World War Two 80th anniversary: how conflict shook – and shaped – Scotland

The Second World War effectively began 80 years ago today on September 1, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain would declare war on Germany, and Europe would descend into six years of bloodshed.

Scotland would be at the forefront of the fighting. The first shots of the air war were fired over Scotland. One of Britain’s worst naval tragedies happened in Scottish waters. Some of the most dreadful nights of the Blitz raged across Scotland. The SAS was created by a Scot. Commandos used Scotland as a training ground for D-Day. An estimated 57,000 Scottish soldiers died during the war and carried out acts of astonishing heroism in all of the most important battles of the conflict. One of the main prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials was perhaps the most controversial lawyer in Scottish history.

Evacuation as war begins

The war may have begun in September but the nation had been preparing for conflict for most of 1939. The biggest fear was that Hitler’s Luftwaffe would carry out an air blitzkrieg, killing thousands. Parents feared for their children. Evacuation from major towns and cities was seen as the only way to keep children safe.

Scotland was at unique risk because of its concentration of heavy industry – particularly shipbuilding. German leaders saw Scotland, with its steel and coal, as central to the British war effort.

The Department of Health in Scotland had been planning for child evacuations since early 1939. Those to be evacuated included unaccompanied children, mothers with children under school age, and the disabled. The areas deemed most at risk were Edinburgh, Glasgow, Rosyth, Clydebank, Dundee, Inverkeithing and Queensferry.

Although evacuation was voluntary, when the order came at 11.07 on August 31, 1939, to "Evacuate Forthwith" nearly 176,000 children were made ready by their parents to leave for the countryside and safety – with labels on their clothes to identify them. Within three days, 120,000 children had been evacuated from Glasgow alone.

Glaswegian children were sent to Perthshire, Kintryre and Rothesay. Children from Edinburgh went to the Borders and the Highlands.

The Scotland’s History project, curated by Education Scotland, describes how “children mustered at their local primary school, carrying their gas-mask, toothbrush, change of underclothes, and label ... It was a logistical nightmare to process the evacuees on arrival and allocate accommodation. For some children it was a great adventure, for others it completely dislocated family life.”

By Christmas 1939, Britain was still in the "Phoney War", and the Blitz hadn’t materialised. Three-quarters of the evacuated children returned home.

War in the sky

Although the Blitz hadn’t yet begun, the air war had – and it started over Scotland. The first attack came on October 16 over the Firth of Forth. Scotland was at the limit of the Luftwaffe’s flying range, and the attack took Britain’s air defences by surprise.

Nine Nazi planes were heading for Roysth naval base. Passengers crossing the Forth Rail Bridge thought the planes planned to strafe them. Anti-aircraft detachments were taking part in a drill and using dummy ammunition as the attack started. The Luftwaffe damaged three cruisers and killed 16 crew.

Spitfires from 603 City of Edinburgh Squadron and 602 City of Glasgow Squadron scrambled shot down three German planes over the sea – making them the first enemy aircraft downed over Britain.

A few weeks later, on October 28, 1939, RAF Spitfire pilots from the 602 and 603 squadrons were engaged in dog fights with the Luftwaffe above East Lothian. One pilot, Flight Lieutenant Archie McKellar, aged just 25, shot down a Heinkel bomber over the village of Humbie. The "Humbie Heinkel" became the first enemy aircraft to be shot down on British soil.

Two German crew died, but the pilot and navigator surrendered to police who arrived on the scene, as crowds turned out to take pictures.

In a tragic epilogue, Archie McKellar was later killed just a few hours after the official end of the Battle of Britain, meaning his name was left off the Roll of Honour. The Scotland’s History project notes, however, that “a memorial plaque commemorating Flight Lieutenant McKellar calls him ‘the Forgotten Ace’.”

The war at sea

Scapa Flow, the natural harbour at the centre of the Orkney Islands, was symbolic in the minds of German leaders. First, it was where the German fleet scuttled itself after surrender at the end of the First World War, and second it was a base for the British Home Fleet. Its position allowed the Royal Navy to mount a blockade of Germany, and to limit Hitler’s attempts to harry Atlantic convoys.

Admiral Karl Donitz hand-picked U-Boat commander Gunter Prien to lead his attack on Scapa Flow within days of war beginning. Prien’s U-47 was briefly caught in the headlights of an Orkney taxi as it broke the surface entering Scapa Flow just after midnight on October 14, 1939, but it spotted the Royal Oak battleship and fired a salvo of torpedoes. The ship sunk and 833 sailors lost their lives, including 120 "Boy Sailors" aged 14-18.

“The sinking of the Royal Oak entailed the biggest loss of boy sailors in any single Royal Navy engagement before or since,” the Scotland’s History project says. Against the odds, though, a small trawler, Daisy II, rescued 386 survivors from the water. Hitler gave Prien an Iron Cross First Class; every member of his crew received an Iron Cross Second Class. There were claims that Prien was guided by a German agent on Orkney – but the allegations were never substantiated.

The Blitz

Thousands of civilians died, and tens of thousands more were left homeless, during the Blitz as bombs rained down on Glasgow, Greenock, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, and the town which came to symbolise the resilience of the Scottish people, Clydebank.

Clydebank, a major munitions and shipbuilding town, was all but destroyed after two nights of bombing on March 13 and 14 1941. Of all the Scottish towns hit by the Blitz, it was Clydebank which suffered the worst. Although the official memorial commemorates 528 fatalities, some upper estimates put the dead at 1200. Out of 12,000 homes, eight were undamaged. More than 35,000 people were left homeless. A Polish destroyer undergoing repairs at the John Brown shipyard helped defend the town. A memorial to the crew can be found at Solidarity Plaza in Clydebank today.

In the book, Luftwaffe over Scotland, historian Les Taylor called the Clydebank Blitz “the most cataclysmic event” in wartime Scotland. Taylor described the raid as a terror attack “intended to crack morale and force the people to call for an end to the war. However, it had quite the opposite effect, strengthening resolve for the war in Scotland”.

After the raids, The Glasgow Herald wrote: “The cool unwavering courage of the people is evident, and when the full story of their heroism in the face of the Luftwaffe is told, they will take their place alongside the citizens of London and Coventry.” The government noted: “It is agreed by all observers that the bearing of the people in Clydebank was beyond praise.”

The Home Front

Rationing became a part of everyday life during the war, with essential foodstuffs like butter, eggs, sugar and meat limited for everyone aged five and up. It was a Scot who came up with a plan to help the Home Front and make life more bearable. Professor John Raeburn from Aberdeen was the head of the Agricultural Plans Branch at the Ministry of Food – and the Dig For Victory campaign was his brainchild.

The idea was to take any available land – sports fields, golf courses, parks, waste ground – and allow people to graze animals and grow their own fruit and vegetables. By 1943, there were 1.4m allotments. Herb committees were set up to pick medicinal herbs no longer in supply. Victory gardens were planted on rooftops.

As the Scotland’s History project says: “The government knew the British people could be starved out by sea blockade; as much imported food came from Canada and America, supplies were vulnerable to attack from the German navy. The British Merchant Navy also had to change its role to be available for transporting troops and munitions.”

Scotland with its vast wild forests also became a place of essential work for the Women’s Land Army – especially the "Lumberjills" who cut down trees to get wood for the war effort. These Land Girls kept Scotland’s farms operating while the men who once worked the fields were recruited into the armed forces.

The secret war

Scotland was a centre for spying activity during the war. The so-called Shetland Bus set up by the Special Operations Executive was based in Scalloway. It used lightly armed boats disguised as trawlers to ferry agents to occupied Norway to fight in the resistance. It also smuggled out Norwegians at risk of being executed by the Gestapo. Some 192 agents and 383 tonnes of weapons were smuggled into Norway via the Shetland Bus, along with 73 agents and 373 refugees who made the return trip to Shetland.

From 1940 until D-Day, soldiers trained in Scotland for landings on enemy beachheads, with No 1 Combined Training Centre at Inveraray the HQ. A quarter of a million men were put through their paces there, and at Loch Fyne, Arran and the Scottish Borders. Soldiers who made the grade underwent elite training from early 1942 at the Commando Centre near Spean Bridge. And at Lochailort near Fort William, soldiers, including the actor David Niven, were trained to kill at the Irregular Warfare School.

It was a Perthshire soldier called David Stirling who created the SAS in 1941 as a elite force designed for espionage, sabotage and assassination behind enemy lines. Stirling joined the Scots Guards straight from school, and inspired by Lawrence of Arabia he established the SAS, while in North Africa, to harry Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

Stirling was captured in 1943 and after multiple escapes was sent to Colditz for the remainder of the war.

Another Scot was also instrumental in securing the reputation of the early SAS – the upper class Fitzroy Maclean, seen by many as the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Maclean helped Josip Tito and his Yugoslav partisans fight the Nazi occupation. He’d enlisted as a private in the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders as war began and rose to the rank of brigadier. He later became a Conservative MP, representing Bute and North Ayrshire, and was made a baronet.

Scotland was also at the centre of one of the most bizarre secret operations during the entire war: the peace mission to Britain by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess. Hess, who was mentally unhinged, decided in May 1941 to fly solo, without Hitler’s knowledge, to Scotland in the hope of meeting the Duke of Hamilton to begin peace talks. Hess landed in Eaglesham and was immediately arrested. He was held in custody throughout the war, and later sentenced to life imprisonment. He hanged himself in Spandau Prison aged 93 in 1987.

Aftermath

Shortly before 9am on May 8, 1945, crowds began to gather in their thousands in Glasgow’s George Square, marking the start of a three-day celebration of VE Day – Victory in Europe.

Although the fighting would go on until VJ Day – Victory Over Japan – on August 15, when PoWs would finally return home from their brutal captivity in the far east, the three-day party in Glasgow marked the coming of peace for the people of Scotland. By the end of the celebrations many pubs had run dry.

"Noise – the sort of gay, happy, carefree merrymaking, the sound of which has not been heard in Glasgow in the 40s, came back to town," a Herald reporter wrote. "You could hear it half a mile away. It was solid and heart-warming.”

With the coming of peace, justice had to be dealt out to the Nazi regime. Edinburgh lawyer David Maxwell Fyfe had been thinking about how to deal with Nazi leaders once war ended since being made Solicitor-General by Winston Churchill in 1942. Churchill wanted summary executions, but the new Labour government of 1945 wanted war crimes trials at Nuremberg. Fyfe became one of the lead prosecutors, famously grilling Hermann Goering on the stand. Ten Nazi leaders were executed. Goering killed himself before he could be hanged.

Fyfe was controversial as Home Secretary. He persecuted Britain’s gay community, and pushed through the execution of Derek Bentley, later given a posthumous pardon. Yet, despite his flaws, Fyfe helped draft the European Convention on Human Rights.

One of the few remaining physical reminders of the war in Scotland is to be found on Orkney. On the island of Lamb Holm stands the Italian chapel, built by PoWs who had fought in Mussolini’s fascist army. The PoWs took two Nissen huts and transformed them into this beautiful hand-built place of worship. One of the PoWs was Domenico Chiocchetti, the artist who painted the fresco of the Madonna and Child above the altar. It remains one of Orkney’s most visited and beloved attractions.