The Blitz

One of the biggest impacts of WWII on Britain was the Blitz, an intense bombing campaign by the Nazis that lasted for around 8 months. From 7^th September 1940 until 11^th May 1941, the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain. The attacks were coordinated following British air raids on Berlin and came to be called the Blitz as a shortened form of the German word Blitzkrieg, which means lightning war.

The Blitz formed part of the Battle of Britain.

The Battle of Britain

After France surrendered to the Nazis in June 1940, Britain remained the Nazi’s sole enemy on the Western front. This led to a proposed invasion of Britain which was known as Operation Sea Lion which never actually materialised. However, the Nazis did occupy British territory in the Channel Islands and dominated British air space for much of that year. A victory for the Luftwaffe would have created the perfect environment for a full invasion and occupation.

The British were well prepared, they had a Chain Home early warning radar, the most advanced system in the world gave Fighter Command adequate notice where and when to send out the forces and the Luftwaffe were never able to destroy it, British planes were also known to be superior at the time.

The start of the Blitz

Initially, Nazi air raids focused on strategic areas, including airports and factories. In late August 1940, Nazi airships dropped bombs, apparently by accident, on civilian areas of London. The British retaliated by launching a bombing raid on Berlin, something that Hitler’s commanders had insisted was an impossibility. The raid infuriated Hitler so much that he ordered the Luftwaffe to shift its attacks to other civilian areas.

The British government had anticipated air attacks, especially after seeing the casualties of Guernica in Spain and started a huge evacuation plan on the day that WWII officially began. Over the course of three days, some 1.5 million civilians, the majority of them children, were transported to the countryside from the nation’s cities. It was the largest internal migration in British history.

The government also put plans in place to protect Londoners from bombs and to find accommodation for those left homeless by the attacks. Public air raid shelters were constructed and the Air Raid Precautions Department distributed more than 2 million shelters made of corrugated steel which were designed for people’s gardens. These included the Anderson and Morrison shelters.

During the first year of the war, life went on much as it had before, theatres and cinemas remained open and apart from a few false alarms, there were no sirens heard in London for much of 1939. Sirens only began to be heard regularly after September 1940 when the Blitz officially began.

Black Saturday

The Blitz began at around 4pm on 7^th September when Nazi planes were spotted over London. Bomb attacks commenced for around two hours, followed by more bombing as planes used the light of raging fires to drop further devices which lasted until around 4.30 the following morning.

In just a few hours, around 430 people were killed and 1,600 were injured. The first day of the Blitz is remembered as Black Saturday.

From there on, London was attacked on 57 straight nights. Between Black Saturday and 2^nd December, there was no 24 hour period without at least one alert. Nine were registered on three separate occasions and from the start of the Blitz until 30^th November, there were more than 350 alerts.

3^rd and 28^th November were the only two days during this period where there was not an air raid. After the Blitz began, night bombing on a large scale continued but day time bombings were replaced by much smaller raids.

During the whole period of the Blitz, the city’s operation was disrupted however, no significant cuts were made to necessary social services and buildings were repaired as speedily as possible. In many cases, daily life was able to resume within a couple of hours.

Primarily, the raids targeted the East End of London where the Docklands area is. This area was known for industry and trade and so presented a strategic target for the Nazis, who over the course of the war dropped around 25,000 bombs on the Port of London.  The Docklands, as well as being of strategic importance, was also an area with thousands of civilians, many of whom were working class. The raids hurt more civilians than it did industry. A charitable relief fund for the people of London was set up in September and contributions came in from all over the world. As the Blitz extended out from London, the fund was extended to cover the whole of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Though the damage was widespread and affected hospitals, clubs, churches, museums, hotels, theatres, schools, offices, embassies, and London Zoo among residential areas, it was the crowded and poorer areas that suffered the most severely. Buckingham Palace was bombed on four separate occasions and fared much better than the buildings of the more crowded areas. Although casualties were heavy, they never reached the estimates made at the start of the war and only a fraction of available hospital and ambulance capacity was ever used.

January of 1941 was particularly bad for heavy bombing. The Lord Mayor of London’s home and the Bank of England were narrowly missed, but bombs created huge craters surrounding them. In April another large scale attack destroyed or seriously damaged an enormous amount of buildings. On one occasion, a raid including 500 aircraft flew over in continuous waves, dropping around 400 bombs across the city. More than 1,000 people were killed and the raid lasted from 9pm until 5am the following morning. Thhree nights later, there was another seven hour raid with considerable loss of life. The most amount of damage took place in May with areas of London from Westminster to the docks being set alight. 700 tons of bombs fell, destroying 11,000 homes and killing over 1,000 people. The House of Commons, Westminster Abbey and the British Museum were all severely damaged. On the same night as that raid, Nazi officer Rudolph Hess parachuted into Scotland on an unauthorised peace mission.

Bombing outside London

From November 1940, the Blitz was expanded to other cities in England, including Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry and Southampton. The attack on Coventry destroyed the city centre and killed more than 500 people. Another wave of attacks launched in 1941 focusing on port cities including Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol, Newcastle, Hull, Swansea, Belfast and Clydeside.

British response

When the Blitz began, the government enforced a blackout to make it difficult for bombers to be able to see potential targets. Streetlights, illuminated signs and indoor lights were kept off and blackout curtains were installed so that no lights could be seen from outside. In the lead up to a raid, air raid sirens were sounded to warn residents to find shelter.

Later into the Blitz, barrage balloons were installed around major target areas to prevent low flying aircraft from approaching, as the higher you fly, the less accurate you are when dropping bombs. Over 100 Nazi planes crashed into the barrage balloon cables during the Blitz and were forced to make landings on British soil.

Though the casualties were lower than initially anticipated, the level of destruction far exceeded anyone’s predictions. Though there were communal air raid shelters, these were not big enough to accommodate everyone. It found that although these shelters were fully occupied, only 9% of Londoners made use of them, with the majority using private shelters, hiding in tube stations or remaining in their own homes.

The use of tube stations came about following the bombing of a school which was being used as a shelter in the East End. Although initially frowned upon by city officials, the  government eventually provided beds and bathrooms underground and it is believed that using the tube system saved thousands of lives.

Mickey’s Shelter

An East-ender, Mickey Davis, helped organise a communal shelter in Spitalfields. With him at the helm, those sheltering in Spitalfields created their own government and established a set of rules to make sure that the shelter and underground tunnels were safe and didn’t become dangerously overcrowded. He also helped set up medical stations and persuaded any medical personnel on site to treat the sick and the wounded. He helped inspire the government’s work on improving deep shelters and creating new ones.

During the course of the Blitz, one in every six Londoners was made homeless at some point and at least 1 million homes were destroyed. It is believed that nearly half of Britain’s civilian deaths were as a result of the air raids.

The campaign ended up being a strategic mistake for the Nazis, Hitler’s intention had been to break the morale of the British people so there would be increased pressure on the government to surrender. However, the British responded with a Keep Calm and Carry On attitude and the RAF won the Battle of Britain, postponing the invasion indefinitely. After May 1941, the Blitz was called off as Nazi forces had to concentrate on the Eastern Front.