{"id":967,"date":"2015-04-06T08:56:19","date_gmt":"2015-04-06T08:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=967"},"modified":"2019-08-18T22:10:48","modified_gmt":"2019-08-18T22:10:48","slug":"the-phoney-war-reaches-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2015\/04\/06\/the-phoney-war-reaches-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phoney War reaches Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Phoney war, a term used to describe the relative peace and lack of military action in Western Europe in the first months of WWII, doesn\u2019t mean that absolutely nothing happened, but rather that there was an overall semblance of remaining peace among the countryside as well as the cities. It\u2019s interesting to note that based on the description of Berlin between September 1939 to April 1940 in Berlin At War, by Roger Moorhouse, the Phoney war seems to have reached even the capital of Germany. Why does it seem to have been in Berlin?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Rationing was established. This indicated the creation of a war, but the rationing that was in place in the first couple of months still enabled Berliners to eat in relatively the same fashion. One time, the book mentioned Berliners enjoying good weather by picknicking<\/em> of all things. Whether they had plentiful food to do this with or not is questionable, but even emerging from outside to recreationally enjoy the weather shows their overall feeling of safety.<\/li>\n
  2. Sand Bags. Sand bags were placed around for protection against bombing and air raids. The creation of these bags, however, became a community event in Berlin neighborhoods, with everyone participating, and everyone in good spirits. Yes, they didn\u2019t like the association these sand bags had\u2014that of war\u2014but they took it lightly, nonetheless.<\/li>\n
  3. The Christmas of 1939 was full of \u201cminor inconveniences\u201d in Berlin. It\u2019s true that many of the traditional gifts, such as soaps and candies, could not be obtained, or were so expensive as to be virtually unobtainable. However, many Berliners still had access to, and purchased, a Christmas tree, just ones that weren\u2019t viewed through open curtains in the streets, but hidden behind black out curtains.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Phoney war\u2019s reach into Berlin originally struck me as a little odd, considering the location and importance of Berlin. But taking under consideration many things that only the start of a war could have, afterwards it makes sense. Although rationing came early, in part due to the landlocked location of Germany, at the start of the war the country would still have had plenty of resources and stores of materials with which to make the rationing seem less important. This also plays into the seeming ease of acquiring festive Christmas items like trees. Also, air raids did not become frequent or disastrous until after the Nazi entrance into Paris. This was in part due to the difficulty of locating cities with just-emerging radar technology, in part the overarching belief that civilians should not be targeted during a war, and in part due to the affect the Phoney war had on England\u2014the major player in bombing Germany.<\/p>\n

    Nonetheless, the Phoney war ends, and so too do the \u201cgood times\u201d at the beginning of WWII for Berlin. While we, as a class, continue reading Berlin At War in preparation for our trip to Germany and Poland, I fully expect to see the impact of WWII play out across civilian experiences in Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Phoney war, a term used to describe the relative peace and lack of military action in Western Europe in the first months of WWII, doesn\u2019t mean that absolutely nothing happened, but rather that there was an overall semblance of remaining peace among the countryside as well as the cities. It\u2019s interesting to note that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-field-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18061,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/18061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}