Churchill's Bunker: The Cabinet War Rooms and the Culture of Secrecy in Wartime London

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Churchill's office-bedroom, open from 27 July 1940, [24] included BBC broadcasting equipment; Churchill made four wartime broadcasts from the Cabinet War Rooms, the first being on 11 September 1940. [25] Although the office room was also fitted out as a bedroom, Churchill rarely slept underground, [26] preferring to sleep at 10 Downing Street or the No.10 Annexe, a flat in the New Public Offices directly above the Cabinet War Rooms. [27] His daughter Mary Soames often slept in the bedroom allocated to Mrs Churchill. [28] Visits made in 2011 to visitor attractions in membership with ALVA". Association of Leading Visitor Attractions . Retrieved 25 April 2012. A celebrated military historian, Holmes is the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed Tommy and Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket. His dozen other books include Dusty Warriors, Sahib, The Western Front, The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French, The Road to Sedan, Firing Line, The Second World War in Photographs and Fatal Avenue: A Traveller’s History of Northern France and Flanders (also published by Pimlico). In the event of invasion, auxiliary soldiers had an estimated life expectancy of just 10 to 14 days—in part, perhaps, because the bunkers were not as hidden as their inhabitants would have liked. On several occasions, courting couples strolling through the woods stumbled upon the men’s hideouts, forcing them to relocate.

According to Asbury, almost immediately after the war, a small stream of visitors were brought into the rooms for unofficial tours, even as government officials continued to toil away on secret Cold War projects in several of the rooms (with sensitive documents sometimes left out in the open). By the late 1940s, more official tours began to take place, and an effort to preserve the rooms (many of which had been significantly altered when they were put to new use after the war) began. Interest in the War Rooms steadily built until the Imperial War Museum was asked to take it over and open it up fully to the public in 1984. In the early 2000s, an expansion to the War Rooms opened up more of the original complex for view, in addition to adding a museum dedicated to Churchill. If the Nazis had invaded Great Britain during World War II, they would have faced an uprising of scallywags—specifically, the Auxiliary Units also known as Winston Churchill’s “ secret army.” These elite fighters, chosen for their knowledge of the surrounding landscape, were among the United Kingdom’s last line of defense. Tasked with sabotaging enemy invaders, the men were trained to hide out in underground bunkers, lying in wait as the Nazis drove past before emerging to wreak havoc behind German lines.

Within a month, crews had cleared, reinforced, soundproofed and installed communications in several of what became the Cabinet War Rooms. By the war’s outbreak, dozens of rooms were functional, fitted with air conditioning, independent water and lighting, medical facilities and sleeping quarters. The Office of Works considered the arrangements temporary, and the budget for expansion was tight. Inhabitants paid the price. The rooms were chilly, damp and poorly ventilated. In an era when almost everyone smoked, tobacco fumes mingled with cooking odors and smells from the primitive toilets. The Rooms were opened to the public by Mrs Thatcher on 4 April 1984 in a ceremony attended by Churchill family members and former Cabinet War Rooms staff. At first the Rooms were administered by the museum on behalf of Department for the Environment; in 1989 responsibility was transferred to the Imperial War Museum. [35] [36] However, after seven years of disuse, explains Holloway, “All of the things that made it not viable as a station made it absolutely perfect for secret bunkers during the Second World War.”

Now, the opportunity has come round again to slip behind the door of the abandoned Down Street Tube station and descend by torchlight into the World War II hideaway from which campaigns such as the D-Day landings and the Dunkirk evacuation were coordinated. Hansard, 23 March 1989; 'Cabinet War Rooms: HC Deb 23 March 1989 vol 149 c780W' Hansard 1803-2005. Accessed 18 March 2009 Historian and guide Siddy Holloway meets us at ground level, where the distinctive Leslie Green oxblood-tiled arches of the facade are still the same as at the many other famous Edwardian Tube stations he designed, including Covent Garden and Russell Square. As ultimate authority lay with the civilian government the Cabinet, or a smaller War Cabinet, would require close access to senior military figures. This implied accommodation close to the armed forces' Central War Room. [11] In May 1939 it was decided that the Cabinet would be housed within the Central War Room. [6] In August 1939, with war imminent and protected government facilities in the suburbs not yet ready, the War Rooms became operational on 27 August 1939, only days before the invasion of Poland on 1 September, and Britain's declaration of war on Germany on 3 September. [4] Wartime use [ edit ]Deep under Whitehall lies a labyrinth of offices, map rooms and sleeping quarters whose very existence was kept a mortal secret from the Nazis. For this was where Churchill's war cabinet and military chiefs met to plan the strategy that was eventually to bring victory over Hitler in the Second World War. Restored today to exactly the condition they were left in at the end of the war in August 1945, the Cabinet War Rooms are a powerfully evocative time capsule. Military historian Richard Holmes has written a superb book that explains their central role in Britain's finest hour. Ironically, while low-level staff worked there permanently, Churchill preferred meeting above ground. Even during the 1940–41 Blitz, leaders met in the bunker at night, when air raids were likely, but elsewhere during the day. Use by senior staff declined sharply in 1942 and 1943, peaking again in early 1944 during the “little Blitz” and later that year when V-1s and V-2s posed a risk. We would never talk about what we were trained to do,” Trevor Miners, who was 16 years old when he volunteered with the Auxiliary Units in Oxfordshire, told BBC News in 2013. “One of my unit was even sent a white feather by someone who thought he was a coward for not going out to fight, but we knew different.” During World War I, writes veteran British military historian Holmes, German aircraft dropped about 300 tons of bombs on Britain, causing 1,500 deaths and a good deal of terror. These sorties had no effect on the war’s outcome but great influence later, as British leaders assumed bombing would determine the outcome of the next war. In 1936 the Air Ministry estimated that raids on London in any new conflict would kill 60,000 during the first week (in fact, 80,000 Londoners died during all of World War II). Working on an assumption that “the bomber will always get through,” British leaders decided the best way to deter a potential enemy was to match his bombing capacity (a take on “mutual assured destruction” two decades before the Cold War nuclear standoff). Thus, when rearmament began, the Royal Air Force clamored for bombers. In 1937, realizing it could not afford them, it switched to defensive (and far cheaper) fighters. We now know what British intelligence didn’t—that Germany ignored the prevailing obsession with bombing. Adolf Hitler intended the Luftwaffe as tactical support for ground forces and never built a heavy-bomber fleet.

Waite, Richard (8 June 2012). "Clash opens new Churchill War Rooms entrance". Architects' Journal . Retrieved 19 June 2012. Rose, Steve (1 June 2012). "Constructive criticism: the week in architecture". The Guardian . Retrieved 19 June 2012. The bunker consists of some forty rooms on two floors, with the most notable being the cabinet room with seating for up to 30 people, and a large map room. Image Credit : Markus Milligan During the height of the Blitz, Churchill often held meetings at unusual times of the day and night; sometimes, they would carry on long after midnight (to the private fury of some of his staff who, unlike him, had not had the benefit of an afternoon nap). But unconventional though he was as a war leader, Churchill understood the importance of maintaining morale, and from Room 60 he delivered several BBC broadcasts to the British nation, its empire and commonwealth, the US and occupied Europe.New Churchill War Rooms entrance will reference military hardware, Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore". culture24.org.uk. 25 May 2012 . Retrieved 19 June 2012. Work to convert the basement of the New Public Offices began, under the supervision of Ismay and Sir Leslie Hollis, in June 1938. [8] The work included installing communications and broadcasting equipment, soundproofing, ventilation and reinforcement. [9] Because the War Rooms are below the level of the River Thames, flood doors and pumps were installed to prevent flooding. [10] Meanwhile, by the summer of 1938 the War Office, Admiralty and Air Ministry had developed the concept of a Central War Room that would facilitate discussion and decision-making between the Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces. Construction of the Cabinet War Rooms, located beneath the Treasury building in the Whitehall area of Westminster, began in 1938. They became fully operational on 27 August 1939, a week before Britain declared war on Germany. The War Rooms remained in operation throughout the Second World War, before being abandoned in August 1945 after the surrender of Japan. The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. The museum comprises the Cabinet War Rooms, a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the Second World War, and the Churchill Museum, a biographical museum exploring the life of British statesman Winston Churchill.

The other Hidden London tours which are restarting for the first time since March 2020 are of the disused stations and tunnels at Euston, Moorgate and Aldwych, all of which have their own unique character and histories. It took two more years, after the Nazis had taken over Czechoslovakia and annexed Austria, for the idea of an emergency headquarters to be approved. Finally, in May, 1938, construction began in earnest to create a safe space to house the heads of the military; the structure became fully operational on August 27, 1939, one week before Britain and France declared war on Germany. Within the next year, Baldwin’s successor, Neville Chamberlain, resigned as prime minister, and Churchill found himself suddenly at the seat of British power. When he walked through his War Rooms for the first time as prime minister in 1940, the country was bracing itself for total war, and the Battle of Britain was just weeks away. Churchill stayed overnight down here at least five times in the winter of 1940, having been sneaked in at ground level and then, again, his presence hidden from most of the Down Street staff. While he slept on a modest camp bed, in the executive mess room, at least, he was able to live life well. The civil servant John Colville recalled in his diaries that at Down Street they were treated to caviar, Perrier-Jouet Champagne and 1865 brandy. A lonely playing card on the floor of Churchill undeground bunker. Find out more on underground bunkers. Churchill’s war cabinet met in the bunker 115 times during the course of the war, discussing everything from Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain to Stalingrad. The staff kept the bunker operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until August 16, 1945, two days after Japan publically announced its unconditional surrender. Only then did the lights in the Map Room Annex—where all of the intelligence came in to Churchill’s military advisers—turn off for the first time in six years.Imperial War Museum (2010). "History of the Cabinet War Rooms: Constructing the war Rooms". Churchill War Rooms. Archived from the original on 6 August 2010 . Retrieved 17 April 2013. In June 2012 the museum's entrance was redesigned by Clash Architects with consulting engineers Price & Myers. [38] Intended to act as a 'beacon' for the museum, [39] the new external design included a faceted bronze entranceway, and the interior showed the cleaned and restored Portland stone walls of the Treasury building and Clive Steps. The design was described as 'appropriately martial and bulldog-like' and as 'a fusion of architecture and sculpture'. [40] [41] Churchill Museum [ edit ] Work began in the summer of 1938 to turn some basement storage rooms far under the Treasury into what was then called the Central War Room, which comprised at first little more than a map room and a meeting area. It was particularly convenient for MPs since it was situated almost halfway between No 10 and the Houses of Parliament. During the Munich crisis of September 1938, the rooms were kept fully staffed in case war broke out, but they did not become fully operational until a week before the war started the following year. What had only really started out as a "temporary" expedient until some custom-built bunker was created elsewhere wound up servicing Britain's senior strategists for the next six years. I don’t think you can say he was personally responsible for [the War Rooms] being created. Other people were thinking along the same lines, but he lead the pressure … to make sure it happened,” says Asbury.