Of his latest article about Scottish church history, Paul James-Griffiths of Christian Heritage Edinburgh writes, “This week I’ve decided to cover the two World Wars in one article, but I’ve focused on the Second World War. This article is longer than usual as a special edition, because this year there has been much publicity surrounding the end of the Second World War on 8 May, 1945, being 80 years later. Very few have covered what God was doing during this very dark time when Britain was facing ruin at the hands of the Nazis. Fortunately some pastors/leaders kept diaries recording God’s miraculous interventions, lest we forget. This article has been taken from a chapter in my forthcoming book (due out in 2026) called What has Christianity ever done for Scotland?“

The evacuation of our soldiers from Dunkirk in France, 26 May – 4 June, 1940,

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

When German bombers rained down their cargo of destruction on the naval base of Rosyth on 16^th October 1939, Scotland experienced their first casualties of the Second World War. It was the first bombing raid in the war as the German Axis began its long and bitter air campaign. For those in Scotland who had barely recovered from the First World War, another long, dark night of the soul was upon them.

During the two world wars Christianity was still strong in Scotland. Many dedicated Christians played their part against tyranny in the war effort, both at home and abroad, and the Scots were famous for their warrior courage and resilience. Here in Edinburgh the missionaries were in great demand. The Edinburgh City Mission 1915 Report says that “Never before have our City Missionaries won and held the confidence of the people to a greater degree than now amidst the widespread sorrow and anxiety consequent upon the war… The Missionary in his daily round of visits has to lead sorrow-stricken ones into the deep heart of things – to the God of all comfort and compassion.”¹

This was the general picture across all of Scotland, and also during World War Two as well. The industrial sites and key cities of Scotland were bombed by the Germans, such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Clydebank, Greenock, Aberdeen and Dundee, leaving thousands killed. Today, if you go to Cramond Island near Edinburgh you can still see the ruins of where the gun emplacements would have been.

During 1939 and 1945 every soldier was issued with a Gospel. Inside the book were the words: “We commend the Gospel of Christ our Saviour for it alone can effectively mould character, control conduct and solve the problems of men and nations, and thus make life what it should be. Faith in Christ the Lord and loyal obedience to His Will as revealed in the Bible ensures peace of mind and brings satisfaction in service to God and man.”

To this was affixed the official names of the Admiral of the Fleet, Andrew Cunningham, who was the son of Scottish parents who lived in Edinburgh, and General HR Alexander, of Ulster-Scots descent, besides three other English leaders. During the war several other key leaders of Scottish descent would play a decisive role in the war: Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery of Alamein, the son of Ulster-Scot, Revd Henry Montgomery, and General Sir William Dobbie of Malta, a devout Brethren Christian.

News had emerged from Germany about Hitler and the Nazis and Britain sought to stand against this tyranny, believing it was the righteous thing to do. The deeply upsetting fact though, is that few influential church leaders in Germany or Italy stood up against the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini at first. Eventually the pope and his cardinals and bishops did try to intervene against Hitler because of the growing censorship of churches and the Nazi policy of euthanasia. In 1937 Pope Pius XI’s letter called Hitler “a mad prophet with repulsive arrogance”; the priests that dared read out this papal letter in their churches were imprisoned, with about 400 being sent to Dachau.

Among the Lutherans about 2,000 church leaders were either cowering in fear, or conditioned through the propaganda of eugenics and race hygiene, and were led by Bishop Muller in the new Reich Church. In contrast to this, an estimated 6,000 Protestant pastors eventually took their stand as the Confessional Church against the Nazi regime’s indoctrination, once they realised what was really going on. About 800 were sent to concentration camps.

Hitler sought to rally all of Germany to his cause, and this even meant making use of Luther’s essay against the Jews, which he had written in a time of deep depression.² There were many evangelical Christians³ who did stand against the Nazis and also hid Jewish people, but like those they protected, many lost their lives in the death camps, or were executed. Indeed, Hitler’s rage began to grow against these Christians, and if he had not lost the war when he did, there would have been a movement to exterminate them as well. He even forced churches to display the Swastika and gathered some liberal church scholars to produce a Nazi New Testament, with all references to Jews removed.

Righteous Among the Nations

On 3^rd September 1939, when war broke out against Germany, Jane Haining, a missionary with the Church of Scotland in Hungary, rushed back to Budapest from her trip to Cornwall. The Mission Committee in Edinburgh pressed for her to return home the next year, but instead she was determined to continue her work as matron to the girls’ boarding school, which was part of the Mission School of 400 children. “If these children need me in days of sunshine,” she said, “how much more do they need me in days of darkness?”⁴ When the German Wehrmacht invaded Hungary in 1944 the persecution against the Jews began immediately. Jane Haining had to comply with Nazi regulations and sew the yellow Star of David on each of the girls’ uniforms to mark them out as Jews, but as she did, she wept, sensing the human tragedy that would surely come. She had exemplified Jesus in her teaching and lifestyle, modelling equality between Jew and Gentile, but such a concept would be anathema to the Nazis.

The pupils followed her example, with the Christian children choosing to stand in solidarity with their Jewish friends. “Miss Haining sobbed and she walked with red eyes among us,” said Dr Ninon Leader, now in her 80s, as she looked back at her time in Budapest. This Jewish survivor and former pupil, continued: “I heard later that she had tried to refuse ‘to mark those children who were to be sent to the slaughterhouse’. Acting in Miss Haining’s spirit and personality, irrespective of their religion, every single boarder in the Mission Home sewed a yellow star on their uniforms. That’s how we left our building for our daily walk to the Heroes’ Square and back, hand in hand, as equals.”⁵ On false accusations of espionage for the British and for the crime of caring for Jewish people, she was taken by the Gestapo, along with many Jewish children to Auschwitz, where she died. Since then, she has been honoured by the Jewish people as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. She was one among many unsung heroes.

National Days of Prayer

The fact that King Edward VI and Parliament could call the country to national days of prayer shows the influence that the Christian faith still had in our culture at this time. Dr Victor Pearce kept a contemporary record of these momentous times and relates what happened in his book Miracles and Angels. The fact was that Britain was facing the darkest hours of its existence, with Hitler’s belief that he could “frighten the British people into surrender before the autumn” of 1940.⁶ Even the sceptics realised that their great skills, strategies, technology, and huge efforts would not be enough to defeat a German invasion of Britain, and a subsequent spreading of great darkness throughout the world. Even our British Bulldog, Winston Churchill, prepared to announce “Hard and heavy tidings”, and the Commander of the British Forces, Lt General Sir Frederick Morgan said that only a miracle would save them.

When the call went out for a National Day of Prayer on 26^th May 1940, the majority of people dropped everything and piled into churches everywhere, all over England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, queuing outside on the streets. The call to prayer was so strong and desperate that even the Daily Express ran an article entitled How do you Pray? containing teaching about how we should pray – not for self-centred requests for the bombs to fall anywhere else “but not on us”, rather for righteousness, truth and justice to prevail.

When the German war machine had defeated France, the British troops, with some allies, numbering 350,000, retreated to the coast at Dunkirk. Their situation was so serious that a mass slaughter was feared, ending the war in just months. As the nation prayed to God for deliverance a call went out for every available sizeable boat to cross the channel to rescue the British and allied soldiers. The nation played its part in mustering hundreds of private boats of all sorts, besides the naval vessels and fishing boats, to rescue 338,000 soldiers and bring them home between 27^th May and 4^th June, with a loss of only 12,000.

The courageous defence by the Royal Airforce against the German Luftwaffe was also vital. However, more was needed. What happened? The Germans should have destroyed the army either at Dunkirk, or on the sea. The crossing itself should have been disastrous because the weather forecast predicted severe storms. Several extraordinary things occurred: firstly, Hitler delayed in a full assault, the reason for which scholars still debate today, but it was seen as one of his great mistakes in the war; secondly, the weather dramatically and inexplicably changed, producing such a great calm, that the sea became like a millpond at just the right time to allow the hundreds of smaller boats to rescue the stranded soldiers.

The second Day of Prayer was on Sunday 11^th August, 1940. The King called all the youth of Britain to gather to pray, with most of them responding. Again, the situation was grave, for this time Air Field Marshall Goering sent in a huge wave of bombers and fighter planes to bomb the nation into submission. In what was known as the Battle of Britain, our heroic fighter pilots in their spitfires and hurricanes, defeated the attack, with great loss of life, bringing victory within the week. The British air commander said that apart from the skill and resolute action of the Royal Airforce, “the rate of interception excelled by far anything that could be expected or explained by radar” or technology.⁷

Only a month later Parliament called for another National Day of Prayer, on 8^th September, 1940. It was in August of the same year that some people claimed to see a vision of the crucified Christ and six angels at Firle Lewes in the sky above the Sussex Downs. In the News Chronicle we read that an excited shepherd, Mr Fowler, ran to the village to share with others what he had seen, only to be told by others that they had also seen the same apparition. Some of the eyewitnesses claimed that they “could see the nail in the crossed feet of Christ, and one of the angels with arms outstretched appeared to be praying.”⁸ This time the Germans sent a second, larger wave of bombers and fighters; again, our brave fighter crews played their part, and the air attack was driven back. The newspapers of the time were not afraid to print a statement by Air Chief Marshall Dowding who has been credited with his brilliant skill in the Battle for Britain, but he said:

“I pay homage to those gallant boys who gave their all that our nation might live. I pay tribute to their leaders and commanders; but I say with absolute conviction that I can trace the intervention of God, not only in the Battle itself, but in the events which led up to it. At the end of the Battle one had the feeling that there had been some special Divine Intervention to alter some sequence of events which would otherwise have occurred… Humanly speaking victory was impossible!”⁹

This Scottish man, who was born in Moffat, later sadly turned away from conventional Christianity to spiritualism. Victor Pearce remarks on his notes taken at the time, that Hitler was so confident the Luftwaffe would defeat Britain in the air, that he prepared his barges for the great invasion – but this never happened, as in what should have been the quietest time of the year, an unusual and terrific storm erupted in the English Channel and North Sea, which blew away the barges at Bremen, leaving Hitler having to postpone the invasion.

The next National Day of Prayer was called six months later by the King and Parliament on 23^rd March, 1941. Britain did not know that Hitler had chosen this very day for his second attempted invasion, but “a great earthquake created waves with terrific gales which blew Nazi ships 80 miles of [sic] course… Hitler changed his plans entirely as a result of the submarine earthquake. He gave up invading Britain, and against all the advice of his generals, he turned his attention eastwards to invade Russia. This was the turning point of the war.”¹⁰

Over and over again top leaders of our armed forces recognised that something more than our courage, strong leadership under Churchill, intelligence, and technology, was at work in the battle against world tyranny. General Sir William Dobbie, a devout Christian of Scottish descent, tells of God’s interventions in Malta in his book A Very Present Help, when he, his officers, and the people, became accustomed to witnessing the miraculous as they held their ground against impossible odds. Lt General Sir Frederick Morgan, who was head of the British and American Planning Staff that planned the invasion, leading to Germany’s surrender, was certain about God’s intervention. “Miracles happen still,” he wrote, “How many of them have we not seen enacted before our eyes in these past few years?”¹¹

The War Room of Prayer

Years ago, I had the honour to speak to the students at the Bible College of Wales in Swansea and meet Samuel Howells, the son of the founder, Rees Howells. Some dear elderly ladies proudly took me to the Blue Room, which they affectionately called “the War Room”. It was here that Rees Howells, his staff, and the students wrestled in prayer for God’s miraculous interventions during World War Two. The college itself stood as a testament to God’s miraculous provision. Rees Howells, who walked closely with his Saviour, was convinced that God had shown him to buy a mansion with large grounds to be a Bible college. There was only one problem: he had no money, and he struggled to believe that this would be possible.

Howells was invited to preach at a church in Anworth, Southern Scotland. His host, a Mrs Stewart, told him that in front of his bedroom window scores of Covenanter Christians had been martyred in the 17^th century. The next day he was taken to meet Sir William and Lady Maxwell at Cardoness House. He was shown one of the original documents of the National Covenant of 1638, and describes what happened. “When I saw it,” he wrote, “I changed altogether, and there wasn’t one thing I wouldn’t do to vindicate the Holy Spirit. I never felt anything like it before or since. I shed tears that night in my room. I said to the Holy Ghost, ‘If it costs my blood, I’ll do this for You.’”¹² From that night he believed with an unwavering faith that God would supply the money for the college, and he did, miraculously, so that when the Bible College of Wales opened in 1924, crowds pressed in to hear for themselves what had happened.

During the Second World War the Blue Room was continually used for sacrificial and sustained prayer. From the records we can sense something of the significance of what was happening in this War Room of prayer:

“May 26 [1940] was the public day of prayer in Britain. As Mr. Churchill said of the May 26 Service of Intercession in Westminster Abbey: “The English are loath to expose their feelings, but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent-up passionate emotion, and also the fear of the congregation, not of death or wounds or national loss, but of defeat and the final ruin of Britain.” … All the leading people know to-day that unless God intervenes, we will be slaves… We are going against this Beast [Nazism], as David went against Goliath.”¹³

Miracle at Salerno

As they prayed, they witnessed miracle after miracle: often God would show them what to pray for, even before the official national news was released to the public. One such example of this was in September 1943. Rees Howells stood up before the prayer group, and with trembling voice, said, “The Lord has burdened me between meetings with the invasion at Salerno. I believe our men are in great difficulties, and the Lord has told me that unless we can pray through, they are in danger of losing their hold.”Dr Symonds, who was present, says that “The awe of God settled down upon us, for this came as a complete surprise, there having been no official news to this effect on the wireless [radio].” Immediately the group poured out their prayers to God for his intervention, and then there came a great sense of rejoicing as they all knew he was acting on behalf of the British forces in some miraculous way in Italy. Dr Symonds said that “The victory was so outstanding that I looked at the clock as we rose to sing. It was on the stroke of 11 p.m.”¹⁴

However, they listened to the news broadcast at midnight, and it simply confirmed what Rees Howells had said: that unless some miracle happened, our troops would lose their beachhead before morning. But the next day on the front page of one of the daily newspapers was emblazoned “The Miracle of Salerno”. The reporter who had been there described the impossible situation, and that the ceaseless bombardment of the enemy was so intense, that unless a miracle happened, the advancing army would rout our troops. Then he said the following: “Suddenly, for no accountable reason the firing ceased and the Nazi artillery stopped its advance. A deathly stillness settled on the scene. We waited in breathless anticipation, but nothing happened. I looked at my watch – it was eleven o’clock at night. Still we waited, but still nothing happened; and nothing happened all that night, but those hours made all the difference to the invasion. By the morning the beachhead was established.”¹⁵

Such a testimony was the outcome of a God who intervened in answer to the passionate praying of Christians, not just in Wales, but in Scotland, and across Britain, throughout the war.

Winston Churchill and the Guiding Hand

When it was announced publicly by Winston Churchill in 1945 that the Second World War with Germany was now over, we celebrated all over Britain. As we sought to rebuild our nation, plans were made to bring about changes. One of those plans was enacted by the government: in gratitude for the recognition of God’s deliverance in the war, a law was passed making the teaching of Christianity compulsory in the education system. Besides this, the National Health Service was set up by Parliament in 1948 through the work of Aneurin Bevan. As mentioned in a previous chapter, this had been a Christian vision for centuries with a significant Scottish influence, and William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had a key part in the establishment of the NHS, through his influential book, Christianity and Social Order (1942).

At one time, God’s miraculous interventions during the war were recounted, but today very few are even aware of what happened. After victory had come and Churchill had announced on the BBC radio that war with Germany was now over, he went and read the same statement to House of Commons, expressing his gratitude for their help and co-operation during the long struggle. He knew that there was something else of vital importance that needed to be done: asking for permission, he moved “That this House do now attend at the Church of St Margaret, Westminster, to give humble and reverent thanks to Almighty God for our deliverance from the threat of German domination.”¹⁶

Churchill, even though he was not a religious man, had personally experienced this “unseen hand” that had been guiding and protecting the nation. Once, while addressing three thousand mine owners and mineworkers’ delegates, just over a week after the Battle of Alamein, he told them: “I sometimes have a feeling of interference. I want to stress that. I have a feeling sometimes that some Guiding Hand has interfered. I have a feeling that we have a Guardian, because we have a great Cause, and we shall have that Guardian so long as we serve that Cause faithfully. And what a cause it is.”¹⁷

As we sought to restore Britain, discussions were going on about our purpose in the post-war world. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, had already expressed this earlier on Sunday, 26^th September 1943, in his sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral on the Battle of Britain: “We may, and we must believe, that he who has preserved our land in a manner so marvellous, has a purpose for us to serve.”¹⁸ What was that purpose? When Field Marshall Rommel returned to Germany from North Africa in March 1943, he began to learn from other German officers about Hitler’s ruthless regime: about the mass extermination of the Jewish people, about the gas chambers, persecution of the churches, slave labour and many other atrocities. He directly challenged Hitler about this, but the Führer was unmoved. Rommel began to see Hitler as “the Devil incarnate” and that this evil rule would end in the destruction of Germany.

Meeting in secret with high-ranking officials who were equally dismayed at the Nazi monster, discussions centred on what sort of action must be pursued to stop it. A Draft Peace Treaty was put in Rommel’s hands which outlined the plan for an armistice with Britain, America and their allies. The Treaty was “founded on the idea of uniting Europe on the basis of Christianity” with “the abolition of frontiers and bringing about the return of the masses to the Christian faith… Only thus could the threat of Bolshevism [Communism] be defeated.”¹⁹

His intention was to meet up with Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery, knowing that they had a Christian understanding, and propose an armistice. He would probably have discussed the vision for a new Europe based on Christian values, but he was accused of being part of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler on 20^th July 1944, in Operation Valkyrie. Rommel was forced to commit suicide by cyanide by the Nazis, although the Nazi propaganda said he had died of a brain seizure on the way to a conference. His son, Manfred Rommel, was an eyewitness of his father’s last hour, who told what happened after Nazism had been destroyed. Revd David Gardner wrote to Manfred Rommel when he was the Mayor of Stuttgart, and asked him to confirm the vision of a Europe based on Christian values. Gardner received a letter from him in 1974, saying: “I still have the vision of a united Europe based on Christianity.”²⁰

Sceptics have questioned such a vision, but the fact of the matter is that straight after the end of World War Two there arose the Christian Democratic Union in Germany. This party, to which Manfred Rommel belonged, led the process of rebuilding Germany and saw the preservation of West Germany from the Communist regime. It was a party made up originally of Catholic and Protestant politicians who were determined to steer a new path in Germany and Europe based on Christian-democratic principles. Even in this we can see the far-reaching effects of the Presbyterian influence, in that a Christian-based democracy was deemed to be the best form of government in a sinful world. However, the idea of a merger between Catholics and Protestants would clearly not have been popular with the reformers and Covenanters of Scotland, nor the liberal ideas that would be accepted later as biblical Christianity became diminished.

“The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but deliverance is of the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31, NKJV).

NOTES

1. Annual Report of ECM, 1915, pp.1-7.

2. Martin Luther was for years a supporter of the Jews who disliked the papal policy of persecution against them. He wrote in 1523: “If we really want to help them [the Jews], we must be guided in our dealings with them not by papal law but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.’ (Luther, essay in 1523: That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew).

Luther changed his mind in 1543 when suffering from a severe bout of depression, three years before he died. The writing was also stirred up by their tenacious resistance because they would not convert to Christ. He wrote:

“What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews?… First (to) set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will never [sic] again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honour of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians… Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed…’(Luther: The Jews and their Lies, Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, pp. 268-293).

3. For an account of the underground evangelical Christian movement in Germany that opposed Hitler, please see Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Thomas Nelson, 2011.

4. The Scottish missionary who died saving Jewish children in WWII, 16^th September 2016, News, Christians United for Israel.

5. Remembering the acts of defiance which made Jane Haining a Second World War heroine, The Press and Journal, Neil Drysdale, 27^th January, 2020.

6. Letter sent to the clergy and ministers by Duff Cooper, on behalf of The Special Secretariat for the Ministry of Information, Malet St, London, 21^st June 1940, reproduced in Dr E.K. Victor Pearce’s book Miracles and Angels: Evidence for Faith, pp.143-144, Vol. 4, Eagle Publishers, 1999.

7. Pearce, Victor E.K., Miracles and Angels: Evidence for Faith, p.145, Vol. 4, Eagle Publishers, 1999.

8. Pearce, ibid, p.138.

9. Pearce, ibid, p.145.

10. Pearce, ibid, pp.145-146.

11. Pearce, ibid, p.154.

12. Grubb, Norman, Rees Howells Intercessor, p.190, Lutterworth Press, Guildford and London, first edition 1973, 8^th edition 1983.

13. Ibid, p.254.

14. Ibid, pp. 271-272.

15. Ibid.

16. Gardner, David, E., The Trumpet Sounds for Britain, Vol.2, p.132, from the three volumes in one edition, Christian Foundation Publications, 2002.

17. Ibid, p.130.

18. Gardner, The Trumpet Sounds for Britain, Vol.2, p.133.

19. Gardner, The Trumpet Sounds for Britain, Vol.2, p.135, citing from Desmond Young’s Rommel, p.225, Collins, London, 1950.

20. Letter of Manfred Rommel, Mayor of Stuttgart, to Revd David Gardner, December 1974.