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Chapter IV – The Blitz, myth or reality? I – A reminder of the Battle of Britain A – Definition: what was the Battle of Britain? (July 1940-Sept. 1941)It designates the period when death rained from the skies onto British cities which were methodically bombed by the Luftwaffe. This battle is also called the Blitz, as an abbreviation for Blitzkrieg (meaning “lightning war” in German): this tactic, consisting in three steps (1-air attack; 2-land invasion with tanks and artillery ; 3-land invasion with infantry) was devastating in Poland (1939) or in France (1940), both defeated in a couple of weeks. B – Winston Churchill at the head of BritainThe UK declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 (two days after Germany invaded Poland). In April 1940, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned: King George VI sent for Winston Churchill and asked him to form a new government. C – The Luftwaffe against the Royal Air ForceAt the start of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe, with 2,500 planes, appeared much superior to the Royal Air Force (only 700). These aerial attacks consisted in the first step of the Blitzkrieg: the aim of Hitler was to invade Great Britain in the end. The first targets were military aerodromes/airports, radar stations and armament factories located in the south of England. These attacks were efficient: by the end of August 1940, the country was in dire straits: demoralized, in despair, exhausted, suffering from heavy destructions. D - “We will raze British cities to the ground”, A. HitlerOn August 24th, a German plane mistakenly dropped a bomb on the suburb of London: to retaliate, Churchill launched a massive counter-attack two days later, sending 81 RAF bombers against German cities. It was a failure (only 1/3rd of the planes came back), but it roused the anger of Hitler who, for the first time, was attacked on his own territory: it made him change the targets. The Luftwaffe would bombard British cities. And it started with London on September 7th, 1940. E – Burning London: nights of hell, September-November 1940On Saturday 7 September 1940, sirens announced that almost 1000 enemy aircraft were approaching: the 10-hour raid that followed, from 5 pm onwards on this hot summer afternoon, mostly targeted the docks located in East End, in a terrible sound (hum, thud and crash of exploding bomb). By the morning, 436 East Enders were found dead and 1,600 were injured. The area was ravaged: the warehouses of the docks (storing rum, sugar, paint, timber, etc.) blazed for two days. The bombings continued for 75 consecutive nights. Even Buckingham Palace was targeted, but King George VI and Queen Elisabeth decided to remain in London. Over 12,000 people were killed and 20,000 were badly injured. The regular bombings continued until November 12th, 1940. F – Daily life in London during World War IIWorld War II was a total / all-out war, in which civilians were involved. 1 – How did rationing and shortages affect Londoners?Rationing was introduced to control supplies of food and clothing: Dried and tinned food replaced fresh food. The government encouraged people to grow their own food: every available plot of land was used for farming, like in Kensington Gardens where cabbages replaced flowers!66 clothing coupons a year were issued by the government to all Londoners (5 coupons for a pair of shoes, 18 for a suit, etc.) But rationing made smuggling and black market develop. 2 - Why did Londoners wear identity tags?It was sometimes hard to identify bodies or even wounded people: the government encouraged civilians to wear metal bracelets engraved with their personal details, to help with identification.3 - How did Londoners keep themselves safe during the war?Several measures were taken to protect against the attacks: Everyone in Britain, including babies, was given a gas mask.Night-time blackout (i.e. a curfew with no right to use lights) was ordered in cities from September 1st, 1940. Shelters were built, like the 150,000 Anderson shelters (named after government minister John Anderson) given to all householders with a garden who earned less than ?250 a year, but they were small, damp and sometimes flooded. Londoners forced the authorities to permit the use of Tube stations as shelters: an average of 60,000 people slept on the platform and sometimes on the rails. 4 - The children were evacuatedThe government encouraged parents to send their children away from risky London, for their safety. They were sent in the countryside with their school teachers to live in host families. G - Other targetsDuring the winter 1940-41, the Luftwaffe switched to smaller targets: Vital industrial ports were struck, generally on Sunday night, when everybody was at home: Liverpool, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Hull, etc. Heritage sites were struck, like Canterbury, York or Bath. The German pilots were using tourist Baedeker guidebooks to pinpoint the right targets. H – A German failure: the end of the BlitzFrom Spring 1941, the raids decreased because the German Luftwaffe was preparing for the invasion of the USSR. Even if occasional bombings went on through the war, the Battle of Britain properly ended in September 1941: 43,000 people had been killed and 70,000 injured. More than one million houses were damaged or destroyed, reduced to rubble, together with the serious weakening of industrial installations.The Blitz was considered the first defeat of Hitler: he had failed to break the British spirit, failed to get rid of the radars and failed to hinder the British war production. II – The Blitz in London, seen by the historians: myth and realityA – The official point of view: the Blitz spiritThe official version praises the behaviour of Londoners: Londoners remained calm, stoical (showing stoicism) and full of composure in the face of danger. Their courage/fortitude and heroism were amazing: they faced eight months of heavy bombings without being panic-stricken. They went through this ordeal with endurance, going to work every morning despite the damage of their city, the danger of the situation and their exhaustion. Solidarity was huge: the Blitz was a time of great community spirit, with a sense of togetherness. More, this image of a nation standing shoulder to shoulder, of national unity, developed the sense of Britishness, i.e. this patriotic pride of belonging to a nation able to defy Hitler. Their defiance is illustrated by the fact that their morale kept up, as well as the war production. Londoners remained determined: their resilience was impressive. The consequence of this positive spirit is that there was no fear, no confusion, no violence, no chaos, no terror. This is called the Blitz spirit, which has been proudly invoked by the government at time of need since 1945, like during the London bombings on July 7th, 2005. This behaviour is summarized in the famous motto “Keep calm and carry on”. This was on a propaganda poster created in June 1939, in case Britain was invaded by the German army. But as it never happened, the poster, even though it had been printed already, was never displayed in the end. It was rediscovered in 2000 (old prints of the poster were found in an attic) and became very famous, alluding to the stoicism of British people during the war. B – The critical version of the BlitzWe will focus on two historians who debunk the myth of the Blitz: Angus Calder, Scottish professor and historian (1942-2008), author of The myth of the Blitz, published in 1991 ; Juliet Gardiner, British historian (born in 1945), author of The Blitz: The British Under Attack, published in 2010. These are some of the arguments they put forward: 1 – The deep social divisions and tensions remained very high. The 1930s had been a difficult period (1929 economic slump), feeding a class war which was unresolved when the Blitz started. The workers were living in East End which was the most targeted quarter of London, and their tiny brick-made houses did not resist the bombings. They suffered more than any social class who could find shelter in the suburbs, and they criticized the government for that. The Blitz did not prevent strikes, showing the discontent of the workers. 2 – Damage was sometimes overlooked / played down in national newspapers and on the BBC, especially regarding the bombing of regional cities like Hull in the North-East of the country. On Oct. 14th, 1940, a piercing bomb exploded above Balham Station at 8.02 pm, while the blackout had already started and many people had found shelter in the station. A double decker bus plunged into the crater, while some people drowned underneath because the bomb had damaged the sewage system. The rescue reports did no insist on the casualties and how they died: it rather insisted on how rapid the reopening of the station was (mid-January). The aim of this propaganda (i.e. this distortion of reality) was to keep the morale up. 3 – “Bomb-chasers” followed the latest raids to loot shops and houses for their own gain. This hidden reality of opportunistic looting is described by Angus Calder, in The Myth of the Blitz: "Successful after-raid looters have not written their memoirs." More, some people charged money to get a place on the Tube to sleep at night. 4 – The government proved to be inefficient to prepare the country for mass aerial bombings, especially after Guernica (Spain) was razed by the Luftwaffe in 1937, shocking the whole Europe: while deep shelters were built in other European cities like Barcelona, London only provided Anderson shelters, made of corrugated iron, unsuitable for houses without a garden. Also, for the first German raid, only 92 anti-aircraft guns were available to defend London! Britain was ill-equipped to defend its cities.5 – Every night, the bombings damaged thousands of dwellings: more and more civilians were forced to sleep far from their homes, in the far suburb of London. But these homeless casualties were not always welcomed like in Baldock (North of London) or in Windsor (West of London) which did not accept Jews or children. The Blitz did not prevent anti-Semitism from raising. C – How the Blitz forged the British identity… The vision we have of the Blitz today is the result of wartime propaganda. There is a discrepancy between the official and prevailing memory of the Blitz and the hidden reality which is far less glorious. Like an article published in The Guardian for the 70th anniversary of the Blitz (September 7th, 2010) stipulates: “We think of [the Blitz] as a time when cheerful cockneys defied the Nazi menace; and that's not wrong, but it is a small part of the story.”Why have post-war generations mistaken a propaganda myth for historical truth? Because the myth offers a very flattering vision of Britain: this idea that Britain shows its best when it stands alone in face of the danger and when its back is against the wall, like Mark Connelly, historian and professor of modern British military history, stipulates. Conclusion: History and Memory, two opposed definitions? HistoryMemoryYou collect and analyse information in order to make sense of the past. History is supposed to be neutral, taking into account diversified and sometimes opposed points of view. History is to the society what memory is to the individual. It is more personal and biased. The memory is the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information. Memory is to the individual what history is to the society. In the case of the Blitz, we talk about collective memory. It means that the memories are shared and passed on by the whole nation, and not only by individuals, creating a shared and consensual vision of the past. Commemorations only take into account the myth of the Blitz: they celebrate the courage, the endurance, the resilience and the determination of British people. They are used to remember the great events of the past, and present them as models, as example to follow. ................
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