THE BLITZ 61
The Blitz (German for “lightning”) was the word coined by the British
press for the intense bombing campaign conducted by the Luftwaffe.
The first attack over London on September 7, 1940, was followed by
57 consecutive nights of bombing raids on the capital, as well as raids
on other major cities. The Blitz continued until May 1941.
Hitler still hoped to invade Britain, and bombing London was part
of that plan, with the aim of softening up the British population. The
fighting reached a climax on September 15, when waves of German
planes launched an all-out attack on London but failed to achieve a
decisive breakthrough. The devastating raid on Coventry on November
14–15 signaled that other industrial centers were also at risk. This
single attack claimed the lives of 568 people and left around one-third
of the city’s houses uninhabitable. Over the next six months, the
Luftwaffe carried out heavy raids on Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol,
Cardiff, Clydebank, Hull, Manchester, Plymouth, Portsmouth,
Sheffield, Southampton, and Swansea. Liverpool and Merseyside
suffered the worst destruction of any area outside London, with 1,900
killed and 70,000 made homeless.
By May 1941, Hitler had turned his attention to the Soviet Union.
The last major raid on London took place on May 10, when 1 sq mile
(2.8 sq km) of the city center was set on fire and the Houses of
Parliament took a dozen hits. Bombing continued to the end of
the war, but not on the same scale.The effects of the Blitz
During the campaign, there were 127 large-scale night raids (71
in London), during which some 50,700 tons (46,000 metric tons) of
high explosives were dropped on Britain’s cities, in addition to
110,000 incendiary bombs. The raids killed more than 43,000
civilians and destroyed or damaged two million homes. By February
1941, 1.37 million civilians had been evacuated from areas affected
by the bombing.
Although the effects of
the Blitz were devastating,
Hitler’s plan failed. British
war production was reduced
by no more than five percent
during the Blitz, while
popular morale, dented at
times by the destruction,
never collapsed.THE BLITZ
In September 1940, Hitler made the fateful decision
to switch the focus of Luftwaffe air attacks from RAF
airfields to Britain’s cities. His aim was to damage
manufacturing centers and ports and to break civilian
morale, forcing Churchill to sue for peace.
▷ Image of resistance
This famous image shows St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London, lit up by fire and
surrounded by smoke, during a night
raid on December 29, 1940.US_060-061_The_Blitz.indd 61 20/03/19 12:45 PM