Belief and the People's War: Heterodoxy in Second World War Britain

Britain's Second World War looms large in popular cultural memory. Yet the war is rarely considered as being distinctly religious or spiritual in both academic and popular histories. This thesis addresses this omission by reconsidering the pressing significance of beliefs and believing in the total war context. Using the concept of 'heterodoxy' to reconstruct wartimedebates on the policing of belief by state, military, and cultural agents, it argues that these discourses were shaped by specific wartime conditions as well as longer-term factors. It was here in the 'People's War' context that pre-existing social tensions and technological, military, and political developments stemming from the nineteenth century influenced debates onbelieving. Social and cultural methods are utilised in order to connect these debates with beliefs' lived experience. Ultimately, ideas on heterodoxy were shaped by the relationship between belief and morale. This was both classed and gendered. Perceived differences between home and front, men and women, West and non-West at the cultural level masked the infiniteways beliefs traversed imagined social binaries. To illustrate this, the thesis draws on thematic case studies which showcase different sites and contexts of war. These include the workings of ghosts in the metropole; spiritualism, mediumship, and psychical research in organised context; astrology propaganda and its relationship to domestic morale; superstitionwithin the military sphere; and soldiers' engagement with belief cultures in South/South-East Asia. Adopting an expanded approach to the 'archive', the thesis blends traditional document-based sources with material/visual culture, contemporary media products (newspapers, film and music), rumours and ephemera, as well as sources of the self and ethnographicmaterials (notably diaries, letters, oral testimonies, and Mass Observation reports). In terms of original contribution, the thesis offers a fresh analysis of class and gender in wartime through the prism of belief. It also develops conceptual readings of religion and belief in modern Britain; pushing discussion beyond 'diffusive Christianity' and 'popular religion', and challenging twentieth century secularising arguments from a broader interpretation of 'belief' during a neglected time period.