Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE BLITZ
The Luftwaffe bombing of London in World War II - commonly known as the
Blitz
- began on
September 7, 1940, when in one night alone some 430 Londoners lost their lives, and over 1600
were seriously injured. It continued for 57 consecutive nights, then intermittently until the final
and most devastating attack on the night of May 10, 1941, when 550 planes dropped over one
hundred thousand incendiaries and hundreds of explosive bombs in a matter of hours. The
death toll that night was over 1400, bringing the total killed during the Blitz to between twenty
thousand and thirty thousand, with some 230,000 homes wrecked. Along with the East End, the
City was particularly badly hit: in a single raid on December 29 (dubbed the “Second Fire of
London”), 1400 fires broke out across the Square Mile. Some say the Luftwaffe left St Paul's
standing as a navigation aid, but it came close to destruction when a bomb landed near the
southwest tower; luckily the bomb didn't go off, and it was successfully removed to the
Hackney marshes where the 100ft-wide crater left by its detonation is still visible.
The authorities were ready to build mass graves for potential victims, but were unable to
provide adequate air-raid shelters to prevent widespread carnage. The corrugated steel
Anderson shelters
issued by the government were of use to only one in four London
households - those with gardens in which to bury them. Around 180,000 made use of the
tube, despite initial government reluctance, by simply buying a ticket and staying below
ground. The cheery photos of singing and dancing in the Underground which the censors
allowed to be published tell nothing of the stale air, rats and lice that folk had to contend with.
And even the tube stations couldn't withstand a direct hit, as occurred at Bank in January 1941,
when over a hundred died. The vast majority of Londoners - some sixty percent - simply hid
under the sheets and prayed.
The economic situation deteriorated even further after the crash of the New York Stock
Exchange in 1929, with unemployment in Britain reaching over three million in 1931.
The Jarrow Marchers, the most famous protesters of the
Depression
years, shocked
London on their arrival in 1936. In the same year thousands of British fascists tried to
march through the predominantly Jewish East End, only to be stopped in the so-called
Battle of Cable Street
(see p.194). The end of the year brought a crisis within the Royal
Family, too, when Edward VIII abdicated following his decision to marry Wallis
Simpson, a twice-divorced American. His brother,
George VI
(1936-52), took over.
There were few public displays of patriotism with the outbreak of
World
War II
(1939-45), and even fewer preparations were made against the likelihood of aerial
bombardment. The most significant step was the evacuation of six hundred thousand
of London's most vulnerable citizens (mostly children), but around half that number
had drifted back to the capital by the Christmas of 1939, the midpoint of the “phoney
war”. The Luftwaffe's bombing campaign, known as the
Blitz
(see box above), lasted
from September 1940 to May 1941. Further carnage was caused towards the end of the
war by the pilotless V-1 “doodlebugs” and V-2 rockets, which caused another twenty
thousand casualties.
Postwar London
The end of the war in 1945 was followed by a general election, which brought a
landslide victory for the Labour Party under
Clement Attlee
. The Attlee government
1908
1911
1926
1936
London hosts the Olympic
Games and Britain wins
the most medals
London population
exceeds seven million
The General Strike
lasts for nine days
Police, fascists and anti-fascist
protesters clash in the Battle
of Cable Street in the East End
