December 28, 1940 – Words Of War – a recap of the events leading up to the start of World War 2. Since this is the time of year to look back at the previous year and speculate what was in store for the coming year, no one really knew or had much of an idea at the time that, by this time in 1941 the world would be swallowed up in this deadly and endless conflict.
But what’s interesting about this particular “year end” is that, unlike most of the programs of this type, WJR, which was the CBS Radio station in Detroit at the time, utilized “actualities”; real on-the-spot recordings of events, not dramatic recreations which were the rule of thumb at the time.
This broadcast, produced on December 28, 1940 offered some background to this conflict. Going back to 1933 and the rise of Hitler and Nazism that swept over Germany in the post- World War 1 era. The conflict of 1939 had some five years to develop before the first crisis arose in 1938 (the first actually being the Civil War in Spain in 1937, which was a test for German military development). And how, emboldened by the appeasement offered by Britain, made similar overtures towards Poland, claiming Poland illegally took German land and constructed an elaborate campaign of propaganda and faux-outrage while employing a new concept; “fifth columnists” to infiltrate and subvert those governments (Czechoslovakia and Austria) into willing participants for takeover and eventual control.
But the ease which Hitler and Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia and Austria would not be the case with Poland and the land grab became one of resistance and war became inevitable.
December 28, 1940 – war had not come to American shores yet, and the general feeling on this side of the Atlantic was “it was their war” and we were semi-interested bystanders. There would be the continuing pleas not to get America involved in a shooting war and that would continue all the way up to December of 1941.
But in 1940 no one was considering that, even though America was gearing up and tooling for a war – the prevailing opinion was it wouldn’t eventually happen. This one-hour re-cap offers a wealth of information and background and makes a good jumping off point for those diving into the history of world conflicts.
Take notes.
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