The London Blitz
Shrapnel and bomb damage from the Blitz on St. Clement Danes Church, London
I visited London a number of years ago, where I saw buildings with a fairly distinctive feature: pock-marks from bombs that struck more than 80 years ago. The Blitz, from the German word Blitzkrieg, was the German aerial bombing campaign that began September 7, 1940 and targeted London and cities across Britain. The battle for air superiority—the Battle of Britain—was already underway, the German Luftwaffe intending to render British air defenses inoperable to perhaps force a negotiated peace. But the British early warning radar, along with the capabilities of the nimble RAF Spitfire fighter, cost the Germans more men and materiel than they anticipated. When the Royal Air Force failed to capitulate, the Germans trained their bomb sights on British cities.
The British Imperial War Museum tells us that the first night of bombing— Black Saturday, as it came to be called—killed 430 people and injured 1600. For 57 straight nights, London endured sustained bombing and by May 1941, more than 43,500 civilians across the country had been killed. Other heavily-bombed cities included Liverpool and Birmingham, with Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry, and Southampton also targeted.
On November 14, 1940, more than 500 German bombers destroyed much of Coventry, killing more than 550 people. Coventry Cathedral sustained a direct hit and the ruins now stand as an international monument to peace. A new cathedral was completed in 1962.
Britain’s Air Raid Precautions department (The ARP) distributed more than two-million Anderson shelters, so named for ARP’s head, Sir John Anderson. These were made of corrugated steel and designed to be dug into a garden and covered with dirt. In War Bonds, there’s one installed in the Clarke’s garden where Beryl takes refuge when the air raid sirens sound. Gordon, through his coded letters from prison camp, advises her to make good use of the shelter’s protection. The ARP also offered the Morrison shelter, named for Home Secretary Herbert Stanley Morrison. This was a steel cage big enough for two adults and two small children that could be set up indoors to protect lives in the event of a building collapse.
An English garden, with the Anderson shelter visible in the back next to the brick wall.
The British also set up large-scale shelters, one in particular at a school that took a direct hit which killed hundreds. Worried Londoners soon began flooding underground to the Tube, the city’s subway system, when the air raid sirens sounded. Initially, the government opposed allowing people to shelter in the Tube stations, fearing they might begin to refuse to return to street level and resume their daily lives. But as the Blitz continued, the officials relented, ultimately placing bunks and bathrooms on the station platforms. It is believed that thousands of lives were spared because of the protection offered underground.
The Elephant and Castle Underground station. London, November 1940
Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister in May of 1940, six months before the Blitz began. In his first remarks to the House of Commons, he famously declared “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” making clear that he would resist the German aggression to his last breath and inspiring his countrymen and women to do the same. The film below depicts how Londoners’ indeed resisted, rising to the occasion, night after night. Produced in 1940 in the midst of the relentless bombing, it’s called “London Can Take It” and was intended to appeal to the American audience so the United States would abandon its professed neutrality and enter the war on the side of the Allies. Narrated by an American correspondent (with one of those oddly British-esque accents common in that era), it’s hard to say if it was successful, since it took the raid by Japan on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to ultimately convince the Americans they had to enter the fight.
The Blitz abated when Hitler turned his attention and resources to Operation Barbarosa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, only to resume in 1944. After the Allies landed in Normandy and the invasion of Fortress Europe began, the Reich sent V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets across the Channel from launch sites they had erected in Northern France. Some 9000 V-1s were fired at targets in Britain, most aimed at London. An estimated 2500 V1s reached the city, killing more than 6000 civilians. Another 2700 civilians were killed in the V2 campaign, along with about as many military personnel.
The Blitz begins: Prime Minister Winston Churchill visits bomb-damaged areas in London’s East End on September 8, 1940.
