I remember going to the offices of the Ministry of Economic Warfare near Berkeley St. to find the street along side the building strewn with classified (secret) documents for a bomb had hit the building the day before and blasted all the street windows.
This quote is taken from the unpublished diary of Professor Robert E. Dickinson, who was an academic in the UCL Department of Geography around the time of the Second World War. His wartime service was spent in military intelligence for the Royal Air Force, where he used his extensive knowledge of Germany to inform bombing targets.
With the US government threatening Iran with “an economic D-Day“, I was reminded of Dickinson’s reference to the “Ministry of Economic Warfare”. I also thought of a map from the UCL Map Library that, on the face of it, was not deserving of a second look.
The map in question is this very scruffy – and rudimentary – depiction of “Korea” published on the 23rd October 1943.
When looking at maps such as these, it always pays to look on the back as they can sometimes surprise you. The discovery I made here was this extremely rare map stamp.
It is the only map I have come across attributed to the “Ministry of Economic Warfare” and I wonder if Dickinson picked it up as it fluttered down the bombed out street he described in his diary.
The Ministry existed from 1939-45 and was responsible for enforcing blockades to stop goods reaching Germany and Axis-occupied regions (including supporting the US in Asia, which must explain the Korea map); gathering economic intelligence about enemy resource shortages, production capabilities, and supply chains; and supporting the Special Operations Executive to execute sabotage, fuel local resistance groups, and disrupt enemy infrastructure
One of their publications was the “The Bomber’s Baedecker” which supplied a list of German targets. The reference to “Baedecker” here was a response to what became known as the “Baedecker Blitz” following the pronouncement from a German propagandist that “We shall go out and bomb every building in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide”.
Although he doesn’t mention it by name in his diaries, Dickinson would almost certainly have been involved in the creation of the “Bombers Baedecker” and so there may be many other maps in the UCL collection that he handled to inform such a consequential document.
The fact that I have only come across one map with the fascinating “Ministry of Economic Warfare” stamp, and that it falls outside of Dickinson’s geographic region of interest, makes me think it all the more likely that he pocketed it as a Blitz souvenir.
Today it offers us an important reminder that “economic warfare” has long been part of conflict and, as we have seen in Iran, it is often accompanied by bombs as well as sanctions.
If you enjoyed this post then you might also enjoy The Library of Lost Maps. Pick up your copy here.