Our Queen at War (2020) - full transcript
Our Queen at War reveals Princess Elizabeth's extraordinary teenage life; from broadcasting to the children of the Empire, to putting on pantomimes for the war effort.
♪♪
-Queen Elizabeth II is Britain'slongest-reigning monarch.
[ Crowd cheering ]
75 years ago,
she stood on this same balcony
at Buckingham Palace,
celebrating the end
of the Second World War.
[ Crowd cheering ]
This shy princess
had been transformed
by the demands
of six years of war...
a war that had seen
her own home bombed
and her parents nearly killed,
a war that saw this quiet child
find the courage
to broadcast to evacuees in
the United States and Canada...
-Remember, it will be for us,
the children of today,
to make the world of tomorrow
a better and happier place.
-We thought they were
in the wireless.
I remember my sister and I sort
of looking behind the wireless,
wondering where they were.
-...a war that saw
her famous sense of duty
emerging with new
ceremonial roles...
appear in pantomimes
for the war effort...
and support royal charities.
-It gives me great pleasure
to come here today
to open
the Aberdeen Sailors Home.
♪♪
-...and saw her threatened
by one of the war's
most terrifying weapons.
-The girls threw themselves
on the ground.
The thought the worst
was going to happen.
Princess Elizabeth
was really starting
to show signs of strain.
-Eager to throw herself
into the war effort,
the national crisis
turned this young woman
into the leader
her country needed.
-War made her.
It made her closer to people,
and it made us closer to her
because she's one of us.
-The Second World War
transformed a shy princess
into a legendary queen.
♪♪
♪♪
-Elizabeth Alexandra
Mary Windsor
was born April 21, 1926.
As the daughter
of the Duke of York,
who was second in line
to the throne,
nobody expected Elizabeth
to become queen.
Instead, she would lead
a quiet life
away from the glare
of publicity.
♪♪
But everything changed
when her uncle, Edward VIII,
renounced the throne in favor
of Elizabeth's father,
who became King George VI.
10-year-old Elizabeth was now
next in line to the throne.
-Back in 1936, 10-year-olds
were still children,
and she was still a child,
because, as she told
her sister, Margaret,
"Uncle David's going away,
and Papa is to be king."
And Margaret's response
to that was,
"Does that mean
you're going to be queen?"
And she said, "Yes, one day."
-But Elizabeth's father,
the Duke of York,
was reluctant to take
his elder brother's place.
-He was a man
who doubted himself.
Could he be king?
He'd never been
trained for this.
-The peaceful home life
Elizabeth and her family
had enjoyed up until now
was shattered forever.
-She was too young
for her parents to conceal
their own distress.
She'd have lived through it
at the dining table,
lunch table, with them.
When she heard what was due
to happen to her
as heir to the throne,
she started desperately praying
for a baby brother,
who would have got,
in those days --
have jumped ahead of her
in succession.
A nice little baby boy
would have taken the load
off her shoulders beautifully.
♪♪
-On May 12, 1937,
George VI was crowned king.
♪♪
Elizabeth later wrote
a detailed account of the day.
-She talks about Mummy and Daddybeing consumed
in a haze of wonder,
and that clearly expressed how
she herself was moved deeply,
spiritually, by this -- this --this mission that now lay ahead.
♪♪
-Princess Elizabeth
came to terms with the fact
she would one day
follow her father and mother
into that haze of wonder.
Her parents were determined
she and her sister
enjoy their childhood.
But suddenly everything changed.
♪♪
-The Royal Family were on
their Scottish holiday,
as usual,
at the beginning of September
1939 when war broke out.
And the king and the queen
went straight down to London
to see the prime minister.
The girls stayed up in Scotland.
♪♪
-For the second time
in the lives of most of us,
we are...
at war.
There may be dark days ahead,
and war can no longer
be confined to the battlefield.
♪♪
-The towns and cities of Britainwere expected
to bear the brunt
of death and destruction.
Within the first three days
of the war,
1 1/2 million children,
pregnant women,
and the infirm were evacuated
to the countryside.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
While the princesses
were getting used
to being separated
from their parents,
other children were
preparing to leave theirs.
♪♪
-Many of the children thought
they were going on holiday.
One or two children
had a bucket and spade.
They took that away from them,
but we had to just carry
one change of clothes,
and that's all.
-Aware of the suffering
evacuation was causing,
Elizabeth's mother shared
her own feelings about it.
-Many of you have had to see
your family life broken up,
your children evacuated
to places of greater safety.
The king and I know
what it means to be parted
from our children,
and we can sympathize
with those of you
who have bravely consented
to this separation
for the sake
of your little ones.
♪♪
-Looked after by their
governess, Marion Crawford,
Princesses Elizabeth
and Margaret
were moved from Balmoral Castle
to the less obvious target
of Birkhall nearby.
They were about to experience
what life as an evacuee was likefor ordinary children.
-Quite soon, evacuees were beingtaken out of Glasgow
and being set up in houses
on the Balmoral Estate
that the king had opened up.
-In the first weeks of the war,
hundreds of Glaswegian evacuees
descended on rural Scotland.
As World War II progressed,
it would draw people together
from very different backgrounds.
This didn't come naturally
to the princess.
-Elizabeth was never quite at
ease with some of the children
because I think they were
very, very different
from the princesses,
and she was a little bit
awkward with them.
♪♪
-Elizabeth and Margaret
each decided
to donate one of their coats
to the evacuees.
This simple gesture
made the headlines.
Glasgow evacuees Isa Kelly
and Betty Murphy
were the lucky recipients
of the coats.
-I remember Betty Murphy
just because of the coat,
I suppose.
-A year younger
than Princess Elizabeth,
local resident Zan Grant got
to know some of the evacuees.
-They were from the poorest partof Glasgow,
I would think, near the Clyde.
Yes, and, of course,
their picture was in the paper.
Couldn't believe it, you know?
It was really something
special at the time.
♪♪
-While the princess was getting
to know her future subjects,
the predicted bombing
didn't happen.
By early 1940, many evacuees
had returned to the cities.
Princess Elizabeth
and her sister
also secretly returned
to England
to be closer to their parents.
They caught up on the first
major event of the war
by watching newsreels
in a private screening room.
♪♪
-The evacuation of the BEF
from Flanders
has been virtually completed.
Once again,
Hitler had underrated
the power of the Royal Navy.
♪♪
-The German invasion's progress
through Western Europe
led to the Dunkirk evacuation
of Allied Forces.
In just six weeks,
Hitler captured Paris
on June 14th.
The German army was now
at the English Channel.
♪♪
♪♪
Holkham Hall,
near Sandringham in Norfolk,
lived under the threat
of Nazi invasion by sea.
It was the family home
of Ladies Anne and Carey Coke,
friends of Princess Elizabeth
and her sister, Margaret.
-When we were very young,
when the princesses
were very young,
I was young,
we used to go on the beach,
you know, which was lovely, andswim and dig, make sand castles.
Princess Elizabeth then
was more serious
and did say,
"Margaret, what are you doing?"
or "Anne,
you shouldn't do that."
I mean, we definitely thought
Hitler was going to land.
So my sister and I
had this wonderful plan
that we were actually
gonna kill Hitler,
and we had what we called
Hitler's mess,
which was a jam jar
that we kept under our bed.
Anything really disgusting
we'd put in there.
♪♪
And we had it all planned.
We used to practice with
our Teddy bear being Hitler.
And we'd say, "Ooh, Mr. Hitler,
how lovely to see you.
We've got a delicious drink
that we've got for you."
We never thought beyond
actually killing him.
I mean, we just thought
we would succeed.
Luckily, we didn't have
to put it into practice.
♪♪
-With their famous houses
and palaces,
the Royal Family were vulnerabletargets for Nazi assassins.
Fear of invasion was growing.
The government repeatedly
advised the Royal Family
to move their children abroad.
-They were not sent to Canada,
like a lot of girls
of their age,
on the grounds that,
as is well known,
the Queen Mother said,
"They won't leave without me,
and I won't leave without theking, and the king won't leave."
And, you know,
you can understand it,
that if the king and queen
are still in London,
things aren't too bad.
-The precise location
of the Royal Family
was a matter of great
national secrecy and security.
-So, the newsreels told
everybody at the time
the princesses were somewhere
in the country.
♪♪
Now of course we know
it was Windsor Castle.
-They knew that they wereprobably fairly safe at Windsor,
but they did have a safe house,
as well, further north,
and it was kept there
the whole of the war.
So if there was an invasion,
and everybody thought that therewas going to be an invasion,
the princesses and the queen
could immediately
be sent up north.
They would then take a boat
from Liverpool
so that they could
get out of the country
if they needed to be.
But, fortunately,
that never happened.
-While she was safe
in Windsor Castle,
Princess Elizabeth worried
about her father and mother,
who remained
in Buckingham Palace.
And in the Blitz to come,
they would become the prime
target for Hitler's Luftwaffe.
[ Bombs whistling ]
♪♪
In July 1939, two months
before the outbreak of war,
13-year-old Princess Elizabethand the rest of the Royal Family
sailed to Dartmouth in Devon
on the royal yacht.
♪♪
This was a day
that would transform
the life of the princess.
The Royal Family were here
to pay a visit
to the Royal Naval College,
where Princess Elizabeth's
father and grandfather trained
as naval cadets.
Michael Vaughan
was a 13-year-old recruit.
He recalls the visit.
-We would keep a keen eye open
in case any of the royal party
came anywhere near us,
whereupon we would tremble.
[ Laughs ]
It seemed to youngsters like us
that he was a good chap
and that his wife
was really pleasant
and there might be some prospectin the princesses.
[ Laughs ]
-Dartmouth is where
the country's
naval officers are trained.
One in particular stood out
from the crowd.
-This tall 18-year-old
blond chap appeared
that was
Prince Philip of Greece.
-Prince Philip was asked
to entertain
the king and queen's daughters.
-Philip suggested that they go
and jump over the tennis nets
on the tennis courts.
-The princesses' governess,
Marion Crawford,
kept a sharp eye on the girls.
-Princess Elizabeth said,
"Oh, Crawfie,
look at how high he jumps," whenhe jumped over the tennis net.
-Once he'd proved
his athletic skills,
Prince Philip suggested
a game of croquet.
♪♪
Shortly afterwards,
a journalist captured
a photograph
of them together, alone.
♪♪
The following day, the royal
party rejoined the royal yacht,
but their departure
didn't go unnoticed.
-A lot of the cadets
rowed afterwards
in a sort of show of thanks
to say goodbye
to the royal party.
-Just as they were sort of
pulling right away
and all the boats were
going back to the harbor,
the king happened to notice
one boy really rowing away.
-And the king was looking
through his binoculars.
"Who's that bloody fool
still rowing?
Go back."
And it was Philip, of course,
and I think the princess
has never forgot that.
-If you were wondering
whether romance was blossoming,
I would say that
almost everybody believed
that that was happening.
-Elizabeth herself just 13 then,and at this very moment,
she meets the man, um,
with whom she fell in love
that day.
♪♪
-Rising up the ranks
to first lieutenant,
Philip would patrol the perilouswaters of the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean.
Princess Elizabeth kept up aregular correspondence with him.
-Whatever it meant
to her personally,
it gave her this same sense
of identity
with so many British women
during the war.
Their man -- husband, fiancé,
boyfriend --
was away risking his life,
which Philip did.
-For the next five years,
the princess kept a photo
of a bearded Prince Philip
on her mantelpiece.
"There you are, Crawfie,"
she said to her nanny.
"I defy anyone to recognize
who that is."
♪♪
A year into
the Second World War,
life in Britain appeared
to carry on as normal.
It became known
as "the phony war."
But it came to an end
on September 7, 1940.
♪♪
The Blitz began
with heavy raids on London.
Mass air attacks
on numerous towns, cities,
and industrial targets followed
over the next eight months.
♪♪
Between September 1940
and May 1941,
more than 40,000 people died,
almost half of them in London.
♪♪
-Princess Elizabeth was aware
of this, I mean,
'cause they were at Windsor.
But they could hear
some of the bombing.
The king felt
that she needed to know.
And she would see Pathé News,
and she would see newspapers,
although she was protected
from the real horrors of it.
♪♪
-Things move with lightning
swiftness in this Nazi war,
but at the moment
of recording these pictures,
London is still enduring
the nightly bombardment
by Hitler and his gangsters.
The casualties have been heavy,
both in human lives
and materials.
-Newsreels helped Princess
Elizabeth to get a sense
of what ordinary children
were going through.
Ron Batchelor was a schoolboy
living in central London
during the worst
of the air raids.
-When a building was hit,
as children,
we would go and have a look,
and they were bringing
people out on stretchers
and covering them up.
A doctor had to certify
that they were dead
before they carted them away.
We were watching it just like
it was an everyday thing.
At first,
I was worried about it.
I'd never seen a dead person.
But you do.
You get used to these things.
You get used to bombing.
-The Second World War brought
home death and destruction
on a hideous scale
right onto our doorsteps
and into our homes
in a way that had never been
seen before in this country.
You heard stories of
going to work in the morning,
you see limbs
lying on the street.
The hideousness of a dead baby
or a dead child
lying exploded in a mass of gutson the pavement.
♪♪
-On September 13, 1940,
German bombers embarked
on a secret mission.
♪♪
-Imagine you're
a Luftwaffe pilot.
You're a bomber pilot.
You are now carrying out anotherbombing raid on London itself,
but you've found a key feature
in the form of the mall there.
What is at the other end?
One of the most famous,
if not themost famous
landmark in London itself --
Buckingham Palace.
That is the target.
-Princess Elizabeth's mother
described the drama
of what happened next
in a letter to Queen Mary.
-My darling Mama, I hardly know
how to begin to tell you
of the horrible attack on
Buckingham Palace this morning.
Bertie and I arrived there
at about quarter to 11:00,
and he and I went up
to our poor windowless rooms
to collect a few odds and ends.
At this moment,
we heard the unmistakable
"whir, whir" of a German plane.
We said, "Ah, a German."
And before anything else
could be said,
there was the noise of aircraft
diving at great speed.
-They saw this bomber
coming towards them.
Then they suddenly realized,
actually --
the king suddenly realized --
"Good heavens,
it's coming to us!"
[ Bombs whistling ]
-Imagine the sound of that,
when you're sat in your home,
regardless of whether
it's Buckingham Palace.
You're sat at your home, and youcan hear the bombs coming down.
-"It all happened so quickly
that we only had time
to look foolishly at each other
when the scream hurtled past us
and exploded with a tremendous
crash in the quadrangle.
[ Explosion ]
♪♪
-The king and queen
were lucky to survive.
But instead of retreating
to their daughters in Windsor,
they ventured out
to inspect the damage.
-The bombing of Buckingham
Palace was a tremendous
personal shock
to the Royal Family,
but it legitimized them, also.
The Queen Mother, as you now
remember, famously said,
"I'm glad we have been bombed.
I feel we can look the East End
in the face."
-Having shared the suffering
of the Blitz,
the king and queen met ordinaryLondoners with a new confidence.
As they chatted to people
in bomb-damaged areas,
a more informal way
of presenting themselves
to the public was emerging.
The newsreel cameras
captured their every move.
-They saw the cruel damage
inflicted by the Nazis,
and they chatted
with many of the people
whose homes have been destroyed
by the savage
and indiscriminate raids.
-When we see those pictures
of the king and queen
meeting the crowds,
it is the outgoing queen
who's always setting the pace,
as it were, and George VI
naturally being a step behind.
♪♪
People came to find that
rather appealing and human.
♪♪
-Keeping the king and queen safe
while traveling
around the country
became increasingly challenging.
-Whilst they commuted, really,
from Windsor to London
by armored car every day,
they also, during the war years,
undertook no fewer
than 300 regional tours
and covered 4,000 miles
in the Royal Train
specifically to meet people,
to cheer them, to raise morale,
to comfort
in whatever way they could.
[ Crowd cheering ]
-One of the people
who saw the king and queen
was Ron Batchelor.
-I was standing
in the playground,
and somebody said, "Look!"
And he pointed,
and we looked up,
and about 50 yards away,
I suppose,
we saw the queen
and the king in his uniform.
The queen had a fur coat on.
I remember that --
a fur wrap around here --
but it was a kind
of a fur thing.
That -- I remember that
quite well.
And I couldn't wait
to tell my mum, so I left.
When they disappeared,
I went running up to my mum,
and I said to my mother,
"Mama," I said, "guess what?"
She said, "What?"
I said, "The queen's come."
And she said,
"What do you mean?"
I said, "I've seen her
walking up the other end."
She said to me, "I hope
you had your socks pulled up."
[ Applause ]
-Everywhere, Their Majestiesfound the spirit of these people
still undaunted,
while they, for their part,
sincerely appreciated the king
and queen's true sympathy.
♪♪
-They were a very good
double act,
and we know
that Elizabeth studied
the newsreels of the time,
and these were projected
privately to the Royal Family
in Buckingham Palace
and Windsor.
After all,
they were participants
and wanted to see themselves.
-Visitors were wholeheartedly
welcomed everywhere they went.
-Their appearance
in the newsreels revealed
the different characters
and backgrounds
of Princess Elizabeth's parents.
-Her mother had had a very
different upbringing --
aristocratic as opposed
to royal, a big family,
a big rumbustious family,
the Bowes-Lyons,
and very full of warmth and fun.
By contrast, of course,
George VI --
his parents,
George V and Queen Mary --
it wasn't that they weren't
loving people, essentially,
but not terribly good
at showing it.
♪♪
-Up until then,
they were figures
that you just saw
all dressed up at the palace,
having their photograph taken
for some royal event.
The popularity
of the king and queen
and the Royal Family increased.
They'd become more open
and more accessible.
And suddenly my family
became Royalists,
and that was common everywhere.
♪♪
-The Royal Family's appearances
in cinema newsreels
increased dramatically
during the war.
♪♪
Princess Elizabeth
was the first monarch
to grow up in the perpetual gazeof the media,
and she would soon be making
a more demanding contribution
to the war effort.
♪♪
Before the outbreak
of the Second World War,
over 14,000 children
from wealthy families
were sent to safetyin the United States and Canada.
-The reason we are in America
is because
we have been
evacuated from England,
and our mothers
did not think it was safe
to go and stay in England.
-I came here because the war
broke out, to be safe.
-Two children
who weren't dispatched
to safety across the Atlantic
were Princess Elizabeth
and her sister.
-My sister and I, being so proudthat they were still in England,
because a lot of our friends hadbeen sent to America and Canada.
-Back home, nearly 8,000
children were killed
in the mass bombings
of the Blitz,
and many more
were seriously injured.
When the government funded
overseas evacuation
for 24,000 children
from the inner cities,
sending children abroad
was no longer seen
as the preserve of the wealthy.
♪♪
On September 13, 1940,
90 children boarded a ship
like this one
to take them to safety
in Canada.
The SS City of Benares
was four days into its voyage
when it was spotted
by a German U-boat.
[ Men shouting indistinctly
in German ]
[ Watch ticking ]
♪♪
It was reported that only 7
of the 90 children survived.
The prime minister,
Winston Churchill,
canceled all future plansto ship British children abroad.
-Buckingham Palace realized
that these two girls
themselves living somewhere
in the country,
having had their own house
bombed in London,
created a real identity
with children.
♪♪
-On October 13, 1940,
barely a month after the sinkingof SS City of Benares,
Princess Elizabeth recorded
a radio broadcast
for the BBC's "Children's Hour,"
transmitted around the world
and heard by evacueesin the United States and Canada.
-My sister, Margaret Rose,
and I feel so much for you,
as we know from experience
what it means
to be away from those we love
most of all.
-For that 14-year-old,
it would have been
a demanding thing to have done.
It demonstrated some
pretty serious qualities
for a very, very young teenager.
-To you living
in new surroundings,
we send a message
of true sympathy,
and, at the same time, we would
like to thank the kind people
who have welcomed you
to their homes in the country.
-And we thought they were
in the wireless.
I remember my sister and I sort
of looking behind the wireless,
wondering where they were.
-All of us children
who are still at home...
-I thought,
"Oh, that's Princess Elizabeth
talking to us on the radio."
It was wonderful. Wonderful.
-...think continually
of our friends and relations
who have gone --
-A lot of people commented that
she sounds just like her mother
and said what a marvelous,
authoritative,
and mellow voice she had.
-The king was delighted
because she sounded
very much like his wife.
-Many of you have had to see
your family life broken up.
-To you, we send a message
of true sympathy.
-She also spoke about how,
"when peace comes,
it is for us, the children
of this generation,
to ensure that war
doesn't happen again,"
and that in itself marked her asthe leader for her generation.
-And when peace comes, remember,
it will be for us,
the children of today,
to make the world of tomorrow
a better and happier place.
-It was a huge success,
'cause, basically,
it was to America and Canada,
and Elizabeth, being
the sort of person she was,
added a little amendment
at the end
and brought
Princess Margaret into it.
-My sister is by my side,
and we are both going to say
good night to you.
Come on, Margaret.
-Good night, children.
-Good night, and good luck
to you all.
♪♪
-Well, in America,
they loved it so much that,
"Ah, come on, Margaret"
became a catchphrase.
And it was a huge success,
and it was seen
as slightly propaganda
because it was
sort of front page
of all the newspapers in America
that the princess had given
this amazing broadcast.
♪♪
-The education
of the nation's children
suffered greatly during the war.
But from the age of 13,
the king and queen decided
Princess Elizabeth
should be properly prepared
for the life ahead of her.
♪♪
Less than 3 miles
from Windsor Castle,
Eton College
presented a solution.
Twice a week,
Elizabeth's governess,
Marion Crawford,
escorted her to the college.
"Piles of books everywhere,"
wrote Crawford
of the tutor's study.
"Crawfie, do you mean to tell mehe's read them all?"
asked Princess Elizabeth.
But soon she was absorbed
in the complexities
of the British Constitution.
-All through
the emotional experience
of the dangers
and terror of war,
she's also learning thetechnicalities of the difference
between proroguing or dissolving
or suspending Parliament,
what the Prime Minister
has to come to the Sovereign
to do at those times.
And the relationship
between George VI and Churchill
became a paradigm
which I think we can say
the queen has followed
for the rest of her life
of closeness
between premier and monarch.
-The king also gave Princess
Elizabeth an introduction
to dealing with the endless
stream of government papers
in the famous
red dispatch boxes.
Elizabeth's mother had
different priorities.
She was more concerned
with developing
her daughter's
social skills and confidence.
She had the idea of putting
on Christmas pantomimes
to raise money
for the war effort.
♪♪
The splendor of the Waterloo
Chamber played host
to members of the public
who came to see a range
of traditional pantomimes
performed
throughout the war years.
While Hitler was fighting
a losing battle
with the Soviet Union
in December 1943,
a 17-year-old
Princess Elizabeth
was preparing to play
the role of Aladdin.
-The girls helped to make
some of the costumes.
It was very much
a hands-on affair,
but, production-wise,
it was big and professional.
[ Applause ]
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Audience booing, hissing ]
[ Laughter ]
[ Audience ahs ]
[ Horn honking ]
[ Laughter, applause ]
♪♪
Some press members
were invited in
and spoke very,
very highly of it.
-The Daily Mirror
printed a feature
with a photograph
of the princesses
described as
"the stars of the show."
-To see the princesses dressed
as Aladdin and something,
you know, it was lovely.
We used to cut them out andpin them up on our bedroom wall.
I mean, for the children
of Great Britain,
the princesses were --
I always wondered whether they
knew how much they meant to us.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-What the pantomimes did do
for Princess Elizabeth
was to bring her out
of this rather shy character
that she was, and the pantomimesbrought her out of her shell.
-During one performance
of "Aladdin,"
Princess Elizabeth was pleased
to see a certain young
naval officer in the audience.
-Princess Elizabeth andPrince Philip have kept in touch
during the war.
It hasn't stopped him having
other girlfriends in between.
But things really turn around
when he spends Christmas
at Windsor.
-They'd be spotted out
walking hand in hand.
The moment they realized
somebody was looking at them,
they separated.
But for Elizabeth, there was
just this one man in her life.
-There was one reporter
who interviewed him
called Olga Franklin.
She wrote that
"I get dizzy looking at him.
His beauty is so dazzling.
People don't look like this
in real life, surely.
This Prince Philip is stunning,
with hair like gold coin,
only paler, a sort of ash gold,
eyes of deep blue, almost violetin the electric light,
tall, fine-featured,
really a shockingly beautiful
figure in naval uniform."
So we have women who are just
being bowled over by him still.
♪♪
And yet it isn't them
that he goes for.
It's Princess Elizabeth.
♪♪
-Her mother was not at all keen
and had a list of eligible
young men for her,
and as far as
they were concerned,
Philip was a penniless prince
of Greece.
And although his bloodlines
were very royal,
they didn't consider him
a very good prospect.
-But she knew from
the very beginning
that she had to have a husband
who would help her do her job,
And that was one of the many
attractive qualities of Philip
in her eyes.
Philip was ideal, so that
side of her life was sorted.
♪♪
-As the Nazis launched
a new series of raids
on Britain's historic towns,
the king appointed his daughter
Colonel in Chief
of the Grenadier Guards
to mark her 16th birthday.
♪♪
Elizabeth is the only woman
appointed to this
ceremonial role
in one of the oldest regiments
in the British army.
-She was pretty nervous,
and she had to walk
up and down these ranks
of very, very tall guardsmen
and look as though she'd been
doing it all her life,
which, of course, she did
because she hadthat very disciplined character.
-Here she is as colonel
of the Grenadier Guards.
What a change from 13 to 16,
you know, growing --
still a little shy,
but growing in confidence,
and this parade must have done
an enormous amount
for her own personal
confidence and morale.
-Hooray!
-Hooray!
-Hip, hip, hip!
-Hooray!
-Hooray!
-Just four months
after her appointment
to the Grenadier Guards,
Princess Elizabeth's much-loved
uncle Prince George,
Duke of Kent,was killed in a flying accident.
-We mourn the passing
of the king's younger brother,
who lost his life
on active service.
The duke, who was an airman
in his own right,
had undertaken duties concerningthe welfare of RAF personnel
and was on his way to Iceland
when the crash occurred.
-He was flying from Scotland
to Iceland,
ostensibly to visit RAF bases.
The flying conditions
were not perfect.
There was a mist.
And in those poor
flying conditions
thundered into
a hillside in Caithness.
And all bar the rear gunner,
including, of course,
Prince George, were killed.
♪♪
-This was the first time
in more than 450 years
that a member of the Royal
Family died on active service.
♪♪
Prince George was 39 years old.
He left behind his wife,
Princess Marina,
and three young children.
♪♪
-Every family in the war --
practically every family --
lost somebody.
From that point of view,
that wasn't unusual,
but for the Royal Family,
the loss of George of Kent
was just hugely devastating.
♪♪
-Loss is personal,
and I don't think there is
any one way of dealing with it.
Whether --
There was a different attitude
50, 60, 70 years ago,
and during the war, there was
a different kind of stoicism.
I'm sure that would have appliedto the Royal Family themselves.
I think it underlies so much
of what one encounters
with the queen today,
with her sense of duty
and her sense of stoicism.
♪♪
-As she grew older,
Princess Elizabeth was expected
to take on more
and more public duties...
♪♪
...from launching ships...
to visiting hospitals...
♪♪
...and making speech...
-I shall like first
to thank you all very much.
-...after speech.
-I have now much pleasure
in declaring
the Aberdeen Sailors Home open.
-And now happily chatting
to one line of troops...
after another line of troops.
♪♪
Princess Elizabeth
was growing up.
Very soon, she'd be
defending the nation
by serving in the military.
♪♪
June 1944, Windsor Castle,
and the newsreels
were about to reveal
one of the most
decisive chapters
of the Second World War.
♪♪
D-Day saw the largest
seaborne invasion in history.
The Allied Army was on its way
to liberate
German-occupied France.
♪♪
[ Whooshing ]
Seven days after
the Normandy landings,
a strange and terrifying sound
was heard tearing across
the London sky.
[ Humming ]
Then the noise stopped.
This was the first
rocket-powered missile,
known as the V-1.
The "V" was for "vengeance."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
A second V-1 landed
yards from Buckingham Palace
and in the middle
of a church service.
-A bomb was dropped
on the Guards Chapel,
and there were many servicemen
and -women killed
and some civilians, too,
including some friends
of the Royal Family.
The Royal Family was simply
not immune at all.
-With the V-1,
London had been plunged
back into the dark days
of the Blitz.
1 million people
fled the capital
over the next few months.
♪♪
10 days after
the Guards Chapel bomb,
Princess Elizabeth's motherrevealed her worst fears to her.
-"My darling Lilibet,
this is just a note
about one or two things in case
I get done in by the Germans.
I think that I've left all
my things to be divided
between you and Margaret,
but I am sure you will give her
anything suitable later on,
such as Mrs. Greville's pearls,
as you will have
the crown ones."
♪♪
-While Princess Elizabeth's
mother feared for her life,
she also worried about
the safety of her daughters,
who were still in the care
of their governess,
Marion Crawford.
-The princesses were in WindsorGreat Park with the Girl Guides,
and Crawfie was with them.
They suddenly looked up,
and there was a V-1 in the air,
and she says it was just like
being chased by a robot.
The girls threw themselves
on the ground,
and they thought the worst
was going to happen.
But, fortunately, the bomb
passed overhead
and crashed at Windsor
Racecourse, a few miles away.
♪♪
Crawfie said the girls
were really starting
to show signs of strain.
-Nearly 10,000 V-1s were fired
on Southeast England
during the summer of 1944,
causing terror
and terrible damage.
♪♪
Now 18, Princess Elizabeth
was eager
to take a more active role
in the war.
She joined the women's branch
of the British army --
the Auxiliary Territorial
Service, or ATS.
♪♪
Many of the women took on tasks
such as operating radar,
assisting military police,
and crewing anti-aircraft guns.
The service wasn't without
its risks to the princess.
It suffered 700 casualties
in wartime.
-Her father was not at all keen,and he was nervous of really
letting her go anywhere
other than Windsor Castle.
So he said, eventually, "You canjoin up and do the course
and learn whatever it is
you want to do,
but you've got to
come home at night."
♪♪
-At an MT training center,
Princess Elizabeth,
now a second subaltern
in the ATS,
has been on a three-weeks
course of instruction.
The princess is at the wheel of
a 1,500-weight truck in convoy.
Although she drives it
with apparent composure,
she had no experience of driving
before she commenced
her training.
-She joined
the Transport Division,
taking a mechanics' course.
And the queen
was known to have said,
"We had spark plugs
all the way through dinner."
So it really mattered to her.
♪♪
-She really enjoyed hertraining, you know, as a driver.
That's just how I felt.
I absolutely loved driving.
And she looked so happy
to be able to drive.
She was able to be her own self.
Suddenly, women were useful.
You know, they weren't,
"Stay at home
and look after the children."
They could do all sorts
of things.
They could go into
the factories.
They could do war work
of different things.
They could join up like I did.
If you were there,
and the bombs were falling,
well, there were very few people
that were sort of
running around, shrieking.
If they did, they were out
of the army pretty quick.
Also, if you happened
to get pregnant,
[Whistles] you were out.
♪♪
-By joining the ATS
in March 1945,
Princess Elizabeth
became the only female member
of the Royal Family
to serve in the armed forces.
-This, of course, was also
something of a morale booster
to the nation,
because they could see
the king's elder daughter,
Princess Elizabeth,
their future sovereign,
doing what others were doing,
what everybody else was doing,
playing their part.
No matter how small,
playing their part.
-By the time she finished
her training,
the war was drawing to a close.
But she'd learnt
some valuable lessons.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-Princess Elizabeth, a humanity
that she might have
taken longer to discover,
she shared a lot in common
with ordinary people
in that she saw their suffering.She knew about it.
She knew that people looked to
her as that new generation --
that new generation of hope.
-Today we give thanks to God.
Germany, the enemy who drove
all Europe into war,
has been finally overcome.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-On May 8, 1945,
Germany finally surrendered.
♪♪
Over a million people
gathered in Central London
to celebrate
Victory in Europe Day.
One small boy was struggling
to see the Royal Family.
-I remember some man
picked me up and lifted me up
and put me on his shoulders,
and I looked.
That was how it was. Everybody
was so friendly with everybody.
You can't live in
that atmosphere all the time.
But they came onto the balcony,
and the king
with his uniform on.
And it went on for hour
after hour after hour.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-Elizabeth said to her father,
"You know,
could we go out in it,
see what's going on?"
It was so exciting.
-She was delighted
when the king agreed
that she could go out
in the crowd
with Princess Margaret
and some friends
and with some officers
to keep an eye on them.
She was in her ATS uniform,
so she was still dressed up.
And she didn't want to be
recognized.
And she tried to pull her cap
over her forehead
so that she wouldn't
be recognized.
And one of the officers said,
"You know,
you can't go like that.
Put your cap back properly."
♪♪
-This was the one time in
her life when she could just be
second subaltern, ordinary,
junior commander, ordinary,
Miss Windsor, ordinary.
Dancing down the mound,
dancing their way up Piccadilly,St. James's,
and at one point,
grabbing the cap
off the head of a sailor,
who then he was chasing
after them to get his cap back.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-The future queen mingled
unnoticed among her people.
For once in her life, she was
just another face in the crowd.
-She actually described it
as the most exciting
night of her life.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-I think that the war
made Princess Elizabeth
grow up like it made me grow up.
It really made her.
It made her closer
to the people,
who she reigned as subjects.
And it made us closer to her,
because they had been
in the war,
and right through the war,
they were one of us.
The Royal Family were one of us.
♪♪
-♪ Once you get
down Lambeth way ♪
♪ Every evening, every day
♪ You'll find them all
♪ Doing the Lambeth walk, oh
-Two years after the revelers
had gone home,
Princess Elizabeth chose the
occasion of her 21st birthday
to make a vowto the people of her generation.
-I am thinking especially today
of all the young men and women
who were born
about the same time as myself
and have grown up, like me,
in terrible and glorious years
of the Second World War.
I declare before you all
that my whole life,
whether it be long or short,shall be devoted to your service
and to the service
of our great imperial family
to which we all belong.
God help me to make good my vow,
and God bless all of you
who are willing to share in it.
-Queen Elizabeth II is Britain'slongest-reigning monarch.
[ Crowd cheering ]
75 years ago,
she stood on this same balcony
at Buckingham Palace,
celebrating the end
of the Second World War.
[ Crowd cheering ]
This shy princess
had been transformed
by the demands
of six years of war...
a war that had seen
her own home bombed
and her parents nearly killed,
a war that saw this quiet child
find the courage
to broadcast to evacuees in
the United States and Canada...
-Remember, it will be for us,
the children of today,
to make the world of tomorrow
a better and happier place.
-We thought they were
in the wireless.
I remember my sister and I sort
of looking behind the wireless,
wondering where they were.
-...a war that saw
her famous sense of duty
emerging with new
ceremonial roles...
appear in pantomimes
for the war effort...
and support royal charities.
-It gives me great pleasure
to come here today
to open
the Aberdeen Sailors Home.
♪♪
-...and saw her threatened
by one of the war's
most terrifying weapons.
-The girls threw themselves
on the ground.
The thought the worst
was going to happen.
Princess Elizabeth
was really starting
to show signs of strain.
-Eager to throw herself
into the war effort,
the national crisis
turned this young woman
into the leader
her country needed.
-War made her.
It made her closer to people,
and it made us closer to her
because she's one of us.
-The Second World War
transformed a shy princess
into a legendary queen.
♪♪
♪♪
-Elizabeth Alexandra
Mary Windsor
was born April 21, 1926.
As the daughter
of the Duke of York,
who was second in line
to the throne,
nobody expected Elizabeth
to become queen.
Instead, she would lead
a quiet life
away from the glare
of publicity.
♪♪
But everything changed
when her uncle, Edward VIII,
renounced the throne in favor
of Elizabeth's father,
who became King George VI.
10-year-old Elizabeth was now
next in line to the throne.
-Back in 1936, 10-year-olds
were still children,
and she was still a child,
because, as she told
her sister, Margaret,
"Uncle David's going away,
and Papa is to be king."
And Margaret's response
to that was,
"Does that mean
you're going to be queen?"
And she said, "Yes, one day."
-But Elizabeth's father,
the Duke of York,
was reluctant to take
his elder brother's place.
-He was a man
who doubted himself.
Could he be king?
He'd never been
trained for this.
-The peaceful home life
Elizabeth and her family
had enjoyed up until now
was shattered forever.
-She was too young
for her parents to conceal
their own distress.
She'd have lived through it
at the dining table,
lunch table, with them.
When she heard what was due
to happen to her
as heir to the throne,
she started desperately praying
for a baby brother,
who would have got,
in those days --
have jumped ahead of her
in succession.
A nice little baby boy
would have taken the load
off her shoulders beautifully.
♪♪
-On May 12, 1937,
George VI was crowned king.
♪♪
Elizabeth later wrote
a detailed account of the day.
-She talks about Mummy and Daddybeing consumed
in a haze of wonder,
and that clearly expressed how
she herself was moved deeply,
spiritually, by this -- this --this mission that now lay ahead.
♪♪
-Princess Elizabeth
came to terms with the fact
she would one day
follow her father and mother
into that haze of wonder.
Her parents were determined
she and her sister
enjoy their childhood.
But suddenly everything changed.
♪♪
-The Royal Family were on
their Scottish holiday,
as usual,
at the beginning of September
1939 when war broke out.
And the king and the queen
went straight down to London
to see the prime minister.
The girls stayed up in Scotland.
♪♪
-For the second time
in the lives of most of us,
we are...
at war.
There may be dark days ahead,
and war can no longer
be confined to the battlefield.
♪♪
-The towns and cities of Britainwere expected
to bear the brunt
of death and destruction.
Within the first three days
of the war,
1 1/2 million children,
pregnant women,
and the infirm were evacuated
to the countryside.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
While the princesses
were getting used
to being separated
from their parents,
other children were
preparing to leave theirs.
♪♪
-Many of the children thought
they were going on holiday.
One or two children
had a bucket and spade.
They took that away from them,
but we had to just carry
one change of clothes,
and that's all.
-Aware of the suffering
evacuation was causing,
Elizabeth's mother shared
her own feelings about it.
-Many of you have had to see
your family life broken up,
your children evacuated
to places of greater safety.
The king and I know
what it means to be parted
from our children,
and we can sympathize
with those of you
who have bravely consented
to this separation
for the sake
of your little ones.
♪♪
-Looked after by their
governess, Marion Crawford,
Princesses Elizabeth
and Margaret
were moved from Balmoral Castle
to the less obvious target
of Birkhall nearby.
They were about to experience
what life as an evacuee was likefor ordinary children.
-Quite soon, evacuees were beingtaken out of Glasgow
and being set up in houses
on the Balmoral Estate
that the king had opened up.
-In the first weeks of the war,
hundreds of Glaswegian evacuees
descended on rural Scotland.
As World War II progressed,
it would draw people together
from very different backgrounds.
This didn't come naturally
to the princess.
-Elizabeth was never quite at
ease with some of the children
because I think they were
very, very different
from the princesses,
and she was a little bit
awkward with them.
♪♪
-Elizabeth and Margaret
each decided
to donate one of their coats
to the evacuees.
This simple gesture
made the headlines.
Glasgow evacuees Isa Kelly
and Betty Murphy
were the lucky recipients
of the coats.
-I remember Betty Murphy
just because of the coat,
I suppose.
-A year younger
than Princess Elizabeth,
local resident Zan Grant got
to know some of the evacuees.
-They were from the poorest partof Glasgow,
I would think, near the Clyde.
Yes, and, of course,
their picture was in the paper.
Couldn't believe it, you know?
It was really something
special at the time.
♪♪
-While the princess was getting
to know her future subjects,
the predicted bombing
didn't happen.
By early 1940, many evacuees
had returned to the cities.
Princess Elizabeth
and her sister
also secretly returned
to England
to be closer to their parents.
They caught up on the first
major event of the war
by watching newsreels
in a private screening room.
♪♪
-The evacuation of the BEF
from Flanders
has been virtually completed.
Once again,
Hitler had underrated
the power of the Royal Navy.
♪♪
-The German invasion's progress
through Western Europe
led to the Dunkirk evacuation
of Allied Forces.
In just six weeks,
Hitler captured Paris
on June 14th.
The German army was now
at the English Channel.
♪♪
♪♪
Holkham Hall,
near Sandringham in Norfolk,
lived under the threat
of Nazi invasion by sea.
It was the family home
of Ladies Anne and Carey Coke,
friends of Princess Elizabeth
and her sister, Margaret.
-When we were very young,
when the princesses
were very young,
I was young,
we used to go on the beach,
you know, which was lovely, andswim and dig, make sand castles.
Princess Elizabeth then
was more serious
and did say,
"Margaret, what are you doing?"
or "Anne,
you shouldn't do that."
I mean, we definitely thought
Hitler was going to land.
So my sister and I
had this wonderful plan
that we were actually
gonna kill Hitler,
and we had what we called
Hitler's mess,
which was a jam jar
that we kept under our bed.
Anything really disgusting
we'd put in there.
♪♪
And we had it all planned.
We used to practice with
our Teddy bear being Hitler.
And we'd say, "Ooh, Mr. Hitler,
how lovely to see you.
We've got a delicious drink
that we've got for you."
We never thought beyond
actually killing him.
I mean, we just thought
we would succeed.
Luckily, we didn't have
to put it into practice.
♪♪
-With their famous houses
and palaces,
the Royal Family were vulnerabletargets for Nazi assassins.
Fear of invasion was growing.
The government repeatedly
advised the Royal Family
to move their children abroad.
-They were not sent to Canada,
like a lot of girls
of their age,
on the grounds that,
as is well known,
the Queen Mother said,
"They won't leave without me,
and I won't leave without theking, and the king won't leave."
And, you know,
you can understand it,
that if the king and queen
are still in London,
things aren't too bad.
-The precise location
of the Royal Family
was a matter of great
national secrecy and security.
-So, the newsreels told
everybody at the time
the princesses were somewhere
in the country.
♪♪
Now of course we know
it was Windsor Castle.
-They knew that they wereprobably fairly safe at Windsor,
but they did have a safe house,
as well, further north,
and it was kept there
the whole of the war.
So if there was an invasion,
and everybody thought that therewas going to be an invasion,
the princesses and the queen
could immediately
be sent up north.
They would then take a boat
from Liverpool
so that they could
get out of the country
if they needed to be.
But, fortunately,
that never happened.
-While she was safe
in Windsor Castle,
Princess Elizabeth worried
about her father and mother,
who remained
in Buckingham Palace.
And in the Blitz to come,
they would become the prime
target for Hitler's Luftwaffe.
[ Bombs whistling ]
♪♪
In July 1939, two months
before the outbreak of war,
13-year-old Princess Elizabethand the rest of the Royal Family
sailed to Dartmouth in Devon
on the royal yacht.
♪♪
This was a day
that would transform
the life of the princess.
The Royal Family were here
to pay a visit
to the Royal Naval College,
where Princess Elizabeth's
father and grandfather trained
as naval cadets.
Michael Vaughan
was a 13-year-old recruit.
He recalls the visit.
-We would keep a keen eye open
in case any of the royal party
came anywhere near us,
whereupon we would tremble.
[ Laughs ]
It seemed to youngsters like us
that he was a good chap
and that his wife
was really pleasant
and there might be some prospectin the princesses.
[ Laughs ]
-Dartmouth is where
the country's
naval officers are trained.
One in particular stood out
from the crowd.
-This tall 18-year-old
blond chap appeared
that was
Prince Philip of Greece.
-Prince Philip was asked
to entertain
the king and queen's daughters.
-Philip suggested that they go
and jump over the tennis nets
on the tennis courts.
-The princesses' governess,
Marion Crawford,
kept a sharp eye on the girls.
-Princess Elizabeth said,
"Oh, Crawfie,
look at how high he jumps," whenhe jumped over the tennis net.
-Once he'd proved
his athletic skills,
Prince Philip suggested
a game of croquet.
♪♪
Shortly afterwards,
a journalist captured
a photograph
of them together, alone.
♪♪
The following day, the royal
party rejoined the royal yacht,
but their departure
didn't go unnoticed.
-A lot of the cadets
rowed afterwards
in a sort of show of thanks
to say goodbye
to the royal party.
-Just as they were sort of
pulling right away
and all the boats were
going back to the harbor,
the king happened to notice
one boy really rowing away.
-And the king was looking
through his binoculars.
"Who's that bloody fool
still rowing?
Go back."
And it was Philip, of course,
and I think the princess
has never forgot that.
-If you were wondering
whether romance was blossoming,
I would say that
almost everybody believed
that that was happening.
-Elizabeth herself just 13 then,and at this very moment,
she meets the man, um,
with whom she fell in love
that day.
♪♪
-Rising up the ranks
to first lieutenant,
Philip would patrol the perilouswaters of the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean.
Princess Elizabeth kept up aregular correspondence with him.
-Whatever it meant
to her personally,
it gave her this same sense
of identity
with so many British women
during the war.
Their man -- husband, fiancé,
boyfriend --
was away risking his life,
which Philip did.
-For the next five years,
the princess kept a photo
of a bearded Prince Philip
on her mantelpiece.
"There you are, Crawfie,"
she said to her nanny.
"I defy anyone to recognize
who that is."
♪♪
A year into
the Second World War,
life in Britain appeared
to carry on as normal.
It became known
as "the phony war."
But it came to an end
on September 7, 1940.
♪♪
The Blitz began
with heavy raids on London.
Mass air attacks
on numerous towns, cities,
and industrial targets followed
over the next eight months.
♪♪
Between September 1940
and May 1941,
more than 40,000 people died,
almost half of them in London.
♪♪
-Princess Elizabeth was aware
of this, I mean,
'cause they were at Windsor.
But they could hear
some of the bombing.
The king felt
that she needed to know.
And she would see Pathé News,
and she would see newspapers,
although she was protected
from the real horrors of it.
♪♪
-Things move with lightning
swiftness in this Nazi war,
but at the moment
of recording these pictures,
London is still enduring
the nightly bombardment
by Hitler and his gangsters.
The casualties have been heavy,
both in human lives
and materials.
-Newsreels helped Princess
Elizabeth to get a sense
of what ordinary children
were going through.
Ron Batchelor was a schoolboy
living in central London
during the worst
of the air raids.
-When a building was hit,
as children,
we would go and have a look,
and they were bringing
people out on stretchers
and covering them up.
A doctor had to certify
that they were dead
before they carted them away.
We were watching it just like
it was an everyday thing.
At first,
I was worried about it.
I'd never seen a dead person.
But you do.
You get used to these things.
You get used to bombing.
-The Second World War brought
home death and destruction
on a hideous scale
right onto our doorsteps
and into our homes
in a way that had never been
seen before in this country.
You heard stories of
going to work in the morning,
you see limbs
lying on the street.
The hideousness of a dead baby
or a dead child
lying exploded in a mass of gutson the pavement.
♪♪
-On September 13, 1940,
German bombers embarked
on a secret mission.
♪♪
-Imagine you're
a Luftwaffe pilot.
You're a bomber pilot.
You are now carrying out anotherbombing raid on London itself,
but you've found a key feature
in the form of the mall there.
What is at the other end?
One of the most famous,
if not themost famous
landmark in London itself --
Buckingham Palace.
That is the target.
-Princess Elizabeth's mother
described the drama
of what happened next
in a letter to Queen Mary.
-My darling Mama, I hardly know
how to begin to tell you
of the horrible attack on
Buckingham Palace this morning.
Bertie and I arrived there
at about quarter to 11:00,
and he and I went up
to our poor windowless rooms
to collect a few odds and ends.
At this moment,
we heard the unmistakable
"whir, whir" of a German plane.
We said, "Ah, a German."
And before anything else
could be said,
there was the noise of aircraft
diving at great speed.
-They saw this bomber
coming towards them.
Then they suddenly realized,
actually --
the king suddenly realized --
"Good heavens,
it's coming to us!"
[ Bombs whistling ]
-Imagine the sound of that,
when you're sat in your home,
regardless of whether
it's Buckingham Palace.
You're sat at your home, and youcan hear the bombs coming down.
-"It all happened so quickly
that we only had time
to look foolishly at each other
when the scream hurtled past us
and exploded with a tremendous
crash in the quadrangle.
[ Explosion ]
♪♪
-The king and queen
were lucky to survive.
But instead of retreating
to their daughters in Windsor,
they ventured out
to inspect the damage.
-The bombing of Buckingham
Palace was a tremendous
personal shock
to the Royal Family,
but it legitimized them, also.
The Queen Mother, as you now
remember, famously said,
"I'm glad we have been bombed.
I feel we can look the East End
in the face."
-Having shared the suffering
of the Blitz,
the king and queen met ordinaryLondoners with a new confidence.
As they chatted to people
in bomb-damaged areas,
a more informal way
of presenting themselves
to the public was emerging.
The newsreel cameras
captured their every move.
-They saw the cruel damage
inflicted by the Nazis,
and they chatted
with many of the people
whose homes have been destroyed
by the savage
and indiscriminate raids.
-When we see those pictures
of the king and queen
meeting the crowds,
it is the outgoing queen
who's always setting the pace,
as it were, and George VI
naturally being a step behind.
♪♪
People came to find that
rather appealing and human.
♪♪
-Keeping the king and queen safe
while traveling
around the country
became increasingly challenging.
-Whilst they commuted, really,
from Windsor to London
by armored car every day,
they also, during the war years,
undertook no fewer
than 300 regional tours
and covered 4,000 miles
in the Royal Train
specifically to meet people,
to cheer them, to raise morale,
to comfort
in whatever way they could.
[ Crowd cheering ]
-One of the people
who saw the king and queen
was Ron Batchelor.
-I was standing
in the playground,
and somebody said, "Look!"
And he pointed,
and we looked up,
and about 50 yards away,
I suppose,
we saw the queen
and the king in his uniform.
The queen had a fur coat on.
I remember that --
a fur wrap around here --
but it was a kind
of a fur thing.
That -- I remember that
quite well.
And I couldn't wait
to tell my mum, so I left.
When they disappeared,
I went running up to my mum,
and I said to my mother,
"Mama," I said, "guess what?"
She said, "What?"
I said, "The queen's come."
And she said,
"What do you mean?"
I said, "I've seen her
walking up the other end."
She said to me, "I hope
you had your socks pulled up."
[ Applause ]
-Everywhere, Their Majestiesfound the spirit of these people
still undaunted,
while they, for their part,
sincerely appreciated the king
and queen's true sympathy.
♪♪
-They were a very good
double act,
and we know
that Elizabeth studied
the newsreels of the time,
and these were projected
privately to the Royal Family
in Buckingham Palace
and Windsor.
After all,
they were participants
and wanted to see themselves.
-Visitors were wholeheartedly
welcomed everywhere they went.
-Their appearance
in the newsreels revealed
the different characters
and backgrounds
of Princess Elizabeth's parents.
-Her mother had had a very
different upbringing --
aristocratic as opposed
to royal, a big family,
a big rumbustious family,
the Bowes-Lyons,
and very full of warmth and fun.
By contrast, of course,
George VI --
his parents,
George V and Queen Mary --
it wasn't that they weren't
loving people, essentially,
but not terribly good
at showing it.
♪♪
-Up until then,
they were figures
that you just saw
all dressed up at the palace,
having their photograph taken
for some royal event.
The popularity
of the king and queen
and the Royal Family increased.
They'd become more open
and more accessible.
And suddenly my family
became Royalists,
and that was common everywhere.
♪♪
-The Royal Family's appearances
in cinema newsreels
increased dramatically
during the war.
♪♪
Princess Elizabeth
was the first monarch
to grow up in the perpetual gazeof the media,
and she would soon be making
a more demanding contribution
to the war effort.
♪♪
Before the outbreak
of the Second World War,
over 14,000 children
from wealthy families
were sent to safetyin the United States and Canada.
-The reason we are in America
is because
we have been
evacuated from England,
and our mothers
did not think it was safe
to go and stay in England.
-I came here because the war
broke out, to be safe.
-Two children
who weren't dispatched
to safety across the Atlantic
were Princess Elizabeth
and her sister.
-My sister and I, being so proudthat they were still in England,
because a lot of our friends hadbeen sent to America and Canada.
-Back home, nearly 8,000
children were killed
in the mass bombings
of the Blitz,
and many more
were seriously injured.
When the government funded
overseas evacuation
for 24,000 children
from the inner cities,
sending children abroad
was no longer seen
as the preserve of the wealthy.
♪♪
On September 13, 1940,
90 children boarded a ship
like this one
to take them to safety
in Canada.
The SS City of Benares
was four days into its voyage
when it was spotted
by a German U-boat.
[ Men shouting indistinctly
in German ]
[ Watch ticking ]
♪♪
It was reported that only 7
of the 90 children survived.
The prime minister,
Winston Churchill,
canceled all future plansto ship British children abroad.
-Buckingham Palace realized
that these two girls
themselves living somewhere
in the country,
having had their own house
bombed in London,
created a real identity
with children.
♪♪
-On October 13, 1940,
barely a month after the sinkingof SS City of Benares,
Princess Elizabeth recorded
a radio broadcast
for the BBC's "Children's Hour,"
transmitted around the world
and heard by evacueesin the United States and Canada.
-My sister, Margaret Rose,
and I feel so much for you,
as we know from experience
what it means
to be away from those we love
most of all.
-For that 14-year-old,
it would have been
a demanding thing to have done.
It demonstrated some
pretty serious qualities
for a very, very young teenager.
-To you living
in new surroundings,
we send a message
of true sympathy,
and, at the same time, we would
like to thank the kind people
who have welcomed you
to their homes in the country.
-And we thought they were
in the wireless.
I remember my sister and I sort
of looking behind the wireless,
wondering where they were.
-All of us children
who are still at home...
-I thought,
"Oh, that's Princess Elizabeth
talking to us on the radio."
It was wonderful. Wonderful.
-...think continually
of our friends and relations
who have gone --
-A lot of people commented that
she sounds just like her mother
and said what a marvelous,
authoritative,
and mellow voice she had.
-The king was delighted
because she sounded
very much like his wife.
-Many of you have had to see
your family life broken up.
-To you, we send a message
of true sympathy.
-She also spoke about how,
"when peace comes,
it is for us, the children
of this generation,
to ensure that war
doesn't happen again,"
and that in itself marked her asthe leader for her generation.
-And when peace comes, remember,
it will be for us,
the children of today,
to make the world of tomorrow
a better and happier place.
-It was a huge success,
'cause, basically,
it was to America and Canada,
and Elizabeth, being
the sort of person she was,
added a little amendment
at the end
and brought
Princess Margaret into it.
-My sister is by my side,
and we are both going to say
good night to you.
Come on, Margaret.
-Good night, children.
-Good night, and good luck
to you all.
♪♪
-Well, in America,
they loved it so much that,
"Ah, come on, Margaret"
became a catchphrase.
And it was a huge success,
and it was seen
as slightly propaganda
because it was
sort of front page
of all the newspapers in America
that the princess had given
this amazing broadcast.
♪♪
-The education
of the nation's children
suffered greatly during the war.
But from the age of 13,
the king and queen decided
Princess Elizabeth
should be properly prepared
for the life ahead of her.
♪♪
Less than 3 miles
from Windsor Castle,
Eton College
presented a solution.
Twice a week,
Elizabeth's governess,
Marion Crawford,
escorted her to the college.
"Piles of books everywhere,"
wrote Crawford
of the tutor's study.
"Crawfie, do you mean to tell mehe's read them all?"
asked Princess Elizabeth.
But soon she was absorbed
in the complexities
of the British Constitution.
-All through
the emotional experience
of the dangers
and terror of war,
she's also learning thetechnicalities of the difference
between proroguing or dissolving
or suspending Parliament,
what the Prime Minister
has to come to the Sovereign
to do at those times.
And the relationship
between George VI and Churchill
became a paradigm
which I think we can say
the queen has followed
for the rest of her life
of closeness
between premier and monarch.
-The king also gave Princess
Elizabeth an introduction
to dealing with the endless
stream of government papers
in the famous
red dispatch boxes.
Elizabeth's mother had
different priorities.
She was more concerned
with developing
her daughter's
social skills and confidence.
She had the idea of putting
on Christmas pantomimes
to raise money
for the war effort.
♪♪
The splendor of the Waterloo
Chamber played host
to members of the public
who came to see a range
of traditional pantomimes
performed
throughout the war years.
While Hitler was fighting
a losing battle
with the Soviet Union
in December 1943,
a 17-year-old
Princess Elizabeth
was preparing to play
the role of Aladdin.
-The girls helped to make
some of the costumes.
It was very much
a hands-on affair,
but, production-wise,
it was big and professional.
[ Applause ]
♪♪
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Audience booing, hissing ]
[ Laughter ]
[ Audience ahs ]
[ Horn honking ]
[ Laughter, applause ]
♪♪
Some press members
were invited in
and spoke very,
very highly of it.
-The Daily Mirror
printed a feature
with a photograph
of the princesses
described as
"the stars of the show."
-To see the princesses dressed
as Aladdin and something,
you know, it was lovely.
We used to cut them out andpin them up on our bedroom wall.
I mean, for the children
of Great Britain,
the princesses were --
I always wondered whether they
knew how much they meant to us.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-What the pantomimes did do
for Princess Elizabeth
was to bring her out
of this rather shy character
that she was, and the pantomimesbrought her out of her shell.
-During one performance
of "Aladdin,"
Princess Elizabeth was pleased
to see a certain young
naval officer in the audience.
-Princess Elizabeth andPrince Philip have kept in touch
during the war.
It hasn't stopped him having
other girlfriends in between.
But things really turn around
when he spends Christmas
at Windsor.
-They'd be spotted out
walking hand in hand.
The moment they realized
somebody was looking at them,
they separated.
But for Elizabeth, there was
just this one man in her life.
-There was one reporter
who interviewed him
called Olga Franklin.
She wrote that
"I get dizzy looking at him.
His beauty is so dazzling.
People don't look like this
in real life, surely.
This Prince Philip is stunning,
with hair like gold coin,
only paler, a sort of ash gold,
eyes of deep blue, almost violetin the electric light,
tall, fine-featured,
really a shockingly beautiful
figure in naval uniform."
So we have women who are just
being bowled over by him still.
♪♪
And yet it isn't them
that he goes for.
It's Princess Elizabeth.
♪♪
-Her mother was not at all keen
and had a list of eligible
young men for her,
and as far as
they were concerned,
Philip was a penniless prince
of Greece.
And although his bloodlines
were very royal,
they didn't consider him
a very good prospect.
-But she knew from
the very beginning
that she had to have a husband
who would help her do her job,
And that was one of the many
attractive qualities of Philip
in her eyes.
Philip was ideal, so that
side of her life was sorted.
♪♪
-As the Nazis launched
a new series of raids
on Britain's historic towns,
the king appointed his daughter
Colonel in Chief
of the Grenadier Guards
to mark her 16th birthday.
♪♪
Elizabeth is the only woman
appointed to this
ceremonial role
in one of the oldest regiments
in the British army.
-She was pretty nervous,
and she had to walk
up and down these ranks
of very, very tall guardsmen
and look as though she'd been
doing it all her life,
which, of course, she did
because she hadthat very disciplined character.
-Here she is as colonel
of the Grenadier Guards.
What a change from 13 to 16,
you know, growing --
still a little shy,
but growing in confidence,
and this parade must have done
an enormous amount
for her own personal
confidence and morale.
-Hooray!
-Hooray!
-Hip, hip, hip!
-Hooray!
-Hooray!
-Just four months
after her appointment
to the Grenadier Guards,
Princess Elizabeth's much-loved
uncle Prince George,
Duke of Kent,was killed in a flying accident.
-We mourn the passing
of the king's younger brother,
who lost his life
on active service.
The duke, who was an airman
in his own right,
had undertaken duties concerningthe welfare of RAF personnel
and was on his way to Iceland
when the crash occurred.
-He was flying from Scotland
to Iceland,
ostensibly to visit RAF bases.
The flying conditions
were not perfect.
There was a mist.
And in those poor
flying conditions
thundered into
a hillside in Caithness.
And all bar the rear gunner,
including, of course,
Prince George, were killed.
♪♪
-This was the first time
in more than 450 years
that a member of the Royal
Family died on active service.
♪♪
Prince George was 39 years old.
He left behind his wife,
Princess Marina,
and three young children.
♪♪
-Every family in the war --
practically every family --
lost somebody.
From that point of view,
that wasn't unusual,
but for the Royal Family,
the loss of George of Kent
was just hugely devastating.
♪♪
-Loss is personal,
and I don't think there is
any one way of dealing with it.
Whether --
There was a different attitude
50, 60, 70 years ago,
and during the war, there was
a different kind of stoicism.
I'm sure that would have appliedto the Royal Family themselves.
I think it underlies so much
of what one encounters
with the queen today,
with her sense of duty
and her sense of stoicism.
♪♪
-As she grew older,
Princess Elizabeth was expected
to take on more
and more public duties...
♪♪
...from launching ships...
to visiting hospitals...
♪♪
...and making speech...
-I shall like first
to thank you all very much.
-...after speech.
-I have now much pleasure
in declaring
the Aberdeen Sailors Home open.
-And now happily chatting
to one line of troops...
after another line of troops.
♪♪
Princess Elizabeth
was growing up.
Very soon, she'd be
defending the nation
by serving in the military.
♪♪
June 1944, Windsor Castle,
and the newsreels
were about to reveal
one of the most
decisive chapters
of the Second World War.
♪♪
D-Day saw the largest
seaborne invasion in history.
The Allied Army was on its way
to liberate
German-occupied France.
♪♪
[ Whooshing ]
Seven days after
the Normandy landings,
a strange and terrifying sound
was heard tearing across
the London sky.
[ Humming ]
Then the noise stopped.
This was the first
rocket-powered missile,
known as the V-1.
The "V" was for "vengeance."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
A second V-1 landed
yards from Buckingham Palace
and in the middle
of a church service.
-A bomb was dropped
on the Guards Chapel,
and there were many servicemen
and -women killed
and some civilians, too,
including some friends
of the Royal Family.
The Royal Family was simply
not immune at all.
-With the V-1,
London had been plunged
back into the dark days
of the Blitz.
1 million people
fled the capital
over the next few months.
♪♪
10 days after
the Guards Chapel bomb,
Princess Elizabeth's motherrevealed her worst fears to her.
-"My darling Lilibet,
this is just a note
about one or two things in case
I get done in by the Germans.
I think that I've left all
my things to be divided
between you and Margaret,
but I am sure you will give her
anything suitable later on,
such as Mrs. Greville's pearls,
as you will have
the crown ones."
♪♪
-While Princess Elizabeth's
mother feared for her life,
she also worried about
the safety of her daughters,
who were still in the care
of their governess,
Marion Crawford.
-The princesses were in WindsorGreat Park with the Girl Guides,
and Crawfie was with them.
They suddenly looked up,
and there was a V-1 in the air,
and she says it was just like
being chased by a robot.
The girls threw themselves
on the ground,
and they thought the worst
was going to happen.
But, fortunately, the bomb
passed overhead
and crashed at Windsor
Racecourse, a few miles away.
♪♪
Crawfie said the girls
were really starting
to show signs of strain.
-Nearly 10,000 V-1s were fired
on Southeast England
during the summer of 1944,
causing terror
and terrible damage.
♪♪
Now 18, Princess Elizabeth
was eager
to take a more active role
in the war.
She joined the women's branch
of the British army --
the Auxiliary Territorial
Service, or ATS.
♪♪
Many of the women took on tasks
such as operating radar,
assisting military police,
and crewing anti-aircraft guns.
The service wasn't without
its risks to the princess.
It suffered 700 casualties
in wartime.
-Her father was not at all keen,and he was nervous of really
letting her go anywhere
other than Windsor Castle.
So he said, eventually, "You canjoin up and do the course
and learn whatever it is
you want to do,
but you've got to
come home at night."
♪♪
-At an MT training center,
Princess Elizabeth,
now a second subaltern
in the ATS,
has been on a three-weeks
course of instruction.
The princess is at the wheel of
a 1,500-weight truck in convoy.
Although she drives it
with apparent composure,
she had no experience of driving
before she commenced
her training.
-She joined
the Transport Division,
taking a mechanics' course.
And the queen
was known to have said,
"We had spark plugs
all the way through dinner."
So it really mattered to her.
♪♪
-She really enjoyed hertraining, you know, as a driver.
That's just how I felt.
I absolutely loved driving.
And she looked so happy
to be able to drive.
She was able to be her own self.
Suddenly, women were useful.
You know, they weren't,
"Stay at home
and look after the children."
They could do all sorts
of things.
They could go into
the factories.
They could do war work
of different things.
They could join up like I did.
If you were there,
and the bombs were falling,
well, there were very few people
that were sort of
running around, shrieking.
If they did, they were out
of the army pretty quick.
Also, if you happened
to get pregnant,
[Whistles] you were out.
♪♪
-By joining the ATS
in March 1945,
Princess Elizabeth
became the only female member
of the Royal Family
to serve in the armed forces.
-This, of course, was also
something of a morale booster
to the nation,
because they could see
the king's elder daughter,
Princess Elizabeth,
their future sovereign,
doing what others were doing,
what everybody else was doing,
playing their part.
No matter how small,
playing their part.
-By the time she finished
her training,
the war was drawing to a close.
But she'd learnt
some valuable lessons.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-Princess Elizabeth, a humanity
that she might have
taken longer to discover,
she shared a lot in common
with ordinary people
in that she saw their suffering.She knew about it.
She knew that people looked to
her as that new generation --
that new generation of hope.
-Today we give thanks to God.
Germany, the enemy who drove
all Europe into war,
has been finally overcome.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-On May 8, 1945,
Germany finally surrendered.
♪♪
Over a million people
gathered in Central London
to celebrate
Victory in Europe Day.
One small boy was struggling
to see the Royal Family.
-I remember some man
picked me up and lifted me up
and put me on his shoulders,
and I looked.
That was how it was. Everybody
was so friendly with everybody.
You can't live in
that atmosphere all the time.
But they came onto the balcony,
and the king
with his uniform on.
And it went on for hour
after hour after hour.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-Elizabeth said to her father,
"You know,
could we go out in it,
see what's going on?"
It was so exciting.
-She was delighted
when the king agreed
that she could go out
in the crowd
with Princess Margaret
and some friends
and with some officers
to keep an eye on them.
She was in her ATS uniform,
so she was still dressed up.
And she didn't want to be
recognized.
And she tried to pull her cap
over her forehead
so that she wouldn't
be recognized.
And one of the officers said,
"You know,
you can't go like that.
Put your cap back properly."
♪♪
-This was the one time in
her life when she could just be
second subaltern, ordinary,
junior commander, ordinary,
Miss Windsor, ordinary.
Dancing down the mound,
dancing their way up Piccadilly,St. James's,
and at one point,
grabbing the cap
off the head of a sailor,
who then he was chasing
after them to get his cap back.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-The future queen mingled
unnoticed among her people.
For once in her life, she was
just another face in the crowd.
-She actually described it
as the most exciting
night of her life.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
-I think that the war
made Princess Elizabeth
grow up like it made me grow up.
It really made her.
It made her closer
to the people,
who she reigned as subjects.
And it made us closer to her,
because they had been
in the war,
and right through the war,
they were one of us.
The Royal Family were one of us.
♪♪
-♪ Once you get
down Lambeth way ♪
♪ Every evening, every day
♪ You'll find them all
♪ Doing the Lambeth walk, oh
-Two years after the revelers
had gone home,
Princess Elizabeth chose the
occasion of her 21st birthday
to make a vowto the people of her generation.
-I am thinking especially today
of all the young men and women
who were born
about the same time as myself
and have grown up, like me,
in terrible and glorious years
of the Second World War.
I declare before you all
that my whole life,
whether it be long or short,shall be devoted to your service
and to the service
of our great imperial family
to which we all belong.
God help me to make good my vow,
and God bless all of you
who are willing to share in it.