Mr Attlee's cap and the nun index

Currently piling through Listening to Britain, a compilation of reports on domestic morale over the period May-September 1940 produced from a nationwide network of informers by the Ministry of Information for circulation at senior government levels. 

Early revelations: The RAF was very unpopular in the period before the Battle of Britain due to the belief, spread by returning soldiers, that they had let the BEF down at Dunkirk. Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches speech” wasn’t all that. It was generally popular, but a lot of people didn’t like it, being unpleasantly surprised by the ‘we fight on alone’ theme, since the French were still just about in the war at that stage. Everyone knows the stories about phantom German paratroopers being seen everywhere. But the nation also seemed gripped by the idea that German spies were going around dressed as nuns. These stories were so general that the MOI seem to have adopted an unofficial “nun index”, taking the number of spying nun stories in circulation as an indicator of the general level of rumour-mongering. And everyone mongered rumours, including rumours that rumour-mongers were going to be shot. Here are a random few of them, along with other miscellaneous responses from a country feeling its way into war.

The Chief Constable of York has been arrested as a German

Mr Attlee’s cap is depressing picturegoers 

Amongst all classes, dislike of Belgians is growing 

Kidderminster reports concern at German technicians in sugar beet factories

Nuns, paratroopers and paralyzing gases are widely reported today

Mental defectives are being recruited for a suicide corps 

The Germans are invading the South of France through a tunnel they dug under Switzerland 

East Grinstead phlegmatic after last night’s bombs

Isle of Thanet very worried about the fall of Belgium

Glasgow is generally bewildered 

Wiltshire nervous but not panicky 

 Hull jubilant at arrest of fascists 

 Some unease in coastal towns 

Tunbridge Wells pleasurably excited by bombs and anti-aircraft guns 

Dorset upset at lack of bomb shelters 

Manchester is mystified and anxious 

Isn't it always?

Comments

[ajay]

These sound like captions to a lost Fougasse cartoon. Like the classic "Mr Punch's Stock Market Report" which illustrated sentences like "Market sentiment was weak today" (man in morning coat sobbing) "but Distillers rallied somewhat" (cheerful kilted man holding whisky bottle).

[ejh]

I'd have liked to have seen some cartoons along those lines when I read a report about the Australian election result which had "markets nervous" in the headline.

Tunbridge Wells pleasurably excited by bombs?

[ejh]

I'd have liked to have seen some cartoons along those lines when I read a report about the Australian election result which had "markets nervous" in the headline.

Tunbridge Wells pleasurably excited by bombs?

[Richard J]

Peter Fleming's Invasion 1940 is a good anecodtal source for popular myths in 1940 (paratroopers as nuns certainly features in it). Ajay's reference to Fougasse reminds me that one of the stories was of a German beach invasion foiled by setting the sea on fire.

[ajay]

Something that the British were actually planning to do: look up the Petroleum Warfare Department, producers of fougasse mines and Crocodile tanks, as well as the Flame Barrage project.
I don't know if Fleming mentions this, but apparently the "charred bodies" story was originally black propaganda spread overseas that filtered back to Britain.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/dont_miss/codename/bodies_on_the_beach2.shtml
http://www.psywarrior.com/DeceptionH.html

[Alex]

Nuns, paratroopers and paralyzing gases are widely reported today

Aren't they always?

[ajay]

It's sort of a nationwide Twitter feed, isn't it?

[Richard J]

ajay> Yep, he mentions all of those (having a slightly more well-known brother, Ian, helped, I suspect).

[jamie]

Today's excerpt:

Cardiff, August 1: release of pickled eggs causes relief in densely populated areas.

[GLADOS]

"Ooh, better out than in, eh, Dai?"

[Chris Williams]

It reminds me of the proto-Twitter multiverse news feed that Bryan Talbot used as mood music in 'The Adventures of Luther Arkwright'.

Someone needs to go at the M-O online archive with a scraper and a script, for comic effect. "Haw Haw poisoned by Woolton Snoerk Pie" ought to be a possible outcome.