Recent research into the formation of working- Bombs blasting the historic past out of the lives of Englishmen. You know, destroying war industries, shipping, transport, all this sort of thing. The Blitz is the name given to the bombing of British cities between September 1940 and May 1941. On these visits, the Queen took a keen interest in what was being done to help people who had lost their homes. The reports covering the Blitz, which began with the mass bombing of London on 7 September 1940 and continued until May 1941, provide a unique window into the mindset of the British at a momentous time in their history. In the 1920s and 1930s, airpower theorists such as Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell claimed that air forces could win wars, obviating the need for land and sea combat. More than 25,000 tons of German bombs would fall on British cities by May 1941. ... ‘We can take it’ became the catchphrase of the Blitz.” Jon E Lewis, London: The Autobiography. If the Germans had had the sense not to bomb west of London Bridge there might have been a revolution in this country.1. This popular saying was created to be used as a propaganda slogan for the British when Germany invaded. Examples of Propaganda Released during the Blitz: In this example of propaganda, Britain used the bandwagon technique to get British citizens to put in immense effort for the war on the homefront. The Spirit of the Blitz Home Intelligence and British Morale, September 1940 - June 1941 Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang Tells the inside story of Home Intelligence, the secret organisation that monitored the state of British popular morale during the war After the Blitz wound down, Stephen Taylor reflected on the nation’s character traits. The experiences of the bombing naturally feature heavily in the reports. Morale suffered in places that were not as well prepared, like Coventry, Bristol and Plymouth. However, evidence gathered by the Mass-Observation (M-O) movement, which undertook extensive research into civilian morale during the blitz, provides the historian with an opportunity to reconstruct elements of working-class culture. They also tend to live in less good housing. The mass bombing of urban areas posed, or so it was thought, the greatest of all threats to morale and the unit reported in detail on the complex reaction of civilians and the many complaints levelled at the inefficiency of local authorities, the lack of provision for the homeless, the poor quality of air-raid shelters, and the absence of anti-aircraft fire. Subsequent German raids also damaged the homes of the rich. The government worried it was an indicator of poor morale, before realising that it could do little but aid a form of existence that people had adopted in order to cope. The saving of so many soldiers, against all the odds, gave a massive boost to morale in Britain - a boost that was never to be lowered, even during the blitz. The ‘Blitz’, as it became known, aimed to disrupt production and break morale. British Morale “It was Hitler’s belief that the war from the air would terrorise London into defeat. A classic view of what would happen. Professor Richard Overy: Of course there was lots of grumbling, there were difficulties, the government didn’t do everything it said it was going to do. Commentary: On September 7th 1940, German planes flew towards London in the first of a series of concerted raids on the capital. ‘He comes when he wants’ 17 was perhaps another of the major fears of the wartime population, as the Luftwaffe seemed to be able to attack at any time and in any place destroying cities and lives … Past historiographical accounts have led to the myth of a Blitz spirit arising, Historians such as Calder and Marwick in early studies regarding Britain during the Second World War suggest that morale was robust and showed no weakness 11, these ideas on morale would be later revised by historians by involving a more in-depth study of M.O reports and intelligence reports which would show a new and completely different picture of the state of morale in Britain. So maybe they wanted this morale to be misinterpreted. Words of Harold Nicholson (Minister of Information): It is said that even the King and Queen were booed the other day when they visited the destroyed areas. 96 In part this is simply due to peacetime distaste for the brutal acts carried out in a total war. Commentary: London, in 1940 it looked like this. The fall of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, had given him more than one hundred million slaves to work for him or starve. Our Privacy Policy sets out how Oxford University Press handles your personal information, and your rights to object to your personal information being used for marketing to you or being processed as part of our business activities. We can take it and we’re going to fight back. And it had exactly the opposite effect from the one that Hitler wanted. 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