This is a very interesting article from the Daily Telegraph about ordinary people's feelings and experiences on the first day of the war: Second World War: The day the balloon went up - Telegraph September 3, 1939: Neil Tweedie describes a dreamlike Sunday when the immaculately dressed diplomats of Europe put the finishing touches to a global catastrophe A newspaper seller carries a hoarding pronouncing the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, on the Strand in London on 3rd September 1939 . 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. Had war been declared? she had inquired of a docker before catching the Liverpool Street-bound train. "Not yet," came the reply. "But I hope it won't be long now – this waiting around is making us all nervous." Maybe the Germans had decided to dispense with the niceties and had launched a surprise attack. Miss Cowles's apprehension mounted as she neared the metropolis. Only when she reached the outskirts of the city and was met by torrential rain did she realise she had been witnessing a violent thunderstorm. So began the day on which the Second World War began. Two days earlier, on September 1, German forces had invaded Poland in defiance of an Anglo-French military guarantee to that country. The greatest conflict in human history can be said to date from just after 3am on that Friday when German militiamen began firing on Polish troops in the city of Danzig. But only when London and Paris honoured their commitment, the latter after some soul-searching, did the invasion of an eastern European state translate into global war. Even now, 70 years later, there is something dreamlike about that Sunday, when immaculately dressed diplomats hurried about the capitals of Europe, putting the finishes touches to catastrophe. The war that would finally destroy European pre-eminence began in the traditional European manner, with ultimatums beginning: "I have the honour to inform you..." For the ordinary men and women, those who would do the fighting, suffering and dying, September 3 was a day of apprehension, despair, excitement and, occasionally, panic. Wars are still fought but they are now rarely ''declared''. Watching peace drain away like sand in an hourglass is an experience unlikely to be repeated for today's Britons. At the same time as Virginia Cowles was making her way to London, Lt Peter Parton of the Royal Artillery was watching a late showing of Wuthering Heights at the cinema in Watchet, Somerset. It was halfway through when a message flashed on the screen: "All officers and soldiers return to your barracks immediately." The balloon, he knew, was about to go up. In London, Neville Chamberlain was presiding over an emergency meeting of the Cabinet. The French were insisting on more time to mobilise their vast army before going ahead with an ultimatum to Berlin, but British service chiefs and Cabinet hawks wanted to get on with it. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War, demanded a 6am deadline. Eventually, it was agreed that Berlin would be issued with an ultimatum expiring at 11am. After years of appeasing Adolf Hitler, the honour of the British Empire was now at stake. David Margesson, the Chief Whip, summed it up to ''Chips'' Channon: "It must be war, old boy. There's no other way out." In anticipation of the inevitable, the Foreign Office had agreed a statement with the French promising to wage war in a civilised manner, sparing civilians wherever possible. The fire storms of Hamburg and Dresden were but a few years away. It was left to Sir Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador in Berlin, to deliver a note to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, at 9am. Ribbentrop did not relish such an encounter and left it to his interpreter Paul Schmidt to accept the ultimatum. A few hundred miles to the east, Poland's obsolete army was being cut to pieces by panzer thrusts, the world's first taste of Blitzkrieg. Schmidt managed to oversleep for the 9am (8am London time) meeting and had to sneak in the back of the foreign ministry building in Wilhelmstrasse. He was just in time to take delivery of the note, giving Hitler three hours to cease hostilities. Henderson liked Schmidt and told him: "I am sincerely sorry that I must hand such a document to you in particular." Schmidt then made his way to the Chancellery, where Hitler was waiting. He translated the ultimatum for the Fuhrer and then withdrew. Hitler saved his rant for his inner circle, Ribbentrop, Hess, Himmler and Goebbels. The Poles, he told them, were a miserable rabble. It was a "disgrace" to treat them as a sovereign nation, and the British understood this. Yet they were prepared to pillory him for "recognising natural realities". France's ultimatum was now being telephoned to the French embassy in Berlin. It was 10am in London when the BBC announcer Alvar Lidell warned his audience to expect an announcement from the prime minister in just over an hour. Far away in Munich, Unity Mitford, 25, daughter of Lord Redesdale, fervent devotee of Adolf Hitler, handed an envelope to Adolf Wagner, gauleiter of Munich. Just before 11am London time, Paris's ultimatum was finally delivered to Wilhelmstrasse by Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador. This time, Ribbentrop was on hand to confront him, accusing France of being the aggressor. In London, sirens warning of non-existent air-raids sounded across the capital. Wagner opened Mitford's envelope to discover a suicide note. The prospect of war between Britain and Germany was too much for her, she wrote, and she had therefore decided to ''put an end to herself''. Chamberlain, for so long the architect of appeasement, began his broadcast from the Cabinet Room in Number 10 Downing Street at 11.14am. Lidell noticed how "crumpled, despondent and old" he looked. Across the capital in Hayes, five-year-old Douglas Higgins was sitting halfway up the stairs in his house, listening to the declaration of war. "I had never known a silence before or seen such worry etched on my family's faces," he remembered. "What did it all mean? Apparently, we were at war with Germany. What was war and who was Germany? I rushed downstairs and clung to my mother, who was gently sobbing. I had never seen her cry before and hated the man on the wireless for making her cry." In Munich, Unity Mitford shot herself in the head in the English Garden. She was discovered and taken to a clinic. Eventually repatriated to Britain, it would be eight years before she succumbed to the bullet lodged in her brain. Shortly after his address, Chamberlain announced his War Cabinet. Winston Churchill, the arch anti-appeaser and for so long a thorn in the prime minister's side, was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Around the globe, the might of the Royal Navy, still the largest in the world, was stirring. "Commence hostilities against Germany" was accompanied by the signal "Winston's back". The Germans would draw first blood, however. Just after 7.30pm the British liner Athenia was torpedoed by U30 250 miles north-west of Ireland. Some 120 people died, including women and children. Realising he had sunk an unarmed liner, rather than the armed merchantman he thought her to be, U30's commander, Fritz-Julius Lemp, remarked: "What a mess!" The RAF began its war with reconnaissance flights over German naval bases and the dropping of 13 tons of propaganda leaflets. France, bled white in the First World War, declared war at 5pm, exhibiting little taste for the fight. Australia and New Zealand immediately declared war with Britain, but Canada would take another week to throw in its lot with the Mother Country, insisting on a meeting of its federal parliament before declaring war. For the British people, the events of that Indian summer Sunday spelled the beginning of six years of bloody struggle. The evacuation of some 3,000,000 women, children and disabled people from urban centres had begun two days earlier, bringing home to them and their relatives the reality of war. As for Chamberlain, he would resign in May of the next year following the disastrous campaign in Norway, to be succeeded by Churchill. Cancer killed him the following November. His diary for September 3 1939, the 15th after Trinity, records simply "War declared". Two words and infinite misery.
