Hitler’s invaded Poland. Don’t tell your father yet, Pat

‘Oh – tea,’ said Mrs Ingoldby. ‘You’re just in time. I’ll get them to make you some more of the little tongue sandwiches. Did you have a good walk?’ ‘Wonderful, thanks. Any news?’ ‘Yes. Hitler’s invaded Poland. Don’t tell your father yet, Pat. He can do nothing about it and there’s his favourite supper. Oxtail stew.’

J. Gardam, Old Filth (2004), loc. 913

The engine room of European culture for the first third of the twentieth century ... had ceased to exist

The intellectual condition of post-war Western Europe would have been unrecognizable to a visitor from even the quite recent past. German-speaking central Europe – the engine room of European culture for the first third of the twentieth century – had ceased to exist. Vienna, already a shadow of its former self after the overthrow of the Habsburgs in 1918, was divided like Berlin among the four allied power. It could hardly feed or clothe its citizens, much less contribute to the intellectual life of the continent

T. Judt, Postwar (2005), 203

Bulgaria always chooses the wrong card … and slams it on the table!

The Bulgarians has actually oscillated quite markedly over the years from enthusiastic pro-Germanism to ultra-Slavophilism. Neither served them well. As a local commentator remarked at the time, Bulgaria always chooses the wrong card … and slams it on the table!

T. Judt, Postwar (2005), 134 footnote

Boundaries stayed in broadly intact and people were moved instead

At the conclusion of the First world War, it was borders that were invented and adjusted, while people were on the whole left in place. After 1945 what happened was the opposite: with one major exception boundaries stayed in broadly intact and people were moved instead.

T. Judt, Postwar (2005), 27

During the war I hadn't seen a single child's thing. I forgot they existed.

In the ruins of q German village I saw a child's bicycle lying about. I was happy. I got on it and rode. It rode so well! During the war I hadn't seen a single child's thing. I forgot they existed. Children's toys ...

S. Alexievich, tr. R. Pevear and L. Volkhonsky, Last Witnesses [Volodia Chistokletov] (1985), 42

And it would be amusing if, after all the fuss and heiling, all the marching and indoctrination, the only contribution to the world by the Nazis was “Lilli Marlene.”

This is the story of a song. Its name is “Lilli Marlene” and it was written in Germany in 1938 by Norbert Schultze and Hans Leit. In due course they tried to publish it and it was rejected by about two dozen publishers. Finally it was taken up by a singer, Lala Anderson, a Swedish girl, who used it for her signature song. Lala Anderson has a husky voice and is what you might call the Hildegarde type.

...

Eventually Lala made a record of the song and even it was not very popular. But one night the German station in Belgrade, which sent out programs to Rommel’s Afrika Korps, found that, due to a little bombing, it did not have many records left, but among a few uninjured disks was the song “Lilli Marlene.” It was put on the air to Africa and by the next morning it was being hummed by the Afrika Korps and letters were going in demanding that it be played again.

The story of its popularity in Africa got back to Berlin, and Madame Goering, who used to be an opera singer, sang the song of the inconstant “Lilli Marlene” to a very select group of Nazis, if there is such a thing. Instantly the song was popular and it was played constantly over the German radio until Goering himself grew a little sick of it, and it is said that, since inconstancy is a subject which is not pleasant to certain high Nazi ears, it was suggested that the song be quietly assassinated. But mean­while “Lilli Marlene” had got out of hand. Lala Ander­son was by now known as the “Soldiers’ Sweetheart.” She was a pin-up girl. Her husky voice ground out of portable phonographs in the desert.

So far, “Lilli” had been solely a German problem, but now the British Eighth Army began to take prisoners and among the spoils they got “Lilli Marlene.” And the song swept through the Eighth Army. Australians hummed it and fastened new words to it. The powers hesitated, con­sidering whether it was a good idea to let a German song about a girl who did not have all the sterling virtues be­come the favorite song of the British Army, for by now the thing had crept into the First Army and the Americans were beginning to experiment with close harmony and were putting an off-beat into it. It wouldn’t have done the powers a bit of good if they had decided against the song.

It was out of hand. The Eighth Army was doing all right in the field and it was decided to consider “Lilli Marlene” a prisoner of war, which would have happened anyway, no matter what the powers thought about it. Now “Lilli” is getting deeply into the American Forces in Africa. The Office of War Information took up the problem and decided to keep the melody, but to turn new words against the Germans. Whether this will work or not remains to be seen. “Lilli Marlene” is international. It is to be suspected that she will emerge beside the barrack walls—young and fair and incorruptly inconsistent.

There is nothing you can do about a song like this ex­cept to let it go. War songs need not be about the war at all. Indeed, they rarely are. In the last war, “Madelon” and “Tipperary” had nothing to do with war. The great Australian song of this war, “Waltzing Matilda,” con­cerns itself with sheep-stealing. It is to be expected that some groups in America will attack “Lilli,” first, on the ground that she is an enemy alien, and, second, because she is no better than she should be. Such attacks will have little effect. “Lilli” is immortal. Her simple desire to meet a brigadier is hardly a German copyright. Politics may be dominated and nationalized, but songs have a way of leaping boundaries.

And it would be amusing if, after all the fuss and heiling, all the marching and indoctrination, the only contribution to the world by the Nazis was “Lilli Marlene.”

J. Steinbeck [12 July 1943], Once there was a war (1959), 61-3

When Army Supply ordered X millions of rubber contraceptive and disease-preventing items, it had to be explained that they were used to keep moisture out of machine-gun barrels

A third sternly held rule was that five million perfectly normal, young, energetic, and concupiscent men and boys had for the period of the War Effort put aside their habitual preoccupation with girls. The fact that they carried pictures of nude girls called pin-ups, did not occur to anyone as a paradox. The convention was the law. When Army Supply ordered X millions of rubber contraceptive and disease-preventing items, it had to be explained that they were used to keep moisture out of machine-gun barrels - and perhaps they did.   

J. Steinbeck, Once there was a war (1959), 10

One felt that somehow it would take more than totalitarian war to put an end to cricket

[H.S. Altham, in 1940] ends by describing a visit to Lord's, sandbags everywhere, the Long Room stripped bare. And yet: "The turf was a wondrous green, old Time on the Grand Stand was gazing serenely at the nearest balloon, and one felt that somehow it would take more than totalitarian war to put an end to cricket."

Since all Wisden  readers obviously enjoyed a classical education, he concluded with a line - in Latin only - from Horace, the poet who had also written the dulce et decorum est mantra that inspired the Great War generals. Altham's choice was more positive: Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit (You may drown in the depths, but it rises the more glorious). So it was for cricket in1940, so it will be 80 years later.

P. Kidd, 'When the cricket stops', L.Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2021), 46-47

'Can you write the King's English?' ... 'That is almost my only qualification.'

Almost all the history dons had served in at least one of the world wars, whether as soldiers or spies. For some, like Karl Leyser, the senior history tutor at Magdalen, a German-born internee turned naturalized British war hero, soldiering had, perforce, preceded the academic life. Others, like the Christ Church stalwart, Provost of Worcester and ubiquitous fixer J.C. Masterman, had surprised the establishment of military intelligence with the usefulness of their hitherto donnish talents, 'Can you write the King's English?' an SIS superior of Masterman's once demanded. 'That,' J.C. replied mildly, 'is almost my only qualification.'

M. Dinshaw, Outlandish knight: the Byzantine life of Steven Runciman (2016), 364

Fault lay with the Czech nation for having the carelessness to lose most of its aristocracy following the Battle of White Mountain in 1620

It could, of course, be argued that that fault lay with the Czech nation for having the carelessness to lose most of its aristocracy following the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, and that a British peer [Viscount Doxford], wishing to associate with his social equals, had little choice  but to seek the only suitable company available, which happened to be German

Vrsny, quoted in M. Dinshaw, Outlandish knight: the Byzantine life of Steven Runciman (2016), 256

The section on Steven Runciman's father's doomed mission regarding the Sudetenland is depressing. This acerbic summary is I believe unfair, but nonetheless brilliant.

The worst was in the ruins of Warsaw, or the fields of Treblinka, or in the marshes of Belarus, or the pits of Babi Yar

The American and British soldiers who liberated the dying inmates from camps in Germany believed that they had discovered the horrors of Nazism. The images their photographers and cameramen captured of the corpses and living skeletons at Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald seemed to convey the worst crimes of Hitler. As the Jews and Poles of Warsaw knew, and as Vasily Grossman and the Red Army soldiers knew, this was far from the truth. The worst was in the ruins of Warsaw, or the fields of Treblinka, or in the marshes of Belarus, or the pits of Babi Yar.

T. Snyder, Bloodlands (2010), 311-2

There's more on this around 382f. He is very good on uncovering our historiographical bias on this.

This cannot be said of any other European country

A rough estimate of two million total mortal losses on the territory of present-day Belarus during the Second World War seems reasonable and conservative. More than a million other people fled the Germans, and another two million were deported as forced labour or removed from their original residence for another reason. Beginning in 1944, the Soviets deported a quarter million more people to Poland and tens of thousands more to the Gulag. By the end of the war, half the population of Belarus had either been killed or moved. This cannot be said of any other European country. 

T. Snyder, Bloodlands (2010), 251

There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war

It was the fag end of the war, a quiet conspiratorial time with no secret lives; we were all in it, and by now we knew most things about each other – we shared and stuffed ourselves on them. There was also that all pervasive sense of eroticism that goes with the boredom of war, that freewheeling fantasizing that goes with displaced persons who are displaced through no fault of their own. The girls fell on the few men with an urgent and hungry disdain. They tidied the rooms of the bachelors and cooked for them. They took our shirts home at weekends and washed them.

L. Lee, 'Chelsea towards the end of the last war' Village Christmas and other notes on the English year (2015), 88

No ball bearings, no war

It's terrible to say," Speer said pensively, "but it's better that they're concentrating on the cities." - "What do you mean, Herr Reichsminister?" - "During the summer, when they attacked the Ruhr, I was terrified. In August, they attacked Schweinfurt, where our entire production of ball bearings is concentrated. Then again in October. Our production fell by sixty-seven percent. You may not realise it, Sturmbannfurher, but no ball bearings, no war. If they concentrate on Schweinfurt, we capitulate in two months, three at the most. Here" - he waved his hand at the fires - "they're killing people, wasting all their resources on our cultural monuments." He gave a dry, harsh laugh: "We were going to rebuild everything anyway. Ha!"

J. Littell, The Kindly Ones (2006) tr. C. Mundell, 714

We lost land, cities, men; all that can be replaced. But the Party didn't collapse

"We'll fight  to the last man." - "No doubt, but you'll perish all the same. And Stalingrad will remain as the symbol of your defeat. Wrongly, too. In my opinion, you already lost the war last year, when we stopped you in front of Moscow. We lost land, cities, men; all that can be replaced. But the Party didn't collapse, and that was your only hope,

J. Littell, The Kindly Ones (2006) tr. C. Mundell, 396

More like a war fought at sea than on land

He had been up at the front and he'd be going back there next week. Or wherever the front by then was - that indeterminate confusion of minefields and dispositions of vehicles in the empty neutral sand. He once described it to me as more like a war fought at sea than on land, a sequence of advances and retreats in which the participants related only to each other and barely at all to the landscape across which they moved. A war in which there was nothing to get in the way  - no towns, no villages, no people - and nothing tangible to  gain or lose.

P. Lively, Moon Tiger (1987), 72-73

That war [WW2] seems to have functioned like an impossibly stern father: no performance would ever suffice.

Yates's stories and novels return repeatedly to the weakness and hysterical anxiety of mid-twentieth-century American masculinity. His fiction, begun in the early 1950s, and written throughout the next four decades, was closely shadowed by the Second Word War. For Yates. that war seems to have functioned like an impossibly stern father: no performance would ever suffice. If you fought in it, you never fought bravely enough (Yates was anxious about the bravery of his own conduct in the Seventy-Fifth Division, in Europe); if you missed it, the rest of your life would be perforated with inadequacies.

J. Wood, The fun stuff  (2013), 201