I want you to imagine, just for a moment, that
your country has, well, officially declared war.
Right, the big one. Exactly. Not some distant
border skirmish, but the most consequential conflict
in human history. The declarations are on the
radio, papers are signed, troops are, you know,
theoretically mobilizing. You'd naturally assume
everyone is totally on the same page. Right.
You'd think the reasons for fighting a global
superpower would be so, I don't know, painfully
obvious that they wouldn't even need ex - Blaining.
But history at the ground level is rarely that
clean. It really isn't. Because what if the general
public was actually so uncertain, so disconnected
from the geopolitical reality that they needed
a 160 -page paperback book just to explain why
they were fighting in the first place? It's a
premise that completely upends how we usually
view history. We tend to assume the grand narrative
of a war is just solidly in place before anyone
even deploys. And that tension right there is
exactly why we're here today. So, welcome to
the Deep Dive. Glad to be here. Today, we're
immersing ourselves in the pages of this largely
forgotten, but like massively influential piece
of 1939 nonfiction. Our source is the Wikipedia
page for a book titled Why Britain is at War
by Harold Nicholson. Which is just a fascinating
historical artifact. It really is. Our mission
here is to dissect how this 50 ,000 word treatise
was practically rushed into print to convince
a really skeptical or at least super confused
British public. Right. To convince them that
fighting Nazi Germany wasn't just some abstract
political thing happening far away on the continent.
Exactly. It was an absolute existential necessity.
It truly serves as this remarkable case study
in public communication and crisis management.
Taking massively complex international relations
and decades of grievances and, you know, distilling
it down into something you can hold in one hand.
And something people could actually understand.
And they absolutely devoured it. To set the stage
for you, this was printed as what they called
a Penguin Special. just 60 so six old English
pennies that press point is super crucial yeah
why is that so important well because it made
the book incredibly accessible pricing it at
six pennies meant this wasn't you know some academic
journal meant only for the political elite debating
in London Gentleman's Club right it wasn't locked
away in an ivory tower exactly it was specifically
engineered for the everyday citizen reading on
the train to work and it reached them it sold
a hundred thousand copies which is a staggering
print run for a dense political treatise. Even
major political figures like Anthony Eden were
praising it and buying copies to hand out. It
was a cultural phenomenon. But to truly understand
why it struck such a nerve, okay, let's unpack
this. We have to look at the exact moment it
was commissioned. The timeline is arguably as
fascinating as the book itself. So on September
25, 1939, Alan Lane, he's the founder of Penguin
Books, he officially commissions Harold Nicholson
to write this special edition. And Nicholson
was a very, very deliberate choice for this.
He wasn't just some commercial author looking
for a quick gig. Brady had a day job. Yeah, he
was the national labor member of parliament for
Lester West, but what makes him uniquely qualified
is his track record. Because he'd been talking
about this for a while, right? Exactly. Nicholson
was one of the very few voices in parliament
actively raising questions in the House of Commons
about the rising threat of fascism, like, way
before it was popular to do so. You can almost
picture the dynamic. He's the guy in the room
pointing out the smoke while everyone else is,
I don't know, insisting there's no fire. Right.
He saw the storm gathering while others were
actively looking away, which made him the perfect
candidate for Alan Lane's vision. Because Lane
needed this fast. Right. Lane didn't have time
for an author to... researched the history from
scratch. He needed someone with the arguments
already simmering in their head because he needed
50 ,000 words and he needed them immediately.
It's essentially the 1939 equivalent of like
an emergency podcast or a viral explainer threat.
That's a great way to look at it. Lane is basically
saying, give me 50 ,000 words fast, tell the
British people why we're at war and why we absolutely
have to defeat Nazism. But I want to pause here
because something about this timeline just feels
off to me. How so? Well, if I'm putting myself
in the shoes of a British citizen in 1939, I
know Britain declared war on Germany on September
3rd. Right. So if war is declared on the 3rd,
why is the founder of Penguin Books desperately
commissioning an explainer book on the 25th?
I mean, shouldn't the public have already known
what the stakes were three weeks into a world
war? It's a great question, and what's fascinating
here is that to answer it, we have to look at
the strange psychological reality of that specific
time frame. Okay, lay it out for me. So the book
was published on November 7, 1939, and this entire
period, the autumn and winter of 1939, is known
historically as the Phony War. The Phony War.
That is such a surreal and, I mean, almost dismissive
label for the start of World War II. It sounds
dismissive now, yeah, but it perfectly captures
the agonizing suspense of the time. The Phony
War was this eerie, quiet gap from the fall of
Poland in October 1939. all the way to the German
invasions of Denmark and Norway in April 1940.
So yes, Britain had officially declared war.
The papers were signed. But for the average citizen
in London or Manchester, nothing was physically
happening. Let me make sure I'm picturing this
correctly. The government declares war, so everyone
expects immediate devastation. They're filling
sandbags, doing blackout drills, bracing for
the apocalypse. Right. Adrenaline is through
the roof. And then they just look up at an empty
sky. No massive air raids yet. No major battles
with British troops. Just silence. Exactly. And
that silence is psychologically corrosive. Corrosive.
How so? Because no major bombs were dropping
on Britain during this window. Public motivation
was incredibly vulnerable. There's this initial
sense of unified purpose. But if months go by,
rations begin, the economy is disrupted, and
the skies stay clear. That adrenaline crashes.
Yes. It crashes into confusion and apathy. People
begin to grumble. Like, wait, why are we doing
this? Are we really in any immediate danger?
Oh, wow. That puts the entire book into perspective.
The government and figures like Nicholson realized
that if the public basically went to sleep during
the phony war, they'd be completely unprepared
when the real kinetic war actually arrived. They
needed a mechanism to keep the public awake.
They had to manufacture the urgency that those
silent skies were failing to provide. And that
specific requirement... dictated the entire tone
of Nicholson's book. Because the sources are
super clear on this, he definitely didn't sit
down and write some dry academic textbook about
border disputes. Not at all. The text notes that
he used quote, high irony, low sarcasm, and the
telling phrase. He essentially weaponized his
prose, going on the offensive against the reader's
complacency. He had to provoke a visceral reaction.
Dry recitations of international law just wouldn't
keep anyone awake at night. Right. Sarcasm and
irony, though, that engages your emotions. It
creates a sense of outrage. And clarity. It's
fascinating to look at this strictly as an artifact
of persuasion. I do want to clarify for you listening
that the source explicitly categorizes this book
as both a polemic treatise and propaganda. Which
is an important label to unpack. Yeah, because
we aren't here to take sides on the politics
of the era. But when we hear propaganda today,
our modern minds almost automatically jump to
fabricated lies or malicious brainwashing. If
we connect this to the bigger picture, that's
a vital distinction to make. Propaganda, especially
in a total war, is very often just about framing.
Framing real events. Exactly. It's about taking
real, verifiable, geopolitical events and wrapping
them in a specific emotional resonance. Nicholson
wasn't inventing facts about Nazi Germany. The
events actually happened. But he was curating
them, presenting them this highly opinionated
way, so the threat felt immediate and personal
to the reader. He had to make it personal because
the abstract threat of a shifting border thousands
of miles away doesn't feel dangerous to a guy
sitting in a pub in London. You have to bypass
the dense politics and make it relatable to human
nature. Which brings us to honestly the most
bizarre part of this. Here's where it gets really
interesting. Oh, the analogy. Yes. Nicholson
uses this incredibly jarring analogy right in
the opening pages. He's been tasked with writing
about the terrifying rise of Adolf Hitler, right?
The biggest geopolitical threat of the century.
So how does he start? Not with the Treaty of
Versailles, not with the League of Nations. He
opens with the story of a murderer named George
Joseph Smith. It is arguably one of the most
brilliant if unorthodox structural choices in
20th century political writing. It's a massive
bait and switch. It's like sitting down to read
a master's thesis on international relations
and the first chapter is just a true crime documentary.
It is quite the pivot for the reader. I just
have to ask, how does Nicholson draw a logical
line from a single domestic criminal to the leader
of a heavily armed nation state? What he does
is use the murderer to map out a psychological
playbook. By filtering it through this criminal,
George Joseph Smith, he compares those specific
methods directly to Hitler's insatiable grasp
for power. So he scales the psychology of a predator
from the domestic level right up to the international
level. Exactly. He bypasses the political jargon
completely. Wait, I think I see where he's going
with this. Is he trying to say that Hitler wasn't
operating like a traditional statesman bound
by diplomacy, but rather like a predator actively
grooming a victim? Precisely. The book highlights
Hitler's foreign policy brinkmanship, his elaborate
deception ploys, and his use of both actual and
implied force at the negotiation table. But by
using the murderer analogy, the average reader
instantly understands those abstract concepts.
Right. It makes the abstract intensely recognizable.
That is a chilling way to frame international
diplomacy. Suddenly, brinkmanship isn't just
a vocab word from a policy class. It's like...
a bully backing you into a corner in a dark alley
to see how you'll react. And deception isn't
just tearing up a treaty. It's a con artist gaining
your absolute trust right before they empty your
bank account. An implied force. That's just the
weapon resting visibly on the table while you
try to have a polite conversation. He's translating
diplomatic maneuvers into recognizable criminal
behavior. He's essentially asking the British
public You wouldn't negotiate with a serial killer
who is actively deceiving you, so why should
Britain and France keep giving in to Hitler's
demands? That is incredibly effective. Because
once Nicholson establishes that psychological
baseline, he uses that playbook as a lens for
the rest of the book. And then he takes the reader
on a very grim tour. Yeah, according to the source,
he walks the reader through how that exact playbook
was executed across Europe. step by step. The
structure of that tour is highly intentional
too. He actually starts by critically reviewing
Hitler's early life and his manifesto, Mein Kampf.
Grounding the reader and the ideology first.
Exactly. You establish the motive of the killer
before you walk the jury through the timeline
of the crimes. That fits the true crime analogy
perfectly. And once the motive is set, he deals
with each of the territorial claims sequentially.
This raises an important question though. What
happens when you list those events back to back?
Well, let's do it. Let's walk through this chilling
timeline exactly as it's presented in the source,
because hearing it really puts you in the shoes
of that 1939 reader watching the dominoes fall.
It really does build a sense of dread. It starts
in March 1936 with the seizure of the Rhineland.
If we map this back to the playbook, this is
the initial testing of the boundaries. It's the
predator bumping into you on the street to see
if you apologize or if you push back. And in
this case, the international community basically
apologized. They let him get away with it. Right.
Then there's a two year gap. But in March 1938,
we have the Forced Angeles for Austria. And we
should define that. The Angeles was essentially
Hitler forcing the annexation of Austria into
the German Reich without firing a single shot.
He just rolls in and takes over a sovereign nation.
And the pace of the aggression begins to accelerate
here. The predator realizes the doors to the
neighborhood are largely unlocked. Which leads
straight into the intense foreign policy crisis
from March to September 1938. This is the Munich
Agreement. The classic moment of appeasement.
Right. Britain and France try to negotiate with
the predator. They concede parts of Czechoslovakia,
hoping that if they just give him what he wants,
he'll be satisfied and go home. It's the bargaining
with a killer phase. It's like the neighbor saying,
OK, you can have the living room, but please
leave the rest of the house alone. But that never
works, does it? No. In the psychology of a predator,
concessions are just an invitation for further
exploitation. And Nicholson proves it never works
because just six months later, in March 1939,
comes the seizure of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.
The mass completely slips. All the promises made
at Munich are entirely broken. And finally, September
1st, 1939, the invasion of Poland. When you look
at that timeline, imagine reading those dates
in November 1939. Sitting in your armchair with
this six penny penguin special. Exactly. While
the skies outside are totally quiet, by laying
out the events from 1936 to 1939 in rapid succession,
Nicholson forces you to see the pattern. It strips
away any comforting illusion that these were
just, you know, isolated incidents or complex
border disputes. It wasn't just a misunderstanding
in the Rhineland, followed by a cultural unification
in Austria. It was a calculated escalating march.
And the book concludes by reviewing the main
causes for the outbreak of the war based on this
timeline and then suggests its ultimate aims.
It leaves the reader with zero doubt that the
pattern would have continued until the predator
reached their own shores. So what does this all
mean? If we zoom out and look at the entire journey
we've just unpacked, it's just this master class
in narrative framing. It really is. You have
a 160 page Penguin special commissioned in late
September, published by November. written by
an MP who saw the threat early, using high irony,
sarcasm, and a bizarre true crime analogy to
map out a brutal timeline. all carefully engineered
to wake a nation up, to shake them out of the
complacency of the phony war before the real
bombs began to fall. And the underlying lesson
here feels incredibly relevant to how we consume
information today, doesn't it? Absolutely. I
mean, we live in an era of unprecedented data
availability. We have news alerts hitting our
pockets 24 hours a day covering every skirmish
across the globe. But having more data points
doesn't necessarily mean we have more clarity.
Exactly. Sometimes, just like in the autumn of
19 - 1939, it takes a perfectly timed, highly
structured summary to cut through all that noise.
It takes someone laying out the timeline, step
by step, defining the psychology of the actors
involved to make us realize the true stakes of
the events unfolding around us. Which brings
up a completely different paradigm for us to
consider today. Yeah, think about it. Back in
1939, it took a human author. a singular voice
like Harold Nicholson, to synthesize this massive
existential threat into something the public
could process. He used his human understanding
of psychology, sarcasm, and fear to connect the
dots. But if a similar confusing geopolitical
crisis were to unfold tomorrow, we probably wouldn't
be waiting on a six penny paperback written by
a politician. No, we'd be relying on digital
platforms, real -time feeds, and increasingly
algorithms to summarize the events for us. Which
leaves you with a final, lingering question to
chew on. If we ever find ourselves in a moment
of sheer global confusion again, our own modern
phony war, who or what, is going to write the
narrative that makes us understand the stakes?
It's a daunting thought. And can we ever trust
an automated algorithm to synthesize the reality
of human survival the way a human being with
a clear warning once did? Thank you for joining
us on this deep dive. Keep questioning the information
around you and we'll see you next time.