Desert Island Discs premiered on the BBC. The show invited guests on to imagine that they were shipwrecked on a desert island, but could bring 8 records with them, then featuring the eight.
The show ran throughout the war, and has been revived from time to time. The concept remains a popular one in the imagination.
Indeed, at least for the stressed, being shipwrecked on a desert island, as long as you have food and some comfort, starts to look like a pretty good thing. . . for a while.
January 29, 1942: Iran signs treaty of alliance with Britain and USSR, which promise to depart Iran 6 months after Axis defeat.
Iran frankly didn't have much of a choice but to agree, and the Soviets would nearly have to be forced out after the war.
Persia had been long part of the "great game", along with Afghanistan, played between the United Kingdom and Russia. As it was between the two, its position was untenable during the Second World War, and it was occupied, as we've previously discussed, by both powers.
The New York Times reported, on the previous days byline, that Prime Minister Churchill was standing for a vote of confidence:
LONDON, Jan. 28 -- Debate on conduct of the war raged in Parliament today with a political fury quite equal to the fighting on the fronts. At the end of one of the longest single day's sittings that Parliament has had since the war began, there was little doubt that Prime Minister Winston Churchill would get a big majority in a vote of confidence that will close the three-day debate.
He survived the vote.
The NYT also reported that:
RED CROSS TO USE BLOOD OF NEGROES; New Policy, Formulated After Talks With Army and Navy, Is Hailed and Condemned WILL BE PROCESSED ALONE New York Delegation Criticizes Separation as 'Abhorrent' to Founding Principles
Hard to believe this was a concern with some people.
Blood is blood, but the "mixing of blood" to mean the mixing of "races" had been a long fear in a certain section of the United States, with no quarter of it being immune. Laws existed nearly everywhere preventing mixed marriages, although the degree to which they were enforced varied enormously.
Scientifically, it was well known and had been for a very long time that there's no difference whatsoever between the blood of various humans, not matter what their ethnicity. Indeed, the concept of "race" itself is a false one, although it's still widely believed. The genetic variance between various human populations is slight, and to the extent it's real, it's real between various populations that are grouped into "races" as well. I.e, there's a genetic variance, albeit slight, between, let's say, Irish men and Italians, and so on.
As we've discussed here before, it's widely stated, inaccurately, that World War Two brought about a phenomenal change in regard to women in the workplace, and hence society. It'd be more accurate to say that about the status of African Americans in American society.
Their place, of course, had been fought over and struggled over since the end of the Civil War. The Compromise of 1877 had caused a massive nationwide retreat in the cause of civil rights in the country, but the issue had not gone away. The creation of the Lost Cause myth, its strong growth in the early 20th Century, and increased mobility, had brought about the Great Migration in the second decade of the 20th Century. World War One saw African Americans volunteer to fight in the belief that their performance in the war would bring about a final leap to full equality, but that not only did not occur, the end of the war brought a racist reaction with the Red Summer of 1919.
Still, things were slowly changing, and the liberal administration of Frankly Roosevelt at least held the promise of the advancement of civil rights for African Americans.
African Americans had served in some numbers in the U.S. military since the Revolution. Interestingly, the Navy had been originally integrated, as we've also discussed here previously, but the Army had been segregated since large-scale recruiting of blacks first occurred during the Civil War. The Marine Corps had not admitted blacks its entire history, going into the Second World War. Given the excellent performance of black troops during World War One, it would be natural to suppose that the experiment would have been repeated during World War Two, but in fact the Army was, at least at first, more prejudiced during the Second World War than the First.
In spite of having longstanding all black combat units, prejudice from career officers, often with Southern roots, meant that the Army declined to deploy them as combat troops. For the most part, the Regular Army black units were busted up into service units during the war. African American sailors likewise were relegated to service roles on board ship, something that had been the case since the steel wall Navy replaced the wooden wall one. Blacks were allowed into the Marine Corps as the war progressed, but again in service roles. Only late in the war, when pressure from African American groups and combat necessity required it, would this start to break down in the Army.
Still, the fact that the nation went to war espousing the ideal of equality made the hypocrisy a bit too much for society to bear. Integration of the services would commence in the late 1940s and there was no going back. This was brought about, in large part, due to the ideals expressed in the Second World War.
Related Threads:
Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation
Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two
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