The Blitz (1940–1941): German Bombing of British Cities

The Blitz was the German bombing campaign against London and other British cities between 7 September 1940 and 11 May 1941. Mostly carried out at night, it killed around 43,000 civilians, damaged or destroyed more than a million homes and changed daily life across Britain. It failed, however, to break British morale or industry, and it became one of the defining experiences of the Second World War on the home front.

Background

In the summer of 1940 the Luftwaffe tried to defeat the Royal Air Force as a preparation for invading Britain. During the Battle of Britain, German bombers initially targeted airfields and aircraft factories.

On the night of 24–25 August 1940 bombs fell on central London, apparently by mistake. RAF Bomber Command replied with raids on Berlin, and on 4 September Hitler promised to retaliate. German commanders also hoped that striking London would force the RAF to commit its last fighters and might push the British government to negotiate. Britain had experienced air raids before, during the Zeppelin raids of the First World War, but nothing on this scale.

Black Saturday and the London Blitz

On the afternoon of Saturday 7 September 1940 around 350 German bombers, escorted by more than 600 fighters, attacked London’s docks in the East End. Fires raged through warehouses along the Thames and guided further waves of bombers that night. About 430 civilians were killed and some 1,600 seriously injured on that first day.

London was then bombed on 57 consecutive nights. Daylight raids grew rarer after heavy German losses in mid-September, and the campaign became overwhelmingly a night offensive. Bombers used incendiaries to start fires and high-explosive bombs and parachute mines to destroy buildings and hamper firefighters.

The poorer, crowded districts around the docks, such as Stepney, Poplar, Bermondsey and West Ham, suffered most. But bombs fell across the capital: Buckingham Palace was hit on 13 September, and Queen Elizabeth reportedly said she was glad, because she could now look the East End in the face.

On the night of 29–30 December 1940 a concentrated incendiary raid on the City of London started some 1,500 fires, a disaster sometimes called the Second Great Fire of London. Many historic churches and Guildhall were badly damaged, but St Paul’s Cathedral survived, protected by its fire watchers. Herbert Mason’s photograph of the dome rising above the smoke became an icon of resistance.

Defending the night sky

Britain’s defences were poorly prepared for night attack. The Luftwaffe guided its bombers with radio beams, such as the Knickebein and X-Gerät systems, which crossed over the target. British scientists identified the beams and RAF No. 80 Wing jammed or distorted them, a contest later called the Battle of the Beams.

Anti-aircraft guns brought down relatively few bombers, but when London’s guns were ordered to fire a heavy barrage on the night of 11 September 1940, the noise lifted public morale. Barrage balloons forced bombers to fly higher, and a strict blackout made cities harder to find. Night fighters improved slowly: only from early 1941, when the Bristol Beaufighter entered service with airborne interception radar and ground-control radar stations, did German losses start to rise noticeably.

Beyond London

From November 1940 the Luftwaffe widened its attacks to industrial cities and ports. On the night of 14–15 November, in the raid the Germans codenamed Moonlight Sonata, the Coventry Blitz killed around 568 people and destroyed the medieval cathedral.

Birmingham, Bristol, Southampton, Sheffield, Manchester, Portsmouth and Plymouth were all heavily bombed in the following months. In March 1941 raids on Clydebank, near Glasgow, killed over 500 people and left most of the town’s homes damaged. In April and May 1941 Belfast suffered two major attacks; the raid of 15–16 April killed around 900 people, among the heaviest losses of any single night outside London.

Liverpool and the neighbouring Merseyside ports, vital to the Atlantic convoys, were the most heavily bombed area outside London. The “May Blitz” of 1–7 May 1941 killed around 1,700 people and wrecked large parts of the docks.

Shelters and civil defence

Shelter was a central question of the Blitz. Millions of Anderson shelters, made of curved corrugated steel and half buried in back gardens, had been issued since 1939. From March 1941 the Morrison shelter, a steel cage that doubled as a table, protected families indoors. Many people simply sheltered under the stairs or in cellars.

At first the government discouraged use of London Underground stations as shelters, but Londoners bought platform tickets and stayed. The authorities soon accepted the practice, providing bunks, toilets and refreshment trains. At the peak, in late September 1940, around 177,000 people slept in the Tube, yet surveys showed that most Londoners stayed in their homes or garden shelters.

No shelter was entirely safe. Direct hits killed dozens of people at Balham station on 14 October 1940 and at Bank station on 11 January 1941. Air Raid Precautions (ARP) wardens, the fire services, the Women’s Voluntary Service, rescue squads and first-aid workers, many of them volunteers, worked through the raids. Herbert Morrison, appointed Home Secretary in October 1940, introduced compulsory fire-watching duties.

Life under the bombs

For most people the Blitz meant broken sleep, long journeys around bomb craters and the constant fear of loss. Factories, offices and shops tried to keep working, and many displayed signs announcing they were open as usual. Homeless families crowded into rest centres, which were often overwhelmed in the first weeks.

The blackout itself was dangerous; road deaths rose sharply in the early war years. Rationing of food, which had begun in January 1940, continued throughout. The social research organisation Mass Observation recorded ordinary people’s diaries and conversations, giving historians a detailed picture of fear, humour, resentment and resilience.

Children had been evacuated from cities in 1939 under Operation Pied Piper, and many who had returned during the quiet months of the “Phoney War” were sent away again once the bombing began.

The final great raid

The Blitz reached a grim climax on the night of 10–11 May 1941, when more than 500 bombers attacked London. Around 1,400 people were killed, the highest toll of any single night in the capital. The chamber of the House of Commons was destroyed and Westminster Abbey and the British Museum were damaged.

After that night the heavy raids stopped. Hitler needed his bombers in the east for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941.

Britain was not free from air attack afterwards. In 1942 the so-called Baedeker raids struck historic cities such as Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. Early 1944 brought the “Baby Blitz” (Operation Steinbock) against London, and from June 1944 the V-1 flying bombs and then V-2 rockets killed nearly 9,000 more people, most of them in and around the capital. In all, around 60,000 British civilians died from bombing during the war.

Key people

• Hermann Göring: commander of the Luftwaffe, who directed the campaign.
• Winston Churchill: prime minister, who toured bombed areas and spoke for national defiance.
• Herbert Morrison: Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security from October 1940, responsible for civil defence.
• King George VI and Queen Elizabeth: remained in London and visited bombed districts, becoming symbols of shared hardship.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

• Myth: everyone sheltered in the Underground. Only a small minority did; most people stayed at home or used garden shelters.
• Myth: the “Blitz spirit” meant unbroken cheerfulness. Morale held overall, but there was fear, exhaustion, anger at poor shelter provision in some areas and some looting. Historians such as Angus Calder have examined how wartime propaganda shaped the popular memory.
• Myth: the Blitz crippled British industry. Production was disrupted locally, but output of aircraft and other war goods continued to rise.
• Fact: the bombing was indiscriminate in practice. Although the Germans named docks and factories as targets, the inaccuracy of night bombing meant homes were hit everywhere.

Timeline

• 1940, 24–25 August: bombs fall on central London; the RAF raids Berlin in reply.
• 1940, 7 September: Black Saturday, the first mass raid on London.
• 1940, 13 September: Buckingham Palace is bombed.
• 1940, 14–15 November: Coventry is devastated.
• 1940, 29–30 December: the Second Great Fire of London.
• 1941, 13–14 March: the Clydebank raids.
• 1941, 15–16 April: the first large Belfast raid.
• 1941, 1–7 May: the Liverpool May Blitz.
• 1941, 10–11 May: the last and deadliest raid on London.

Why it matters

The Blitz showed that bombing cities alone could not force a nation to surrender, a lesson both sides were slow to learn as Allied bombing of Germany later grew far heavier. In Britain it reshaped cities, prompted post-war rebuilding and remains central to how the country remembers the war. Bomb sites became new housing estates and modern city centres, while ruined churches such as Christ Church Greyfriars in London and the old cathedral in Coventry were kept as memorials to those who died.