On the 8th May, it seems appropriate to publish Holland's perspective on the end of the War in Europe. The family has nothing suitable to illustrate this piece but Sal Shuel has kindly supplied two Lilliput cartoons to start and end the text. The start point is Jim Boswell's cartoon for Lilliput for the end of the War in the East, while the entry ends with a self portrait cartoon Holland supplied to Lilliput, illustrating his activity at the end of the War. Other more relevant works may be in various Ministry and Museum archives.
Strange days, the end of a World War. Surely the actual moment of victory, the day of surrender, should be a day never to forget. Yet while I can remember everything about the 11th November 1918 - the visit to my secondary school of the Chairman of the Governors, a local builder whose grammatical infelicities delighted us all, to announce a day or half-day holiday. The school’s torch lit procession after dark to the playing fields where a celebration bonfire had been assembled and even a few fireworks obtained, the neighbouring street celebration, with kitchen chairs and heaven knows what household goods being thrown on the street fires. My father, having vainly attempted to reach an appointment in Hammersmith, fighting his way through the celebrations outside the Exchange to return from Liverpool Street in early afternoon.
Yet I can recall little of the end of the Second World War, a bonfire on a Chiltern Common so fierce that up rooted green hawthorns burnt like tinder - but this was the end of the war against Japan surely? Perhaps no people should be called on to celebrate the end of a world war twice in a lifetime.
The flight from the Ministry of Information (MOI) was spectacular. Many of the specialists could hardly have been more anxious to get back to their peacetime practices or stake a part in the immense field of post-war rebuilding. I was offered and was glad to accept the Chief Designer (Exhibitions) post in the Central Office of Information, a rather skeletal organization to carry on some aspects of the MOI’s functions on the demise of that Ministry.
Robert Frazer became Director General of COI and Cecil Cooke, most sensitive and kindly of executives, headed the new Exhibitions Division. With survivors from the MOI team and recruits demobilized from other wartime setups, we had a team equipped to deal with post war demands.
One of the first such demands was to publicize the work of the Control Commission for the British Zone of Germany which was taking over the administration of that devastated region from Military Government. This involved short notice visit s to the Zone with a War Correspondent’s Pass, though without the uniform that normally accompanied that appointment. In consequence we were hauled out of the theatres, canteens, and clubs and centres such as Bielefeld, Herford, Minden by indignant Town Majors bellowing “Who brought those civilians in here?” to be followed by a confrontation between our Conducting Officer and the irate officers on which the production of our laisser passer, signed by the responsible Minister, eventually won the day.
To climb into a ramshackle Dakota, with blackened windows, barely lit by the feeblest of bulbs, secured to metal benches running the length of the unlined fuselage, to emerge on a bleak airfield to encounter for the first time the notorious Volkswagen and bounced over ice covered roads to Bunde, near Minden, HQ for Military Intelligence.
With the script and caption writers we were based at Intelligence Headquarters and from here, with carte blanche to visit any part of the Zone, we operated. Belsen was memorable, not for its horrors, the worst of which had been buried or burnt by the time of our visit, but for the contrast between the environment of Lüneberg Heath, so like the Surrey countryside, and the many survivors still living in the huts, many with numbers tattooed on wrists, all with a grim story to tell, the heroic efforts of the Red Cross to provide something.
This abrupt encounter with Germany after defeat was difficult to evaluate. We were taken wherever in the Zone we felt would give us the most comprehensive picture of the problems - to Belsen, Hamburg, Essen and the Ruhr. No fraternization between occupying forces and the native population was allowable or excusable; rumours spread - new swastikas had been seen on walls and snow banks. The military machine functioned efficiently, it had plenty of practice; the civilian takeover by newly set up Control Commission less so. It was soon apparent to us that some very wide boys had insinuated themselves into the organization and were rapidly carving out profitable little enclaves for themselves and their business associates in the United Kingdom.
After the War years and the image the press and radio had built of the German scene, there were surprising adjustments to be made. At Belsen for example, were we expected a desolate sea of mud, was situated in gorse and bracken covered country very similar to Surrey and Hampshire and adjoining spacious and well designed SS barracks decorated with heroic murals of the Teutonic Knights - a juxtaposition more horrifying than a monotone consistency of squalor.