1662 1939-2009

Even when my birth and care mothers reached 80,and then 90, and my birth mother 100 the idea of me reaching 70 was distant. It is not that I did not want to live on and on but it was never something I anticipated doing. Unlike them who clung to Catholic belief in self awareness continuing in some form after physical death and being able to recapture their happier times, I have had a sense of finality since my late teens. What was important was how you lived, what you achieved and not necessarily a single act but the contribution made each and every day. Only you would know how this accumulation of thought and activity on behalf of others measured up to the extent you took out of society and the more you took out the more you had to give back. I agreed in my early twenties with the ideas of Erich Fromm who asserted that every human being had the right to be able to develop their innate and acquired abilities to their maximum potential and that it was the function of parents, educators and society generally to enable individuals to do this, that is to release the full potential of individuals rather than an attempt to mould individuals into doing what society needed from them. It was the role of parents, educators and society to produce the next generation of adults holding certain values about human life and all human activity especially the interaction between human beings and each other, between human beings and other creatures and the physical world inhabited.

It was not an idealistic or naive view of human behaviour, because in 1939 when I was born one of the first things I can remember learning was fear as men first flew in planes to drop bombs which killed and injured and then sent over rockets to do the same. I have a vivid memory of relatives praying in the Anderson air raid shelter in the garden and seeing a rocket bomb flying overhead in daylight as I entered the shelter hearing the engine cut out soon after.

Then soon after I became a teenager and an adolescent, a Jesuit Priest charged with the responsibility of teaching us something about recent “history” suggested we should read the reports of the War Crimes Trials, especially references to what happened at the concentration camps, and I went along to my local library and asked to do so, an assistant queried the request with a senior because I was still at school, who fortunately agreed and I was able to go through two volumes, reading passages which communicated the purpose of the camps, and the treatment and the experimentation on people, including children, which went on. It was much later that I was able to put what happened in context although we were explained the relationship between the fist and second World Wars. At the end of the first World War the successful nations did what successful nations had always done in the past, that is humiliate and punish the vanquished, a roped and at time arrogant people with the consequence that the law of reaction was invoked because of the decisions taken then making it inevitable that someone like Adolph Hitler would be able to strike a chord with the German people, and had been given by them absolute power. Now of course it is politic to rewrite history and to identify those who committed the atrocities or who held positions of power and who made choices as the only villains, thus absolving the majority of the rest of the generation who actively supported what happened as well as overlooking the minority who questioned, disagreed, protested and paid the price of standing up against the popular of the day.
Today, 70 years later, it is possible for everyone, everywhere anytime to study not just the actual trial reports but view the transcripts and the documents which makes it incomprehensible that anyone should seriously deny the nature and the extent of what took place. I have made a mistake for several decades ascribing the Bergen Belsen Trial as part of the Nuremberg Trials which were in fact about the surviving principal individuals of the Hitler regime whereas the trial relating to the running of Belsen involving Joseph Kramer and 44 others although carried out under the United Nations War Crimes Commission (and published in 1947 HMSO Volume II) was a British Military Court lasting 54 days at Luneberg.

It is also now possible to read comprehensive lists of the events of 1939 and there is a Video, likely to also be DVD, of newsreels films of the year and it was appropriate to look at again over the weekend. I no longer have a recollection of those first months of my life, if I ever had any, although I have some memory of the period 1942-1945 and more vividly of the immediate post war years.
The following are some of the people born in 1939 and who had some impact on my life: Tina Turner, Clive James, David Frost, John Cleese, Lily Tomlin, Margaret Drabble, Terry Waite, Germaine Greer, Judy Collins, Lord Lichfield, Dusty Springfield, James Fox, Ian McKellan, Nanette Newman, Corin Redgrave, Leon Britain, Francis Ford Coppola, Mary Peters,, Liv Ullman Lee Harvey Oswald, Shelagh Delaney and Alan Ayckbourn, Sigmund Freud died together with William Butler Yeats, Ma Rainey and Douglas Fairbanks.

The year commenced as badly as it was to become with Hermann Goering appointing Reinhard Heydrich head of Jewish Emigration and an order issued to prevent Jews from practicing as dentists, chemist and veterinarians. The traditional German Officer class structure was abolished in favour of one tied to the Nazi party. Franco entered Barcelona and in February the Spanish government fled to France. Pope Pius XI died at the aged of 82. An anti Communist pact was signed between Germany, Italy, Japan and Hungary. The British Government recognised the Franco’s Fascism as they had that in Germany and Italy and the Communist Regime in Russia. It was a month before the U.S.A did likewise. The IRA launched a bombing campaign in England with bombs detonated in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool

It is perhaps unfortunate that a new Pope was required in such a momentous year and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected on March 2nd and took the name of Pius XII. Before the end if the month he had congratulated Franco on defeating the Communists. and on March 3rd Gandhi began a fast to protest about the British autocratic rule.

The only significant event I could find for March 9th was that the Czech President ousted the pro German Premier of Slovakia in an attempt to preserve unity, but within a week Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia and with two days occupied the whole of Czechoslovakia, declaring themselves independent. The next week Hitler demand demanded the port of Gdansk from Poland and marched the following day into Lithuania and then made membership of the Hitler Youth compulsory

History has tended to blame Neville Chamberlain for his approach to Hitler and German actions prior to 1939 and the discredited Peace in Our Time agreement but no one who knew what had happened in World War I wanted a repetition of that experience and one has only to gauge the opposition there was to the Iraq war and our continuing involvement in Afghanistan to understand something of the national mood here in UK and across the Atlantic in the USA. Less known than his visit to Munich in 1938 is his visit with the Foreign Secretary to Italy and the show of enthusiasm by the Italian public who lined the street from the airport to the villa where they where they stayed. Meanwhile in Berlin one million people carried torches of support for Hitler. It has also to be remembered that it was only after the state visits and the action taken by Germany in March that Britain signed a military pact with Poland.

In New York, the World’s Fair was being organised at which 53 of the wealthiest nations showed their progress and the black singer Marian Anderson sung before 75000 at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution had prevented her from using the Constitutional Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt resigning her membership as a consequence. The first black woman judge was appointed in July.

In May Germany and Italy signed a military pact which became known as the Axis. Britain signed an anti Nazi pact with Russia. In June the British King George and Queen Elizabeth made the first visit of a monarch to the USA (Niagara Falls during their visit to Canada and tasted their first hot Dogs at a party arranged by the Roosevelt’s). However a ship carrying 937 Jews from Germany was turned away from the United States and had to return to Europe with many of those who were taken in by countries other than the UK ending their lives in the German extermination camps. The present Queen Elizabeth met her future husband for the first time. Albert Einstein urges the President to create an atomic weapons research programme while in Germany the first rocket plane is tested. Russia counters the Japanese invasion of Mongolia and drives them out. Russia signs a Trade agreement with Germany.

On September 1st Germany troops invade Poland this effectively starting World War II. Hitler issued an order to exterminate all who were assessed as mentally ill in Germany and its territories regardless of their birth and race.

On September 6th Britain declared war on Germany followed during the day by France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. Roosevelt declared USA neutrality and Germany made first air bombing attack on the UK on the same day. The Emergency Powers Bill passed all Parliamentary requirements to become Law within two hours. The King visits Downing Street because the Prime Minister is too busy to visit the Palace.

September 9th Germany army reached Warsaw. September11th Iraq and Saudi declared war on Germany. September 17th Germany navy sink a British aircraft carrier and British navy sink a German U boat. Arabia declares war on Germany. The British expeditionary forces reaches France and the Kind visits all the forces with the President of France. Lord Haw Haw starts his radio broadcasts. The German regular army murder 100 Jews in Poland while Heydrich has the famous meeting on the outskirts of Berlin to plan the extermination of all Jews. The French army moves five miles into Germany. The Soviet Union also attacks Poland. Germany and Russia partition Poland. Jews required to wear the yellow star. Attempt to assassinate Hitler fails. Finland wages defence war against Russia while Germany begins to exterminate all Polish Jews. Winston Churchill secretly approved a payment of 100 million USA dollars to the Spanish military leaders so that Spain was kept out of the War, and the Swiss national bank shipped Nazi gold in 280 trucks to Spain and Portugal. The year ended with the Battle of the River Plate and the scuttling of the German battleship.

1939 was also the year when Gone with the Wind won best film Oscar and Vivian Leigh Best Actress and Wizard of Oz was second best grossing film of the year. Other films included Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Beau Geste, Dark Victory, Each Dawn I die, Goodbye Mr Chips with Robert Donat best actor Oscar, Gunga Din, Its a Wonderful World, Of Mice and Men, Stage Coach, Wuthering Heights and Young Mr Lincoln.

Christopher Isherwood wrote Goodbye Berlin, Raymond Chandler, the Big Sleep; James Joyce Finnegan‘s Wake; T S Elliot Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats; Earnest Hemmingway, the Snows of Kilimanjaro and John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.

Berthold Brecht wrote the play Mother Courage and her children, Eugene O’Neill The Iceman Cometh.

The first fluorescents lights and FM radio receivers went on sale, Automatic transmission was first offered and automatic air conditioning. Buick introduced electrical indicators on cars and Tupperware was created. In British sport Everton won the football league with Wolves, Charlton and Middlesbrough following, Arsenal were 5th. Liverpool 11th Manchester United 14th, Sunderland 16th and Chelsea 20th thus avoiding relegation. Newcastle were not the first division.

However these facts say little about the nature of the of working and lower middle class people or the social and spiritual values. There were few cars about the street and the bicycle was still the most common form of personal transport. The Street lighting was turned off and everyone was required to black out internal lighting with street wardens appointed to ensure this happened. Other were recruited to fire watch at night and several members of my extended family did this including my care mother. A guide to national service was issued to every household during the year One cousin was recruited into the land army and married a farm hand later. There was rationing of food and clothes and everyone was issued with gas masks including special ones for young children. Policemen were also on foot or bicycle and carried whistles. There were dedicated phone boxes coloured blue to be used only by the police. There was only one BBC radio station and no television service. Everyone listened to the 9 pm news broadcast at night. People went to the cinema to see the newsreels films as well as the feature films of which there would be two and the programmes were continuous. There were few popular music programmes with Forces and then Family Favourites the main event each week at Sunday lunchtime.

Apart from my birth certificate and that my mother and her married sister and family lived in a rented on the outskirts of Croydon near Waddon and moved to a four bed roomed house in Wallington, adjacent to one two roads of shops, a quarter of miles from the Catholic church and within a mile of Croydon airport no together record have been found of my first eleven years, including medical or school records. My existence was kept secret for the first five years from everyone except the immediate members of the household, and even after that it continued to be kept secret from members of the extended family in Gibraltar and the USA until I was 15 years of age. I was kept hidden upstairs in a room above the toilet on the landing so any movement could not be heard below. I did not know who my birth mother was until going to school and it was within two months of sixtieth birthday when I was told the name of my father, what he did and the country of his family.