A doom-laden stillness had fallen upon the land, as everyone prepared themselves to hear the worst. Just after eleven o'clock, Chamberlain's voice crackled across the air waves.

He began by explaining that he was speaking from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street and in burdened tones he went on to state, "This country is at war with Germany.

Union Jacks were flying for VE Day celebrations in Wolverhampton

"You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that my long struggle to win peace has failed."

The declaration of war was inevitable. Two days previously, at 4:45 in the morning, fifty-eight German army divisions had invaded Poland, with which Britain had recently signed a mutual assistance treaty.

The German leader had been warned that an invasion would lead to a British intervention but in his arrogance and lust for the domination of Europe, the Nazi dictator ignored that warning.

Even then, as Polish troops valiantly defended their country, Chamberlain sought an opportunity to push back the clouds of war. On the night that Poland's integrity was violated, he addressed Parliament.

He had few words to say, "for the time has come when action rather than speech is required. Eighteen months ago in this House I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war. I fear that I may not be able to avoid that responsibility."

Taking upon himself that unwanted yet unavoidable responsibility, Chamberlain said that with the support of France, the German Government had been told that unless they were prepared to give satisfactory assurances that they had had "suspended all aggressive action against Poland and are prepared promptly to withdraw their forces from Polish territory, His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom will without hesitation fulfil their obligations to Poland."

The next day, Germany was given until 11.00 am on September 3 to withdraw its troops from Poland. When that did not happen, the Prime Minister solemnly alerted the nation to the coming of war.

The next day, the Express and Star asserted that the general attitude in Wolverhampton was, "Now we are in it, we must play our part in securing victory".

Like so many of his generation, Chamberlain's mind and soul had been seared by the terrible losses of life in the First World War. He had desperately wanted to avoid such a dreadful conflict again.

As Prime Minister he had done all he could to keep peace in a Europe in which dictators destroyed their opponents and dowsed the light of freedom.

Just less than a year before, Chamberlain had returned from the Munich Conference with what he thought was an agreement with Hitler that in the future disputes between the United Kingdom and Germany would be settled by diplomacy.

Arriving back at Heston Airport, Chamberlain had held up the paper upon which both leaders had signed and showed it to the crowds of people who had gathered.

Confidently he declared that he had brought back, "Peace in our time".

Sadly, he had not. The ensuing aggression of Germany has led many to decry Chamberlain as an appeaser, as a weak leader who did not stand up to Hitler and who made Britain vulnerable to war.

Others would argue that Chamberlain was not feeble, that his policy of trying to keep the peace was widely supported and that he actually bought time for Britain by his appeasement, valuable time in which Britain re-armed.

Certainly, preparations for war had begun in earnest some years before. As early as 1935, procedures had been put in place for training experts who would co-ordinate civilian responses if war broke out and there were air raids on Britain’s great towns and cities.

Leaflets were also sent out about Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and in 1937 Wolverhampton Council, amongst others, established an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Committee.

It divided the borough into 15 districts and appointed 258 street wardens. Two years later, nearby Tettenhall Urban District Council joined other local authorities in producing a booklet telling people what to do after an air raid.

By this time, public air raid shelters had started to appear locally as had shadow factories - like that put up by H. M. Hobson at Fordhouses in Wolverhampton.

This site had been bought in 1939 and building soon started on a works of almost 25,000 square feet. It was camouflaged to blend in with the countryside, whilst a total blackout meant that artificial light had to be used morning and night. Air raid shelters were erected on the south side of the factory and in June 1940 the place was ready to commence operations.

Founded in 1911, H. M. Hobson specialised in the design and manufacture of carburetters and automatic controls for aero engines.

Under the foremanship of Mr J. Cotterill, 12 workers began machining raw castings to make aluminium carburetter bodies for fighter and bomber aircraft engines, such as the Cheetah Engines which powered the Avro Anson.

Slowly the workforce increased, and when they were not at their jobs they acted as voluntary fire wardens to protect the plant from an incendiary attack.

The carburreters made at Fordhouses were vital and the workers grafted seven days a week to turn out as many as they could.

By 1941, over 50 people were engaged in production, the premises were protected by the Home Guard, and another shadow factory had been built by the Ministry of Aircraft Production just to the north.

This No. 2 Works was headed by Harold Price, who oversaw milling and drilling operations on the carburetter bodies for the No. 1 Works. The next year, the size of the works was more than doubled and work began on the BH5, a bulk fuel injection system for the Hercules Engine.

Fordhouses was becoming a vital element in the munitions industry and by 1945 the development of a Fitting Shop and Petrol Test had allowed the total manufacture of carburettors on site.

There were few British aircraft not supplied by Hobson's and when they took to the skies, pilots of planes such as the Blenheim, Halifax, Lancaster, Spitfire, Tempest and Wellington all relied on the skills of Wolverhampton workers.

Other local factories played as important a role in the fight against tyranny, amongst them Boulton Paul Aircraft Ltd. A Norwich company, its aircraft division had relocated to Wolverhampton in 1936 to expand the business and to take advantage of the skilled labour force in the area.

It was also believed that if war were to come that the new factory would be in an area safer from enemy bombing than in East Anglia. During the war Boulton Paul produced at its Pendeford site 2,198 aircraft, including the Defiant, a two-seater fighter which despite its later reputation did have success initially.

The design work on the Defiant itself had begun back in Norwich three years before war was declared. In place of a fixed-firing armament it had a multi-gun turret.

The employment of a gunner reduced the workload for the pilot, whilst the armaments in the turret allowed a greater field of fire. The Defiant entered service in May 1940 and did well, but the German pilots learned that the Defiant was less agile than their own fighter planes and so attacked the Defiant head on or from below, where its guns could not be trained. Consequently the Defiant was fitted as a night fighter and then for target-towing duties.

From 1942, Boulton Paul also made the Barracuda, and gun-turrets for aircraft. The Germans were aware of the importance of this aircraft factory and Luftwaffe maps from 1940 show it clearly. To fool enemy aircraft, a 'dummy' factory with 'dummy' aircraft outside was built two miles away at Coven. It did its job for it was bombed three times.

In common with Fordhouses, Boulton Paul had a unit of the Home Guard. They were not on their own. The factories of Joseph Sankey and Stewart's and Lloyds in Bilston were under the watch of the 34th Company, as were other industrial premises.

Guy Motors Ltd was another important centre of war work. Back in 1923 it had commenced production of military vehicles, and five years later it was making a six-wheeled armoured car for the Indian Government.

In the late 1930s Guy's was heavily involved in the production of lorries and gun tractors for the British Army, and produced the first British rear-engined, four-wheeled drive, all-welded Armoured Car.

These were considered of such high quality and safety that they were used for the protection of the Royal Family and the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, during the war.

Indeed, the company's development of armoured plate welding in place of riveting was believed to have saved the country one hundred million pounds in tank production costs.

As in many other factories, women workers made a significant impact at Guy's, with the firm employing over two hundred women full time and more than three hundred part time.

One of them was Mrs Nicklin. She had eleven children, eight of whom were still living, and worked 55 hours a week at the Guy Motors factory. Described as a five foot high and seven stone, forty-three year old - Mrs Nicklin still found the time to cook, wash, clean and mend for her family on Sundays.

She also returned home during her lunch break each day to "tidy and clean up and get food ready for cooking a dinner at night". Fittingly she was described by the Express and Star as Wolverhampton's hardest worker!

Women were as prominent at Villiers, working on machines, assembly and production - indeed in the engine assembly shop sixty percent of the workers were female.

In the First World War, this concern had produced ammunition, in particular fuses for the Vickers 75mm shell, and during the Second World War it manufactured fuses for anti-aircraft, artillery and cannon shells, as well as motorcycle engines and cycle parts for use by the armed forces.

By the end of the war Villiers could boast that it had made in excess of six million shell fuses, five million fuses for cannon shells, 17 million steel forgings, 750,000 bomb parts, 14,000 magnetos and thousands of cycle parts.

Goodyear's contribution to victory was as impressive. Having set up in Wolverhampton in the 1920s, Goodyear switched to war production in 1939.

Its employees worked as hard as anyone, with 20 days on and one day off. A fine example was set by Walter Hazlett, the managing director, who travelled to work by bus and also drove an ambulance two nights a week.

Protected by its own Home Guard detachment, Goodyear quickly became the second largest producer of aircraft tyres in Britain, making tyres as big as five feet in height, 24 inches wide and weighing some 355 pounds.

Then in 1942 it was faced with a major challenge. With Britain now at war with Japan, 90 per cent of its supplies of raw materials were in the hands of the enemy.

Acting with initiative, the company looked for other work and began making plywood panels for pontoon bridges. As was reported in the Express and Star on 14 March 1945, they were "impregnated with water-proof glue and cured under pressure - 14,000 of these panels were made."

In the spring of 1943, synthetic rubber began to arrive from the United States. This allowed the release of some of the reserve stocks of natural rubber and output quickly rose.

The company also produced rubber hoses for pumping water, petrol and oil, and a self-buoyant armoured hose for use in the refuelling of ships.

The Express and Star highlighted another ingenious Wolverhampton firm. On 6 April 1945 it brought to the fore one of the most successful production innovations of the war.

This was "the policy of dispersal by handing out the work of producing many small components to small concerns, such as peace-time garages converted for the purpose".

This initiative came about after Dunkirk "to meet the vitally urgent need for producing armaments for defence, and amongst the first to see how important it would be was Industrial Designs Ltd, a Wolverhampton firm whose function is what the name suggests - they undertake the planning, layout, jigging and tooling of industrial plant for all purposes."

As the Express and Star reporter emphasised, many back-yard manufacturers "were put on their feet in those early days and directed along the path to steady production. To many the firm's experts have returned since to replan and increase output capacity."

At the same time, Industrial Designs Ltd had been called in to advise and help the Ministry of Aircraft Production "and for 12 months a team of experts was engaged on jigging and tooling a Ministry underground factory."

Its expertise had also been essential in transforming two Scottish factories, the one making carpets and the other linoleum, into centres for the production of torpedoes.

It was declared that there was hardly a section of the war industry untouched by the small but highly-skilled team at Industrial Designs Ltd and it was estimated that the company had handled some 35,000 designs during the war and been involved at many top secret establishments in inaccessible locations.

Many of the jigs and tools needed by the Wolverhampton business were produced by Dellmich Engineering, based in the same premises - a former mission hall.

Another inventive company was Star Aluminium. By 1942 this was making 2,500 miles of aluminium foil each week, large amounts of which were dropped over Germany to fox radar operators.

And at the Beacon Works of John Thompson Motor Pressings, chassis frames for military vehicles as well as twenty-five pounder gun trailers were manufactured.

On top of that, the firm's workers supplied two-pounder anti-tank shields, anti-aircraft gun elevating gear, and pontoons. That was not the sum of the company's achievements, for it also made Rotol airscrews for Spitfires and Hurricanes, tank ribs for Blenheim bombers, rudder arm masts for Wellington bombers, gun covers for Gloster Gladiators, seats for air gunners and much more.

Given its wide-ranging involvement in the munitions industry, Wolverhampton was an obvious target for German bombers. A German bombing map from 1939 marked out Guy's, Ever Ready Ltd, the gas works, railway workshops and Electrical Construction Ltd. The Luftwaffe had similar maps for Bilston and Wednesfield, whilst it had access to lists of industries and airfields locally. It also knew that Wolverhampton was defended by 'Flakbaterie' using 9.4 cm shells.

In late November 1940 a decoded message indicated that Wolverhampton was to be attacked with Coventry and Birmingham.

After the devastating raids on the two Warwickshire cities in which hundreds of people were killed, extra anti-aircraft guns were sent to Wolverhampton.

These were spotted by German aerial reconnaissance and as a result the town was spared from bombing. However, there were raids in October 1940, August 1942 and at the end of July 1942 when incendiaries were dropped for four nights in a row over a wide area.

Sadly eight people were killed, whilst much damage was caused to homes and public buildings. At the Royal Hospital staff in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) kicked fire bombs off the roof, whilst down below air raid wardens gathered them up and made them ineffective.

Thankfully, the tide of war had now begun to turn and at last in May 1945 Germany capitulated.

The people of Wolverhampton could proudly assert that they kept their word. Just as they had said they would do in September 1939, they had played their part in bringing about victory.