The war on the civilian population of Britain began on 7 September 1940 when London was subjected to mass bombardment from the air. The British people had endured many shocks in the course of 1940 – the Norway fiasco, the retreat to Dunkirk, the desperate days of the evacuation, the collapse of France, the invasion threat, and the uncertainty about the outcome of the great air battles that raged above them. Could they endure a direct assault? How robust was the mood of the country on the eve of the Blitz? Public mood is notoriously difficult to assess but there are some guides through this minefield. In 1940 the measurement of public opinion was in its infancy but the authorities considered the matter important enough in wartime to make an attempt. From May 1940 the Home Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Information (MOI) and a private organisation later hired by the Ministry (Mass Observation or MO) compiled daily or weekly ‘morale’ reports. The information in these reports came from a variety of sources – the Regional Information Officers of the MOI, postal censorship, bookshop owners, cinema proprietors, and a group of investigators who listened in on the private conversations of people whom they considered to be a representative sample of the population. At their peak, however, only about 2,000 investigators were employed in these organisations. Moreover, most of the staff were middle class, male and well educated, factors that at least had the potential to skew the reported views of women, the working class and groups outside the social milieu of the investigators.

By focusing on ‘morale’ the government hoped to obtain some measure of the civilian population’s willingness to continue working. But the definition of morale for survey purposes was open to wide interpretation. Both the MOI and MO thought they knew what was meant by this most slippery of terms. To them, more often than not, high morale was equated with ‘cheerfulness’, a commodity in pretty short supply in Britain after recent events in Europe. Nevertheless, cheerfulness was considered crucial by the investigators, who assumed that only the cheerful could contribute effectively to the war effort. But even when circumstances were grim (and in MOI or MO terms morale had slipped) it was possible that those with so-called low morale could still do a decent day’s work, as suggested by this comment made at the end of a raid: ‘there was little time for grief, for after all the next raid was imminent and every air-raid warning in the night was followed by a new day when people had to work’.

Without a correlation between cheerfulness and the performance of the war economy the daily fluctuations in morale detected by the MOI and MO are virtually worthless as an indication of how the population might respond to the Blitz. Nevertheless, the MOI/MO reports can be instructive – not to track fluctuations in morale – but to identify frequently occurring themes that indicated ongoing concerns and attitudes.

The most constant of these themes is approval for any action taken by the Churchill government to prosecute the war more vigorously and a corresponding disapproval of any policy that seemed inadequate to the situation or harked back to the bad old days of appeasement. So the Emergency Powers Bill of May 1940 had ‘an excellent reception’, even though this bill stated that all persons might be called upon to ‘place themselves, their services and their property’ at the disposal of the government. It was an indication of the stern temper of the times that this measure was greeted with satisfaction among all regions in Britain. It was ‘well received’ in Northern Ireland, ‘welcomed’ in Birmingham and Leeds, ‘excellently received’ in Manchester, and met with a more sober ‘general approval’ in Cambridge.

In contrast was the public response to a broadcast by the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, urging the public to show the courage now that they had displayed in past crises. The reply the MOI conveyed to the minister was that the people had no doubt about their own courage but considerable doubt about the resolve of the government of which Duff Cooper was a part.

This concern was most often expressed over the extent of unemployment in Britain. This figure had stood at over 1 million at the beginning of the war and due to the lethargy of the Chamberlain government was taking some time to reduce. In June the MOI noted that whereas the French were said to be ‘staking all’ in their battles, Britain still had 500,000 unemployed. In particular, the high levels of unemployment in Belfast drew the ire of the Northern Irish – why did the government not place more war orders in the area to soak up the jobless?

Perhaps the most forthright comment on the government’s perceived tardiness to mobilise the economy came in response to one of Churchill’s most famous speeches. The MOI noted that in some quarters it had been said that ‘Phrases like “We will never surrender”, “We will fight in the streets, on the hills” are being criticised in the light of the inadequate mobilisation of men and materials.’ Even the finest of phrases was deemed no substitute for action.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, was never thought to be adequate for his position. His interim budget in July 1940 raised taxation from 7s 6d to 8s 6d in the pound, increased taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and entertainment, and foreshadowed a purchase tax. All the comments the budget brought forth were critical of its feebleness. The opinion that it ‘did not go far enough to carry the tremendous burdens of expenditure needed to win the war’ was typical. Leeds, Cardiff and Reading all thought the budget ‘too timid’. General criticism of the budget continued into August: ‘Not nearly drastic enough’ was the usual comment.

There were other indications of the resolute mood in the country after the shock of Dunkirk. On 3 July Churchill ordered that the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in Algeria be sunk to prevent it falling into German hands. The French command was given the options of joining Britain or of sailing to a neutral port, but rejected both. Churchill gave the order with great reluctance and the British admirals carried it out with even greater reluctance. But the move proved highly popular with the public. Home Intelligence reported that the news of the action was ‘received in all Regions with satisfaction and relief’, the only criticism being that some French ships escaped.

This incident highlights the high approval given by the public to Churchill and his policy of victory at all costs. His great speeches were ‘much appreciated’ or held to have had a ‘steadying effect’. His determination to defend London ‘street by street’ was taken as an indicator that ‘we shall not be sold out as the French were by their government’. Generally his messages were well regarded even (or perhaps especially) when they painted the strategic picture exactly as he saw it without glossing over the peril in which the country found itself. It was said that ‘if he [Churchill] says things are all right … people know they are all right; if he says things are bad, we know they are bad’. His warnings against complacency in the invasion period were ‘widely welcomed’. His speech on the ‘few’ was thought to be ‘the most forceful and heartening he has yet made’ and ‘created a strong feeling of confidence’. Even critics who thought that he might have to be voted out after the war considered ‘he’s the man for us now’.

The most frequently mentioned members of the government apart from Churchill were Neville Chamberlain and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. The attitude of the public towards these men was almost universally hostile. The adverse remarks began just after Churchill had seen off efforts by Halifax (sometimes supported by Chamberlain) to seek some kind of compromise peace with Hitler. On 12 June the MOI reported that the most that could be said about Chamberlain was that the view that he should resign from the War Cabinet was not increasing strongly. A week later there were reports from Newcastle, Scarborough, Brighton and London that both appeasers should go. The Ministry reports reveal that the public was ‘angry’ that they remained in power and even prepared to accuse them of treachery. These feelings did not diminish as the year went on. There was ‘puzzlement’ that Chamberlain in particular was still in office. ‘Demands’ were expressed that members of the previous government (with the exception of Churchill) ‘should be removed’. Criticisms such as these were almost a weekly occurrence throughout the year. Even after the Blitz had started, people found time to observe that Chamberlain should be dismissed. In October when Chamberlain finally resigned due to ill-health, he got scant sympathy. One remark was that ‘I think it is a damned good thing … We’re going to win the war now.’ Only when he died of cancer in November was ‘some’ sympathy expressed, but that emotion was far from universal.

Halifax did not escape censure either. His reply to Hitler’s ‘peace’ overture in June was a public relations disaster that brought down some criticism on Churchill’s head for giving him the job. But that criticism was mild compared to what was said about the Foreign Secretary. Home Intelligence felt moved to give the replies verbatim: ‘Too much like a bishop’, ‘Depressing’, ‘Disappointing’, ‘Unsatisfactory’, ‘What about the Burma Road?’, ‘A statesman has to be a fighter these days’, ‘He didn’t explain anything’, ‘Old-fashioned diplomacy’, ‘Too much like the Chamberlain days’, ‘It was a dull speech: I switched off … It’s no use treating a mad dog like that.’ Someone commented that he liked the ‘high moral tone’ in which the speech was delivered, but that was drowned out by the chorus of disapproval. The MOI tried to put the best gloss on this that they could. Perhaps, they reasoned, what Halifax said went over the heads of a large section of the public. Reading the comments, however, it seems that the public understood Halifax only too well.

Nor did Halifax’s image improve. In October hope was expressed that he would soon join Chamberlain in retirement, ‘as he has been living in a fool’s paradise for years’. Later in the month the view that he was only fit to be a bishop resurfaced in what Home Intelligence reported as a ‘growing feeling’ against him. This negative view remained. Churchill eventually shipped Halifax off to be ambassador in Washington in December. As far as the British people were concerned the Prime Minister could have acted earlier and not necessarily rewarded him with a plum job.

Another indication of the mood of the people was shown by attitudes towards feeding those in Europe under German occupation. Ex-President Herbert Hoover warned Britain that its blockade was threatening millions in Europe with starvation. The government’s policy was to maintain the blockade, as any food sent would be seized by the Germans. The MOI found that 82 per cent of the population supported the policy whereas only 3 per cent disapproved.

Finally there was the attitude to bombing the enemy. Bombs had fallen on London (by accident as it happened) in late August. Even before Churchill could respond, the public were calling for reprisal raids on Berlin. When the enemy capital was eventually bombed on 25 August, the raid caused ‘great satisfaction’ and evoked a ‘wide expression of approval’. Among the public there were ‘no scruples’ about the fact that some of the bombs might fall on civilians. On the contrary the only criticism of the raids was that they were not heavier. Later there was a another criticism – that ‘further accounts of the damage done by our raids on Germany’ should be published.

To sum up, the attitude of the British public (mobilise more rapidly, sink the French Fleet, remove the appeasers from office, call for victory at all costs, maintain the blockade of Europe, bomb Berlin and don’t mind the civilians) pointed in one direction. On the eve of the Blitz there was a remarkable unanimity in Britain around the general proposition of waging vigorous war. The arrival of the Blitz found the British people in good heart.

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It is conventional to think of the Blitz on London as commencing on 7 September. Certainly, that date saw the first day of concentrated bombing of the capital. But bombs had been falling on Britain consistently since late May. After Dunkirk, Goering had ordered the Luftwaffe, as well as preparing the way for invasion and destroying the RAF, to carry out ‘dislocation and nuisance raids on Britain’. Such raids commenced in some strength in late June. Many of them were made at night by (usually) small numbers of aircraft. The idea was to dislocate British industry by forcing factories to cease work while the bombers were in range or by bombing factories that could be definitely identified. The method was for small flights to range far and wide across Britain so that no area could be considered safe. For example, on the night of 6–7 July bombs were dropped on the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk. On the following night Peterborough was overflown, while on the night of 10–11 June bombers were in the vicinity of Portsmouth, Brighton, Horsham, Ipswich, Colchester, Grimsby, Hull, Lincoln, Boston, Canterbury, Norwich and King’s Lynn, causing sirens to be sounded and work in factories to cease for some hours.

From late August the attacks against industrial cities such as Birmingham, Coventry, Liverpool and Swansea were stepped up – on some nights over 100 tons of bombs being dropped. Little lasting damage was done to industry by these raids. The only vital target damaged in this period was the Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich, which was hit on 27 August. Some machine tools were destroyed but the overall effect on Spitfire production was slight.

However, there is no doubt that these raids did cause dislocation. The siren policy adopted by the government meant that on most occasions when the sirens sounded, work would stop. Later the siren policy was changed and tools were only downed when raiders, identified by spotters on the roofs, were immediately overhead. But even in this period the production indices of most war materials increased, indicating that the greater numbers entering war production offset the dislocation or that workers went on working unless in immediate danger.

There is also no doubt that despite the lack of damage, these raids assisted the Luftwaffe in honing their night-flying skills. In addition the raids killed or maimed about 4,000 people – 6 to 7 per cent of the total bombing casualties for the entire war. However, there is another side to this story. Most raids were small scale so the damage they could do was limited. And the wide-ranging nature of the raids meant that a high proportion of the British population acquired some experience of air raids and sleeping in shelters before being subjected to ferocious bombing. This experience would prove useful preparation for the much sterner ordeal that was to follow.

That ordeal began for London on 7 September. In the afternoon a mass of German bombers crossed the coast and instead of following their past practice of peeling off to attack airfields or ports, they continued on to London. This wrongfooted Fighter Command which had scrambled its squadrons to protect its airfields, leaving the way to the capital fairly clear. This raid, it needs to be emphasised, was not in retaliation for the bombing of Berlin by the RAF. The leader of Luftflotte 2 (Kesselring) had always wanted to bomb London. Now he was convinced that the RAF was down to its last few aircraft, which would have to come up to defend the capital.

There were two main raids that day. The first was between 5.00 a.m. and 6.15 p.m.; the second lasted much longer – from 8.10 p.m. to 4.30 a.m. the following day. The statistics of the raids paint a formidable picture. In all the Luftwaffe dropped 649 tons of high explosive and 27 tons of incendiary bombs on London. The bombing was concentrated on the East End, especially on the docks around Stepney, Rotherhithe, Woolwich and Bermondsey, although 45 other London boroughs were also hit. Over 1,000 fires were started, nine of which were categorised as ‘conflagrations’ requiring the attendance of at least 100 fire engines. An area to the north of the Thames for a distance of about one a half miles was obliterated. Many from Silvertown, which lay in this area, had to be evacuated by river. Fifteen large factories were hit and three of these were totally destroyed. Five docks were put out of action. The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich was damaged, severely restricting its output of ordnance. Three power stations were crippled and the Beckton Gas Works, the largest in Europe, was badly damaged. Transport along the river halted and almost 30,000 tons of shipping was sunk in the Thames while an additional 170,000 tons suffered damage. Over 400 people were killed and 1,600 severely injured.

The effect of this raid on London and Londoners was severe. A fireman attempting to fight the conflagration on the wharves thought of the destruction of Pompeii. Another fireman in West Ham was ‘frightened out of my life’. To him the bombs seemed to be saying ‘here comes death’. The docks to the south of the river were ‘a square mile of fire’. At night the scene at the Beckton Gas Works was chaotic: ‘Gasometers were punctured and were blazing away’, shrapnel rained down from destroyers firing (in vain) at the raiders. Many residents near the north Woolwich docks were trapped and were rowed to safety along the Thames.

Shortly after the bombing, the Isle of Dogs, one of the worst affected areas, was visited by a Mass Observation investigator. He found considerable damage in the area, with a bomb having fallen about every 50 or 60 yards. Many shops were shut or destroyed, although all the pubs were open. Transport was chaotic, with the main routes out of the area (the Blackwall Tunnel and the Greenwich foot subway) closed. The only way out was to walk or wade through mud to an improvised ferry. Gas and electricity supply was non-existent, which meant that most food had to be consumed cold. Immediately after the raid there had been no water for 12 hours. Telephone services were only available from the police station and postal deliveries were unreliable. After the raid there had apparently been a certain amount of panic and many had left with the few belongings they could muster. Some had decamped to Greenwich Park but others had trekked into the country. All told, the MO investigator estimated that two-thirds of the population of 5,000 had gone, with the caveat that most of the men seemed to be at work. He added apprehensively that there ‘was very little smiling and few jokes’. We will return to this theme later.

For London this was just the beginning. During the remainder of September the capital was bombed on most days and every night, the emphasis gradually shifting to night bombing because of the toll taken on the bombers by the RAF. That month on average 238 tons of high explosive and 14.5 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on London every 24 hours. About 7,000 people were killed in the raids and about 10,000 seriously wounded. In all 15,000 fires were started, the worst night being 19 September when there were 1,142 fires.

Bad weather reduced the number of large raids in October. The days when more than 100 tons of high explosive were dropped decreased to 19 out of 31. However, London suffered some form of raid on every day and the total tonnage dropped was approximately 5,000. The number of incendiaries is not known with any accuracy but the Germans, for reasons that are obscure, seemed to use fewer per raid than in September. About 4,300 people were killed in these raids and 6,500 seriously wounded. Some 8,200 fires were started, the worst night being that of 14 October when there were over 1,000.

In November, London was raided on most nights but on a much reduced scale. Bad weather often kept German incursions to a minimum. In all there were just eight occasions when over 100 tons of high explosive were dropped and only four occasions on which more than 100 people were killed.

This was not the end of London’s ordeal. It was heavily bombed on 28–29 December, 11 January, 8 March, 17 and 19 April and, finally, on 10 May 1941. Nevertheless these were sporadic raids and it is the experience of the concentrated raids that will be dealt with in depth here. By the time that bad weather in November 1940 limited the raids, London had been bombed for 56 consecutive days. This was unprecedented in the history of aerial bombing. Before the war, the small town of Guernica had been destroyed in an afternoon, Rotterdam had been bombed on just one occasion and Warsaw for eight days. The civilian population of London had therefore undergone an unparalleled and shocking experience – 13,000 had been killed, 18,000 severely wounded and about 24,000 fires started. Homes were damaged or destroyed at the rate of 40,000 per week in September and October 1940 but the severe raid on 19 April 1941 in itself affected 178,000 houses. The number of homeless in rest centres was never much less than 20,000 on any given night in the first months of the Blitz. A total of 200,000 people were made homeless from September 1940 to June 1941.

How did this onslaught further the German aims of breaking the morale of the country and crippling its industry? There are a number of factors that have to be considered. The first is the sheer size of London. In 1939 it encompassed 1,156 square miles of territory and had a population of 8,500,000. It was the largest city in the world. However, it has been estimated that just over 1 million people (evacuated women and children, and men moving into the armed forces) had left London in 1939 and they were followed by another 900,000 during the period of the bombing. Offsetting this was a considerable drift back to London from evacuation points during the whole period. Perhaps it would be conservative to estimate the population at about 7 million during the Blitz. If, taking the figures already cited, we estimate that about 12,000 people were killed in the concentrated bombing period, this amounts to 0.17 per cent of the population. If the seriously wounded are added in we have a figure of about 30,000 or 0.43 per cent. This means that the vast majority of Londoners came through the Blitz unscathed so far as major injury or death is concerned. The Luftwaffe had a long way to go before it could kill or maim widely across the capital. In this sense London was just too big a target for the Luftwaffe.

Some light is shed on this by examining the composition of the force that was attempting to reduce London to ruins. The Luftwaffe had about 1,400 bombers operational during the period of the Blitz. But in order to conserve aircraft and rest crews it was usually impossible for the Germans to send more than 300 or 400 bombers over London on any given night. When they occasionally exceeded this number, as they did on 7 September 1940 and on 17 April and 10 May 1941 (to select just three examples), they were not able to match this effort again for some days. And it must be remembered that in the pre-war years the Germans had built up a force of tactical bombers, well designed to aid the army but unable to carry the heavy bombloads of the later Allied aircraft such as the Lancaster and the B17. Most German bombers could carry approximately 1 ton of bombs and in a large raid drop 300 or 400 tons of high explosive. With the introduction of the Max, a bomb of 2,500 kilograms, the Luftwaffe was occasionally able to deliver a heavier load, but their efforts never matched the raids on Hamburg when Bomber Command was able to deliver 10,000 tons of bombs on just four nights.

Of course some areas of London were bombed much more heavily than average figures indicate. We have noted that after the raid of 7 September two-thirds of the population of the Isle of Dogs decamped. Although Chelsea was not a prime target for the Germans, the vagaries of bombing in 1940 meant that because it was on the river and proximate to Westminster it was hit hard. One air-raid warden in the area (Jo Oakman) noted every ‘event’, as bombings were called, which she attended. Between 4 September and 29 December she was called out on over 400 occasions. If these are plotted on a map of an area bounded by Sloane Street, Cheyne Walk and the Brompton Road, the detail on the map disappears under a mass of red dots. And some of the ‘incidents’ she attended had multiple victims. On 11 September she visited 57 Cadogan Square, only to find that a shelter had been hit and some occupants ‘crushed beyond recognition’. Her comment ‘heaven help us all’ summed up the helplessness of those in the Air Raid protection squads. Almost every diary from the period contains the words ‘frightened’, ‘terrified’ or something similar. One account was entitled ‘Journal Under The Terror’, a reference to the period under Maximilien Robespierre during the French Revolution. The diarist described the night of 8 September as ‘a night of horror, a hell on earth’. The proprietor of a cinema in East Ham, one of the worst affected areas, wrote:

This week has turned us into a very frightened and a very desperate crowd of people … Men on my staff that were in the last war show their misery in the present situation more openly than the rest … Stranded in the theatre all night with half a dozen of them it was very pathetic … These old sweats are very defeatist in their views and keep rubbing in the terrible future they think we have in store for us. All my friends and acquaintances are quite sure they ‘can’t stand much more of this night after night’.

Nevertheless, despite the anxiety and fear, we know that even in areas that were badly bombed the Germans failed in their attempt to induce mass panic. Certainly some left the city. There were 25,000 ‘unauthorised evacuees’ to various towns and villages in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire by 15 September. Others trekked out to areas such as Epping Forest and the Chislehurst Caves at night, but many came back to work during the day. Indeed, special trains were laid on to assist them. In this regard it is worth noting the MO finding that of the 301 inhabitants of one street, 23 per cent of the women and children had gone but just 3 per cent of the men – no doubt because most of the men had to remain in reasonable proximity to their work.

How did people cope with the Blitz and carry on with their normal lives? Many factors seemed to have helped. Some are quite mundane. Most people simply had to go to work, for without work there was no pay and without pay there was no sustenance. And for most people work was an ingrained habit. This factor is often overlooked in analyses of the Blitz but it cannot be emphasised too strongly. Work was the bedrock of industrial society then as it is now. Many diarists mention this. Phyllis Warner made much of the fact that the horror was mixed with everyday routine. She picked her way to work past bomb craters and still did her job although there was a large hole in the roof. Even in the most difficult of circumstances people would stick to their jobs. One bank employee walked to and from work, although it was a journey of 12 miles and it took him three and a half hours each way. Only unexploded bombs kept him away. Others were just too busy or were in such key areas that stopping work never occurred to them. A sister on a children’s hospital ward records the daily terror, regularly notes her lack of sleep, but is only concerned about the babies and children under her care and their screams of terror when the bombs fall. There are innumerable other examples, but work and the routine of work should not be underestimated as providing the spur to continue.

Another factor was the sheer difficulty of leaving. Those who left either had a relative in the country or trekked back during the day. But for most, their support network in the form of family and friends was nearby. And the services they needed to sustain them if their house was demolished were also local. There were rest centres, mobile canteens and other facilities run by the local council. Few had the resources to move away from this network. Indeed, the majority of people did not own a car, the most immediate and personal means of transport. There was always the railway and some availed themselves of it, but the question remained of where to go and to whom to appeal for support on arrival. At other times it was German bombing that prevented this particular escape route from functioning. In short, there were powerful reasons to remain in the familiar surroundings of street and suburb.

It is in this context that statements to the effect that ‘over the first weekend, the nerve and spirit of those in the East End came close to breaking’ should be taken. That there was some panic is beyond doubt. That some of these people fled to safer areas is unquestionable. It also seems unquestionable that for many, removing themselves from where the bombs were falling was not so much a panic reaction as a sensible precaution. But most remained – either because they had no alternative or to utilise the local support networks. How many of these ‘came close to breaking’ can never be known. All we can observe is what actually happened. Most stayed in place and went to work when they could, hardly indicative of broken morale or mass panic. Perhaps the last word should be that of a keen observer of Britain (and of human nature). Before the Blitz had even started, Raymond Chandler predicted its outcome. He wrote to a friend, ‘as for bombing it will be bad but … the English civilian is the least hysterical in the world’.

It is even possible that the bombing stiffened the resolve of Londoners. Certainly they developed, unsurprisingly, a deep antipathy for the people bombing them. Most diarists record this fact. Vere Hodgson, that most sane and broad-minded of Londoners, thought she might never bother with Germans again.63 Ida Naish hoped to see Hitler in Hell. Winifred Bowman spoke of ‘those swines of Jerries’. Mrs Brinton-Lee compared British soldiers with the ‘bombastic’ or ‘craven’ German prisoners she had met. Finally a survey taken by Home Intelligence recorded that after three months of bombing 68 per cent of the people were in favour of subjecting Germany to a harsher peace settlement than Versailles. The diaries certainly show no overwhelming desire by Londoners to come to any kind of settlement with the country that was bombing them.

And even in these circumstances people displayed that normal tendency to come to terms with their situation. Phyllis Warner, who found the first days of the Blitz an appalling experience, reported on 18 September ‘that I’m glad to say that I’m not as frightened as I was. Last week I couldn’t sleep at all, and found the greatest difficulty in getting through my day’s work, but this week I feel much stronger … It’s just a case of getting over the first shock.’ Others felt the same. G. Thomas reported that by 15 September ‘we seem to be getting used to these battles’, while Ann Shepperd, although near an anti-aircraft battery, was sleeping well by 17 September. These individual impressions are supported by the statistics. Mass Observation noted that those getting no sleep decreased from 31 per cent on 12 September to 9 per cent on 22 September and 3 per cent on 3 October. And the numbers recorded by Home Security as sheltering in Underground stations reached a peak of 178,000 on the night of 27–28 September, but decreased to 105,000 on 5 December, 84,000 on 15 January, and just 63,000 on 11 March as more and more people decided to sleep at home. As the head of Mass Observation put it:

For the first few days of the London blitz, social life was shocked almost to a standstill: one left work in the evening to go home to an air-raid. One emerged from the air-raid in the morning to go back to work, maybe late, that was all; and while it was new, exciting, overwhelming, it was enough. Few had the time or the emotional energy for anything else – at first. Gradually, as the nights went by, priorities began to shift. Home life began to acquire some patterns again. New infrastructures were evolved, suited to the new conditions. Routines were established – going to the shelter or not going to the shelter; eating early before the sirens or packing up a picnic. The repetition of bombing on London, every night, helped give such routines both urgency and rhythm.

A comment is needed at this point on the shelters, both public and private, that were made available by the government. Mass Observation reports are highly critical of public shelters. They were unsanitary, there were too few of them, and some of the surface shelters were shoddily built and in effect little more than death traps. The government, including the new Minister of Home Security, Herbert Morrison, who had replaced the rather ineffectual Sir John Anderson in October, was reluctant to allow the Underground stations to be used as deep shelters. Why, given this situation, was there not some kind of rebellion? There was of course anger – after specific incidents – and many local authorities suffered a backlash due to the inadequacy of the shelters provided. The fact is, however, that most people did not repair to shelters during the Blitz. At its peak only 15 per cent of the population of London used a public shelter and this figure declined from late October to under 10 per cent. Hence the dissatisfaction that did exist had no widespread implications for the war effort.

The final factor to thwart the Germans was Churchill. It is easy now to adopt a cynical attitude to politicians touring disaster areas. But this was 1940 and Churchill’s visits to bomb-damaged areas fulfilled a number of needs. He was often moved to tears at the sight of the homeless and he developed an instant empathy with those whose houses and lives would never be the same. But he also represented something else. He had come to power at a desperate time when a fear was expressed that a British government might go the way of the French. A common call to him as he toured the devastated areas was ‘Give it ’em back’ or ‘when are we going to bomb Berlin?’ His resolute responses were invariably described as ‘reassuring’. In the course of the Blitz, Churchill toured most of Britain’s major cities, cheering people with his obvious concern but also letting them see that as long as he was in charge the war would be fought to the end.

This symbiotic relationship between Churchill and the people is often overlooked. He was seeking to comfort them and assess the response of the local authorities to their plight, but they were also assessing him as an indicator that there was no defeatism in the higher ranks of the government.

He made other interventions as well. It was his minute of 21 September in favour of allowing people to shelter in the Underground that broke the paralysis on the issue that had developed in Cabinet. And it was his experience of destroyed homes on the south coast that resulted in the War Damages Act that saw compensation paid to people for bomb damage.

If the German bombing did not cause a breakdown of society in London, to what extent did it achieve its other aim, that of stifling the capital’s war effort? During the war the ‘key points’ in the city were identified. These were facilities that, if hit or destroyed, could substantially damage the functioning of London as part of the war economy. They encompassed transport facilities, water storage, telecommunications, factories, radar, government buildings and docks. In 1940, 840 such points had been identified in London, a number that increased to 1,109 in 1941. One half to two-thirds of these were factories, 35 were electricity power stations, 23 were gas works, 15 ordnance factories and so on.

Let us examine two nights of heavy bombing to investigate what damage the Luftwaffe could inflict on these targets in London. On the nights of 14–15 and 15–16 October, London was repeatedly bombed. On the first night five factories were hit, including one that made instruments for aircraft. In addition six gas works, three electricity supply substations and a water main were damaged, two telephone exchanges were put out of action and six hospitals. No. 10 Downing Street and the Treasury were hit, 10 major roads blocked and five Underground lines affected. Railway services had to be suspended from Broad Street, Fenchurch Street, Marylebone, Charing Cross and London Bridge. Only restricted services could run from Euston, St Pancras and Waterloo.

The next evening the Luftwaffe returned in equal strength. On this night seven factories, two gas works, four electricity supply substations and three water supply facilities were hit, and five docks put out of action. One water culvert at New Bridge Road, Edmonton, supplied London with 46 million gallons of water per day. Fifteen million gallons were restored within 24 hours, but it took 2,000 workers some time to excavate the 2,000 cubic yards of soil to get to the source of the problem. Meanwhile many London suburbs had no running water. Also that night, railway services were again hit badly and the position deteriorated further from the previous bombing. Damage was inflicted on four additional Underground lines, and services from three telephone exchanges were suspended. Finally Marlborough House, the BBC and four hospitals were hit.

This amounted to substantial damage. It made everyday life difficult, getting to work inconvenient, and it did affect the efficient running of the capital. But what the bombing did not do was radically affect the war effort. A total of twelve factories were hit but over 600 were not. The docks were back in operation in short order. The railway lines could be repaired. Buses could replace damaged Underground lines. Routes could be found around blocked roads. Interruptions to electricity and gas supplies were usually short. Couriers could be used by some firms instead of the telephone. The Home Security Report on electricity supply was an indicator of a more general trend:

London suffered the most [of any city in this area]. 30 power stations and three transformer stations were hit, while 1,393 main and secondary transmission cables and 8,590 distribution cables were involved in the general damage. Despite all this it was unusual for stoppages of supply to last longer than an hour. The most seriously affected generating station was that at Fulham, where a 190,000kw plant was not in full operation for a year. The load, however, was taken over by the grid system and the supply was only interrupted for a matter of hours.

This situation applied generally to all of London’s facilities. As for its output of war materiel, it was just too widely spread for the Luftwaffe to make much of an impact. Overall just 35 factories were totally destroyed. Damaged factories were usually soon back in operation and a sophisticated system of sub-contracting provided many alternative sources of supply.

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So far we have dealt only with the Blitz on London. But there was another aspect of the German air assault – the assault on British provincial cities. These phases of the Blitz are not discrete events – there was much overlap between the raids on London and those on the provinces. As we have seen, the Luftwaffe never gave up on attacking the capital. And some heavy raids on the provinces took place while London was being bombed. However, as a generalisation and with one notable exception, London bore the brunt of the enemy attacks from September to December 1940, whereas the Germans concentrated more on the provinces in the early months of 1941. And in this case we cannot stop the story on the last day of December 1940. The campaign to break the British people and the industrial capacity of the country was just as severe in the New Year as it had been in 1940.

The main problem for the Luftwaffe was that provincial Britain was what would now be called a target-rich environment. In the north there were the industrial cities of Birmingham, Manchester, Coventry, Sheffield and Leeds. South Wales also had a concentration of industry around Cardiff and Swansea. Along the south coast lay the major ports of Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton. In the north-east were major shipbuilding and industrial areas around Hull and Newcastle. Major shipbuilding centres were located at Clydeside and Belfast. Each group of cities could be given a high priority. Spitfires were made around Southampton and at Castle Bromwich near Birmingham. The south coast ports commanded the Channel. The west coast ports saw vital supplies of oil and raw materials arrive from the United States. The ships that kept the trans-Atlantic trade flowing were built and based at Liverpool, the Clyde, the Tyne and Belfast.

Given the plethora of targets and given the fact that the Luftwaffe was hard pressed to assemble many more than 400 bombers per night, it was vital to the fulfilment of their objectives that a plan be developed to maximise the effectiveness of their bombing. No such plan eventuated or even formed in the minds of Goering, Kesselring or Sperrle. All they knew was that the attack on London had neither reduced the RAF to manageable proportions nor collapsed morale. Nor had the capital’s industry and infrastructure been reduced to rubble. Yet they would continue to attack London, while at the same time sending small packets of bombers to a variety of targets around Britain and mounting major raids on a selection of provincial cities. This was the opposite of a concentration of effort, but it was what the Germans would carry through from November 1940 until March 1941.

In that period heavy raids (defined as the dropping of over 100 tons of bombs) would be carried out on London on 12 occasions. Cities such as Southampton, Liverpool, Bristol, Portsmouth, Manchester and many others would be visited by small numbers of bombers and occasionally attacked in force.

The limitations of such methods can be demonstrated by examining one of the best-known provincial raids, the attack on Coventry on 14–15 November 1940. In many ways the city was an ideal target for the Luftwaffe. Coventry was small (a population of just under 250,000 in 1940) but it had many factories making such warlike goods as aero engines, motor vehicles and munitions. Some of these works (such as Daimler) were large, but there was a great number of smaller factories clustered with houses in the city centre around the medieval cathedral. The raid was carefully planned by the Germans. The special pathfinder group (Kg 100) led the way, guided by radio beams that the British failed to jam. Around 7.00 p.m. they dropped a mixture of high explosive with some accuracy on the city centre. The fires started guided the main force of about 440 bombers to the city.

Around 11.45 p.m. the raid reached its height but bombing continued until 6.15 a.m., some German aircraft returning to France to refuel and then bombing a second time. In all over 500 tons of high explosive and 30,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. The havoc caused was considerable. The medieval cathedral of St Michael was destroyed beyond repair. A total of 41,500 houses (three-quarters of all houses in the city) suffered some damage. Of these 2,300 were totally destroyed and 6,000 rendered unliveable. In addition 624 shops and 121 offices were destroyed. The war economy was badly hit. Overall 111 out of 180 factories were damaged and 75 of them completely destroyed. The casualties (570 dead and 1,100 wounded) would have been more severe had not a proportion of the population been out of the city on their nightly trek.

Mass Observation rushed a team to Coventry and they reported on 18 November. The investigators found the damage greater than in any other city including London. They found a feeling of ‘helplessness’ among the population, many of whom had no idea what to do. There were signs of hysteria, terror and neurosis. It would indeed be surprising had there not been such feelings in a city small enough for almost everyone to know one of the dead or injured and with such widespread property damage. The mood soon improved, however. The army was drafted in to help clear rubble and essential services slowly returned. Two days after the raid, arrangements had been made to transport 10,000 people out of the centre, but only 300 actually left.

Nevertheless, considerable damage had been done to the war economy. One of the Daimler aero-engine factories was completely wrecked. It was estimated that it would take a month to restore production. A further 14 factories making engines or components for aircraft had suffered damage, as had such firms as Triumph that made parts for tanks and armoured cars.

Coventry, if not quite ‘finished’ as one observer put it, was certainly on its knees. Further raids of this nature by the Luftwaffe were greatly feared. Home Security concluded that ‘Another such raid might well have put Coventry beyond the possibility of repair.’ But the Luftwaffe did not return. In subsequent days and weeks it turned its attention back to London, then to Birmingham, then Bristol and then to other cities. Coventry did not suffer another major raid for some five months, when 100 aircraft dropped 100 tons of high explosive and incendiaries on it. Casualties were high – some 281 killed and 525 severely wounded. The Daimler works was again put out of operation for several weeks. On the night of 10–11 April there was a further major raid but on this occasion no important target suffered significant damage. These raids were certainly intense, but the five-month interval had allowed Coventry to recover – both in spirit and in productive capacity. By repeated bombing the Germans probably could have obliterated Coventry and that would have slowed British aircraft production significantly. This was a lesson that its citizens were happy for the Luftwaffe not to learn.

This pattern of dreadful destruction and then neglect was repeated by the Luftwaffe throughout the Blitz. Bad weather drastically curtailed their operations in January and February 1941, but by then some in the German High Command were becoming disturbed by the lack of results. On 4 February Admiral Raeder, General Jodl and Field Marshal Keitel expressed their concerns to Hitler. Raeder emphasised the importance of British dependence on imports and its need to continually build escort and merchant ships for the trans-Atlantic trade. As a result Hitler issued a new directive that gave the Luftwaffe at least some direction. He ordered that major raids be concentrated on the western ports that either built ships or received imports. Accordingly, when the weather cleared the Luftwaffe launched a major raid on Clydebank, which contained some of Britain’s largest shipbuilding yards. On the night of 13–14 March over 400 bombers dropped 1,100 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs on Clydebank. The loss of life was massive because many workers lived close to the shipyards – over 1,200 were killed and 1,000 injured. Clydebank was a rather self-contained area just to the west of Glasgow. Of its 60,000 inhabitants, just 3,000 remained after the raids – the rest had fled to safety. Indeed, there was not much to return to – only seven houses out of a total of 12,000 remained undamaged. The damage to the actual shipyards was not extensive, but the dispersal of the population had serious repercussions for the industry. John Brown’s shipyard normally employed 10,000 workers, yet a week after the raids just 6,500 had reported for work. Another week was to pass before the yard was 75 per cent effective.

For one of the very few occasions during the Blitz the deductions drawn by Home Security were alarming:

There is a real danger that continued and concentrated attacks on the residential areas of the ports will lead to a large-scale movement of the population, as a result of damage to houses and public services. These attacks may prove more effective in hampering the work of the ports than accurate bombing of the port facilities themselves. Undoubtedly provision of relief for the homeless and facilities to enable the workers to get back to work is of vital importance.

Home Security was no doubt correct. Many more raids on this scale would have seen vital works such as John Brown’s shut down through lack of labour. Yet once again the Luftwaffe did not follow up the attack. Over time the workers were rehoused and returned to their tasks.

In keeping with Hitler’s directive, Belfast suffered a major raid in mid-April. The shipbuilders Shorts and Harlands were out of production for three weeks. Some 20,000 people were made homeless by this single raid. Yet there was again no follow-up and shipbuilding in Northern Ireland was soon back to normal.

If we follow the pattern of bombing during February, March and April 1941, we can see that the Luftwaffe attempted to follow Hitler’s directive. There were raids on Swansea, Hull, Bristol, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Barrow and the Tyne in this period. But the pattern of one or two night raids repeated itself. Plymouth was hit particularly hard in April to the extent that civil administration almost broke down. Mass Observation reported much dissatisfaction with the local authorities. Yet Plymouth survived. This time there would be no more raids because Hitler had begun to regroup the Luftwaffe for operations against Russia.

The last period of the Blitz presents one of the great question marks over German strategy. Liverpool was the port through which flowed most supplies from America. Before May 1941 the weekly tonnage handled by the docks was 181,562 tons. It was an obvious target for the Luftwaffe. Indeed, Liverpool was raided on over 60 occasions between the outbreak of war and May 1941. Yet many of these raids were flights by just one or two aircraft and most did not attain the status of a major raid. The main exceptions were the nights of 12–13, 13–14 and 14–15 March. In these three nights over 450 tons of high explosive were dropped, causing damage to the docks and to commercial and residential buildings.

Despite these three nights it could be reasonably stated that before May 1941 Liverpool had not received from the Germans the attention warranted by its importance. That all changed in the first week of May. From 1 May the city was bombed for seven consecutive nights. In all 839 tons of high explosive were dropped along with hundreds of thousand incendiaries. The raids killed 1,900 people and seriously injured 1,450. At one stage four miles of docks were engulfed in flames. On the night of 3–4 May the SS Malakand, which had 1,000 tons of ammunition on board, was hit and exploded, virtually destroying the Huskisson Dock. A total of 70,000 people, almost 10 per cent of the total population, were made homeless and trekking became a way of life for many. Mass Observation reported widespread dissatisfaction with the local authorities and described an atmosphere of ineptitude, lack of energy and drive on their part. A strong rumour circulated that martial law had been declared. It had not but this was probably a comment on the population’s view of the local leadership.

By the end of the week the capacity of the docks had been reduced to just 25 per cent, a potentially disastrous situation for Britain. Yet even during the Merseyside Blitz the Germans could not concentrate on just one target. In the middle of their campaign against Liverpool they diverted major forces of bombers to Barrow, Belfast, Glasgow and Hull. Thus the number of bombers over Merseyside dropped from 293 on the night of 3–4 May to 55 on the following night, to 27 on the following two nights, then back up to 166 on the final night.

But the surpassing folly from the German point of view was that this series of devastating raids came at the very end of the Blitz. After one more massive attack on London on the night of 10–11 May, the bombers were gradually withdrawn to the east for the impending attack on the Soviet Union. Slowly Liverpool returned to some kind of normality. By mid-May the docks were unloading just less than half their normal tonnage and by mid-June they had returned to full capacity. The thousands of trekkers also returned. In fact most of the dock workers who trekked only did so at night and returned to their jobs during the day, so the same everyday imperatives that acted to keep London going through the Blitz applied at Liverpool as well. For the remainder of the war Liverpool continued to be the main destination for American imports. Any chance that the Germans might have had to cut this lifeline had gone.

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The Blitz failed in its objectives. The Germans could neither cow the British people into surrender nor destroy the fundamentals of their war economy. The Luftwaffe, which was never developed as a strategic weapon, proved inadequate to the task. It had too few aircraft that carried inadequate bomb loads, had too many targets to hit and lacked a coherent overall plan. Civilians, it was proved, could stand up to bombing over a prolonged period without cracking, despite the rather feeble defences the British could deploy against the night Blitz and the government’s ramshackle shelter policy.

However, this is much more apparent now than it was then. When they put their minds to it the Luftwaffe could deliver concentrated blows – against London, Coventry, Glasgow, Belfast, Plymouth, Birmingham and other centres – that caused havoc and destruction to an extent never witnessed in Britain before. To those under the bombs this certainly did not seem like an air force too feeble to prevail. No city or country had ever been subjected to the level of aerial bombardment experienced by Britain in these months. In this sense those in charge of Home Security were only being prudent in their attempts to test the daily ‘morale’ of the people. Their methods might appear amateurish today but there seems little doubt that the overall tenor of the reports must have given some comfort to those in authority. Panic at times was reported; there was some looting; defeatist talk was occasionally expressed. But the solidarity of the population was no myth. Most carried on with their lives as best they could. After the constant series of reverses that marked the first part of the year, the ordeal suffered by the British might have been the last straw. That it came nowhere close to delivering a knock-out blow says much about the resolution of a determined people. They had accepted Churchill’s proposition that this war had to be fought to the end. Indeed, there was some concern that the government might fall below this level of resolve. Churchill’s presence in the bombed cities reassured them that this would not be the case, as did his assurances that when the time came Nazi Germany would receive a greater measure of destruction than had been meted out to Britain. He was as good as his word.