THE TELEGRAPH: On the 70th anniversary of the start of the aerial bombing that devastated British cities, Juliet Gardiner recalls eight months of terror and hardship, and the rise of the 'Blitz spirit'.
Len Jones spent the night of Saturday September 7 1940 in a brick-built public shelter in Poplar, east London, which "lifted and moved, almost as if it was a ship in a rough sea. And the suction and the blasts were coming in and out of the steel door, smashing backwards and forwards, bashing us against the walls…
"The worst part was the poor little kids, they were screaming and crying and clutching their parents. The heat was colossal; the steel door was so hot you couldn't touch it. And everybody was being sick, and people were having to carry on their normal bodily needs, and the smell was terrible."
It was the first night of the Blitz that would last for eight exhausting and perilous months, with German bombs pounding the towns, cities, ports and industrial sites of Britain. The Battle of Britain, in which the Luftwaffe targeted British airfields and aircraft in an attempt to gain air supremacy, had clearly not succeeded in persuading the British to surrender as Hitler had hoped. Although he had no particular wish to fight Britain, since his ambitions lay east, towards Russia, the Führer needed British acquiescence and it was clear that this was not forthcoming. Britain would "fight on, if necessary alone", said Churchill after the fall of France. "We will never surrender."
So German tactics changed: although the dogfights in the air over southern England continued, the Luftwaffe switched its bomber force to attack London in an attempt to destroy Britain's capacity to wage war. London would be bombed without cessation for 57 consecutive nights. And, although in November the aerial attacks fanned out to the provinces, starting with Coventry and extending to Merseyside, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Clydeside, Hull, Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Portsmouth, Plymouth and many other places, it was as if London was a magnet attracting the bombers back to devastate the capital.
That first terrible night set the pattern for the Blitz. First, the bombers would drop incendiary bombs; if left unattended, these would start fires that would absorb the resources of the Civil Defence workers and act as a beacon for the next wave of bombers, which would drop deadly high explosive bombs, ranging in weight from 112lb to the "Max" at 5,500lb. Although the targets were munitions factories, docks and administrative centres, the notion of precision bombing was a chimera and, in any case, in the 1940s industrial and residential areas lay cheek by jowl in Britain's towns and cities. "Collateral damage" invariably included a grim tally of homes and lives. >>> Juliet Gardiner* | Tuesday, September 07, 2010
* Juliet Gardiner is the author of 'The Blitz: The British Under Attack' published this week (Harper Press, £25)
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