Nothing but the war.

Hurricane Is of 242 Squadron (Motto: “Tojours Pret”...

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:05:00 -0400

Hurricane Is of 242 Squadron (Motto: “Tojours Pret” [“Always Ready”]) in the Summer of 1940.

Be Ye Men of Valour

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:01:38 -0400

Be Ye Men of Valour:

Full text of Churchill’s 19 May 1940 speech.

"Our task is not only to win the battle - but to win the war. After this battle in France abates its..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:01:00 -0400

“Our task is not only to win the battle - but to win the war. After this battle in France abates its force, there will come the battle for our Island — for all that Britain is, and all the Britain means. That will be the struggle. In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce and the last inch of effort of which they are capable. The interests of property, the hours of labor, are nothing compared with the struggle of life and honor, for right and freedom, to which we have vowed ourselves.”

- Winston Churchill, 19 May 1940

Soldiers from the 15th (Scottish) Division, supported by...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:04:11 -0400

Soldiers from the 15th (Scottish) Division, supported by Churchill tanks of 7 Royal Tank Regiment, 31 Army Tank Brigade, on 28 June 1944, during Operation EPSOM.

"L’infanterie anglaise est la plus redoubtable de l’Europe; heureusement, il n’y en..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:52:37 -0400

“L’infanterie anglaise est la plus redoubtable de l’Europe; heureusement, il n’y en a pas beaucoup.”

- Maréchal Bugeaud

"Far and near and low and louder On the roads of earth go by, Dear to friends and food for..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 02:01:03 -0400

“Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.”

- A. E. Houseman, A Shropshire Lad, “XXV”

Sherman tanks of the Guards Armoured Division advance past a...

Thu, 09 May 2013 01:57:28 -0400

Sherman tanks of the Guards Armoured Division advance past a memorial to the Empire’s dead from the First World War, near Fuilloy, c.1944.

"Personally, I remember every word of our conversations, which took place on a background of extreme..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:34:03 -0400

““Personally, I remember every word of our conversations, which took place on a background of extreme sorrow and tension for us here in Denmark. In particular, it made a strong impression both on Margrethe and me, and on everyone at the Institute that the two of you spoke to, that you and Weizsäcker expressed your definite conviction that Germany would win and that it was therefore quite foolish for us to maintain the hope of a different outcome of the war and to be reticent as regards all German offers of cooperation. I also remember quite clearly our conversation in my room at the Institute, where in vague terms you spoke in a manner that could only give me the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons and that you said that there was no need to talk about details since you were completely familiar with them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclusively on such preparations. I listened to this without speaking since [a] great matter for mankind was at issue in which, despite our personal friendship, we had to be regarded as representatives of two sides engaged in mortal combat. That my silence and gravity, as you write in the letter, could be taken as an expression of shock at your reports that it was possible to make an atomic bomb is a quite peculiar misunderstanding, which must be due to the great tension in your own mind. From the day three years earlier when I realized that slow neutrons could only cause fission in Uranium 235 and not 238, it was of course obvious to me that a bomb with certain effect could be produced by separating the uraniums. In June 1939 I had even given a public lecture in Birmingham about uranium fission, where I talked about the effects of such a bomb but of course added that the technical preparations would be so large that one did not know how soon they could be overcome. If anything in my behaviour could be interpreted as shock, it did not derive from such reports but rather from the news, as I had to understand it, that Germany was participating vigorously in a race to be the first with atomic weapons.””

- Draft of an unset letter from Niels Bohr to Werner Heisenberg, c.1957. Heisenberg had met Bohr in Copenhagen in September of 1941 to persuade him to assist the Nazi nuclear program; after the war, Heisenberg would imply he was trying to persuade Bohr not to build a bomb. It was in response to that claim that this letter was written. Bohr escaped Denmark with help from the British and worked on the Allied nuclear program.

Spitfires of 92 (East India) Squadron (Motto: “Aut Pugna...

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:35:24 -0400

Spitfires of 92 (East India) Squadron (Motto: “Aut Pugna aut Morere” [Either fight or die]).

Spitfire Is of 501 Squadron (Motto: “Nil Time” [Fear...

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:12:57 -0400

Spitfire Is of 501 Squadron (Motto: “Nil Time” [Fear Nothing]) Royal Auxiliary Air Force, 23 May 1941.

"The flash of the Spitfire’s wing, then, through the mist glare of the summer sky, was the..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:12:12 -0400

“The flash of the Spitfire’s wing, then, through the mist glare of the summer sky, was the first flash of a sharpened sword; they would fight, they would hold out.”

- American correspondent Vincent “Jimmy” Sheean, c.1940

"‘King am I, whatsoever be their cry; And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see Yet, ere I..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:23:35 -0400

“‘King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass.’ And uttering this the King
Made at the man: then Modred smote his liege
Hard on that helm which many a heathen sword
Had beaten thin; while Arthur at one blow,
Striking the last stroke with Excalibur,
Slew him, and all but slain himself, he fell.”

- Tennyson, The Idylls of the King, “XII. The Passing of Arthur”

polyhymnia: demons: RAF Hawker Hurricanes engaging in a...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:24:27 -0400

polyhymnia:

demons:

RAF Hawker Hurricanes engaging in a training exercise, 1940

One for @ardentspork.

newberrylibrary: Excited for Chicago’s Zinefest? Or the Caxton...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:59:43 -0500

newberrylibrary:

Excited for Chicago’s Zinefest? Or the Caxton Club’s “Outsiders: Zines, Samizdat, and Alternative Publishing”? This should tide you over: a World War II-era zine, Gesprek (“Conversation”), printed in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Above is its cover—a painting by Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman.

In May of 1940, Werkman, colluding with Friedrich Robert August Henkels, established a clandestine publishing house, De Blauwe Schuit (“The Blue Barge”). They produced 40-some publications, which called for spiritual resistance in the midst of Nazi cruelty.

In March of 1945, the Gestapo arrested Werkman, placing him and nine others before a firing squad. They died on the 10th of April, three days before Groningen was liberated.

tass-posters: Vladimir Ivanovich LadiaginRussian, born...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:30:51 -0500

tass-posters:

Vladimir Ivanovich Ladiagin
Russian, born 1910
Volodia Zuzuev, Mid-September 1943
Ne boltai! Collection

"What General Weygand called the battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is..."

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 08:01:02 -0400

“

What General Weygand called the battle of France is over. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’

”

- Winston Churchill, speaking to the House of Commons, 11 June 1940

Squadron Leader Brian John Edward “Sandy” Lane...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:32:08 -0400

Squadron Leader Brian John Edward “Sandy” Lane (1917-1942), seen here in 1940 while commanding No. 19 (Spitfire) squadron during the height of the Battle of Britain. He was only 23 years old in this photograph. Two years later, he would be shot down and killed off the coast of Holland.

Goebbels on Churchill, February 17, 1942

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:00:06 -0400

“For the further progress of the war, we cannot think of a prime minister who would be better for us than Churchill. Churchill’s strategy is so short-sighted he will certainly lead the empire from one reverse to another. Let us therefore rejoice that continues at the head of the world empire. If the empire is to be laid to rest anyway, it is comfortable to have an experienced grave-digger at hand.”

—-Joseph Goebbels, diary entry. The fortress of Singapore and 130,000 men had fallen to the Japanese two days earlier, the greatest British defeat of the war.

"[W]e are just as much a dictator country as either Germany or Italy and one day the British public..."

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:00:06 -0400

“[W]e are just as much a dictator country as either Germany or Italy and one day the British public will wake up and ask what we are fighting for.”

- Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville, in a letter to his wife dated January 5, 1941. Somerville, like most senior Royal Navy officers, greatly disliked and distrusted Churchill, and resented his interference with military operations.

Orwell in verse, June 18 1943

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:00:06 -0400

[As for] Churchill; I’ve no wish to praise him,
I’d gladly shoot him when the war is won,
Or now, if there was someone to replace him.
But unlike some, I’ll pay him what I owe him;
There was a time when empires crashed like houses,
And many a pink who’d titter at your poem
Was glad enough to cling to Churchill’s trousers.

—-George Orwell, “As One Non-Combatant to Another”. Orwell wrote this poem in response to a pseudonymous poem criticizing him for supporting the British war effort.