Stories About Hitler Winning World War Two - Noel Coward – Peace In Our Time

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There are lots of science fiction stories about the horrors facing the World if Hitler had won WW2. This play from 1946 was undoubtedly among the first to examine the effects of a Nazi victory. Coward was inspired by a novel written by Saki in 1913 a year before The Great War even started, warning of a future Britain under the Kaiser’s control after a successful invasion then. He also drew upon studies of the French Resistance movement. Coward’s stage play is set in a typical but very busy London pub, The Shy Gazelle, in 1944 where seditious talk and grumbling about the new regime can cost lives. Despite the danger, resistance is nurtured with hints of hope that the rebels might yet make a difference and over-power their occupying oppressors. The Londoners believe a liberating army is advancing so they just have to hold out a little longer. In the play, a couple are unexpectedly reunited with their son, a soldier who they assumed to have died in the war. He indicates that he is involved in a resistance group which leads to some of the more sympathetic pub occupants risking execution, (most of the action taking place audibly just off-stage) before the pub clientele overhear fighting outside as the liberating group of US and expeditionary force rescuers start to free England just as the British liberated Paris. Strictly speaking, Hitler hasn’t fully won the war and though England has been defeated as Paris really fell, the war has continued and gone badly for the Germans. The promise of liberation gives the play a sense of hope and optimism lacking in many of the other stories of Nazi victory to follow. It is a cluttered play, and the 22 strong cast made it awkward as well as rare to perform, though it was well received. The title mocks Neville Chamberlain’s pre-war assurances that Britain would not declare war on Germany, giving the phrase cruel irony in that the peace has been attained by German victory pacifying the British spirit after we have lost the Battle Of Britain. An English newspaper editor is something of a traitor, while the publican struggles to maintain the peace in the bar knowing that trouble could wreck the premises and get him shut down. Churchill, who we are told has been executed in the play, praised it as a realistic consideration of what many must have still feared up to just a year before the play’s debut performance. The original cast included leading British actors Kenneth Moore and Bernard Lee. The Youtube is Coward's wartime propaganda Song London Pride Arthur Chappell