The paradox of the Second World War is that to spend more than five years defending freedom and crushing the Nazis, we resorted to draconian measures – ‘fighting a war for democracy, while threatening to silence dissent’, as we read in this book.
Morale was a constant concern. To keep the populace buoyant, and to avoid blind panic and despair, the government insisted on withholding grim statistics. The actual horrors were suppressed, ‘surrounded in great secrecy’.
Dunkirk, for example, was not reported as a humiliating retreat. It was instead ‘a miracle of deliverance, achieved by valour, perfect discipline, and faultless service’. Churchill’s
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