Here's something about propaganda and what we believed. The stories about German soldiers dressed as nuns were about quite early in the war and probably were purely rumours. There were other stories such as German tanks going into action with prisoners of war tied on the front of them. I think more attention was paid to stories of light signals given to German planes, when it was perhaps nothing more than somebody forgetting themselves and opening a front door with the hall light on. Someone asking for directions was likely to arouse suspicion, despite all road signs being removed in 1940. Anyone with a dubious connection was regarded with suspicion, and thousands of so-called 'aliens' were interned on the Isle of Man. I'm now wondering what happened to 'Jew Boy' mentioned here:
http://www.kenthistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=5154.msg41866#msg41866 But speaking personally I have no experience of anything like that.
My feeling is that the government got its propaganda about right. There was a Ministry of Information (MoI) that told it as it was. If a ship was lost there would be a radio announcement "the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of HMS xxx", perhaps after a delay for security reasons. If there was a battle by the army there could be a statement such as "casualties may be heavy". Aircraft losses were not hidden. I distinctly remember the news bulletin of 31st March 1944 (OK, I had to look up the date!) "Last night our bombers attacked Nuremburg. 96 of our aircraft are missing". That really shook us; it was the biggest lost ever suffered by Bomber Command in a single night. The only thing they didn't say was that they were talking of missing aircraft; there were another 10 that crashed in this country!
So I think the policy of honesty paid off, we trusted what we were told. We were allowed to listen to 'Lord Haw-Haw' broadcasting from Germany and treated him as a joke. Unless there was a D-Notice issued for a piece of news, the press was more or less unrestricted, except that it was an offence to distribute deliberately false information that could help the enemy.
Government information campaigns tended to be humorous. There were the 'Careless Talk Costs Lives' cartoons that became quite famous. There were the 'Famous Last Words' cartoons that I mentioned earlier. That particular one showed a man walking past an air-raid shelter as a German aircraft was approaching from behind him; someone was beckoning him in to the shelter but he said, "it's OK, it's one of ours". The RAF had its own 'hero' named 'Pilot Officer Prune', who showed in a series of cartoons, made public, how NOT to do things. Because they were funny people looked at them and the message got across
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I know this might seem corny, but a big inspiration was Churchill's speeches. I remember everybody listening when he was making a broadcast - no attempt to make things sound better than they were, just a straight message saying it would be tough but we would win.
And that was the essence. I remember the disasters of 1940/41, and the gradual getting of the upper hand. With the D-day landings in France many of us thought it was all over bar the shouting, not realising just how much it was going to take to beat the ordinary German soldier.
But in all that time I cannot recall anybody having any doubt that we would win.
So to answer Stewie's earlier question - yes, there must have been a common spirit. The in-fighting could wait, even to the extent that there were no elections during the war. That didn't mean we were entirely selfless, of course. I for one would always rather the bomb fell somewhere else than on me. But people would muck-in if needed, just as they do today in floods or snowstorms.
Just a last bit about Churchill. He was a great leader but, from what I've read since the war, we could have lost if the Chiefs of Staff hadn't put the lid on some of his more ambitious plans.
I'll probably be back tomorrow.
