The Mystery of Blyton and the Appeasers

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm sure I saw a letter about this poem from Downing Street, in with some papers that Gillian had.

You may well have done, Viv. Bob Mullan says that Enid Blyton had written the poem "for" Winston Churchill, so she probably sent him a copy.

[Timmylover]

Was it his school?

Winston Churchill went to Harrow School.

[Wolfgang]

It seems that Germany in the 1930s was the most powerful nation on earth. So it would not have been surprising that out of intimidation, maybe, who knows, Enid Blyton may have wanted at some point in her life wanted to appease Germany, just as then British Premier, Neville Chamberlain tried to do so at the Munich Agreement of 1938. However, does that make Chamberlain a Nazi sympathizer?

Stephen, I'm not sure what you understand under powerful. At the end of the 1930s Germany might have had the most modern army, it started more or less from scratch in 1934, but in numbers other nations had similar amounts of people they could have called to arms. At sea Germany was no match for the British forces then, and the output of air fighters was greater in Britain than in Germany when the war started. This was possible because Britain had gained some time with the Munich agreement in 1938.
The German ecomomy was already focussed on war and Hitler ruining Germany's finances. If Great Britain had abused its economy the same way, it surely would have been a match for Germany right at the beginning. And naturally the USA would have surpassed them both and later did so.
Germany was able to keep the war on going by exploiting the conquered countries and incorporating their economies into its war machine. And while the Germany war machinery produced some quite advanced technical devices, it wasn't able to produce them in sufficient numbers to really make a difference.
Additionally the corruption and nepotism you usually find in totalitary sytems didn't increase the power of Germany at all...

[Dick Kirrin]

Well said, Wolfgang.

Personally, the question whether EB was a Nazi sympathizer or not is to be answered with a clear "NO". There is a difference between wishing for a total rule of a certain race and being a patriotic British author.

I wouldn't deny that there were people in Britain just like in other places in the world who silently had a more benevolent attitude to Nazism, but I don't think that not describing the Nazis as [censored] and having Geman soldiers featuring as people just doing their job does qualify as justification to count Enid Blyton among them.

The people featuring in her books mostly have the British Middle Class values of their time inside them and so that's the way they perceive the world. As a result, there is a somehow superior, somehow indifferent attitude towards foreigners and people from "lower" classes in the way they act.
Call it snobism if you like, but keep in mind, then, that characters like Jo sometimes challenge the Five at that by offering insights on life from another angle.

Cheers

Dick Kirrin

[Maggie Knows]

Is it possible that EB fans are being a bit too defensive about the author’s political views ? Many sections of British society were sympathetic to the Nazis before the war actually started. This was based at least three themes:

1) residual guilt over the harsh way Germany was treated at Versaille in 1919 – Hitler was seen by many in Britain and other countries as justifiably restoring the territory and prestige of Germany to something like it rightfully deserved

2) Nazi Germany was seen as a bulwark against Bolshevism, which many politicians and opinion-formers (e.g. the Daily Mail) saw as a much bigger threat.

3) Hitler desired an alliance with Britain so that he could focus on territorial conquest in the east. On this basis, throughout the mid to late 1930s there were many overtures to influential people in Britain to try and secure the alliance with the British that Hitler desired. (it was only when he failed to secure this alliance that he opted instead for a [temporary] alliance with Stalin (1939) so he could launch an attack in the west (1940) and neutralise the threat of a two-front war when he returned to the main business of attacking the Soviets (as he did in 1941).

I think point (2) is particularly important. By the mid 1930s the crimes of Stalin were becoming much better known and acknowledged in the west. By then millions had been killed directly, or indirectly through starvation (the estimate for the forced famine in the Ukraine is something like 8 million deaths). Moreover, through support for Comintern the Soviets were still advocating the destruction of the western democracies. Numerous western conservatives (and Catholics) joined the fight against Bolshevism during the Spanish Civil War, and fought alongside soldiers and airmen from Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

The Nazis crimes were (mainly) still ahead of them at this point. Most people in the 1930s could not conceive of the scale of the crimes that would be committed in the 1940s. Many in the 30s saw the Bolsheviks as the bigger evil, and Hitler and the Nazis had pledged to take them on…

I don’t think it is controversial to suggest that EB had right-of-centre political views. On that basis, it would be more of a surprise if it were said that she had no sympathy for the Nazis in the 1930s. Many people (and politicians and newspaper editors) did. Obviously, though, once the war clouds were gathering in 1938\39 and when the war started, patriotic instincts took over….

It is natural to attempt to retro-fit modern attitudes onto people from the past. But we have to accept that sometimes our heroes from the past said and did things that don’t sit comfortably with modern attitudes. I once saw an American movie about the Revolutionary War where George Washington was portrayed as an Abolitionist. In reality, he along with Jefferson was a slave-owner….

[David Chambers]

Bob Mullan writes that the 19th March 1947 edition of the Sunday Graphic contained an Enid Blyton poem about Winston Churchill, called 'A Lion Once We Had.' He quotes only the final two stanzas:

As the topic of Churchill was just raised elsewhere I thought I'd add the first stanzas to this Sunday Graphic poem. I have followed your arrangement Anita - much better than that in the paper where it was squeezed into a narrow column with each stanza taking up 11 lines! The poem was introduced as follows:

We have received the following verses from our famous contributor ENID BLYTON.

A Lion Once We Had
A lion once we had that roared for England,
That spoke with every English heart and voice,
Ranging behind him every man and woman,
At one with him and his unfaltering choice.

He was the voice of England - when he spoke
Our thoughts were uttered, and his burning phrase
Stung us to tears and made us proud and stubborn,
Unconquerable in those tremendous days.

If ever a man was England, this was he,
Old Lion-Heart, whose heart was England's own,
Leader of men, a Marlborough grown in stature,
He stood for us when England stood alone.

And now, when all our glory's dimmed and shadowed,
What would we give to hear a dauntless roar,
To range ourselves behind a trusted leader,
One for all and all for one once more!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, David - it's good to be able to read the whole poem. It's very much of its era. I like the way Enid is introduced as "our famous contributor ENID BLYTON".

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

That's great

Has anyone else got some hidden gems about Blyton and WW2?

Viv