Londoners suffered immense hardship during the Second World War and the destruction inflicted by the Luftwaffe was devastating. From September 1940 to May 1941, the German Air Force carried out ferocious bombing raids over London, which accompanied the end of the Battle of Britain in which British and German planes fought for air supremacy over south east England. The blitz followed the fall of France and was the first test the British faced in standing alone against the Germans.
Besides testing Britain’s military preparedness, the blitz also provided the first tests of civilian morale by subjecting people to prolonged raids, disruption of essential services and the devastating destruction of property and life. From September 7, 1940 till May 11, 1941, 15,775 Londoners lost their lives and 1,400,000 were rendered homeless.
The Longest Night
Hitler had earlier taunted the British at a rally, “In England, they are filled with curiosity and they keep asking, Why doesn’t he come? Be calm. Be calm,” he said. “He’s coming! He’s coming! When the British Air Force drops two or three thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150, 250, 300 or 400 thousand kilograms. When they declare that they will increase their attacks on our cities, we will raze their cities.”
Three days later, Hitler fulfilled his promise. The scale of bombing that pounded London was mind-boggling and frightening — 350 German bombers, escorted by 600 fighters blotted out the warm September sky as they came up the Thames estuary. They were 2 miles high and the head of the force stretched across 20 miles. At 5 pm the bombs began to fall. They fell on the country’s largest munitions factory and on the docks that proliferated along the banks of the river Thames.
But this was not just a day for military and industrial targets. This was a special day. Saturday, September 7, 1940 was the day Hitler had chosen to launch his attack on the British. This heralded the beginning of the blitz. Bombs spewed out of the aircraft and fell with murderous intensity on London’s East End. As the night edged in, 430 people lay dead and across London, people watched with bemusement. Why, they asked each other, was the sun setting in the east as well as the west? The fires guided the second wave of German bombers at 8pm. When dawn broke on Sunday, September 8, 400 more lay dead.
By September 11, London’s population had been sheared by the Luftwaffe. Although hundreds lay dead, it was defiance and not defeat that infused the blood of the British. A survivor recalled someone stepping over the corpses and the rubble and scrawling on a wall the message, “ England forever. Keep smiling. He may get us up but he will never get us down”.
Hitler decided to give his air force more time to annihilate the RAF and the deadline of September 11 was extended. Churchill braced his people for another onslaught. The decisive day was September 15. More than 50 German aircraft were shot down when they were on their way to bomb London. Although these were not significant numbers, the morale of the survivors was damaged. They had been assured that the RAF was terminally ill but it was now clear that far from being in their death throes, the British pilots were in rude health. Two days later, Hitler postponed the invasion.
The heavy daylight raids continued for the rest of the month. The Germans attacked both the poor East End of London and the affluent central and western boroughs. In early October, the Luftwaffe stopped the daylight raids and started bombing exclusively at night. Londoners were leading two separate lives, the routine of 9 to 5 and the terror that came after the dark.
Any possible invasion was out of the question for the next six months but the raids continued because Hitler wanted to spread defeatism and demoralisation among the British people and also because he enjoyed killing people.
On 14 November, the Luftwaffe took the Blitz to the rest of the country.
References
London Was Ours: Diaries and Memoirs of the London Blitz by Amy Helen Bell
The Longest Night by Gavin Mortimer