At the outbreak of the Second World War the East Hull Press produced a game for its readers called Win A War. On the board was a cartoon of a newspaper boy shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Extra Special’ and carrying a poster with the words ‘Win A War’ encouraging people to read all about it. To get the game readers had to cut out and collect tokens from the paper which was sent after they had accumulated enough points. The game board consisted of a map of North-West Europe showing the Allies in red including France, Norway and Poland (dating it to the very beginning of the war). Germany was shown in white with a big swastika flag together with Bohemia and Austria which it had annexed before the war. The Irish Free State, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland were all coloured orange denoting they were neutral, and Denmark (also neutral at the time) was coloured blue.
Win A War was a simplified version of the game Monopoly except players had to capture flags rather than buy properties. Around the outside of the board were four tracks or lanes in red, green, blue and yellow, each representing a different branch of the services: Air Force, Army, Navy and Air Raid Precautions (ARP). In all the board consisted of sixty spaces or moves, each player starting and finishing in the bottom left-hand corner which was marked ‘London’. The game could be played by up to four players, each player beginning with nine flags of their own. The object was to win the war by capturing as many Nazi flags as possible while losing as few of your own.
In 1939, the East Hull Press produced a game called Win A War in which players could be the Air Force, Army, Navy or ARP. One ARP card stated, ‘Report centres got into a panic during an air raid – fire engines and all services were helpless.’
Around the board were eleven squares with ‘Halt Take Orders’, a player landing on one then having to take an order card from the top of their pack, each group of cards again being marked with RAF, Army, Navy and ARP. Typical RAF orders included ‘Your fighters failed to intercept enemy raiders. Lose one flag’, Army ones ‘You have captured a large quantity of ammunition and number of tanks. Take three enemy flags’, Navy ‘You bombarded an enemy port inflicting terrible damage to docks and ships. Advance three spaces and take three enemy flags’ and ARP ‘Report centres got into a panic during an air raid – fire engines and all services were helpless. Lose all flags and retire from the game.’
Just like the fictitious ARP orders in the game, the city of Hull would go on to pay a very heavy price becoming one of the most severely bomb-damaged British cities during the war. Remorselessly targeted by the Luftwaffe because of its strategic importance as a port and its armament factories, a staggering 86,000 or 95 per cent of its houses were destroyed or damaged. Concentrated and large-scale attacks took place throughout 1941 in particular, resulting in over 700 deaths in what became known as the Hull Blitz. Throughout the war the city was subjected to over 1,000 hours of bombing and air raids, resulting in almost 1,200 people being killed.20
Just like the fictitious ARP orders in the game, the city of Hull would suffer from continual air raids during the war becoming one of the most bombed British cities.
The East Hull Press also played a controversial part in the war, its reporters being censored by the government and told to keep the extent of the bombing secret for over two years. Due to the fact Hull was a port and could be reached easily by boat from Germany, the government in the national interest maintained that the enemy mustn’t know how much damage their bombing had caused. It was also deemed vital to keep the morale of the people high, the government fearing the intensity of bombing and the high number of casualties would affect other cities and lead to defeatism.