August 16, 22023 By Carol Britton Meyer
The upcoming “Britain’s War” lecture series, hosted by Hingham Public Library, will be presented by Hingham resident David Barrett, who moved from London, England, to the United States 45 years ago.
This compelling series will span eight weeks, from Sept. 13 through Oct. 25, with a different aspect of the earliest days of World War II covered during each session and a focus on the people of Britain.
The series — open to all — will be offered in the Whiton Room from 10 to 11:30 a.m., free of charge, and will be similar in format to the paid Osher Lifelong Learning Institute programs that take place at the library.
As background, Barrett was born in London in 1939 just before World War II began. He and his mother endured the nightly bombing of the city during The Blitz before being evacuated to Coventry in the English Midlands.
Shortly thereafter, Coventry became the target of Nazi bombing raids, forcing Barrett and his mother to return to London. His father served in the British Army during the war, and David would go on to be conscripted into the Royal Air Force at age 19.
“In talking with people in America [in later years], I found that very few knew that the war actually started in Sept. 1939 or what happened for the first two years,” Barrett told the Hingham Anchor. This is part of the information that will be shared during the “Britain’s War” series. “Unless you studied history in college, you many not know [these details]. I think people who attend [all or some of the sessions] will get a lot out of it.”
Barrett sees a number of parallels with what is happening in Ukraine today and what happened during World War II. “It’s quite fascinating from an American point of view,” he said.
Part 1 of the series will cover WWI, the Treaty of Versailles, and the factors that made Germany vulnerable to an emerging dictatorship — including crippling reparations and shouldering the blame for The Great War, while Part 2 details the growing unrest in the Middle-East, Japan’s invasion of China, and Germany’s march into the Sudetenland, Austria, and Danzig. The second session will also cover Germany’s signing of a nonaggression pact with Russia and Britain’s decision to introduce conscription.
Part 3 will detail Poland and its partitioning by Germany and Russia, Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany, and Russia’s seizure of Finland. It will also cover the Battle of River Plate, Britain’s build up of military forces, and Norway and Denmark’s surrender to Germany.
Part 4 of the series will detail Churchill’s election as British Prime Minister and the German invasion of France, Holland, and Belgium and will cover the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk and the formation of the “Home Guard” in Britain as the island nation prepared for invasion.
Part 5 will cover Germany’s planned “Operation Sea Lion” to invade Britain, British fighter airfields under attack from German bombers, and how the London Blitz decimated the capital. This session will also cover the death of Neville Chamberlain and the expansion of Luftwaffe bombing campaigns in other cities.
Part 6 will detail submarine warfare in the Atlantic and an increasingly isolated Britain as well as Italy’s launch of a North African campaign against Egypt, the crucial capture of an Enigma machine, and the invasion of Greece and Crete.
The 7th session will cover the increasing domestic food production in Britain and the strict rationing imposed on the British people as well as politics and entertainment in Britain, crime during the war, and the capturing of Heavy Water from Norway as well as the “Digging for Victory” campaign.
The final lecture in this series will feature Roosevelt’s re-election, the development of Lend-Lease, the escalation of conflict in the Mediterranean, Rommel’s North Afrika Corps against Britain’s 8th army, Germany’s invasion of Russia, the signing of the Atlantic Treaty, and will conclude with Pearl Harbor.
No registration is required to participate, and the sessions may be attended individually or for all eight of them.
For further details, go to https://www.hinghamlibrary.org/calendar.aspx?Keywords=%22britain%27s%20war%22&startDate=&enddate=&CID=14,22,23&showPastEvents=false.
Barrett left England in 1971 and lived in Switzerland with his family for five years before moving to the United States in 1976.
He and his family lived in Cohasset for 15 years before moving to Hingham seven years ago. “Hingham is a nice, safe town, rich in its own history,” Barrett said. As someone who has a great interest in history, it seems fitting that Barrett lives in an 1829 house and is a member of the Hingham Historical Society.