– News from EIAR Rome – August 26, 1939 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –

As the hours ticked by and while the charges and counter-charges filled the air and conference rooms, War in Europe seemed inevitable on this August 26th, 86 years ago.

With Germany‘s claims of Polish aggression and Poland’s claims of German troops massed on her borders, last minute attempts at a diplomatic solution seemed almost pointless – that it would be only a matter of hours, days at the most, when a shooting war would begin.

Preparations were being made throughout Europe. Poland was drafting into service all men under the age of 50. Horses and any motorized vehicle was being requisitioned for military service. Sales of Vodka were banned in favor of stockpiling alcohol for use in field hospitals. In Britain, sand bags were being filled, Children were being prepared for evacuation to the country. France was busy calling up reserves.

On this broadcast, via EIAR, the Fascist Radio network in Rome reported the Mussolini Government was in complete accord with the German position on Poland. Italy was ready to join in at a moment’s notice.

The stage was set. All that was needed was an incident. All that was needed was the go-ahead.

And on this day in August, everyone in Europe waited.

Here are news reports via EIAR in Rome for August 26, 1939.

Okay – now for the begging and pleading part:

You know we’ve been weathering storms, hysteria, lock-outs, shutdowns and malfunctions since 2012 and in all that time we’ve never stopped making Past Daily a place where you come and discover things – old things and new things you may have missed. Past Daily is a huge endeavor and it normally would take a bunch of people handling different chores to pull off the day-to-day that we do. But it’s just me and my archive – this batch of sounds that I refer to every day is what I do because I don’t want to be part of the problem. Knowing things, especially History makes you an informed person – someone who can look at the world objectively and make up your own mind. We don’t do click-bait, come-ons, phishing expeditions or thirst traps – what you see is what you get – and hopefully what you get is a different perspective on things that can only help and not hurt you.

But doing a site like Past Daily take a lot of time and uses a lot of money to keep running – it’s expensive – and that’s why we need your help. Consider becoming a Patron or kicking in for a cup of coffee or two or putting a few bucks in the kitty via PayPal. It all helps keep the site rolling. Yeah, we run ads because we have to, even though I hate them – they only contribute pennies each month, but every penny is never wasted.

It’s easy to become a Patron – just click on the link and you’ll be given a bunch of choices; one time – a specified time – forever. It’s up to you. Once you subscribe you get to join the secret society of folks who can download all this audio for your very own library to use every day as our way of saying thank you. We haven’t gotten to the coffee-cup and t-shirt phase yet (once the operating expenses get taken care of, we’re going to offer percs – I swear!)

But whatever you do, we need you and we want you to come back every day because there is new stuff being posted at least three times a day and it’s eclectic. You may not like everything but it’s your choice and it’s available.

Do what you can – we keep the hounding down to a minimum because I want to let the posts speak for themselves – but we can certainly use the company.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program.