Throughout the morning of Sunday 3 September 1939, BBC announcers told radio listeners that an important statement was about to be made. Everyone should listen in. At 11.15am, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, broadcasting from 10 Downing Street, told millions of Britons that the ultimatum to Germany demanding that its troops withdraw from Poland had just expired. As a consequence, he added, in words that would become famous, ‘This country is at war with Germany.’
What is less well known is that for the next half an hour the BBC then broadcast an uninterrupted series of government announcements. People were to stay at home as much as possible, large sporting events would cease immediately, cinemas and theatres would close, and details were given as to how poison gas alerts would be made.
And if the BBC’s approach to the outbreak of hostilities seems off-puttingly monolithic, the Corporation also got many other things wrong in the first months of the Second World War.
