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1940-41: Hong Kong's "Phoney War"

Submitted by David on

Barbara Anslow has previously shared extracts from her diaries in the article "Memories of life in Hong Kong, 1938-39". The end of 1939 was roughly half-way through the period known in Britain as the "Phoney War": Britain had declared war against Germany that September, but in the months that followed, nothing much seemed to happen.

In this article, Barbara tells us of her experiences in Hong Kong in 1940 and 1941, again drawing on her diaries from those years. She soon reports the end of Britain's Phoney War:

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