The Home Counties How We Won the War

September 3rd, 1939,

and families all over the country flock to their radios...

'I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received

'and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.'

In that brief moment, life in our country changed for ever.

World War Two had begun,

but victory wouldn't be assured by military might alone.

The Blitz, evacuation, rationing, the loss of loved ones -

the war on the home front meant that everyone had to do their bit.

From the country's women who took on everything -

farming, factory work, even flying spitfires -

to the nation's auxiliary firemen, who worked through the terror of countless air raids.

This is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

This is How We Won The War.

All across the UK, ordinary citizens played a vital role

in our country's war effort here at home.

I'm on a journey to discover their stories,

hearing about their lives and the incredible sacrifices they made

throughout the Second World War.

From the Midlands,

I'm continuing my journey south into the Home Counties.

I'll start in Buckinghamshire before heading on through Bedfordshire.

On today's programme,

I'll be uncovering the dark side of Britain's propaganda war.

By being all for Hitler, and really pro him,

they're managing to insert stories

which would undermine the German morale.

Trying my hand at using a weapon dreamt up by armchair scientists

under the control of Winston Churchill.

How's your throwing arm?

-Cricket was never my strong point, but you never know!

-We'll see.

THEY CHUCKLE

And recreating valuable work

carried out by some of the youngest troopers on the home front.

Everybody ready to get their hands dirty?

ALL: Yesss!

HE CHUCKLES

The countryside just to the North West of London

is, on the face of it, green, lush and peaceful,

but don't be fooled.

During the war, this whole region was a hive

of top-secret cloak and dagger activity.

Code breakers were at work cracking Nazi messages at Bletchley Park.

Secret communications were being broadcast

from tunnels in South Heighton.

And, in Cranleigh, potential saboteurs were being selected

for dangerous missions in occupied Europe.

The Firs Estate, in the tiny village of Whitchurch, may look ordinary,

but, in 1940, this became Churchill's Toyshop...

..a secret home to some of Britain's top technicians and scientists,

all gathered to create cutting-edge weapons.

Few in the village could have imagined

what was really going on here,

but a local schoolboy nearly blew the lid off the whole operation.

-Gordon!

-Hello, Jules!

-Nice to see you, sir!

-Nice to see you.

'Gordon Rogers was just a lad when, in 1945,

'he and three friends stumbled across its explosive secrets.'

Well, there was a buzz at school

that something was going on at Whitchurch,

and a young chap called Culverhouse,

same class as me, said, "Let's cycle over there and have a look."

There were two Nissen huts, we went in and we were amazed to find

a pile of blacker bombards, anti-tank shells,

and boxes of something we hadn't seen before,

which turned out to be L-delay fuses.

I tied a couple of bombs to the cycle,

put a box of fuses in the pannier bag,

and cycled back through Aylesbury to Tring.

After detonating two pounds of explosives in a farmer's field,

schoolboy Gordon was arrested and bound over to keep the peace,

but little did he know then what he'd discovered.

I didn't find out till many years later

that it was MD1, Churchill's Toyshop.

Now, what did the MD stand for?

Ministry of Defence One.

Winston Churchill wanted a regulation-free department

where weapons could be invented without too much red tape

to try and accelerate the introduction of new weapons.

Churchill hired explosives expert Major Millis Jefferies to run MD1.

Amongst civilian recruits was the editor of Armchair Scientist, Stuart MacRae.

No expense was spared,

with a bottomless bank account at their disposal.

Stuart MacRae had unlimited access.

Any amount of funds he required whatsoever was available to him.

Soon, MD1 staff were spending every moment inventing ingenious weapons.

On the way home, they'd stop at the local pub

and they'd discuss further the ideas for weapons they were producing.

In fact, one of them is called the JW bomb,

the Johnny Walker bomb.

'Inside The Firs, Colonel Norman Bonney

'has a selection of MD1 weapons to show me.

'In their day, they were deadly, but, incredibly,

'their inventors often crafted them from everyday household goods.'

You've assembled a wonderful collection here, Norman.

What's in this box?

Well, this box was probably used

to advertise the wares among various units

so either it was used as a training aid

or, more likely, I think, to actually say what this organisation does.

Well, this looks quite exciting. What's this bizarre thing here?

-Can I take that out?

-Yes, please do.

It's quite heavy, isn't it? It's very heavy.

That's a limpet mine.

It's basically a magnetic charge.

You can stick that to a ship or a tank.

And, in fact, this design comes from a Woolworths' bowl.

HE CHUCKLES

'Prototypes were tested in Bedford baths,

'with porridge in place of explosives.

'But a sweet would prove key to the mine's inner workings.'

Now, this device used an aniseed ball, would you believe,

to provide the delay function that was required.

'The team discovered aniseed balls dissolved at a uniform rate,

'so would slowly soften

'and let whoever attached the bomb swim away.'

-It's proper Bond stuff, isn't it?

-Oh, absolutely.

McRae claims that 26 of their products actually got into service.

In fact, looking through their designs, their drawings,

you're probably looking at 250 different designs of viable munitions

that could have come out of this place.

'I'm going to put one of MD1's inventions to the test.

'Trevor Lawrence, an explosives expert, has offered to help.'

Now then, if anybody knows about sticky bombs, it's you.

-Well, allegedly!

-With a career in bomb disposal,

this must be a bit strange. You're used to taking bombs apart,

but here you are putting them back together!

Indeed, it's not something I'd normally do, but we'll have a go, certainly!

Over 2.5 million sticky bombs would be produced

for troops to use as anti-tank weapons.

They'd stick to whatever they were thrown at,

before detonating five seconds later.

Now, we've got a chance to see how effective these were.

I notice you've got a target set up overlooking the view.

I have indeed, how is your throwing arm?

-Cricket was never my strong point, but you never know!

-We'll see.

THEY CHUCKLE

'Today, Trevor's brought a flask

'the same size and volume as MD1 would have used,

'and filled it with petroleum jelly, roughly the same consistency

'as the explosives used in the original bomb.'

It won't go bang.

-But hopefully it'll stick!

-I, well... We'll see!

'Instead of the birdlime used in the original,

'we're using a strong adhesive.'

The gooey bit, look at that.

We really want to get as much on there as we can.

Winston Churchill was a big, big fan, he liked these a lot,

he thought this was a great idea.

The Army High Command not so much,

because if it sticks to a heavy battledress uniform,

once it sticks to you, it's not coming off.

OK, right, what do you think, enough?

Well, I think that's the best we're going to get it, so...

that's pretty sticky, let's have a go!

OK, so that's your panzer rolling over the hill.

So what you want is a nice good over arm throw,

hard as you can and try and get it on the outline of the tank there.

One, two, argh! Missed!

HE LAUGHS

I missed! The invasion would have been all over!

Right, I'm going to try one more.

Right, five seconds, here we go, one, two!

HE LAUGHS

-Do you know what?

-Look at that!

-That's fabulous, isn't it?

-I'm impressed.

It would have gone off, I know it'll fall off the target,

but it's done its job, hasn't it?

By now, it's detonated hard against the tank,

and it's either blown a hole in the side of the tank

or it's put enough stress wave into the tank

to put a scab off on the inside,

which is a bit of metal which would fly around inside,

which is going to be highly injurious to whoever's inside the tank, so that was good.

Now, Churchill's Toyshop is a place

that you clearly would have loved to work in.

Oh, yes, very much so.

I mean, they had sort of carte blanche

to let their imaginations run riot

and really develop some really, really interesting things.

It's been very interesting to see.

Do you think we'd have won the war without them?

Would have been a lot harder.

Certainly, without that sort of inventiveness,

it would have been a much, much harder job.

From Whitchurch, I'm heading on to Luton

to uncover another of the war's secret organisations.

Wars are fought on many fronts and by many means.

But some of the most important battles don't happen on land,

at sea or in the air.

They happen in here.

The Ministry of Information

was formed the day after the war broke out.

They'd create visually striking posters

to keep British spirits running high and the workforce unbroken.

But just as the Germans used Lord Haw-Haw's broadcasts

to try and lower British morale,

our Ministry also had a darker side.

Specialising in what came to be known as "black propaganda",

the Political Warfare Executive at Woburn Abbey, in Bedfordshire,

dreamt up demoralising disinformation to unsettle the Germans.

Sefton Delmer would become

one of the organisation's top propagandists.

Before the war,

he'd worked as a Daily Express correspondent in Berlin.

This had given him access to none other than Hitler himself,

as this footage filmed by him shows.

Sefton's son Felix remembers an ominous meeting

his father had with Hitler eight years before the war started.

The first time he went down

to the Brown House in Munich to interview Hitler,

they were walking through the, through the Brown House,

and they went into one room with a lot of maps,

and they were all pouring over them, and my father said,

"What are those people doing?"

And Hitler turned to him and said, "They're planning the war".

"Oh? Which war?" "The next war."

Sefton had been born and brought up in Berlin.

With his close knowledge of the Nazis,

the British government realised he'd be the perfect man

to lead an attack on the German psyche.

He was in Lisbon at the time, on a job for the Daily Express,

and he was called up and said, you know, "Come back immediately, important job awaits."

Britain had already been broadcasting to Germany,

but were trying to appeal to anti-Nazi elements.

Once Sefton was on board, he realised something else was needed.

My father said, "Forget all that.

"What we need is a pro-Nazi station."

Before long, a station called Gustav Siegfried Eins

was being beamed by the British into Germany,

with a pretend Prussian officer called Der Chef at the microphone.

And by being all for Hitler, and really pro him,

they're managing then to insert stories

which will undermine the German morale.

Der Chef would complain

about Germans making money off the black market

whilst explaining to his listeners exactly how to do it.

And it worked.

In fact, not only did we fool the Germans,

we also fooled the Americans.

The Americans were convinced

that there were good anti-Nazis in Germany.

Before long, Sefton Delmer was approached by Naval Intelligence

to set up another radio station,

this time targeting German U-Boat crews.

Atlantiksender was soon on air.

But the format was going to be entirely different.

It broadcast hot jazz with a German flavour,

interspersed with fast news items.

The broadcasts would spread rumours,

including one that German prisoners of war

were earning large wages working in America.

But they'd also use true stories to unsettle the crews.

When our planes bombed Germany,

we would get all the photographs back and analyse them really quickly.

And the next day, we'd let the troops know what streets had been bombed,

because if your home had been bombed,

you could get leave, you could get home!

-Taking men off the front line?

-Taking men off the front line!

News gathered for the radio stations was also used

for the production of a daily newspaper the British dropped into Germany -

Nachrichten Fur Die Truppe, or News For The Troops.

Come on in, Heather!

'When it came to the top-secret printing of the newspaper,

'the Political Warfare Executive

'turned to the presses of the Luton News,

'and had a bit of help from a ten-year-old girl

'in packing them ready for delivery.'

-And I gather that your father roped you into help.

-Yes.

-What were you doing?

-Me and my sister, we used to,

sometimes on the way back from school,

call in at the factory where they were packing these bombs.

And they would pack them in big round caskets

made of very hard cardboard.

But they would explode before it hit the ground,

and they were all scattered in special places

where they had designated that they should land.

But Heather and her sister would add their own touch

to the newspaper bombs.

We would fill them up with our old buns as well...

HE CHUCKLES

..because we were given buns to eat, and we'd think,

"Hitler can eat those stale buns."

Heather's father was John Gibb, one of the owners of the Luton News.

By day, the presses would be printing the local paper.

But, at night, they'd be playing a top-secret role

in helping defeat Germany.

So how many of these newspapers were produced during the war?

Well, from 800,000 up to a million on D-Day.

And this was per day?

Yes, per day.

You can see on this map of the Eastern Front,

the Front Line moving ever closer

towards Berlin and the heart of Germany.

That must have shaken many a German soldier.

Well, we do know the soldiers were surrendering

with them in their hands

-as they came out of the woods, the forests.

-Were they?

I'm just very, very proud of what they all did, especially my dad.

Propaganda, white or black, was an incredibly powerful weapon,

with both sides battling for the minds of civilians.

The Mass Observation Diary project ran throughout the Second World War.

Personal diaries of civilians recorded everyday life,

including the effects of propaganda

from our own government and the Nazis.

Edward Stebbing was a shopkeeper in Great Baddow, in Essex.

"March 12th, 1940.

"Was in the barber's today and saw another Fougasse poster there.

"It showed two men in a railway carriage.

"One of them is saying, 'Of course, this mustn't go any further.'

"On the racks above, one sees the lower halves of two bodies,

"Hitler and Goering.

"The way in which the identity of the listeners is conveyed

"without showing their faces is masterly,

"and, in the case of Goering, especially amusing.

"August 5th, 1940.

"This evening, a soldier mentioned that more leaflets

"had been dropped in South West England,

"and that most of them had fallen on a sewage farm!

"I then spoke to a soldier

"who said he would like to read one of the leaflets,

"as the Germans' idea of grammar was sometimes very amusing.

"He asked me if I wanted to get hold of some.

"'Yes,' I said, 'One would be enough.'

"'Subversive literature,' he said.

"'No,' I said, 'I'd just like to see one.

"'Still, you wouldn't be able to read them in Germany.'

"'You won't be able to here,' he said.

"'I expect they'll be collected and burnt.'"

One of the most important sources of information

during the war was the BBC.

With the Blitz making London so dangerous,

a decision was taken to move the good old Beeb out to the country.

Entertaining the nation played a vital part in keeping morale high.

After a short spell in Bristol, the departments for Music and Religion

were moved to the relative safe haven of Bedford.

Listeners, though, were kept in the dark

when it came to where the departments were now based.

Any broadcast that was made

was always announced as "from somewhere in England".

The religious broadcasts, the concerts, etc,

you would never say, "Here we are in Bedford,"

because that would be inviting reprisals.

Seven buildings in the town became makeshift studios.

Trinity Chapel in St Paul's Church

would become home to religious broadcasts,

and provide the people of Bedford with an eye-opening insight

into the workings of the BBC.

The engineers treated this as any other studio.

It was 1941, they were used to smoking,

so they simply went just outside of the curtains,

out of the studio, into the church,

and would have a quick cigarette there.

The congregation did not view that very well

and they were most disapproving.

A more positive effect of the corporation's arrival

was felt by music lovers.

Bedford School's Great Hall became one of two studios

used by orchestras, and welcomed world-renowned conductors

such as Sir Henry Wood, creator of The Proms.

The local populace were very keen on the BBC in World War Two,

because charity concerts were being held, rehearsals were being held.

If you had a member of staff billeted on you,

then you could get a free ticket,

and there were all these famous names coming in,

like Vera Lynn, and others, all came to Bedford during the war.

Possibly bumping into David Niven or Laurence Olivier

on your way to the shops became a reality

as celebrities flooded into town.

And it wasn't just British stars that were arriving -

Bedford would also become the base

for one of the biggest American names of the era.

On the 9th of July 1944,

Glenn Miller gave his first broadcast

from the Corn Exchange, here in Bedford.

Miller's music would come to define the sound of the era.

Escaping London attacks, he'd moved his band to Bedford,

where he'd not only mingle with other stars, but help make them too.

The Beverley Sisters, who were in Northampton, came to visit.

Glenn Miller gave them a contact in London,

and they actually went down and did their first broadcast

from London a few weeks later

with one of Glenn Miller's band playing for them.

# Have you ever been lonely? #

The Beverley Sisters would go on to become '50s favourites,

but things wouldn't end so well for their mentor.

On his way to the European Theatre of Operations,

Glenn Miller boarded a plane just outside Bedford, bound for Paris.

He departed from Twinwood Airfield

at midday on 15th of December 1944,

never to be seen again.

And, of course, there's an on-going mystery as to what happened to him.

Tragically, the plane, the pilot and Glenn simply vanished.

Around 8,000 broadcasts were made from Bedford

by the BBC throughout the war.

They left the town in 1945, two months after VE Day.

The BBC in Bedford was the largest outside of London throughout the war

and the effort they put in to improve the morale,

to keep up morale, concerts, the religious broadcasts,

all maintained the morale for the country throughout the war,

all from here, in Bedford.

The threat of invasion, the constant fear of air attacks

and, of course, the loss of loved ones

were daily worries during the war

and had a profound effect on people up and down the country.

But if you think it was tough for the adults,

it was even tougher for the children.

Their world had been transformed completely by the arrival of war.

Classrooms were swapped for air-raid shelters,

toys for gas masks and, sometimes, family for complete strangers.

Children across the UK had to grow up quickly.

They were expected to contribute to the war effort as well,

and one group of youngsters in particular played an important role,

even being used to teach adults wartime skills.

Formed in 1910, the Guides focused on physical fitness,

survival skills, thrift and good citizenship -

all useful lessons that would be called upon when war broke out.

And when that happened, the Guides' motto of "Be Prepared"

meant they quickly sprang into action.

The moment war broke out in September 1939,

Guides put on their uniforms and they went down to railway stations,

they went down to billeting offices,

they went to town halls and they helped with the huge evacuation.

So there were Guides helping screaming two-year-olds,

mothers who needed cups of tea, sandwiches being made,

and there were the Guides in their uniform

just being calm and efficient.

It wasn't just about providing refreshments.

In May 1940, Guides and the older Rangers

turned their attention to raising money for the war effort.

Gift Week was traditionally a week

in which Guides raised money for charities,

and they managed to raise enough

to buy two air ambulances and a life boat.

And almost before it was finished, it was used at Dunkirk

to rescue British soldiers.

In today's money, the Guides raised £1.3 million.

Across the country, youngsters were keen to do their bit.

Lucy Pendar was 11 when the war broke out,

and was one of the 750,000 Guides picking up new skills

to help on the home front.

What did you start learning when you became a Guide?

What were the first things they taught you?

Oooh, good grief!

Morse code was one of the early things,

that was a very useful thing.

Um... I'm trying to think what else they taught us.

Well, everything, really, you know - first aid, a bit of cooking,

a bit of stalking and tracking.

Those were the things I liked the best, the outdoor things.

You mentioned Morse code, we've got a Morse code tapper here.

Does that look familiar to you?

-Very familiar, yes.

-Do you still remember your Morse?

-Some of it!

You'll know this.

-That's SOS, isn't it?

-Yes.

'In emergencies, communications must be kept open at all times.

'Rangers are trained to take an active part

'in the messenger service.'

Like others, Lucy's proficiency with Morse

saw her working alongside the Home Guard

and placed in potentially dangerous situations.

We were each seconded to a Home Guard man,

and we'd been there all night, he with his gun,

and me just standing in case I was going to be sent on a message,

and, suddenly, through the mist,

we realised there were figures moving in the field.

And we were - well, I was absolutely petrified, I don't know if he was.

I thought, "Oh, God, are they Germans who've landed during the night?"

And the relief, when the mist cleared,

and it was Farmer Bates' cows.

HE LAUGHS

-So there was a kind of lighter side to these moments.

-Oh, yes! Yeah.

Raising money, sending messages, and supporting the Home Guard

was all in a day's work for the Guides, but that wasn't all.

We got our service badges for helping with the salvage

and filling sandbags, and things like that.

And our fire-fighter badge,

they taught us how to move a chain of buckets to put a fire out,

and then we all had a turn with the stirrup pump,

so we'd know what to do if there was an incendiary bomb.

And the Guides' first-aid skills were invaluable

as bombs rained down on Britain's towns and cities.

They'd rip off their scarf and they'd staunch the flow of blood,

they knew exactly what to do.

They also knew how to keep everybody else calm.

Even if your heart is beating

and you're panicking inside, you've got to put on what was called

"an emergency smile" and just stay very calm

and then, once everybody settled down, make them nice sweet tea

and maybe get them singing.

And it's amazing how singing will cheer people up

in the worst situations.

The Guides were a resourceful lot too,

coming up with an ingenious solution

when the government was trying to work out

how to feed people bombed out of their houses.

These very earnest chaps were saying,

"Well, the Army could set up a field kitchen in two days,"

and the Navy said, "Oh, I think we could do it in a day and a half."

They all thought they were very clever.

And then, one Girl Guide put her hand up and said,

"We could do it in two hours with 12 bricks and a door scraper,"

whereupon she was told,

"Right, get on with it and show us how to do it."

The solution was the Blitz oven,

and soon, Guides were being sent round in groups

to train housewives with no kitchens how to feed their families.

So we're going to put 3rd Headington Guides and Ranger Unit to the test

by getting them to build a Blitz oven.

The girls are roughly the same age Lucy was during the war,

and today, she's supervising.

Everybody ready to get their hands dirty?

ALL: Yesss!

Right, OK. So we've got some bricks, we've got some firewood,

we've got some cooking pots, and a kettle, so let's get started.

So just start stacking them up, that's it, in a line.

OK. Now then, we also need a door grate, not unlike that one!

Oh, very strong, well done!

OK. Now, let's lay that over the bricks.

Right, OK, let's put a bit of firewood under there!

Well done. Now, what do we all think of our Blitz oven?

-Pretty simple thing, isn't it?

-ALL: Yeah.

What does our expert, Lucy, think?

Lucy, do you think it's ready?

Yes, I think that's all right now!

Ready to light.

Right, then.

We'll let that boil, and, hopefully, in a few minutes,

we can have a cup of tea!

-What do you think of that, Lucy?

-I think that's very good.

I'm sure they'd be perfectly all right if we have another Blitz ever!

-Do you think so?

-Yeah!

Would you want to wind the clock back and be a Guide camping?

Oh, I would love to do that! I would love to stay here all night.

HE LAUGHS

-Aaah! Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Ooh, that's nice and warm!

HE CHUCKLES

-Cheers, Guides!

-Cheers!

ALL: Cheers!

The Girl Guides really stepped up to the many challenges

that the war threw at them.

And they did so with a gusto and a sprit that, I think,

says quite a lot about us as a nation.

Whether they were helping to feed the victims of the Blitz

or keeping up morale in numerous different ways,

there is no doubt that the Guiding Movement

certainly played its part in the war effort,

helping to keep the country going through its darkest days.

Next time, I'll be meeting the women who defended our skies,

discovering how London's cabbies took on new roles,

and hearing how 14-year-olds fought devastating fires.

You'd find yourself on the end of the hose, holding the branch,

hoping for the best.

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