Chapter 2 .sx The Second World War .sx A People's War .sx All modern wars are People's Wars , in the sense that wars are no longer fought between professional armies meeting each other in pitched battles , the names of which are later enshrined in the textbooks - one thinks , for example , of the great eighteenth - century battles such as Marlborough's Blenheim , Ramillies , Oudenarde and Malplaquet .sx Today's wars involve conscript armies and all those unfortunate civilians who get in the way of the fighting , or have their houses and possessions destroyed by one side or the other , whether it is in , say , Vietnam or Afghanistan .sx Yet some eminent historians , and in particular A.J.P. Taylor , have described the British participation in the Second World War as a " People's War " .sx The term seems to have been used first in left-wing periodicals in the dark days of 1940 , but after the war was widely used by historians writing about this period .sx If this is an appropriate description , then it must be assumed that the war had special characteristics which distinguish it from other wars ; and indeed the Second World War does form a very important episode in the history of the working classes .sx It is not simply a matter of the extent of casualties - they were far fewer in the second war than in the first war , and in fact were extremely limited for the first three years .sx In what ways then can the use of the term 'People's War' be justified ?sx The answer lies in a number of unique features of the Second World War .sx In the first place , conscription for men applied from the very beginning - conscription had actually been imposed some months before war was declared in September 1939 .sx Women were also conscripted from 1941 onwards - single women between nineteen and twenty-four , and later , from eighteen and a half to fifty - though they were given the choice between serving in the women's services , in civil defence , or in essential civilian jobs .sx By the end of the war , nearly half a million women were serving in the women's forces ( the ATS , WAAF and WRNS ) , while five million men were in the men's forces .sx So , for the first time in the country's history , both men and women were called up for military service .sx Secondly , after the disaster of Dunkirk ( which the nation contrived to treat almost as a victory , perhaps because the army was extricated almost intact , and the casualties were relatively light ) , national unity increased with the realisation that only the British remained to fight Germany .sx An extraordinary mood , almost of elation , seemed to grip the nation .sx Thirdly , this mood was intensified after the Battle of Britain and the bombing of London and other cities , when it became apparent that the German daylight attack had been beaten off , and that the night bombing raids were also failing to force the nation into submission .sx In the phraseology of the time , London could take it , and so could the provincial cities .sx When Hitler prophesied that he would wring Britain's neck like the neck of a chicken , Churchill remarked , " Some neck , some chicken .sx .. " For these reasons alone , the war seemed to involve everyone , and the mood of national unity and comradeship was strengthened as a result .sx As for actual opposition to the war , it was very limited .sx Over six years , 2,900 conscientious objectors were given complete exemption , and 40,000 conditional exemption .sx By summer 1940 , only 0.5 per cent of those registering for services were COs .sx Some prosecutions were also undertaken for spreading alarm and despondency , but these were very few and far between .sx In contrast to what happened during the first war , there was none of the feeling that fighting was going on in appalling conditions overseas , while those at home in England went on relatively comfortably with their lives , some of them actually making fat profits from munitions .sx In fact , in the Second World War there was more action on the home front after Dunkirk than abroad for at least a year ; in the first three years of war , more women and children were killed than soldiers .sx The civilian population was really in the front line at this time , and were to suffer further attacks from the air even after D-Day on 6 June 1944 .sx It should also be said that from 1942 onwards following the publication of the Beveridge Report , there was continual discussion of what reforms were necessary after the war .sx This discussion was positively encouraged by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs , which issued valuable newsheets relating both to military developments and to reform proposals such as the Beveridge Report itself ; there were even compulsory weekly discussions among the troops .sx Forces newspapers were published in the different theatres of war , for example , SEAC , for the South-East Asia Command .sx Towards the end of the war , Brains Trusts and Forces Parliaments kept discussion going on post-war reforms ( the Cairo Forces Parliament is a famous example) .sx In all these ways , ordinary people were made to feel that they were not being ignored , and that the winning of the war would not mean a return to the dole queue , but to a better life all round .sx This belief was also encouraged by the presence of leading Labour politicians in the wartime coalition government - Clement Attlee was deputy Prime Minister , Ernest Bevin was Minister of Labour and Herbert Morrison was Home Secretary , all of whom acquired valuable experience of office , and enhanced their image in the public eye .sx For all these reasons , the idea that the Second World War was a People's War has substance .sx Of course , class distinctions did not vanish overnight , especially in the services , where it was deeply entrenched in the hierarchy of ranks .sx Most officers spoke with recognisably middle-class accents ; George Orwell , the Old Etonian , wrote defensively before the war about his own accent , and of the need for the middle classes to join forces with the working classes :sx " and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared , for after all , we have nothing to lose but our aitches " .sx A very different kind of writer , Evelyn Waugh , was also well aware of differences in speech between the classes .sx He antagonised his men on parade by mocking their accents and their inarticulacy ( he was a brave but very poor officer) .sx His post-war trilogy of novels about the war made it clear that the life of an officer in a traditional regiment was still worlds apart from the lives of the rank and file .sx Nevertheless , at home in Britain the universal belief in the need to defeat the Nazis formed a strong unifying bond , together with the comradeship forged during the air raids and at work , and the equality of sacrifice enforced by rationing and restrictions and shortages of all kinds .sx This applied especially in the critical period 1940-1 , the " Finest Hour " , as Taylor has called it .sx Mysteriously and unexpectedly , for a time the British of all classes talked to each other and became a united people ; and so it was indeed a 'People's War' .sx Military Service .sx Military service in the Second World War was different from service in the previous war , which was so heavily concentrated on trench warfare in France .sx At first , there was very little fighting .sx The great defensive fortifications of the Maginot and Siegfried Lines seemed to rule out any major advance by either side , in spite of the cheery optimism of the popular song of the time :sx We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line .sx Have you any dirty washing , mother dear ?sx .sx When the Germans attacked through Holland and Belgium in May 1940 , it was soon over with the French and British armies .sx The British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk , having suffered casualties during May and June of 68,111 - a serious loss , but not much more than the total casualties of the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 .sx Thereafter British troops were not to enter France again in force until D-Day in 1944 .sx Meanwhile they were in action from 1941 onwards in North Africa against the Italians and then the Germans , and then again against the Japanese in Burma .sx There was also continuous fighting at sea to keep open lines of communication and supply , especially across the Atlantic ( the Battle of the Atlantic ) ; and after the Battle of Britain in September 1940 there was an ever increasing bomber offensive against Germany .sx This was in remarkable contrast to the policy adopted before the fall of France , when the RAF dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany , not bombs .sx Taylor has it that the Secretary for Air , Sir Kingsley Wood , was horrified by the suggestion that German forests should be set on fire :sx " Are you aware that it is private property ?sx Why , you will be asking me to bomb Essen next .sx " In the course of time , Essen was duly bombed , many times .sx The war experience of the working classes in the services was gained therefore in a number of different theatres of war , and thus was intensely varied , with the RAF playing a far greater part than in the First World War .sx It would be impossible , of course , to sum up those experiences in a few sentences .sx In the army , there was of necessity much training and bullshit ( " If it moves , salute it ; if it doesn't , paint it " ) before fighting began again in Africa , Italy and Burma .sx In Africa , the predominant memory of many is of heat , flies , sand and tank battles of unprecedented dimensions .sx In Burma , there was again the heat , the jungle and a peculiarly ferocious and cruel enemy .sx At sea , the war meant the constant danger of attack from the air or from German U-boats , especially on the notorious convoys to Murmansk .sx War in the air brought its own hazards of destruction by enemy aircraft or anti-aircraft fire , or of limping home sometimes mortally wounded .sx The casualty rate of bomber aircrew was extra - ordinarily high , at least as high as that of officers in the trenches in the Great War , when life expectation was limited to a few weeks .sx For those on active service in all branches of the forces , ways of getting killed were infinitely various :sx one could be shot , blown up , drowned , roasted alive in tankor aircraft , or starved or beaten to death as a prisoner of war of the Japanese ( those imprisoned by the Germans stood a rather better chance of survival) .sx These horrors are still vivid memories of ex-servicemen alive today .sx Yet , even in the services , many were lucky enough to escape actual combat , and may even be said to have had 'a good war' :sx office workers and administrative staff , technicians and skilled workers , even ground crew on air force stations in this country ( understandably , aircrews sometimes tended to regard ground staff as mere civilians) .sx In these many different ways , experiences in the six years of the Second World War form an imperishable part of the social history of the working classes .sx The names of those who were killed are to be found on war memorials up and down the country , and on the gravestones of the war cemeteries in France and further afield .sx About 300,000 were killed in the armed forces , together with 35,000 in the merchant navy .sx Air Raids and the Blitz .sx Before 1939 it was anticipated that in any future war the casualties resulting from air raids would be very heavy .sx The general public was aware of the destruction wrought by bombing in the Spanish Civil War , especially at Guernica , and the air-raid scenes in the film version of H.G. Wells' Shape of Things to Come contributed to the fear of aerial attack .sx The government itself grossly overestimated the number of hospital beds necessary to accommodate air-raid victims - the official figure was from one million to three million beds , with 600,000 dead and 1.2 million injured in the first sixty days - and this helps to explain why a massive evacuation scheme was prepared well before the war .sx As a consequence , about a million and a half children , together with mothers under five , were moved principally from the cities to safer areas , usually in the countryside .sx