The Phoney War

Waiting for the Blitzkrieg

ON SEPTEMBER 3, 1939, ENGLAND declared war on Germany. Shortly after the radio announcement by the prime minister, the first air-raid warning siren of WWII blared across London. In my historical novel, Ashes and Ruins, Edith’s entire family—Edith, her husband, her mother, her brother, and her infant daughter—rushed to their stone-lined wine cellar. But the piercing tone had been a false alarm. Within a few hours, they, like their neighbors, returned to their parlors relieved but shaken.

Londoners were convinced the next blast of the siren would come soon and it would be the real thing. They expected German planes to appear overhead, dropping their deadly bombs. But though the British government had prepared the country to expect air-raids as soon as the war began, the German bombers did not come. The first seven months of WWII were a time of relative military inactivity on both sides of the English Channel.

This period, from September 1939 to April 1940, came to be called “The Phoney War.” (Note that the English spelling of phoney is preferred). Churchill sometimes referred to it as “the Twilight War,” and the French termed it drôle de guerre or the “funny war.” In Germany, the inactive months were called Sitzkrieg, the “armchair war” or “sit down war.”

Britain and France declared war on Germany because of the Third Reich’s all-out Blitzkrieg attack on Poland. Yet neither the UK nor France launched an invasion to aid that embattled country. Geographically, the expanse of Germany lay between them and Poland. A counterattack would have been difficult, if not impossible. Once Poland was subdued, even Hitler took a rest and did not send his troops elsewhere. The Luftwaffe did not bomb London or Paris. Some deluded English politicians even attempted to restart peace negotiations with the Third Reich.

The only military action was the French army’s half-hearted attempt to invade the Saar and Rhine Valley region, an assault that was mostly unsuccessful. After advancing about five miles into Germany, French forces stopped and pulled back to the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line on the German/French border.

Since the early 1930s, Great Britain had quietly prepared for what many felt would be an inevitable second war with Germany. Remembering the trauma of WWI gas attacks at the front and knowing modern bombers could fly across the English Channel, the British government made gas masks a priority. Within weeks of the declaration of war, 38 million gas masks were issued door-to-door to families. Children were required to take their masks to school each day, and gas mask drills were frequent. There were even special “onesies” gas masks for babies.

During the quiet months with little fighting, the British government escalated their efforts to prepare the nation for a long war. Restrictions, including fuel rationing and the reduction of passenger train schedules, were enforced. Using the Emergency Powers Act, British authorities enacted laws necessary for the war effort—everything from rationing to severe penalties for looting, from media censorship to compulsory military service.

As a precaution against massive enemy bombings, civilians, especially children, were sent away from the major cities where 400 million sandbags were stacked up around shops and public buildings and roadside curbs were painted white to delineate the streets during the strictly enforced blackouts. Pitch black nights resulted in many roadway injuries as pedestrians were hit by cars in the dark, automobiles drove off the road, and people fell in ditches or tripped over unseen hazards.

Among other activities, the Home Office Aliens Department concentrated on sorting thousands of enemy aliens into categories based on their perceived hazard to the war effort. Immigrant Germans and Austrians, including refugee Jews, were required to appear at locally administered tribunals to prove they were not spies or Nazi sympathizers.

In addition to all the preparations and safety efforts, the British government sent Royal Air Force bombers on missions over Germany. But these planes did not carry explosives. Their bomb bays were full of propaganda leaflets. During the early weeks of war, more than six million leaflets titled “Warning: A Message from Great Britain” were dropped into the cities of the Third Reich. Written in German, they declared, “Never has Government ordered subjects to their deaths with less excuse.”

These “truth raids” inundated German towns and villages in an attempt to convince civilians of the evils of their homeland and, hopefully, lead them to withdraw their support from the government. The propaganda drops had little effect on the German populace, who were already paralyzed by fear of the regime or else were devoted followers of the Führer. As German townsfolk looked at the sky with British bombers soaring overhead, perhaps some realized their country was vulnerable to similar air attacks dropping bombs rather than paper. In any case, the “truth raids” did nothing to change Hitler’s plans to take over Europe.

On May 10, 1940, the quiet period came to an end. Nazi troops and tanks sped over the borders into Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Earlier, in the first week of April, Denmark had fallen in less than six hours with few shots fired. Norway, also invaded in April, fought longer, but, after June 10, only the resistance remained active.

The Phoney War was over. In less than a month, the British Expeditionary Force retreated across the English Channel from Dunkirk. The UK government chose to bring their troops home. To prevent mass causalities and the dishonor of surrender, they saved most of their fighting force for another day.

In Ashes and Ruins, Edith’s husband George finds himself on one of the evacuation beaches three days into Operation Dynamo, the name given the British troop retreat. Separated from his unit, with a shrapnel wound in his thigh, George huddles in a sandy crater on the beach. For a full day, he waits for a boat to ferry him across the channel, where he is immediately sent to hospital. In the confusion of thousands of wounded soldiers arriving on everything from battleships to fishing boats, his family is not notified. Finally, a week later, George makes it home.

After Dunkirk, the path to Paris was undefended, and the German army pushed on to the French capital. Soon most of France was under Nazi rule. On June 22, 1940, when the new French Prime Minister, Marshal Pétain, surrendered to the Nazi army, Britain no longer had an ally with sustainable forces to fight beside them. Like the governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway, the Free French under Charles de Gaulle existed only in exile in London.

The next four years of war would decide the fate of Europe.