JF Ptak Science Books Post 2211
Part of the winning-the-war effort in Great Britain in 1940 came with the expense of proceeding with as many normal bits of life as possible while still being bombed. When this advertisement appeared in the Illustrated London News for 23 November 1940 the Battle of Britain--fought already for months and killing 24,000+ civilians (and wounding 30,000+)--had largely turned the corner though it would continue nearly half-way into 1941, with the more than 3,000+ civilians killed on 19 December 1940. It was in this issue that images from the Blitz at Coventry (from 14 November) are shared for the first time in this magazine--it was not the first raid on Coventry by any means, but it was perhaps the most infamous. It was the belief at the time that continuous bombing of civilian populations (that is, "area" vs. "precision" bombing, which was theoretically outlawed in various forms by the Hague conventions of 1907 and again in the 1920's and the Geneva conference on disarmament in 1932) would reduce the enemy's will to fight--recognizing these rights of civilians in wartime was as little followed as the suspected moral-busting/war-ending reasons for the bombings were wrong.
Ads in the Illustrated London News were not very heavy at this time, and this was hardly the only ad making reference to the war--there were in fact a number of them using the war as a background to selling a product that really had nothing to do with the war effort. For example, "Lorola" sold a skin cream with a war-ish flavor, and Harmer's was advertising stamp collecting as a way to understand the war. There are others, like "Chilprufe", who advertised their underwear "for national service", which was partially true, as well as Players and Churchmans selling tobacco and cigarettes--mostly though those advertising goods for the war effort were so, like Burberry's "RAF equipment", Austin Reed for officers' clothing, Hector Pave for "winning service" officers' uniforms, Nicolls of Regent Street for ARP service coats, and the like. Johnnie Walker had big color back cover ads, but they usually featured something war-related, like a war bonds booklet on a tray along with two glasses of Johnnie (neat). Gunniess had a more humorous approach, for example, featuring an opened bottle of the great nectar and an empty used glass, with a taped notice "opened by censor" on the bottle. From my reading of LIFE during this time, the ads using the war as backdrop for non-war-effort goods in that magazine were far more common than those in the ILN--there were far fewer of those sorts of ads in LIFE by 1944, however.
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