Sunday, September 3, 1939: the dawn of a new conflict that would engulf
the world, following the words of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain:
"This country is at war with Germany." By the time World War II ended in
1945, nearly half a million people from Britain and its empire had lost
their lives, and the world had changed forever. Eighty years on, a look
back at the lives of British people in September 1939 reveals a very
different world from the one we know today. Unprecedented hardship lay
ahead for a country where free healthcare for all was unknown: strict
rationing of food and petrol, conscription for both sexes, and personal
tragedy year after year amidst the chaos of Britain's bombed out cities
and ports. What was it really like to be living in Britain in September
1939? The Day the War Broke Out is a fresh insight into the hearts and
minds of a nation on that fateful day. With exclusive personal
interviews, untold stories, wartime diaries, and newspaper reports, it
reveals the innermost fears and hopes of a society on the brink of war:
through the eyes of young mothers fearful for their families, bewildered
children painfully cut adrift from loved ones, and men of all ages, many
now facing combat for the second time in their lives. These are
personal, intimate snapshots from 80 years ago--when the entire world,
virtually overnight, seemed to have been turned upside down--and of how
a nation faced this new world with courage, humor, and stoicism.
