UNDERGROUND WAR ROOMS

CHURCHILL’S WAR ROOMS

Officer's quarters

Churchill's secret phone room 

Portrait of the Prime Minister

Switchboard operators 

Central military command: mapping and planning room

During the long and difficult years of World War II, the Nazis targeted London with bombs delivered by airplanes, V-1 pilotless bombs and later, V-2 rockets with high explosive warheads.  All these attacks caused fire and destruction throughout the city. Parents often voluntarily evacuated their children to live in greater safety with families in the British countryside. In fact, our London host, Solomon Potel, as a boy of 10 was sent to live with a family in another part of England out of harm’s way. Because safety could never be assured to the citizens of this targeted city --– how could one assure safety in London for those running the war? 

Anticipating the conflict, military planners in 1938 developed the idea of protected war rooms for the Prime Minister and military leaders responsible for guiding the nation and its war efforts.  These leaders also felt that they had to remain in London to help maintain the morale of the general population. Hence, the origin of the underground cabinet war rooms, windowless, often quite airless, where Prime Minister Churchill and his senior military staff lived and did much of their strategic war planning.  In 1940, during the Nazi Blitz bombing campaign, a massive layer of reinforced concrete up to five feet thick increased protection and enabled the cabinet war rooms to expand. 

This warren of protected spaces included a cabinet room, several map rooms with banks of old style single line telephones, dormitories for staff, small narrow private bedrooms with desks for senior military officers, a kitchen, a mess hall, a square room with switchboard operators and another square room for up to nine young women typists responsible for the preparation of communiqués and top secret documents –everything needed to live, meet, and plan was underground.  These indeed were very close quarters; the typists’ room was probably sufficient for four women but held nine desks with clanging typewriters. With everyone committed to the war effort, the existence of this underground command center remained a complete secret throughout the war and was opened to the public only in the 1980’s as part of the Imperial War Museum.  In 2002 it expanded to include a museum dedicated to Winston Churchill’s life with special focus on WWII. 

Accompanied by his chief of staff, General Ismay, and smoking his ever-present Cuban cigar and drinking his favored Red Label Scotch, Churchill spent many of his waking and sleeping hours in these war rooms. A small closet of a room, disguised as his personal loo, just off his narrow bedchamber housed the direct phone line between Churchill and Roosevelt. A code-scrambling encryption system was installed in the basement of Selfridge’s department store that was connected to a similar terminal in the Pentagon, enabling Churchill to speak securely with President Roosevelt.

And throughout it all, Churchill reflected:

            I felt as if I were walking with destiny

            and that all my past life

            had been but a preparation

            for this hour and for this trial.

            I was sure I should not fail.