London How We Won the War

September 3rd, 1939,

and families all over the country flock to their radios.

NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN: '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 forever.

World War II had begun,

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

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

the war on the Home Front meant 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 the 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.

I'm travelling across the UK,

exploring how different parts of the country

made unique contributions to the war effort here at home.

I'm revealing the incredible efforts ordinary people went to

throughout the war years.

Today I've arrived in our capital city.

London would see its fair share of devastation throughout the war,

suffering 71 attacks during the Blitz alone.

SIREN WAILS

But Londoners would rise to the challenges of wartime life.

On today's programme,

I'll be taking a ride to hear how London's cabbies took on new roles...

One of the journalists nick-named them, "the suicide squad".

..meeting women that helped defend the city's skies...

We heard this plane. It was screaming. It's a horrible noise,

when they're screaming, diving at you.

..and hearing how 14-year-olds found themselves fighting devastating fires.

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

hoping for the best.

As the nation's capital, this city was always going to be

a prime target for the Germans.

And despite some optimistic reassurances

about peace in our time, the Government here took no chances,

and they started to prepare this city for war.

SIRENS WAIL

As part of those efforts, around 3.5 million children

were evacuated to the countryside.

But as our youngsters readied themselves to escape London,

in Europe, another group of children faced a desperate bid to get in.

Britain would come to the rescue of children who faced discrimination

and almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

Anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe.

In November, 1938,

the shooting of a diplomat by a young German-born Jew

precipitated a night of terrifying violence that would shock the world.

Across German and Austria,

the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht saw thousands of

Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues ransacked and set alight.

I was in the street,

looking at it.

and I saw all the shops being smashed in.

Our neighbours,

the people who were in our apartment the day before,

now shouted obscenities.

"Jude, Jude, Jew, Jew. Perish, Jude."

After Kristallnacht,

life for Europe's Jewish citizens would never be the same.

The Wiener Library in London holds documents

detailing their persecution.

Jews were beaten up and killed, shops looted.

About 30,000 men detained and sent to concentration camps.

It was a truly horrendous event.

And that then caused the Jews in Germany and Austria

to realise they had absolutely no future there, and that they had,

as a matter of life and death, to get out if they could.

The influence of the Nazis would see close relationships torn apart.

Ten-year-old Otto Deutsch was shocked when a family friend burst into his Vienna apartment.

"Uncle Kurt", in inverted commas here, broke into our apartment

with his group of young thugs...

some of them hardly older than I was.

Then the reality really gripped me.

We were given two days

to leave our little home.

And that was the beginning.

Otto's father was taken away,

leaving him with his mother and sister.

Judy Benton was a 16-year-old living in Meissen, East Germany.

She didn't get to say goodbye to her parents

I came home from school at lunchtime

and the doors in our apartment were open,

and nobody was there, and a neighbour came in and said,

"The Gestapo has just been and they're looking for you and they're coming back for you."

Children in Austria, Germany and beyond were in grave danger,

but Britain offered to help.

Working with organisations in Berlin and Vienna,

plans to rescue them were quickly formed.

They drew up lists in Berlin and Vienna, trains were arranged,

and the children then came to Britain.

In an unprecedented undertaking, Kindertransport trains

were laid on to save persecuted children from the clutches of the Nazis.

For ten-year-old Otto,

it would mean the start of a new life...

without his family.

Mother came early in the morning,

kissed me and cuddled me.

"Otto, you're going to England."

"But when are we going?"

"No, Otto.

"Not we, but you."

Across the continent,

thousands of children were taken to train stations

to wave goodbye to their families, and be ushered to safety.

On the loudspeaker, news was given through

that there were to be no emotional scenes.

My mother turned her back on me.

She knew that if I was to see her cry, I wouldn't be such a big man.

It was my sister, Adele...

who took me to the platform.

I remember the last words I heard my sister...

I hear it so distinct that I can hear it now.

"Otto, sei schon brav,

"wir sehen uns bald wieder."

"Be a good boy.

"We'll see each other again shortly."

Otto was on his way to safety,

but would never see his sister again.

For Judy, with no parents to get her a place on a Kindertransport train,

her situation seemed impossible.

Arriving at the station,

she would have to think fast to make her escape.

Everybody came on to me -

"Please would you do this, would you do that?"

I thought, "Well, they think I'm a nurse. I'm not a nurse,

"but I'll make myself a nurse."

Judy ran into town and bought a child's nurse's costume.

Donning its Red Cross hat and an apron,

she managed to sneak on the train suitably disguised.

She was now on her way to Britain, too.

Kindertransport children arrived at London's Liverpool Street station.

For the young Otto, England was another world.

Things were the same and yet different.

the grass was the same, the trees were the same,

but the people were different, even differently dressed to us.

For ten months,

trains rescued desperate children from Germany, Poland, Austria

and Czechoslovakia, before boats brought them to Britain.

It was only when war broke out that the transport ended.

Tony's been taking me through records of children whose lives

were saved by the Kindertransport.

Well, this, I think, tells the story,

Just so happens it is the first one on the pile.

A young lad called Julius Blumenthal.

Date of birth, 1926. Sex, male. There he is.

And it says here, "Father in concentration camp. Mother dead."

And somebody's written in red, "Very urgent indeed."

-Yes.

-And he's moved in...

-May, 1939.

-May, 1939, yeah.

How many, in total, do we think made it over here?

It was just under 10,000 children who made it over here.

Alas, not many of their parents.

And that has been the cause for criticism of the British.

We could, I think, have tried to get more of the parents out,

if the German authorities had been willing,

and that's an unknown question.

It's estimated that 10% of Jewish children in Germany and Austria

were saved by the Kindertransport.

Otto was welcomed into the arms of a family in Northumberland.

Judy studied at an agricultural college in Surrey.

All across Britain,

the Kindertransport children were beginning new lives.

They were, on the whole, given these traumatic events early in their lives,

I think, remarkably successful at building new lives

and making a tremendous contribution to British society.

Had it not been for the Kindertransport,

I doubt if I would have been alive today.

It was a very horrible experience, and, as a child, it sticks.

But I get over things, I don't think back.

I think if you think back, then you cannot enjoy life.

Now I have a lovely family...

..and kids, grandkids and great-grandkids.

And I've found my place again, and I belong again.

With war imminent,

the Government began to draw up plans to defend the country.

They'd long known that if German bombers ever entered British skies,

the Fire Service would be essential in saving lives.

Knowing that the existing brigades would be severely stretched,

in 1938, the Government started recruitment

for the Auxiliary Fire Service.

Within a few months, thousands had signed up.

One was 14-year-old Stacey Simkins.

Already working, he was attracted by the fringe benefits of the job.

You were, first of all,

allowed to use their table tennis facilities,

and secondly, when you finished they let you slide down the pole,

so, to be quite honest with you, that's the main reason I joined.

Volunteers would come from all walks of life.

Elena Payami is Assistant Curator at the London Fire Service Museum.

Some of them may have been conscientious objectors.

Some of them might have had some infirmity that meant

they couldn't go to fight.

There might have been any reason,

but it was a huge section of society that decided to come and do this.

Also, from the poshos, down to the gor-blimeys,

the whole spectrum, they just got on together.

After only 60 hours of training,

the AFS members were soon were soon ready for action

but, with no sight of war, they'd face a long wait.

We had quite a long period where nothing really happened.

Well over a year when AFS personnel weren't really doing a lot,

so this phoney war period.

And they got a couple of unfortunate nicknames.

"Army dodgers" being one of them,

"the darts and snooker brigade" being another.

All over the country,

people were unsure how effective the auxiliaries were going to be.

A park keeper from Eltham, South London recorded his view of the volunteers

as part of his diary entries to the Mass Observation project.

Set up two years before the war,

it asked hundreds of members of the public to keep records of their everyday lives.

"Sept 3rd, 1939.

"The fire station officer tells me he has not rested in 72 hours.

"Neither have several of his regular men.

"He deplores the lack of discipline among some of the volunteers - AFS -

"they stand around and smoke and do not realise

"what sort of job they've taken on.

"Having received no communication from one of these many sub depots,

"he went in a car himself to investigate.

"The men were playing nap. Others had gone home to supper,

"though food and beds are provided and men must be on call night and day, taking turns at sleeping.

"None should leave without permission."

"September 16th. Auxiliary firemen paraded this morning outside the park

"for practice with one of the trailer pumps.

"Owing to the engine being cold, half an hour was spent in starting it up.

"When they got going however, they made a very good show, and appear very efficient.

"At fire drill, from being summoned to posts to the actual pumping of water,

"the time was two-and-a-half minutes."

With an army of Auxiliary Fire Service volunteers in place,

the next challenge was equipment.

The shortage of fire engines meant that 2,000 trailer pumps were quickly produced.

And they'd be needed. London was about to experience

devastating fire storms on an unprecedented scale.

To give you an idea, the Surrey Docks fire, 7th September, 1940...

That fire was so enormous, they had hundreds of pumps in attendance.

If I can compare that for you -

a ten-pump fire, pump being a fire engine,

would make the national news today.

They had 500 pump fires during the Blitz.

-SIRENS WAIL

-On September 7th, 1940,

German planes dropped hundreds of tons of high explosive

and incendiary devices on East London.

It was the start of an eight-month blitz on the city.

The AFS were suddenly face-to-face with conditions

they couldn't have imagined in their worst nightmares.

The fires were so massive that they created fire storms.

It sucks air in from surrounding streets,

and there'd be this horrible whistling sound

coming along the roads as the fire's drawing in air.

it would be quite eerie.

The biggest fire I saw was the one when that famous picture was taken.

You never saw any flames, all you saw was this huge...

you know, as if somebody had come out and painted all the clouds

with lovely crimson paint. It was just aglow.

Stacey was working as a messenger boy for the service,

communicating between crews,

but soon the 14-year-old was battling blazes, too.

It seemed to be, nine times out of ten, you'd get up to a crew

who were playing on a burning building,

and one of them was sure to say to you,

"Here, mate, hang on to this for a minute,"

and you'd find yourself on the end of the hose,

holding the branch, hoping for the best.

AFS crews put their lives at risk every time they donned their heavy woollen uniforms,

even when in the relative safety of their stations.

Stacey was on guard one night when he answered a call of nature.

I heard a little whistle, like a "phseew",

and the next thing I knew, the snooker table had moved up

about six or eight feet.

I was underneath it, as was this other fella.

A bomb had created a crater where Stacey had been standing, seconds earlier.

I just thought, "Well there's somebody up there must like me."

So I began to think that I was invincible.

Stacey was one of the lucky ones.

Throughout the war, 327 AFS and regular firemen and women in London

would lose their lives.

One of Stacey's crew would be amongst them.

He was up the top, directing a stream of water onto a building,

and another bomb dropped,

and the building just flared straight up.

And he was in the middle of it, and he died of severe burns.

You got hardened to the fact that people might die, and that was it.

Fire fighters, whether AFS members or regulars,

faced death from literally every direction.

The streets themselves were full of craters and potholes.

Bombs are still falling, buildings are collapsing around you.

You barely have enough water to put them out,

and sometimes you'd be in a small crew, and if you needed back up,

it just simply wasn't there.

Somehow, though, the brave fire fighters took this all in their stride.

You were concentrating on what you're doing,

and you're too busy to get frightened.

And all you know is the bit that you're actually doing.

One thing I would never describe myself as...

as a hero.

I was just somebody doing what I was supposed to be doing,

and doing it to the best of my abilities.

That was it, as far as I was concerned.

By the time war ended,

and the skies across the country had cleared of smoke,

the AFS had shed their original nicknames.

By the end of the war,

they were known as, "the heroes with grimy faces."

They would be cheered by members of the public

on their way back in the morning,

covered in filth and soot, and tired.

They'd be given cups of tea, and Churchill himself said that

they were a grand old lot whose work must never be forgotten,

and that is so true.

If it hadn't been for the AFS, I think London would have burnt down.

During the Blitz, London endured 57 nights of bombing raids,

with up to 300 bombers a night attacking the city.

In the first month alone, 5,730 people died and 10,000 were injured.

The bravery and sacrifice of the AFS proved their doubters wrong

and their efforts saved untold lives.

Now, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles

may well have been in short supply in London during the war,

but there is one form of transport the city has always had plenty of...

Taxi!

Although there are days when you have to wonder. There we go!

In 1939, there were over 6,500 taxis on London's streets.

During the war, over a third of them would be requisitioned.

Not only would the taxis be converted,

but the cabbies' jobs, too.

Now, this is an absolutely beauty, Alf. What kind of taxi have you got here?

This, dear boy, is a 1930s Austin Low Loader.

Now how long have you been a cabbie for yourself, Alf?

I've been a London cabbie for 50 years, dear boy.

50 years.

I know I don't look old enough, but 50 years, man and boy.

-HE LAUGHS

-And you've made the history of the London taxis

a real passion of yours?

I have a thing about it.

I love taxis, I love the history of London taxis.

I love what the London cabbies,

the bravery they showed during the war,

with all the various aspects of what the cabs were used for.

Well, what were they used for?

The London County Council requisitioned 2,500 vehicles, or taxis.

2,000 were used as fire tenders, emergency fire tenders,

300 were used for emergency ambulances,

and a couple of hundred were used, would you believe it,

for troop personnel carriers.

How was it possible to convert a taxi like this into a fire truck?

Well, what they did is, they stuck a trailer onto the back with a pump,

and they were trained.

But the beauty was, because they knew the Knowledge,

when there was a call, they went all through the back streets,

and were there before the big tenders, you know, to the fires.

They were known by fellow cab drivers as, "the Blitz crew,"

but one of the papers, or a journalist,

nicknamed them, "The Suicide Squad."

Driving in the blackout could be deadly.

Cabbies had to cover their headlights.

Just three slits let light peek through,

allowing them to navigate London's streets.

Well, this taxi driver got a fare from one of the posh clubs

in Pall Mall. He wanted to go to Kensington.

And they got halfway, and it was completely black.

Couldn't see a foot in front of him.

So, he said, "Well I'm sorry, guv, I can't go any further."

He went, "Don't worry, my man, I'll get in front and walk in front".

So he's walking in front, saying "Over here, over here,"

and he walked half the way to Kensington,

and he turned round to the driver and said,

"How much do I owe you, driver?"

And he went, "I can't charge you any money. You bleeding walked all the way, ain't you?!"

He said, "No, I insist. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

HE LAUGHS

-That's the sort of camaraderie you got in the war, you know.

-Yup.

D'you think London would have kept functioning without the taxis?

They were like a second army, I believe, a second army,

and they were indispensable.

I've got a great empathy for London,

and what the Londoners did in World War II,

especially the taxi drivers.

But the taxi drivers weren't the only resource the government would call on.

In 1938, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, or ATS, was launched,

recruiting women to help Army units

with cooking and other domestic duties.

By 1940, over 35,000 women had signed up.

And the Government soon realised

they could be used for more than just pastry and paperwork.

I've come to the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich

to meet ATS recruit, Dorothy Hughes.

Posted to London as part of an Anti-Aircraft company,

she led a team predicting the path

of enemy aircraft, so her male colleagues could fire at them.

We had to know about range finding, height finding,

certainly spotting planes.

And it all came naturally.

You did it so often, over and over again.

The women of the ATS were soon proving their worth

on the front lines of Britain's defences.

So the Government decided to see if they could operate searchlights.

Mary Simpson was one of the trial's recruits.

Only 17, she'd help man the powerful lights sweeping Britain's skies

to pick out enemy aircraft,

and remembers vividly the first plane she spotted.

This night, we had a call out,

and this was really...

German planes.

I think we were all crying!

SHE LAUGHS

Terrified.

Overcoming their fear,

the girls shone their lights on the incoming bomber,

highlighting it for the gunners.

It was them against a powerful machine.

Famous Luftwaffe, challenged by nine...

There was only nine girls on site...

Challenged THEM.

And we'd got one, "We've got one, we've got one!"

The ATS women were now fulfilling a multitude of roles,

but the Government drew the line at allowing them to fire weapons.

And that wasn't the only discrimination the ATS faced.

We were encroaching on the men's territory and they hated it.

It was just, "Get back to the kitchen."

Oh, the sarcastic remarks. You know, "Girls won't stand the life."

But we did prove them wrong.

It was hard, but we were determined.

Having established themselves as vital to Britain's aerial defences,

they now found themselves constantly in the crosshairs of enemy pilots.

You'd hear first of all the whirring of the aircraft coming over,

and then you'd hear the whistling of the bombs,

and sort of think, "Oh, good, that went past,"

because you only heard the whistle if it had gone past you.

Mary would be directly in the line of fire

as she caught aircraft in her spotlight.

With no means of defence,

there was little to do but switch it off and take cover.

We heard this plane that was screaming. It's a horrible noise,

when they're screaming, diving at you down the beam.

But we knew what to do. We doused the lights, we jumped down,

and, of course, I couldn't get out, because the girl sitting next to me,

she had to get out first, and she landed on the ground.

I landed on top of her.

She was screaming, "I've been shot, I've been shot!"

SHE LAUGHS

We were all crying,

"You can't be shot, Julie. We didn't hear any shots."

"I have been shot, he's shot me in the ankle."

And, of course, we got her up, looked,

and she'd broken her ankle when she fell.

The ATS' work was dangerous and hard,

but close friendships were formed,

as the young women shared accommodation, often far from home.

And, when not defending our skies, they'd manage to have a bit of fun.

We'd play childish games - hopscotch, skipping ropes and hide and seek.

SHE LAUGHS

Although never actually firing a weapon,

the women were key in destroying incoming enemy aircraft.

The human cost of their actions was something they had to put out of their minds.

And we never thought what the outcome of us picking that plane up,

what happened to it.

How many lives we took.

Never thought of it that way, it was just a plane.

A bomber landed on Wimbledon Common, quite next to our gun site.

And it was then I realised we weren't firing at metal.

Two chaps got out of it, and they were only the same age I was,

and they looked scared. Really, really scared.

And I thought, "No, we're hitting human beings."

After D-Day, ATS members were moved to different duties and areas.

Mary and three colleagues stayed with their searchlights,

but now they were using them to pick out victims

in sites devastated by the Germans' lethal buzz bombs.

We never discussed it.

Even after that first night,

we never discussed what we'd seen.

We'd just go and sit in the bath and cry our hearts out, have a cry.

It was the only place we could do it.

SHE SIGHS

But...

I think we grew up then.

I think we really grew up.

The ATS would help destroy just under 2,000 flying bombs,

and 627 enemy aircraft.

But, in the process, more than 70 would lose their lives.

"Freedom made the call and they answered,

"Just as their mothers answered before.

"Let us salute them, knowing we need them,

"Fighting the good fight once more."

Those words to a popular ATS song of the time pay tribute,

not just to those women who gave their lives in the service of their country,

but also to the thousands of Londoners

who kept our capital going through its darkest hours.

Next time on How We Won the War, I'll be meeting two women

who risked life and limb delivering bombers...

Discovering the foodstuff that created quite a buzz...

And learning how a 23-year-old agent

carried out deadly missions in occupied France.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd