In the early autumn of 1939, after the declaration of war by Nazi Germany in Great Britain, the inhabitants of the latter destroyed a huge number of cats, dogs and other domestic animals. The historian Hilda Keane tried to explain why this was done.
When World War II broke out, thousands of British children were evacuated. The media encouraged parents to write to them as often as possible about their pets and what happened to them. Regardless of whether the animals were left in the family or they were sent to a safe place, children should definitely know this, because many people worry about their pets and feel a great responsibility for them.
And parents really wrote such letters. Such a letter was received by a girl named Beryl, who was supposed to be sent by ship to Canada. The letter even bore the paw print of her dog Chummy. Unfortunately, the ship was not destined to reach the coast of Canada, as it was hit by a torpedo and the ship sank.
Most of the stories about the children who were evacuated stood in sharp contrast to the articles about the German after, who left for the war, leaving his pet, a dog named Teddy Bear. The man was heavily criticized in the press, saying that Britain is fighting in the brutality of the Nazis, who know neither the sense of justice nor the usual human feelings when it comes to pets.
After the appearance of this article, in London alone, about 400,000 cats and dogs were euthanized at the behest of the owners - which is about 26 percent of their total and six times the number of people who died during the bombing. The event has been called the "September Holocaust" by animal rights activists.
The archives have preserved a lot of documentary evidence of the impact the war had not only on people, but also on their pets. Among this evidence are about one million pigs, cows and chickens, which were killed in Denmark due to the lack of imported feed. The Germans, who entered Paris in mid-June 1940, heard the sounds of the slaughter of livestock left by people.
The attitude of the British people towards animals is extremely interesting to consider in the context of the mythologization of the events of 1939-1945. For the British it was a "people's war", and the British themselves were portrayed exclusively from the good side.
But what caused the events of September 1939? It should be noted that not a single bomb fell on Britain until April 1940. The British government did not make any decisions about the need to euthanize pets - people themselves decided to kill their pets.
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On September 7, 1939, the press wrote that thousands of dogs and cats were destroyed in veterinary clinics. Moreover, every day more and more animals are brought by citizens. As a result, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had to multiply the staff in their clinics and introduce a night shift.
In the people's veterinary clinic there were a huge number of cats and dogs that were brought in for euthanasia. Private veterinarians, veterinary clinics and animal welfare societies were unable to bury so many animal carcasses on their own. This forced the royal society to allocate for these purposes a meadow located near the building of this organization. Here, according to reports, about half a million pets were buried. Chloroform was used to painlessly euthanize dogs and cats, but National Dog Defense League officials complained that supplies were running low.
It should be noted that the mass euthanasia of domestic animals in September 1939 was not the first. During the First World War, about two decades earlier, some representatives of the British government had already raised the question that pets are useless. So, in particular, in 1916, the conservative parliamentarian Ernest Pretyman said that it is necessary to reduce the number of dogs in urban areas, because these animals do not perform any useful role. Philip Magnuss completely agreed with him, who was an ardent supporter of vivisection and advocated banning keeping dogs within the city, as it is unhygienic.
Despite the fact that the House of Commons actively called for the mass destruction of domestic animals, such a decision was never made. The UK media agreed that pets should be kept, but at the same time they condemned people who spent food on animals, which was already in short supply during wartime.
Representatives of environmental organizations did not agree with such statements. In particular, the National League for the Protection of Dogs said that people who hate dogs were not motivated by a desire to save food resources for people or patriotism, and used the plight of the country for their cruel and selfish purposes. Briton John Sandyman published a letter in one of the newspapers in which he said that his dog eats only skin and cartilage, which were not suitable for feeding people and which were thrown away anyway, and also accused the authorities of ignorance. There were many other similar letters in which people tried to justify their loyalty to pets. At the same time, there were many such owners who were guided by the laws of wartime and decisively put their pets to sleep.
Shortly before the "September Holocaust", the National Committee for Precautions for Animals during Air Raids appeared. Its functions included consulting the authorities on those problems that affected animals during the war. However, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, despite the committee's recommendations, did not organize special evacuation centers for pets, but at the same time forbade taking pets with them to bomb shelters.
Moreover, there was an active state policy on the destruction of domestic animals. One of the statements of the committee contained information that such actions could provoke uncontrolled reproduction of mice and rats, which, in turn, will lead to the development of epidemics of deadly diseases.
According to some historians, the mass destruction of domestic animals was caused by a general panic in the first months of the war, because this is what most of the print media of that time reported. In particular, the press wrote that the authorities would soon ban the keeping of dogs and cats, so they need to get rid of them as soon as possible.
Psychiatrists and psychologists argued that, apart from the regular military, ordinary people have no idea what an air raid really is, so they will stay in their homes and hope that the danger will not touch them. According to experts, such behavior can provoke not only a negative attitude towards the enemy, but also towards loved ones and others.
Those historians who argue that panic is to blame for the massacre of animals, cite the statements of the authorities that were made in previous years as proof of the correctness of their words. The Empire Defense Committee in 1937 published its forecast, which said that in the first few months of the war, about 1.8 million people could be injured, and a third of them would die. One year later, the same department claimed that 3.5 thousand bombs would be dropped on London on the very first day of the military conflict. Fortunately, such dire predictions did not come true, there was no mass panic and the number of patients with mental disorders did not increase. People were engaged in the arrangement of military life and acted in accordance with the situation. The list of these actions included the euthanasia of pets:in addition to sending the children to the village and having thick black curtains on the windows, it was imperative to get rid of a dog or a cat. All this, to some extent, created a feeling of control over the situation, where people put themselves first, and then pets.
Accordingly, the desire to save their pets from suffering or panic cannot explain the mass murder of animals. What actually happened? To understand this, you need to look at the facts.
The doctor, the owner of the black Labrador Angus, was drafted into the army. The dog was left without a home. His fate, like the fate of other dogs, was handled by the Duchess of Hamilton, Nina, who was a well-known activist of the Society for the Protection of Animals and the Prevention of Sleep, who encouraged people to give her their pets.
Angus, like the other dogs that got to the duchess, were successfully evacuated. On the collar of each dog was a tag with a nickname, because after the war the owners were going to find and return the pets. Unfortunately, not everyone wanted to do this, because at the end of the war many dogs were old, and some breeds simply went out of fashion.
Brian Sewell, a dog lover and renowned art critic, spoke of the murder of Prince Labrador. This story illustrates a completely different relationship between man and dog. The prince was shot by Brian's stepfather immediately after the family was evacuated. He left the dog's body on the river bank to be washed away with water. According to Brian, he did not cry, but he felt a persistent cold disgust for his stepfather.
The thing is that Brian, unlike Robert, had a warm relationship with the dog. The stepfather was not drafted to the front, he was not announced a mass urgent evacuation. The death of the dog was not motivated by anything other than Robert's own desire to get rid of the animal.
The mass euthanasia of pets cannot be explained from a geographical point of view. People who lived in the suburbs, who had no reason to fear the bombing, also killed animals.
18-year-old Daphne Pennefazer from Surrey writes about her dog's short life in her diary. The pet appeared in the family in May 1939. The dog was killed that same year, in the fall, in preparation for the transition to martial law. On the site of the rose garden, the family set up a vegetable garden, and at the same time euthanized their daughter's dog.
It is worth saying that many of those who killed their pet soon regretted it. In one of the radio programs devoted to the work of the animal welfare society, it was said that killing a loyal friend was tantamount to letting the war creep into the house. According to polls and interviews conducted by state sociological organizations, this was the case in reality.
The mass murder of pets has been sharply criticized by animal welfare societies and individual activists. Neither the state nor the citizens considered such actions to be inevitable during the war period. People who put their pets to sleep were not in the majority. As the Duchess of Hamilton wrote, the pets that he managed to evacuate were very dear to their owners, since for many they were the only friends, and for those who had children, they were also children.
Oddly enough, but the events of September 1939 did not remain in the collective memory of the British. Most likely, people are not required to remember the "September Holocaust" as part of the war. It was part of the normative behavior towards animals. Even though they were family members at the same time, they were the easiest to sacrifice in a stressful situation.