Second World War: The day the balloon went up

[oldironside]

"September 3, 1939: Neil Tweedie describes a dreamlike Sunday when the immaculately dressed diplomats of Europe put the finishing touches to a global catastrophe.

"In the 1936 film version of the H G Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come the arrival of war is swift and terrible. Barely has it begun before enemy bombers arrive, raining certain death from the skies in the form of gas bombs. With no defence against this new and indiscriminate form of warfare, bodies are soon piled high in the rubble that was London.

It was a startling image, regarded by many cinema-goers as a dreadful prophecy. Fear of the German bomber was as real as that of the H-bomb in a later era.

One can imagine, therefore, the fear that engulfed Virginia Cowles as she made her way towards the capital on the Harwich boat train, just after midnight on Sunday, September 3 1939. The young American was returning from the Continent when the horizon to the south lit up with flashes, accompanied by the distant rumble of explosions."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6128589/Second-World-War-The-day-the-balloon-went-up.html