The Day We Went to War (54 page)

‘We can find you a dozen with the greatest pleasure,’ the magazine replied. ‘We can find you a thousand if you want them. We will find soldiers or groups of soldiers, for any other readers who feel generous.’

If Britain’s Christmas, brightened by the River Plate victory and
with ample food, drink and presents available, was a reasonably normal one, Germany’s was a much more austere and depressing one. Unlike in Britain, both food and clothes rationing were firmly in place, but special concessions were made for the holidays. There was a slight raising of the food ration for the whole month and a special Christmas bonus. Not that they amounted to much. In practice it worked out at an extra egg, one-eighth of a pound of butter, the same amount of ersatz honey, a little chocolate candy and about two ounces of sweets per person. The sugar ration was also increased. On the clothing front, men were allowed a tie, and women, a pair of stockings, without having to surrender any of their precious coupons.

In Berlin’s huge department stores and shops there was very little that customers could actually buy without special permission. The stores themselves had done their best to put on a festive front. The giant AWAG department store (formerly the Jewish-owned Wertheim’s), had spent lavishly on a children’s fairyland display in the main foyer, with animated animals, dwarfs, elves and fairies waving wands. But there was little worth having on sale. All the children’s toys had gone a fortnight before Christmas, and none had been made since the outbreak of war. And in desperation, another store, the famous KaDeWe was reduced to selling Easter rabbits as its stock of other Christmas cuddly toys had sold out. Only the AWAG’s book and record departments were well stocked, and even then in the latter, one had to hand over an old record before one could buy a new one. Just before Christmas, on coming out of the store, a Berliner remarked, ‘I’ve been going in there every day for the past week and can’t find anything that is not either purchasable only by permission of the government or totally foolish to give.’

Nor did the war news give many Germans cause for satisfaction. The scuttling of the Graf Spee off Montevideo came as a great shock to the public, as the action off the River Plate had been
depicted as a German victory. And many believed that the claim of thirty-four RAF bombers shot down next day over Heligoland was ‘eyewash’ by Dr Goebbels to get them to forget the less-than-heroic end of the pocket battleship.

Dr Goebbels himself was much exercised at two major rail accidents in which over 200 died. He also fumed in his diary that ‘Berlin “society” is still celebrating merrily as if the war had nothing to do with them. The dregs! To the rubbish heap with them!’ The awful weather over Christmas – snow, rain, frost and sleet ice – did little to improve the propaganda minister’s temper. He spent the holidays reading a Somerset Maugham novel, which only went to confirm his belief in the ‘inner rottenness of English society’. And, ‘sterile and idiotic’ was Goebbels’s withering and snide judgement on the King’s Christmas Day broadcast. In his own Christmas message to the German people, Goebbels had told them:

‘This is a “war Christmas” celebrated by a determined people . . . with that profound faith which is always a prerequisite of victory . . . Although peace is the real meaning of Christmas, we shall talk peace only after victory.’

While Dr Goebbels was spending Christmas with his family, Hitler was inspecting his troops on the Western Front. On 23 December he visited a reconnaissance squadron of the Luftwaffe and then the infantry regiment
Grossdeutschland
. He finished the day by participating in the Christmas celebrations of his own bodyguard unit
SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler,
giving the men an address on the ‘meaning of the present struggle’. On Christmas Eve, he visited
flak
units and after again addressing the men was presented with a hand-carved German eagle, but without, it was noted, the swastika. In the afternoon, Hitler visited the
Hauptkampflinie
(main front line) and then tank and armaments factories in the Saarbruecken area. Afterwards, and for the first time since 1918, the Fuehrer found himself on French soil near Spichern, in a section abandoned by Gamelin’s men back in October. Christmas Day was spent with a Luftwaffe fighter unit and the reconstituted List Infantry Regiment in which he had served during the Great War. The German press made great play with the fact that the Fuehrer, in contrast to Chamberlain, Daladier, Churchill, Eden and Co., was among his fighting men at Christmas.

‘In the afternoon Christmas celebration . . . many children present . . . they are very sweet and charming, the public are in good fettle despite all their troubles, my speech is greeted with great applause and there is great delight when Father Christmas arrives.’ Dr Goebbels, 23 December 1939.

‘Midday with the Fuehrer. He tells me about his Christmas trip to the West Wall, which impressed him deeply. The mood at the front could not be better. The troops were beside themselves with joy. The Fuehrer’s visit came as a complete surprise to them.’ Dr Goebbels, 28 December 1939.

Unlike Berlin, Christmas in
drôle de guerre
Paris was almost pre-war, like Britain’s. There was no shortage of turkeys, oysters, foie gras or champagne, according to journalist Alexander Werth. Twice over the holidays, Werth visited a night club where chanteuse Lucienne Boyer entertained an audience of ‘lots of young men in uniform, and young women, drinking champagne, and also fat bald podgy people’, whom the journalist took to be war profiteers. The uncrowned king and queen of French show business, Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker, alternated each night at the Casino de Paris, while other music halls, theatres and cinemas did a roaring trade. For children, the shops on the
grands boulevards
had plenty of toys and presents in stock. At Lancel’s, on the Boulevard Raspail, one could buy terracotta Aberdeen terriers raising a hind leg over a copy of Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
. And, ‘to keep our soldiers warm’ in the Maginot Line, quite a few stores were offering tarred paper vests.

The newspapers and journals were full of officially inspired optimism, with stories of ‘poor old Fritz’ shivering away in the waterlogged Siegfried Line. Victory was taken for granted. Germany, already rationed, would sooner rather than later succumb to the Allied blockade. Meanwhile, writing in the December 1939 issue of
Les Annales de la Guerre
, Captain Georges Montgredien dwelt longingly and lovingly on the French Army’s own food-and-drink situation: ‘Midday everything is ready. There is a hors d’oeuvres, meat, vegetables and dessert . . . The messing officer reads out the menu, wishes everyone
bon appetit
and gives the signal for the regimental tune to be struck up.’

Montgredien noted that when it came to aperitifs, his commanding officer was ‘very strict’. Only the
poilus
in the advance posts were
to get Pernod, the rest had to make do with the lower-alcoholic-content St Raphaël. The Captain finished his idyllic account with the telling sentence, ‘Provided the enemy’s artillery lets us alone and provided there is a bit of sun, one can, for a moment, forget the war and think it all a picnic.’

But there was no ‘picnic’or Christmas truce at sea in 1939. Just as its crew members were having drinks before their Christmas dinner, the London steamer SS
Stanholme
hit a mine that had been laid by the
U-33
at the beginning of November. She sank within five minutes. The ships’ boats were smashed by the explosion, but two of the crew managed to lower a raft. For about a quarter of an hour, they rowed round where the
Stanholme
had gone down, picking up survivors. But soon the raft itself started to sink, and it was the only the timely arrival of a lifeboat from a Norwegian ship that saved the eleven survivors of the sinking. One of them was the wife of the chief engineer, forty-two-year-old Percy Jenvey:

‘The captain had poured us out drinks in his cabin and wished us all Merry Christmas, when a terrible explosion occurred which threw us to the floor. We rushed on deck as the vessel began to heel over, and a second explosion shook us. My husband ran to the lifebelts, put one over my head and threw me into the water. That was the last I saw of him, for he went down with the ship.’

Neither did Christmas bring any respite to the fighting in Finland. Helsinki experienced several air-raid warnings on Christmas Day as Soviet bombers attempted to raid the capital. They did not get through to the city centre, but around thirty bombs were dropped in the suburbs. Over forty other places, including the cities of Viborg, Tampere and Turku, were bombed, and Viborg was also subjected to long-range bombardment. Elsie Warren noted admiringly in her diary, ‘The Finns are still fighting bravely . . . Russians have been found frozen to death inside tanks. Helsinki was bombed on Xmas Day. The occupants spent from ten to three in air raid shelters.’

Paris, December 1939: ‘Christmas draws near and the poultry merchants have a grand show of the traditional turkeys.’

‘From somewhere in France, I wish all ranks of our forces throughout the world – navy and army and RAF – a happy Christmas and a bright New Year. Do remember, everyone at home, that we are happy and contented, and don’t forget, when we come home, to roll out the barrel.’ Men of the BEF at their Christmas dinner.

In German-occupied Poland, the Christmas holidays brought no relief from the Nazi terror. During a tavern brawl in the village of Wawer, near Warsaw, on 26 December, a couple of local criminals shot two German non-commissioned officers. That night, as soon as the news reached the German police authorities in Warsaw, reprisals were ordered. Under the command of Police Major Friederich Wilhelm Wenzel, men of
Polizei-Regiment Warschau
were sent to Wawer and the neighbouring suburb of Anin to undertake a special ‘pacification’ operation. 120 men between the ages of sixteen and seventy were rounded up. Among the men arrested were workmen, artisans, shopkeepers, office workers, a journalist and a retired Polish Army officer. The majority were Poles, but Jews and one Russian were also included in the number. When the men were ‘dragged out of their beds, none of them had the slightest idea of what had happened in the restaurant . . . All of them were charged with actions not of their commission. Their only offence was that they happened to be in the area covered by the raid.’ In fact, as well as permanent residents of the two villages, there were a number of men arrested who were just visiting their families or friends over the Christmas holidays.