limits to the censoriousness

that infected the upper echelons of Broadcasting House.

Even Vera Lynn did not escape.

The controller of programmes, Basil Nicholls,

judged that performances by women singers like her

were "insincere" and "overly sentimental".

The board of governors went further.

Her very popular programme Sincerely Yours

provoked these denizens of good taste to sniff,

"Sincerely Yours, deplored.

"Popularity noted".

But, perhaps because of the possible backlash,

they refrained from taking an axe to the Forces' favourite.

# There'll be bluebirds over

# The white cliffs of Dover... #

There'll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover

was written to sustain the hard-pressed morale of a nation standing alone.

But by 1942,

the nation was no longer alone.

There had been an invasion -

not from Germany, but the United States.

MUSIC: Over There by Glenn Miller

# Over there, over there

# Send the word, send the word over there

# That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming

# The drums rum-tumming everywhere. #

Soon after Pearl Harbor, the first GIs began to pour into Britain

to prepare for the eventual liberation of Europe.

By 1943, South Devon was a billet for at least 30,000 US servicemen.

The village of Slapton became a US dormitory.

To make way for the strangers from the New World,

the residents resigned themselves to moving out

and finding a bed elsewhere.

For the BBC, this influx of young Americans

posed a challenge of a rather different kind.

When the American troops arrived, they were given radios -

one for every 100 soldiers.

The radios could only pick up the BBC -

news, entertainment, music.

Music while you work will be played to you

by AJ Pearl and his banjo octet.

The GIs were not impressed.

News, OK.

Music, dire.

Entertainment, dreary.

Something needed to be done.

All information is that

American troops consider the BBC's programmes "lousy".

Even the news, which one might suppose would form a common ground

to all English-speaking peoples,

is unacceptable to American troops

when presented in the British manner.

How to give a party, including how not to.

Also, how and how not to be a guest.

The GIs weren't impressed.

Indeed, so powerful was their disaffection

that their commanding officers feared they would seek out

enemy radio stations.

Anything, except the BBC.

The Corporation's cultural tsars were at a loss.

The BBC was in a quandary.

On the one hand, it wanted to preserve its broadcasting monopoly.

On the other, it was important, not least for their morale,

that the GIs actually enjoyed listening to the radio.

The solution - let the Americans have their own station, which was

fine until word got out and British listeners started to tune

into the American Forces Network as well, and loved what they heard.

The BBC was losing out.

ANNOUNCER: This is the American Forces Network.

It's one big package of words and music and laughter,

delivered to you by the stars from whom you want to hear.

BIG BAND MUSIC PLAYS

The great attraction was the big band sound, which the

BBC's audience had rarely, if ever, heard before.

The likes of Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Count Basie

and Duke Ellington, household names in America,

mesmerised those who tuned in to the American Forces Network, AFN.

Word spread, and before long the BBC found itself with a rival,

which, ironically, it had helped establish and operate.

Soon, some five million British citizens, many of them young

men and women, were deserting the BBC for the new American station.

Facing this haemorrhage of listeners,

one BBC panjandrum proposed a desperate remedy.

"The BBC should take every step to check

"up on the number of civilian listeners, but discreetly,

"so as not to draw attention to the rival network.

"If it was found the numbers were considerable,

"then we should ask the Americans to take steps to reduce the power

"of the transmitters, or take whatever steps may be appropriate."

But that didn't work.

In the end, the BBC would have to face an unpalatable truth -

it would not be possible to control public taste for much longer.

To stay in business, the national broadcaster would have to go

with the flow and not play Canute with the tide of popular taste.

CHORAL MUSIC

While their bosses in Broadcasting House wrestled with their

personal prejudices, the BBC's war correspondents were in the county

of Oxfordshire, on the cusp of a new era in broadcast journalism.

AIR RAID SIREN WAILS

ARTILLERY FIRE

On the 1st of March 1943, the Allies mounted a secret military exercise

across great swathes of southern England -

a trial run for the liberation of occupied Europe.

The BBC team was with them, embedded with the British Army.

But this was only because the military had finally given them

a chance to prove themselves.

It had not been easy.

The secret exercise was codenamed "Spartan", and Oxfordshire

was chosen as the location for a mock battle against a mock enemy.

The BBC had to fight the military to get permission for its

reporters to cover the operation, and when the authorities finally relented,

Richard Dimbleby was deputed to lead the reporting team.

It was a crucial moment - a chance for the BBC to prove itself.

Get it right, and the way would be opened to an entirely new

kind of front-line reporting.

Get it wrong, and the BBC would be out in the cold.

Almost a year earlier, the broadcaster had

come in for severe censure from those with authority over it.

One of the BBC's senior controllers, AP Ryan,

who had himself been seconded from Whitehall, noted gloomily -

"We have been criticised by the Board of Governors,

"by the Minister of Information and by Number 10,

"for not having a high enough standard of news observing.

"We must, you will agree, admit that this criticism is justified."

ARTILLERY FIRE

Ryan's rebuke had galvanised the BBC into a far more coherent

approach to the task of covering the conflict.

By the time of Spartan, the Corporation had established

a much larger team of professional correspondents.

Better organised, better trained and better equipped.

Everything was done as though for real.

Engineers recorded the sounds of battle.

Reporters gave eyewitness accounts which were flashed through to

Broadcasting House.

There, every word was scrutinised, passed through the censors

and then condensed into a radio newsreel which was rushed

through to meet the mock deadlines of a mock bulletin.

In the pile of scripts thus processed,

was one my father sent back from a liberated city.

"I am talking at a street corner in Oxford...

"which was entered by our forces, last night, after the enemy

"had evacuated the city.

"The people of Oxford are taking it with admirable calm.

"While the enemy was withdrawing from the city,

"they remained inside their homes, hearing the crushing explosions as

"the lovely old bridges of the city are destroyed, one after another."

After it was over, the BBC played back its Spartan war report

to the Secretary of State for War, and the military high command,

and then waited anxiously for their verdict.

It was unanimous.

After three and a half years from the start of the Second World War,

the BBC was now free to report the war on a far greater scale.

It was a real breakthrough.

The BBC's War Reporting Unit, as it was called,

could now plan for the next phase of the war.

With Supreme Allied Headquarters set up on the edge of London

in Bushy Park,

and more than a million and a half American troops assembling

in Britain to rehearse for D-Day, the BBC's men were also in training.

STAG BELLOWS

Learning how to interpret signals, distinguish between different types

of weaponry, and to negotiate rough country with a pack on their backs.

It was, though, one thing to be an officer and to wear uniform,

another to play the part to perfection.

The BBC reporters were instructed in military etiquette -

the general salute.

On the command, "Salute",

you salute on the third and last movement of the present,

and you drop the salute on the second

and last movement of the slope.

Thus, sergeant major says, "Present arms."

"Slope arms."

History doesn't record whether anyone ever got it right.

But this attention to detail paid off.

The radio men had been regarded as meddlesome amateurs.

Now they were increasingly treated with respect,

as valued comrades in a common venture.

The BBC boss who had been on the receiving end of that

coruscating review of the BBC's war coverage two years earlier,

now held his head high as he prepared his team for battle.

"We have a world audience...

"and we mean to give it the fullest and the most vivid

"and alive account of coming operations that we can.

"Let pride in the achievement of our armies come through,

"but never seek to 'jazz up' a plain story.

"Events will contain their own drama.

"You handful of men have been chosen to undertake the most

"important assignment so far known to broadcasting.

"Good luck."

-ANNOUNCER:

-General Overseas Service of the BBC,

broadcasting to the Far East,

the Middle East, the Near East...

ANNOUNCER SPEAKS IN DANISH

For the BBC,

the war was not only about its reporters on the Allied front-line.

There were also the men and women on the other side of the line,

entombed by the Nazi Occupation and longing to be free.

ANNOUNCER SPEAKS IN SPANISH

By 1944, the number of foreign language services

operated by the BBC had grown from seven at the start

of the conflict to no less than 46 networks.

And it was one of these that inspired what became perhaps

the war's most memorable symbol of resistance.

It began here, in the Ministry of Information

when a young Belgian refugee,

fleeing from the Gestapo for helping the Resistance, met an official

from the Ministry, and said, "What we need is something to unite us.

"Something like a symbol."

Word of that reached the head of the BBC's Belgian service,

Victor de Laveleye, and he came up with the idea of the letter V.

First letter of his Christian name, Victor, and of course, victory.

# When the Fuhrer says We is the master race

# V heil, heil

# Right in the Fuhrer's face... #

De Laveleye urged his listeners to adopt the V sign as their own

form of silent resistance.

MUSIC: Symphony Number 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven

Another member of the BBC staff took this campaign a step further.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, very familiar, of course.

It reverberated across the airwaves with a very special resonance.

A BBC news editor, Douglas Ritchie, had noticed that the

"b-b-b-boom" precisely replicated the "dot dot dot dash"

of the Morse code for the letter V - V for victory.

So he turned it into a jingle at the start of his programme,

and thus the German composer's famous Fifth became

an indelible symbol of British defiance.

MUSIC: FIFTH SYMPHONY JINGLE

Ritchie broadcast on the BBC's European Service under

the pseudonym, Colonel Britton.

You in Europe who listen to me now...

know that we are working and preparing for the day

when we shall cross that narrow strip of Channel

and the North Sea, and help you drive the Germans out.

If you and your friends are in a cafe and a German comes in,

tap out the V sign all together.

Have you got it?

HE TAPS OUT V SIGN IN MORSE

The response was remarkable. The V went viral,

spreading across all occupied Europe.

A chance to scrawl a secret "up yours" to the Nazis.

Inspired by this, Ritchie wrote a pamphlet entitled,

Broadcasting As A Weapon of War.

"After 20 months of war, it is now clear that there are in Europe

"an enormous majority of people who wish to see the Allies win the war.

"The BBC's broadcasts to the occupied countries are listened

"to by a remarkably high percentage of the population.

"It is almost impossible to exaggerate

"the significance of these two facts.

"We have here, if we develop it, and make use of it,

"a weapon of war of an entirely new kind.

"No such power has ever been in the hands of man before."

For Ritchie, the possibilities seemed boundless.

"The Germans are short of oil.

"At a word from London,

"sugar can be slipped into petrol tanks all over Europe,

"and buildings where oil and other petrol are stored

"can be set on fire.

"The Germans are short of rubber. At a word from London,

"motor tyres can be slashed across the Continent."

It was a trifle far-fetched,

and in fact those ideas were never broadcast.

Nonetheless, Ritchie, aka Colonel Britton,

was able to promote the V campaign on air,

by suggesting a somewhat subtler campaign of sabotage.

Colonel Britton liked to call his growing number of listeners his

"V Army", and he gave them a vital task to perform.

Amongst other things,

urging factory workers under German occupation to cut their output.

A go-slow to beat Hitler.

In a belated counterattack, the Germans tried to claim that the

V for Victory sign was in fact theirs, which fooled no-one.

However, Colonel Britton's radio campaign eventually ran

out of fresh ideas and it was dropped.

Not that that mattered too much.

By this time, it had played its part in securing a European

audience of at least 35 million people a day,

who defied the Nazis by tuning in to the BBC.

And with Beethoven's help, the solemn V for Victory drumbeat

continued to echo across the airwaves for the rest of the war.

MAN SINGS IN FRENCH TO TUNE OF FIFTH SYMPHONY

The BBC's European Service also had a more tangible purpose,

notably for the French.

MAN ON RADIO: Ici Londres, et vive la France.

Ici Londres gave refugees in Britain a chance to send

messages back to their loved ones in France.

But some of these began to sound very odd indeed.

MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH

One evening in the summer of 1943,

listeners to the BBC's French service heard a most peculiar message -

"Le sucrier est entre les deux tasses."

The sugar bowl is between the two cups.

It may have sounded like any other personal message from refugees

in Britain, back home to their loved ones in occupied France.

But this one was different.

In this case, the sugar bowl and the two cups,

a coded message to the Resistance in this area that a cache

of weapons was soon to be dropped in a field just outside this town.

The codename for the drop was Operation Roach,

which was masterminded by the Special Operations Executive.

Established in 1940, the SOE's mission was sabotage.

Blowing up trains, bridges and factories,

and promoting subversion and guerrilla warfare.

It was a high-risk enterprise.

On the night of the 14th of July,

a small group of resistance fighters led by a local teacher,

Marcel Herard, was waiting at the drop site.

AEROPLANES DRONE

The sound of aeroplane engines.

Then the parachutes floating to the ground.

Seven crates laden with pistols, grenades, explosives

and Sten guns, to be collected up and carted off well before dawn.

The following morning, Marcel Herard's wife,

who was also a teacher, brought her pupils to the same field,

but while they played, she scoured the area to make sure that

all evidence of the previous night's haul had been removed.

As the preparations for D-Day intensified,

the SOE wanted more and more airtime to contact the Resistance.

But with the airwaves reaching saturation point,

the announcers threatened mutiny.

"I rather think this is getting beyond a joke.

"It seems the general opinion that any announcer, good,

"bad or indifferent, can stand up in front of the microphone for 30

"to 40 minutes and read, without a break, some 300 to 400 messages.

"It is an established fact that a really first-class announcer

"at the BBC has had enough after 20 minutes."

By this time, listeners to the BBC's French Service were being

deluged with personal messages.

Some genuine, some coded. It was an avalanche of gobbledegook.

For instance, what were they to make of random nonsenses like

"Le lapin a bu un aperitif" - the rabbit has drunk an aperitif?

Or "Mademoiselle caresse le nez de son chien" -

Mademoiselle is kissing the nose of her dog?

In London, the Ministry of Information set up

a meeting between the BBC and the SOE, to solve the conflict

between the secret saboteurs and the public broadcasters.

In a really significant shift of attitude,

the Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken,

who took a refreshingly unorthodox view of his role,

sided with the BBC against his government colleagues in the SOE.

The BBC was right, he argued, to insist that its principal role

was to report the news, not to send secret messages.

And the Minister prevailed.

On the other side of the line in Berlin,

the Ministry of Propaganda was up against it,

though the Nazi call sign sounded as confident as ever.

ANNOUNCER: Germany calling, Germany calling, Germany calling.

The notorious voice of William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw.

Once a thorn in the BBC's, side, his lies

and distortions no longer carried conviction.

Though the German armies were on the retreat,

Lord Haw-Haw continued to claim the opposite.

German troops have succeeded in surrounding

and annihilating a large enemy force.

The Soviet losses in dead have been at least three or four

times as great.

In fact, the Red Army had turned the tide on the Russian Front.

By the summer of 1943,

only the most gullible listener believed anything the Nazis said.

Thanks, not least, to the BBC,

which was now winning the war of words hands down.

On all fronts, the Allies were on the offensive.

They destroyed the Axis armies in North Africa.

By July, they were in Sicily.

In September, the Italian army laid down its arms.

The Germans were left on their own to hold the Third Reich's southern flank.

The Allies began to advance on Rome.

The Wehrmacht mounted a stubborn resistance

and held the high ground to the south of the capital.

To break through, the Allies needed reinforcements.

On the 22nd of January 1944,

Allied troops stormed ashore here on the beach at Anzio, and which

was a measure of the new respect with which the military regarded

the broadcaster, the BBC's Wynford Vaughan-Thomas was with them.

VAUGHAN-THOMAS: Then down went the ramp and we stepped off.

I braced myself for the shock because not far from us,

the men were going in up to their armpits, but we were lucky.

As the troops landed, they advanced into thick woodland,

but soon came under heavy fire.

Suddenly, there came a high-pitched whistle,

and a dull shaking thud among the pines.

It was shells. The Germans had woken up at last.

SHELLS THUD

To record the Anzio landings, the BBC had a new piece of kit

that was to transform radio's coverage of the war.

It was called The Mighty Midget.

And this was it. Mighty perhaps, but not exactly a midget.

It weighed in at 42lbs, just about you could carry it on your back.

But they were also very fragile.

You had to cut the disc as you were speaking through the microphone.

It had to be wound up, but otherwise it was quite sophisticated.

It had two settings.

Normal, which is if you wanted to be heard over the sound of battle,

and Distant, if you wanted to hear the entire pandemonium of war.

The Mighty Midget transformed radio war reporting.

You could be with the soldiers in a slit trench at the front,

right in the thick of it.

It was a real broadcasting revolution.

Now I'm going to lift the microphone over the parapet

and hold it up for you to hear

the actual sound rhythm of the Anzio beachhead front at night.

GUNFIRE AND SHELLING

As the Allies pressed the offensive,

the BBC correspondents were with them all the way,

notably at the Battle of Monte Cassino.

The Germans held the monastery on the commanding heights

which blocked the way to the capital.

It was not only a massive obstacle, it was also virtually impregnable.

It was four months before the Allies were in a position

to make the final assault on the summit,

but on the 18th of May,

Godfrey Talbot was with the Polish Second Corps

as it made the final fight to the top.

Men fought till they dropped.

Dropped exhausted, or dropped killed or wounded.

GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS

They had to get through appalling mountain tracks

with the Germans pouring streams of fire upon them at every move.

GUNFIRE CONTINUES

In many positions,

you could by day remain alive only in a hole in the ground.

To show yourself and move in daylight

in these forward positions was death.

Eventually, on the 18th of May,

Monte Cassino was taken by the Allied forces.

I was at a Polish headquarters on the morning of the capture

when the news came through.

"We're in the abbey.

"Monastery Hill is occupied."

It was a historic moment and the drama was heightened

when an officer put the good news right in front of my eyes.

He handed me a small piece of paper.

"It's come from the monastery by one of our carrier pigeons," he said.

And I looked at the crumpled scrap of paper.

All that was on it was one large V for Victory.

18 days later, Rome was liberated.

TRIUMPHANT SHOUTING

I'm standing in the middle of the Piazza Venezia,

on this day of our occupation.

The windows have been opened

and there's come out onto the balcony, not Mussolini,

but three Allied soldiers

and they're waving the Italian and the Allied flags.

But this victory was rapidly overshadowed

by the moment for which everyone had waited - the launch of D-Day.

For the BBC's War Reporting Unit, it would be the test to beat all tests.

Just after midnight on the 6th of June, 1944,

my father was on the edge of this runway at RAF Harwell

to record the departure of troops from the 6th Airborne Division

as they took off for Normandy

to become the first Allied soldiers to land in occupied France.

ENGINES HUM

The first aircraft that is going to lead the very front

in the early hours is turning onto the end of the tarmac

to make its takeoff.

Taking off from here, loaded with parachutists.

Taking with it perhaps the hopes and the fears

and the prayers of millions of people in this country,

who sleep tonight not knowing

that this mighty operation is taking place.

-ENGINES ROAR

-There she goes now.

The first aircraft leading the attack on Europe.

Dimbleby was one of the 17 BBC correspondents

who sailed with the Navy, flew with the RAF,

jumped with Paras, landed with gliders,

or hit the Normandy beaches with the Allied troops.

In the history of radio, there'd been nothing like it.

GUNFIRE

We're over the enemy coast now.

Red light, green light and out, out.

Get on! Get out! Get out!

Out, out into the air over France.

We're jumping, in fact, into fields covered with poles,

but I hit my 'chute and lower my kit bag

which suspends on the end of a 40-foot rope from my harness

and then the ground comes up to hit me.

On the evening of the 6th of June, 1944,

the British public heard the first edition of a new programme

that was to go out every night

immediately after the nine o'clock news.

It was called War Report -

first-hand accounts from BBC correspondents on every front.

Vivid, accurate, and authoritative,

the programme had an electrifying impact and in the process,

served hugely to enhance the BBC's status

as a genuine public service broadcaster.

War Report number one - the story of D-Day.

The Paratroops are landing.

They're landing all round me as I speak.

GUNFIRE

They've come in from the sea, showering in.

There's no other word for it.

On D-Day, the BBC's correspondents sent back

more than 50 reports to London.

Vivid and up to the minute, War Report was a must-listen programme.

Hello, BBC. This is Richard Dimbleby.

The British, Canadian and American troops

who landed on the coast of France in broad daylight this morning,

are already several miles inland.

They're pushing steadily on,

backed by the tremendous firepower

of heavy British and United States warships,

and covered by an ever-changing, but ever-present umbrella of fighters.

Within days of the landing,

General Montgomery, commanding the Allied forces on the ground,

had established his headquarters in a chateau in the village of Creully.

It was crucial for the broadcasters to site themselves nearby

to get the news back fast.

Montgomery gave permission for the BBC

to take over part of another chateau in the village,

a base from which front-line reports could be transmitted

almost immediately to radio stations all over the world.

I'm lying down at full length here, in the cornfield.

Just in the hedges around me, I can see many men taking shelter

behind a bank while this terrific barrage goes on around us.

The shells are whistling overhead now. Just listen to them.

GUNFIRE AND SHELLING

By this point,

the little studio here had become a global broadcasting hub -

the only way of telling the world

what was going on on the Normandy front.

The road into Tilly is a road of devastation.

It's lined at intervals with soldiers' graves.

Some British, but mostly German.

Every yard of this road was shouting at you

that it had been fought for bitterly.

It was a ghastly, a sickening sight.

I've never seen a place so completely obliterated.

Tilly has just ceased to exist.

Allied broadcasters trooped in here

to tell their stories to millions upon millions of listeners,

in the United States, in Canada,

Australia, India, the Pacific and not least into occupied Europe.

The BBC was broadcasting in more than 40 languages

and in Britain alone, it had at least 15 million listeners.

The BBC not only served a worldwide audience, but Montgomery as well.

The BBC's Frank Gillard was the go-between.

Soon after D-Day, Montgomery summoned Gillard

and said, "I want to use the BBC to reach my troops quickly."

Gillard said, "Can I use your phone?"

He was put through to the War Office, to the BBC,

who recorded the pep talk

and the two men sat and listened to it

as it went out half an hour later.

To every officer and man,

whatever may be his rank or employment,

I send my grateful thanks

and my best wishes for the future.

Much yet remains to be done, but together, you and I,

we will do it and we will see this thing through to the end.

The BBC had come a long way since the beginning of the conflict

when it had been regarded by the military

with suspicion and hostility.

Montgomery now called it "the fourth arm of the war."

As the Allies advanced slowly but inexorably towards Germany,

the peoples of occupied Europe

came to rely on the BBC's European Service

to discover when they might be liberated.

Within Germany itself,

sensing that they were doomed,

Hitler's subjects began to do likewise.

RADIO BROADCASTS IN GERMAN

By the autumn of 1944,

the German people were tuning their People's Radios

away from Berlin towards London,

from where the BBC's German Service was reaching an audience

estimated at some 15 million people.

But to listen to the BBC was a risk.

The radio carried a health warning.

"Think of this.

"It is a crime against the national security of our people

"to listen to a foreign broadcast.

"It is a Fuhrer order punishable by imprisonment and hard labour."

No hint that Hitler might lose the war

was ever allowed to seep onto the German airwaves.

No setbacks were reported.

Victory remained inevitable, if somewhat delayed.

If you were British, it was a nonsense to relish

and the BBC made the most of it.

With the Allies now all but assured of victory,

the BBC German Service was taunting its listeners

by reminding them how many months had passed

since the year in which Hitler had promised them final victory - 1940.

Only the most besotted Nazi could now ignore the facts,

however unpalatable they might be.

As the Allies drove more deeply into Europe,

the BBC teams were with them.

Paris has been liberated. A communique just received...

And now that that they were more often reporting success than failure,

far freer to tell it how it really was.

In March 1945, as the Allies began the crossing of the Rhine,

BBC correspondents were on the ground and in the air.

The engines are being revved up to their full peak and we're off.

My father was in an RAF plane, towing a glider,

filled with Airborne troops.

This time, in marked contrast

to the bombing of Berlin over two years ago,

he had the Mighty Midget to record his impressions directly onto disc.

It made a huge difference.

The Rhine lies left and right across our path below us,

shining in the sunlight,

and the whole of this mighty Airborne army

is now crossing and filling the whole sky.

Our glider's gone. We'd better go.

There she goes, down behind us.

I'm sorry if I'm shouting. This is a very tremendous sight.

Ahead of us, another pillar of black smoke marks the spot

where an aircraft has gone down and yet another one.

It's a Stirling, a British Stirling.

It's going down with flames coming out from under its belly.

A few days after crossing the Rhine,

the British Second Army was on its way towards the port of Hamburg.

On the 15th of April,

my father was relaxing with other correspondents at a forward base

when word reached them of a German prison camp a little way up the road

that was about to be liberated.

He decided to go there with the British troops.

They entered the gates of Belsen.

Belsen was still in the hands of the SS,

but the Camp Commandant, Josef Kramer,

who was later to be hanged as a war criminal, had agreed to surrender

to allow soldiers and doctors from Montgomery's Second Army

to come in here with food and medical supplies for the inmates.

Inside they found a charnel house of sick, dying and dead people.

My father bore witness to it all

and then returned to the forward headquarters of the Second Army

to record in unsparing detail what he had seen and heard.

Here, over an acre of ground, lay dead and dying people.

You could not see which was which,

except perhaps by a convulsive movement

or the last quiver of a sigh from a living skeleton too weak to move.

A mother, driven mad,

screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child

and thrust the tiny mite into his arms and ran off, crying terribly.

He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.

This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.

It was the first time that any such thing had been broadcast by the BBC

and those who heard it would never forget it.

But it very nearly wasn't transmitted.

At first, Dimbleby's bosses in London

thought that the truth that he had spoken was so terrible

that it shouldn't be shared with the British public.

It was only when my father, who was by then a household name,

said that he would never broadcast again

unless they changed their minds, that they finally relented.

Belsen was the first camp to be liberated by the British.

Tens of thousands perished, a great many of whom were Jews.

My father's report was testament to the Holocaust.

Just over two weeks later, the Third Reich finally crumbled.

Hello, BBC. This is Chester Wilmot,

speaking from Field Marshal Montgomery's tactical headquarters

on a high, windswept hill

on the wild Luneburg Heath near the River Elbe.

It's 10 minutes past six on Friday, May the 4th.

The commanders of the German forces opposing Field Marshal Montgomery's 21st Army Group

have come to this headquarters today to surrender.

Another private war had also been won - the BBC versus Lord Haw-Haw.

William Joyce had retreated to Hamburg just before the surrender.

Lord Haw-Haw had finally given up predicting a mighty Nazi triumph.

Instead, he started to ramble on about the threat posed to Britain,

not by Hitler's 1,000 year Reich,

but by the United States and the Soviet Union.

To support him in this volte face,

he took to drinking prodigious quantities of alcohol.

Indeed, he took to the bottle big-time,

a fact which some listeners were to detect in his very final broadcast.

-SLURRING:

-This evening,

I am talking to you about Germany.

That is a concept that many of you may have failed to understand.

Let me tell you that, in Germany, there still remains

the spirit of unity and the spirit of strength.

Once he'd got all that off his chest,

William Joyce lay down his microphone and fled the city.

Soon afterwards, the Devonshires were here

with the BBC's Wynford Vaughan-Thomas in attendance.

Vaughan-Thomas could not resist.

He saw the Haw-Haw microphone and picked it up.

This is Germany calling.

Calling for the last time from Station Hamburg.

And tonight, you will not hear Views On The News by William Joyce.

For Mr Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw to most of us in Britain,

has been most unfortunately interrupted

in his broadcasting career.

And in his place, this is the BBC,

calling all the long-suffering listeners in Britain

who, for six years, have had to put up with the acid tones of Mr Joyce,

speaking over the same wavelengths that I'm using to talk to you now.

William Joyce would be no more than a footnote in the history

of the Second World War, but for the BBC, he had been an important one -

a real threat and a formidable challenge.

Now on behalf of his colleagues, Vaughan-Thomas had got his own back.

In Britain, the nation waited for the moment

when, no longer a matter of wonder or surprise,

the Prime Minister would take to the airwaves

to announce that the war was over.

BIG BEN STRIKES THE HOUR

The German State signed the act of unconditional surrender

of all German land, sea and air forces.

Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom!

God save the King!

CHEERING

My father was the BBC's man on the spot.

And the crowd is singing,

and this suddenly has become a very moving moment,

for Mr Churchill too is singing

and he is conducting the singing of this song.

Will you listen, please?

CROWD SINGS "LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY"

Here they come.

First, Her Majesty the Queen comes into view. Then the King.

The BBC did its bit.

Battered by bombs,

Broadcasting House was nonetheless bedecked with flags -

the emblems of the 22 nations

which had helped destroy the tyranny of Nazism.

For the BBC, as for the nation, it was a beginning as well as an end.

The nation had been transformed by the war and so had the BBC.

At the start of the conflict,

it had very little idea of where it was going or how to get there.

By the end, it had found the ways and means

to articulate the story of a nation at war

and had the confidence to do it.

In the process, the BBC had become embedded in the national psyche

as a genuine public service broadcaster.

The BBC had been moulded by the war.

Now, it faced the challenges of peace.

But that, as they say, is another story.