The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Dunkirk sketch among rarities seen for first time
Publishing: Unique texts from Second World War
A never-before published sketch used to aid the escape from the beaches of Dunkirk is among the rare documents featured in a new book on the Second World War.
The War on Paper: 20 Documents That Defined the Second World War, explores the conflict through a series of rarelyseen papers which changed the course of the war.
Published by the Imperial War Museums (IWM), the book also features more than 50 images, extracts from letters and diaries, maps and posters charting the conflict.
The key documents range from Adolf Hitler’s signed directive ordering the invasion of Poland in 1939 to Winston Churchill’s annotated “end of the beginning” speech, made after the Allied victory at El Alamein in 1942.
There is also the hastily scribbled “diagrammatic layout of embarkation” by Captain Ken Theobald of the 5th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment, which was used by the British Expeditionary Force to flee from Dunkirk in 1940.
The drawing is one of five pull-out replica documents in the book.
Home Front documents in the book include an “If the Invader Comes” leaflet and Air Raid Precautions, while Kindertransport identity papers and the governor of Singapore’s final broadcast are also featured.
Other documents include the Anglo-German Declaration signed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler in September 1938, spelling out the desire not to go to war and leading Chamberlain to claim there would be “peace for our time”. There are also photos of Chamberlain holding the declaration aloft to the cheering crowd at Heston Airport when he returned from his talks with Hitler on September 30, 1938, and of the occupation of Warsaw, Poland.
Another image shows the surrender of all German forces in northwestern Europe at Luneberg Heath on May 4 1945.
The War On Paper is published on September 27 and can be pre-ordered at www.iwmshop.org. uk/p/26664/The-War-onPaper