Geoff Norcott on Technology & Innovation

When you hear these warning sirens take cover at once. The warning may also be given by short blasts on police whistles.

Hi, I'm Geoff Norcott, a comedian, writer and performer, and I'm at the Imperial War Museum today to look at the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Gallery.

Hello, I'm James Taylor. I'm a curator at Imperial War Museums. I've been here for years and years. So very different world from mine-

Yeah, it would seem so, yeah. I'm all over the job, and you're always here.

Geoff Norcott has joined me at Imperial War Museum London to pose the questions that many of us are too embarrassed to ask about how recent conflicts have shaped our world. And in this series, we are exploring the role of war artists, photographers, and filmmakers in capturing seismic moments of modern and contemporary history. Focusing in this episode on the use of film during the first and second World Wars.

Avoid panic buying. There are plenty of food supplies in the country.

They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

From reconnaissance missions by air to the cameramen risking their lives on the ground, images from this time have endured in our consciousness and shaped the way we have recorded war since. But what did it take to capture those moments and how were they used in the war effort?

You've gotta convey something of the fact that bombers are getting through. Because otherwise you'll lose credibility. But you don't want to show it so explicitly that it actually scares the bejesus out of everyone.

On our way, we'll explore iconic items from the museum's collection so that we all leave with an understanding of the importance of artists, filmmakers, and photographers in a time of war.

Do you know what, I'm feeling the resistance. I think watercolours might be my problem.

All this in under an hour. I'm James Taylor, and this is Conflict of Interest. Geoff and I meet by the iconic guns that are displayed outside Imperial War Museum, London.

I used to come here all the time. I always used to love walking around the museum, but I haven't been here for years, so it's quite nostalgic coming back here.

So Geoff, what was the gallery you went to?

You're talking to the wrong guy. I mean, you know, I gig in cities all around Britain, all around the world. And I always say to myself, you should go to an art gallery. And I do that thing of going there and think I'm gonna spend two hours here, 15 minutes later, I'm in the cafeteria. I have that working class imposter syndrome where I think I shouldn't be here. I think everyone's looking at me looking, which of course they're not.

Well, that's what you're gonna see today. We are going to take you through some film that we've got in our collection. And also a couple of artworks, which yeah, I hope you'll find really interesting and we're gonna delve into the kind of the backstory around some of this material today.

Good. I'll challenge my Philistine.

Well, no, not Philistine. I think, you know, sometimes art is a difficult thing to get your head around.

Joining us on our journey through the gallery will be Toby Haggith.

Hey mate. How's it going?

Hi, Geoff, I'm Toby. Pleased to meet you. Curator at the museum. I've been involved in the exhibition and helped select the films you're gonna look at today, which I hope you really enjoy. So what are we doing here again today?

Well, what we're gonna look at today are some films and artworks from the First World War and the Second World War. And what they really do is kind of document the advances in technology, air technology during those conflicts, which is absolutely incredibly rapid, and is used for all different kinds of purposes. So you know, how aircraft are used, for any reason, from surveillance and reconnaissance right through to heavy bombing of cities.

We have come to our first object. A film projected from above down onto a vast canvas. On certain podcast apps you can see what Geoff is seeing by waking your screen..

So I can see what I think is a, is it a biplane landed on the, maybe a river or-

This is actually from the First World War.

Oh wow.

Aircraft are used right from 1914-

Yeah.

-to act as the eyes of the Army. Traditionally that had been the role of cavalry, but now you've got these new machines that can get new perspectives from height. They can fly over trenches and so on, look at enemy positions, identify targets, and guide the artillery to those targets.

So what was the sort of air defense like? How under- at risk were those planes?

Very much at risk and also even flying through your own barrages and things that. Because the next progression in air warfare is that scouts, what we would today call fighter aircraft, are developed to shoot down the reconnaissance planes.

Yeah.

And then the fighters, the scouts, start shooting at each other. So you get the kind of classic, you know, the Red Baron is the most, you know, the most famous figure from that war. From that, the aircraft start to attack ground targets in cooperation with the Army. And then you get the advent of the bomber aircraft. But what's interesting about this, there's a real romanticism that really captures the public imagination.

So it must feel like then going from analog to digital, so those generals that we saw making sense of those images, I guess, what were they looking at before they had photos?

Before they would've had... had I mean... one of the things the titles talk about is how they could get daily reports. And you could just gloss over that, but that's really important. I mean, the film provides you with reliable intelligence on a regular basis. Before, you've got guys going out on horses or, or you're using captured people. Now suddenly you've got power of observation. So this is a real modern innovation.

Yeah. Yeah. I got, almost got a bit of vertigo when I was standing there.

Yeah, that's good that you did 'cause we want to-

It wasn't for me, mate.

We want to give the the visitor the perspective that artists and filmmakers we're getting excited about, which is being able to stand in the sky, and have a God-like position.

It's time to move on with Toby and me guiding Geoff through the gallery to two works of art by Eric Ravilious. They are watercolor paintings and  Geoff is not in his element.

Do you know what, I'm feeling the resistance. I think watercolours might be my problem. I don't know why it has to look like this. I know this sounds incredibly ignorant. You've just told me he's one of our greatest ever water colourists, and I question, I don't know what's good about it and that's not saying it's bad. But I don't know why he's celebrated.

Let me give you a bit of his backstory. Basically he's appointed as an official war artist in December, 1939. He grew up in Eastbourne, in Sussex. So just down the coast from me, I live in Hastings, and so I've got a particular keenness for him. He did a lot of his early work was painting around the South Downs, again where I live nearby, so I'm, you know, familiar with those scenes. But he had an utter fascination with aircraft.

Well, Yeah, there's two things that stand out. So on the left hand side there's countryside and then, I don't know, this like, I sort of thought it was a city scape at first, but now it looks like a church spire.

It's- that's exactly it.

It's kind of grey, whereas the trees are green, so I dunno, I'm guessing he's setting up some sort of contrast.

That's it. And I think, so these are, I think these are taking off. You can see the aircraft in the background. I love this little figure here. He wasn't very confident with painting human figures and particularly faces.

With respect, I can see why.

Yeah. So you can never, you never see, you know, or rarely does he kind of like give facial features at all.

Do you know, do you know what though? Because that's the one on the left. But the one on the right that does grab me. Because it's the, it's planes in snow and I dunno, maybe that's just more my favorite Star Wars film is Empire Strikes Back and it was on a snow planet, so it may be as basic as that but I like how this looks.

It's interesting you mentioned snow because Ravilious was very drawn to snow landscapes. He was at RAF Sawbridgeworth, but before that he was at RAF Clifton, which was near York. I checked what was flying from Clifton. It was actually Lysanders. Western Lysanders were doing coastal patrols. Well, that's not a Lysander's tail in the foreground there. That's a Bristol Blenheim. He must have painted this at another airfield. He didn't like bombers, he thought they were, in his words, repellent.

I suppose, actually I was drawn to the foreground because there's these icicles hanging off the tail wing. So that suggests it's been there a while.

There's actually a very sad postscript to Ravillious's story. He was posted into Iceland about five months after these were painted. In September 1942, the month after he arrives, there's an aircraft goes missing on a coastal patrol off Iceland. Another plane is sent up to look for it. He asked to go with this plane. And that too disappears, never seen again. And so he was actually the first official war artist to be killed on-

How old ? James: ...active service. How old? 39. And he left behind a wife and three very young children. The sort of countryside one, it's fairly bucolic, it feels like more of an English sort of country scene. But maybe that- I suppose right, if I'm getting right into the analysis of, ah, that must be a weird thing. Being in this country at the time, for a lot of the time things were just really normal. But there was this other thing going on, which was of mortal importance.

That's it. And I grew up in Kent, my father told me that he was woken up the early hours of D-Day. It was the bomber fleets going over, just shaking the house and the noise of it. So... and that's the sort of things-

Scary!

...not conveyed there. You know what? I've moved on in my- I love it now. Literally, I know that sounds like the kind of thing that you just say for a thing like this... but I guess you gotta stop and think about it. And now I see where he's coming from. Yeah.

Great. Can I have it?

I'm not sure that's possible.

Okay.

After the first World War developments in filmmaking continued apace. With sophisticated editing techniques and lighter cameras at their disposal, the thirties provided a new challenge to governments. How to capture the threat from the skies for domestic audiences? Toby Haggith again.

The public's perception before the Second World War is absolute horror of aerial bombing. And in fact, the very first official film that the British government produces, to be shown in cinemas, is called If War Should Come or Do It Now. And it's really all about how you respond to an air raid.

if you are provided with a steel shelter and have not erected it, do so at once. First, dig a pit four feet deep, then build your shelter inside it.

I mean, I suppose they want people to be alert though.

Well, that's the big thing because one of the big problems you've got as a propagandist is that you've gotta convey something of the fact that bombers are getting through. Because otherwise you'll lose credibility. But you don't want to show it so explicitly that it actually scares the bejesus out of everyone.

Toby has escorted Jeff to our next objects. Two films documenting life in the cities of London and Manchester during the Blitz.

I suppose these are more familiar images, but I don't know if that's 'cause of movies and so on, but there was a team of firefighters with a massive hose that they've got it trained, on a blaze- , James: We are looking now at film of devastation during the Blitz. So these films are from December 1940, the so-called Christmas Blitz in Manchester, and then January 1941 in London.

There's some amazing scenes in this film and a lot of the scenes are actually shot from St. Paul's roof itself. And that was because the team who got to film these sequences was the fledgling Army Film Unit. Led by Major David McDonald, who'd been a feature film director himself. So the scene of St. Paul's, which has been photographed and filmed many times, and that landscape or roofscape, really skyscape, became a symbol of British sort of resistance to the bombing.

Yeah, I suppose firefighting, it's a metaphor, isn't it, where people still say, well, we're just firefighting. It literally is the symbol of something that you're doing that you're gonna have to do for quite some time 'cause things are gonna be bad you know, for a while. I mean, the thing that always stuck out to me that you're conscious of when people talked about the German bombers coming up the Thames is just so scary. It's just such a scary idea.

Well, there was 250 men, firemen, were hospitalised on that one night.

Wow.

These particular films were made by the Army Film and Photographic Unit, which had access to areas that the newsreels and BBC were prohibited to enter. Enabling, for the first time, these sweeping vistas of a burning London, not seen since 1666.

I know it might be a tricky question to ask, but how aware were the German people of this happening and if they were aware of it, what did they think about it? You know, a horror or discomfort about civilians being targeted?

No. I think what you've gotta remember is that the news in Germany about the bombing of Britain would've been celebrated. This is when the German armed forces are riding high. They haven't really encountered defeat yet, and they're pretty triumphant. And this is part of that campaign.

So there's no thought that - put it brutally, what goes around might come around?

Not specifically. I mean, bombing raids have happened against Germany. They've not been particularly effective, certainly not really until 42, 43.

So they're feeling impregnable.

Yeah.

The Nazis entered this war under a rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

We move through the films, from showing the effects of bombing across London and Manchester, to a devastating series of raids on the city of Hamburg in Germany. Footage that was captured by Fire Officer Hans Brunswig.

Is, is this definitely in Hamburg?

Yeah, this is Hamburg.

Okay. It looks like very similar to, I suppose, a British house. I mean, you see now the devastation in daylight, and it is pretty absolute, it seems.

So what we're seeing here is the aftermath of a raid on the night of 27th and 28th of July, 1943, carried out by the RAF, and it's one of six raids that were carried out over 10 days on Hamburg. it was absolutely devastating. At the main concentration point of bombs, there was a firestorm, which raged for three hours. So what was happening was the oxygen was being sucked in. And winds reached 300 miles an hour. People were sucked into the flames. The temperature reached over 800 celsius.

And 40-odd thousand across the whole thing-

And 43, yeah. 40-odd thousand across the- In this set of raids, as I said, over 10 days, 37,000 people are killed. It's the highest single loss of civilian life in Europe during the Second World War.

So not just at at this point, but it remains that.

Yes, yes. 61% of the buildings in Hamburg are destroyed.

Yeah, it's on a different level to what we saw in London. I mean, I suppose the question I've got is similar to the one that I asked about how the German public perceived it, were the British public in sort of retributive mood?

By and large, yes. this was seen as dishing it back out to the Germans. But there was also a significant minority, many of them whom had experienced bombing themselves, in London or wherever, who were a bit more ambivalent about it and knew what that experience had been like. And don't necessarily want it visited upon anybody else, or having it shown to them and thrown in their faces.

So some of the news reels used phrases like 'Hamburg's Been Hamburgered'. It was really callous language, there was no sense that one should hold back on that language, it was totally uncensored.

I mean, is it what it was like at a command level, was it strategic to do this or were they operating at an emotional level as well?

No, it was part of a strategic bomber offensive. Allied policy at the time, it varied, but from February 1942, there was what was called an area bombing directive issued to bomber command. What that meant was that the RAF bombers were going not for, specifically for factories or anything, they were aiming to de-house German workers, so they were attacking residential areas. Hamburg had been on the list for quite a long time. It was a massive center for the shipping industry.

Brunswig's films are typical of amateur filmmakers during this period. One reel is a family holiday and the next, the destruction of a city. But Brunswig also captures the aftermath. Citizens gathering in a park, nursing the wounded and rebuilding their homes.

The desired effect is basically to dislocate or crush German industry in the city. And to cause a complete collapse of society, essentially. Neither of them actually work, I mean, Albert Speer, the German munitions minister said six more Hamburgs and we won't be able to produce any arms at all. Whether that's true or not-

So it didn't break the will of the people, but did break the ability to manufacture.

To a degree. Hamburg never gets up to full, full production again, but it recovers very, very quickly.

But also, you wonder how the effect, the sort of cumulative effect of all these raids, although it might not have broken the will of the people, per se, it must have undermined their willingness to carry on.

The other thing to say is that this raid comes five months after the German surrender at Stalingrad. So there's your military defeat. This is on the home front where this raid comes as a complete shock. And again, people, I think for the first time in Germany, what with Stalingrad and with Hamburg, begin to question whether they can actually win the war now.

So how does the- we all know about the Nazi propaganda. How do they try and spin it? How do they try and-

Oh, basically, what they do is try to spin the story of the heroic air defenses. The Flak Helpers, you know, the people manning the anti-aircraft guns. That's the way they do it. It's interesting that Hitler never actually goes and visits any bombed city in the way that, you know, Churchill does, example. He leaves that to Goebbels, by and large.

And I mean, I suppose they were helped out a little bit by technology because the way that people find out from other citizens what's happened is slower churn than, say, for example, what's happening right here with Ukraine and Kursk. Quite quickly, people were ringing each other saying, we've had to to leave-

But, you say that Geoff, but the power of gossip and word to mouth information is incredibly powerful. So people would've soon, you know, they would've had relatives who would've told them what was happening in the cities. So it's very difficult to keep that message down for a long time. Yes.

And then that news also bleeds out to the armed forces who are getting letters from their, you know, relatives saying we've been bombed at, whatever. So-and-so's been killed. So, yes, Hamburg, as I say, it changes everything. The German authorities start to prepare for similar raids like this and start to prepare to bury 50,000 people at a time. You know, how are we gonna find the cemetery space and-

well it is fascinating, really. 'cause I guess like, from my level of understanding, it was always about Berlin. That's the one that stays in your mind. But, I mean, in the most sort of grim way possible, it feels like this was both strategic, but also a preamble.

The official history, Noble Frankland, who ran the museum and also served in bomber command, he called it the high tide of the Allied air offensive. They regarded it as the point at which they'd got the technology just right....

Yeah.

...for maximum destruction. In the Brunswig film it shows the civil defense workers, again, Brunswig himself reports on the, you know, some civil defense workers are just too terrified to do their work because one of the things that they're doing is that the RAF are also dropping delayed action anti-personnel bombs. So once you start clearing rubble, bang, it goes up. So you're even threatened with death doing that kind of work.

So Brunswig, this amateur photographer guy, you know, filming it, how does he feel doing this? How does he keep his perspective?

Well, actually in the notes he writes about the film he does, he doesn't really refer to that sort of thing at all. It's a very technical kind of record of what he did. But clearly he was angry. I mean, I think, obviously felt compassionate, and wants to record the extent of the disaster, the extent of the destruction. So I think we can gauge his anger by the things he films. For example, he films scenes of a dead body, dead bodies in one-

Yeah, I noticed that compared to the British footage, there was a lot more-

Yeah, and also compared to the German footage, that would've been really unheard of. So I think the fact that he's kind of crossed that Rubicon and filmed one of his fellow countrymen, or a number of his fellow countrymen, including some small children, I think shows his level of anger. And then his commander says, I want you to make this into some sort of demonstration film. So he records, and it was shown to foreign visitors on a number of occasions to show what really happened in July.

What was the motivation of the commander then? Is it because of outrage and-

It must have been. It's tantalising to know the kind of foreign visitors who arrived, but you can imagine, obviously they were people who were in the other Axis powers. Then, we won't know what happens to it... but then we know that in May '45, the British take over Hamburg, they find the film... and they confiscate it.

What's the legacy on the British side in terms of conscience, you know? I mean from, right the way from Churchill at the top... generals, to people that flew and dropped the bombs. Well, Geoff, I feel that actually the fact that they confiscate this film, and it doesn't surface again until it becomes deposited in the Imperial War Museum some decades later, indicates that there is some concern of the image that it might show of the Allied raid. That's what I'm guessing.

Questions about the, you know, the ethics of bombing Germany in this way are kind of side stepped or ignored. But I think what we have to say is in the Allies' defence, that they see the Nazis as such a threat to civilization that they're prepared to destroy it by any means possible. And if that means bombing, then so be it. But as Toby says, after the war, there are kind of more nerves about it. I mean, Churchill visits Berlin.

And it'll take longer.

That's it.

Because artillery is often really more destructive than aerial bombing, believe it or not.

If you are just, you know, a lad from Kent, you know, who's opening the bomb doors, it might have been a long time where you felt like a hero and then there's a point of inflection, you know, where, I guess that would've come to some people a lot, many years later. 'cause you know, if you are on the ground, you have to shoot somebody that's quite immediate.

Ted Hughes writes an amazing poem in the fifties, comparing an Anglo-Saxon warrior with the guys who flew the Lancaster bombers, and seeing them as kind of... well cowardly really, and the noble warrior who uses his own sword to fight is the sort of the honourable one.

Well, but then, but then it changes over time because, you know, when I was out in Afghanistan, you know, you literally had people there were operating stuff with genuinely, PlayStation controllers because they're actually quite user-friendly. So, you know, I guess over time it all moves forward and there can be a greater distance between the act and the destruction.

But that's what's amazing about that film is I think we were saying earlier on, it's very unusual to get this moment where you've got coverage of an of air raid from the pilot's position or the air crew's position, and the very same air raid covered from somebody on the ground. So it enables us to kind of see these two positions and explore it in a much fairer way, and to get the empathy that you need. That we were talking about before.

Yeah, no, seeing that, particularly the footage, because I've seen the London stuff. One way or another.... it's in the mythology of the nation, but also my own family. The Hamburg stuff on the other hand, was sort of transformative in a difficult way.

I think one of the interesting things about Brunswig's film was that there's a shot of Dammtor station, that was one of the stations in Hamburg that was used to deport Hamburg's Jewish citizens to their deaths. And their possessions were actually being sold at bargain prices to people who had suffered during the bombing. And I think the other thing to say is that we saw footage as well of the rescue workers and, you know, the firemen there.

Yeah, even in the point where you might empathise on one level, there was still reminders of why this was happening.

Yeah.

We return to the skies for one final film. Geoff is shown RAF footage of that same night in Hamburg, but from the Allied perspective. Pin pricks of light on the otherwise black canvas of the night.

This film is being shot by aircraft who are among 787 planes that take off that night. I mean, the journey to Hamburg is about two and a half hours. And I think you've gotta remember these are pretty uncomfortable aircraft. They're blooming cold, noisy, rattling, and those airmen are gonna be concerned about a) German flack, b) night fighters. Being in bomber command is about the most dangerous job of the Second World War.

But this raid is pretty successful, isn't James? I mean, I think only 97 planes are downed, aren't they?

But that's what makes me annoyed with that Ted Hughes poem then, because he's sort of acting like it's without peril-

Well, yeah, you see I would take issue with that as well. I mean, the extraordinary- I can't begin to imagine how terrifying it, it must have been.

our time together is nearly at an end. As Toby guides us down to the IWM cafe, Geoff reflects on his time in the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Gallery.

Do you know the interesting thing is, I'll be honest, if I come somewhere like this, this would be normally a thing - don't hate me - but I wouldn't come to. I'd think I wanna see the guns, the machines, the aircraft, and I would've missed out really. I would've missed out a lot.

That, that's the idea.

I think one of the things that I really enjoy about working here and talking to people about the collections, is we learn by talking with you. And I think- so you asked a couple of questions, thought blimey, I hadn't thought of it from that angle.

One thing that really I'm gonna take away with, is the fact that there were commissioned artists and painters for the war. We always think of the poetry of the First World War, but I feel, yeah, I feel like I'm intrigued about that area though.

Yeah. It's the fact that the government and the leadership, without even knowing how the wars were gonna end, were commissioning these things to record the effort at the time, so both on the home front and on the fighting fronts. And it's both for that immediate use which Toby was talking about, for example films, news and news reels, but also for posterity. They wanted people like us today to see this material as well. To see the art, to see the film. See the photography.

I think the most striking thing is about what happened in Hamburg and the numbers. You know, it does challenge certain perceptions. I mean, obviously the Blitz is still an incredible effort of British will and determination. But just the sheer numbers will stay with me. I found a watercolor that I like. Which I was not expecting. So I might be putting in, a little bid on a, what's the fellow's name?

Eric Ravilious.

Eric Ravilious. Very-

I'm glad I've converted you.

Very Very... very, cool name. Yeah. And I sort of finally understood what he's trying to do. You know, like say, I'm a comic, I work in an art form that is incredibly gratuitous and disposable. You say the thing, it gets a laugh, you move on. You say that joke again. People won't laugh again. But I can absolutely see why someone would look at that image of that painting in the snow with the icicles and look at it again from different ways.

That's where we must leave this conflict of interest and the Blavatnik Gallery of Art, Film and Photography. Thanks again to our guests, Geoff Norcott and Toby Haggith. Next week on Conflict of Interest. ... Sanjeev Baskar: but it's such an abstract notion, to a child, that a bomb's gonna fall... That you couldn't compute it as pure terror, you know? Some of it was just... quite exciting. Actor Sanjeev Baskar looks into the impact of war on the human psyche, My name is James Taylor.