The deadliest battle

More people died in the Siege of Leningrad than the combined World War Two losses of the United Kingdom and United States combined. The Siege, also known as the Leningrad Blockade, lasted 872 days and, according to some estimates, resulted in over a million deaths each from the Red Army and the civilian population.

Estimates of total deaths range from 1,117,000 to 4,500,000, but even at the lower end of estimates it ranks as one of the, if not the, bloodiest battles in recorded history. In total casualties it rivals two other bloodbaths of the Eastern Front - the Battle of Stalingrad (with losses estimated at between 1,250,000 and 1,798,619) and the Battle of Moscow (estimates of 930,000 to 1,680,000 dead). It probably exceeded the losses in the Battle of the Somme (with approximately 1,200,000 dead).

Many of the civilian deaths came from starvation, particularly in the savage winter of 1941 – 1942. During this period the official bread ration was reduced to 125 grams with the bulk of this meagre sustenance comprising sawdust and plaster. Cannibalism became such a threat to morale that the Leningrad Police formed a unit to deal with cannibals. 

Leningrad was rewarded with the Order of Lenin to commemorate its bravery. It took more than laudatory speeches and medals to restore the city – its population collapsed to 600,000 and only returned to its pre-war level of three million in the 1960s.

A controversial plan for post-war Germany

At the Second Quebec Conference in the middle of September 1944, President Roosevelt and the US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau tried to persuade Winston Churchill and the British delegation on a radical plan for post-war Germany.

The militaristic, Prussian tradition would be destroyed once and for all, ensuring that Germany could never again threaten the peace in Europe and the world. Part of this would be achieved by destroying the integrity of Prussia – dividing it between Germany, Poland and Russia.

The next stage of the plan was far more ambitious. Germany would be:

·         partitioned into two independent states – north and south (admittedly, not so very different from what happened upon partition between east and west Germany);

·         annexation or internationalisation of the industrial areas of the Saar, Ruhr and Upper Silesia;

·         all heavy industry in the remaining territory of Germany to be dismantled or destroyed.

The aim was to return the bulk of Germany to a pre-industrial past, or, as the memorandum of the conference put it, “converting Germany into a country primarily agricultural and pastoral in its character”.

The plan was never put into effect. The combination of practicalities (it was estimated that if fully implemented it would have resulted in the death of 25 million Germans unable to support themselves in a purely agricultural economy) and realpolitik (a strong West Germany became a lynchpin to the USA’s Cold War strategy).

U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson firmly opposed the policy as did Anthony Eden (at the time Foreign Secretary). In its place came the Marshall Plan, which had almost the exact opposite intention and result to the Morgenthau Plan and saw Germany quickly resume its position as one of the world’s leading industrial and manufacturing nations. 

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted

The story is irresistible, and, as such, has become part of the BBC’s unofficial history. It is repeated on countless websites, news stories and anecdotes. It is the story of how the BBC returned to television broadcasts in the aftermath of the Second World War.

As Europe teetered perilously on the edge of cataclysmic conflict, BBC television was still in its infancy. The service could not continue in war time – its transmitter at Alexandra Palace would have been a powerful beacon for enemy planes.  So, with only days to go until the declaration of war, the television signal was cut off on 1 September 1939 half way through a Mickey Mouse’s Gala Premiere. It would only resume in 1946, picking up at the same point in the cartoon but only after the announcer had witheringly intoned: “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.”

Unfortunately, as well as being a great story, it is also a complete fabrication. There is a kernel of truth, in that they relate to the resumption of a media institution in peacetime. William “Bill” Connor, the legendary Daily Mirror writer, began his first post-war Cassandra with that phrase. The full quotation was: “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted ,it is a powerful hard thing to please all of the people all of the time.”

The BBC’s real return to the airwaves was, in many ways, just as charming a tale. The first words uttered on 7 June 1946 were “Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?” Jasmine Bligh was one of the original three BBC announcers from their pre-war service.

It is true that they then played the same Micky Mouse cartoon from 1 September 1939, but they were sensible enough to realise that seven years and a world war would test people’s memory, and so started it from the beginning. In any respect, it is part of the myth that the cartoon was cut off half way through – in reality the BBC finished the programme and then broadcast test signals until its suspension.