Developments

Maurice Dobb had an extensive personal library, but only one of his books — The Borough of Cambridge Civil Defence Handbook — outlined steps to take during a Nazi invasion. As the handbook’s introduction explains, it was “prepared by the Civil Defence Committee for the purpose of informing Wardens and others engaged in the Civil Defence organisation to whom it is issued of the Emergency Services which have been provided” for the fight against Germany. It contained detailed descriptions of Cambridge’s wartime “CLEANSING STATIONS” built to house “persons who become contaminated with gas when away from their homes or those of their friends” along with the locations of “EMERGENCY FEEDING CENTRES,” “CASUALTY HOSPITALS,” and a “MORTUARY.” In fewer than forty pages, the handbook detailed responses to almost every conceivable emergency scenario, ranging from assault by parachuting Nazis to a gas attack. It also included descriptions of Germany’s “BOMBS, MINES, ETC.” Near the end, Dobb scrawled directions for what to do if one of those bombs exploded: “Open all unscreened windows and evacuate all unscreened rooms for 3X above distance for unburied 2X above distance for buried bombs.” “Same rules for gas bombs,” he added.1