Bismarck in 1940
Simon Pease ponders the cataclysmic demise of the Bismarck. What spiritual lessons might we learn today?
DELIBERATELY FORGETTING?
When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshipped. (Exodus 12:25-27)
They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. (2 Peter 3:4-5)
MIGHTY HOOD
Captain Martin of HMS Dorsetshire, a WW2 British heavy cruiser, addressed his crew, explaining that he had decided on his own initiative to abandon the Mediterranean convey they were escorting and head for the Atlantic. Their new mission was to sink the battleship Bismarck, Hitler’s greatest military asset and a proud symbol of the Third Reich. They were to avenge the destruction of HMS Hood by engaging the enemy warship with gunfire, torpedoes and, if necessary, by ramming her. An inspirational speech undoubtedly, but in private memoires such as my uncle’s “A boatswain’s progress”, crew members confessed to feelings of dread and the fear of impending death.
HMS Hood was known as the “mighty Hood”, yet the Bismarck had only needed to expend a couple of brief salvos to tear it apart in a massive explosion that sent it to the bottom of the ocean with only three survivors out of a crew of around 1500. The Hood was not just any battleship. In 1922 it had undertaken a world cruise as the symbolic embodiment of the power and reach of the British Empire. Perhaps even worse than the horrendous loss of life, the shock at the Bismark’s raw power and the blow to national pride, this enemy warship was set to be unleashed against Britain’s precious conveys of merchant ships – our fragile lifeline preserving us from starvation and enabling us to stand alone in the world against Nazi tyranny.
This clear and present danger had to be eliminated at all costs, and so Churchill gave the order to “sink the Bismarck”. Despite the Royal Navy’s frantic search and destroy mission, the Bismarck would almost certainly have escaped, were it not for a series of remarkable events, including the jamming of her rudder in an airborne torpedo strike. Within a few days of sinking the Hood, after being pulverised to destruction by the British navy, the mighty Bismarck joined her vanquished foe on the Atlantic sea bed.
REMARKABLE EVENTS
The story of Hood and Bismarck is the stuff of legend, re-animated in recent years by the discovery of the wrecks lying miles below the sea’s surface. For those who fought and survived, relief was mixed with memories of horrendous carnage and death. For the crew of HMS Dorsetshire, which fired the torpedoes that finally sank the Bismarck and then stayed briefly to pick up survivors, the worst of these was being forced to leave hundreds of German sailors to die in the sea’s freezing embrace after they received warning of a U-boat sighting in the immediate vicinity.
Since WW2, British and American film-makers have commemorated the bravery of allied forces, with historical classics including “The Longest Day”, “The Battle of Britain”, “Sink the Bismarck”, and “A Bridge Too Far”, whilst others produced gripping fictional adventures such as “Where Eagles Dare”. The historical films typically tempered the heroism with human frailty and a recognition of the horrors of war, although the Bismarck film was remiss in ignoring the fate of the German sailors whose loss their British counterparts so mourned. “The Battle of Britain” presented German combatants with the same respect as the British, gave credit to the contribution of Polish RAF Hawker Hurricane pilots and ended with a roll call of the dead from all nations.
Overthrow the nation-state
More recently, portrayals from German and Japanese perspectives, such as “Letters from Iwo Jima”, have contributed to a more rounded and nuanced collective body of work. However, there has also been historical revisionism from broadcasters such as the BBC, relentlessly pushing an ideology that seeks the overthrow of nation states, especially those with once strong Judeo-Christian foundations. Familiar tropes include presenting all sides in a positive light, except of course for the British, who are variously portrayed as racists, cowards and murderers.
In reality, Britain’s survival when standing alone against German bought precious time for the Soviet and American superpowers to join the fight, leading ultimately to the overthrow of a profoundly evil and vicious ideology. Key to that survival was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, whose inspirational oratory (“we shall fight them on the beaches… we shall never surrender”) greatly strengthened a shaky nation’s backbone at this most critical time. No wonder, then, that he has become a target in an ideological battle. Whilst Churchill has literally been placed by supporters on the pedestal of a statue erected in his honour, he has also been much criticised for handing Russian Cossacks over to Stalin to face the prospect of almost certain death, but even blamed – probably wrongly by those with an agenda – for causing mass starvation in India.
Love the truth
How then, as believers in Jesus, should we view these matters, and what importance do they hold for contemporary Britain? The ninth commandment obliges us to love truth by looking at history as objectively as possible, which includes rejecting agenda-based bias regardless of its origin. The second commandment prohibits idolatry, and specifically creating objects for veneration. What then of Churchill’s statue, which groups hostile to Britain have so enthusiastically vandalised? Is it an object of worship, or a necessary reminder of a time when safe-guarding our hard-won democratic freedoms was considered to be worth the ultimate personal sacrifice of giving one’s own life?
In the past, God commanded the Jewish people to honour Him by recording and remembering His miraculous interventions on their behalf – a task at which their scribes proved remarkably faithful. Tragically, however, the corrupt spiritual leadership of various kings consigned the Lord’s precious Word to obscurity for long periods of history. During the reign of King Josiah, the priest Hilkiah rediscovered the Torah, actually hidden within the Temple (2 Chronicles chapter 34)! This discovery caused Josiah and the people to realise that the terrible state of the nation was due to them having turned away from God’s commands:
“Great is the Lord’s anger that is poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written in this book.” (v21)
Evidently then, ignorance was no defence in God’s eyes, thus He had continued to act according to the terms of the Covenant agreed by both parties on Mount Sinai. What then of Britain?
Not a single one died
The recent documentary “Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom” dramatised the ship’s demise and included contributions from survivors. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to forget that the British combatants knew that this day might be their last, yet remarkably, not a single one died. The documentary states, regarding the warship targeted by German fire, that “the Bismarck failed to score a hit on the Rodney, a testament to the skill of Captain Dalrymple Hamilton”, whilst eye witnesses recalled:
“Take nothing away from the Germans, their gunnery was out of this world… You could feel the shells coming towards you … you could be blown away any minute…. Due to very clever manoeuvring, our captain, Dalrimple Hamilton, avoided shells. He would just shift his ship, almost as if he knew where the next shot was coming. He was very astute.”
Was this remarkable deliverance due solely to human skill, or have historians overlooked important evidence?
“Admiral Sir John Tovey, K.C.B., K.B.E., D.S.O., Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, also considered the sinking of the Bismarck a miracle. Ashore and Afloat (1953) relates that, after the sinking, he spoke to the ship’s company of HMS King George V to this effect:
‘One is very diffident about these things, but for a long time I have been a great believer in prayer. In the last few weeks I have prayed as I have never prayed before in my life. If anyone had said that we could meet the Bismarck, that great ship with her armament of 9 in. and 15 in. guns unimpaired, and come out of the action without damage and without loss of a single British life, no one would have believed him. It is incredible. It can only be attributed to one thing. I firmly believe that the result of this action was due to Divine Guidance and Intervention.’”
Power of prayer – forgotten
Like David Gardner’s series “The Trumpet Sounds for Britain”, this booklet records numerous miraculous interventions by God during WWII on behalf of the allies in response to national prayer, many of them at the war’s most critical moments, such as Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and D-Day. Yet now, like the Torah scroll lost within the Temple, most believers, let alone ordinary British people, are ignorant of these matters. We have rightly remembered those who courageously sacrificed their lives for our freedom, yet collectively failed, whether by neglect or design, to give honour where it is most due, by airbrushing the Living God out of our history. Even by 1980 Gardner had concluded Volume 1 with this chilling indictment of Britain:
“1) We are a nation living without God, and without any reference to God.
2) We are openly defying Him, and wilfully flying in His face.
3) We have got so far away from God, as a nation, that we have already become a nation under judgment, and in terms of such judgment, have begun to be ‘handed over’ and to be ‘given up’ in a number of ways.
4) All the indications are that unless we turn to God and repent, there is a further and more grievous judgment being kept ready for us, and which will be brought upon us. And that judgment could take the form of us being handed over to a foreign power, or of being brought to such a position as to leave us with no alternative but to surrender and submit to foreign domination.”
Remember to remember
For the Lord, ignorance is no excuse, and our situation is far more perilous today. Is it futile to earnestly seek Him in prayer, beseeching that the nation might respond once more to the Word of God as did who heard it with repentant hearts in King Josiah’s day?
s://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/britains-cossack-betrayal/
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2020/churchill-and-the-genocide-myth/
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/bismarck-24-hours-to-doom/on-demand/73106-001
We Have a Guardian, W.B. Grant, page 27. The Covenant Publishing Co. Ltd, Fifth Edition revised and enlarged 2011
The Trumpet Sounds for Britain, Volume 1, David E Gardner, page 154. Christian Foundation Publications, 1980
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Simon Pease is author of “Ruth – A Prophetic Parable” Sub-titled “How does the story of Ruth relate to YOU today?” He teaches on the unity of Scripture and contributes to the UK magazine Sword: https://christian-publications-int.com/Ruth_A_Prophetic_Parable.html
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