From Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac”:
The Blitz began on this date in 1940. “Blitz” comes from the German word “Blitzkrieg,” which means “lightning war.” Germany had successfully invaded France, and now Hitler was determined to conquer Britain as well. The German Luftwaffe, or air force, had been engaging the Royal Air Force for a few months, but without much success. Hitler changed his strategy: rather than focusing on military targets, he set out to crush the morale of the British people through relentless attacks on its major cities.
The first wave of bombers — 348 in all — hit London at around 4:00 in the afternoon. The Luftwaffe primarily targeted London’s docks on this first attack, but many bombs fell in civilian areas as well. Four hundred and thirty people died, and 1,600 were seriously injured. The fires that had started as a result of the first wave of attacks served as beacons for a second wave that hit after dark and lasted until 4:30 the next morning. But Hitler’s attempt to crush the British spirit had the opposite effect. Winston Churchill said: “[Hitler] has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe.”
Journalist Ernie Pyle reported from London during the Blitz. He wrote: “It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire. […] The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there gradually took shape — so faintly at first that we weren’t sure we saw correctly — the gigantic dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“St. Paul’s was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions — growing slowly clearer and clearer, the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield.”
The attacks of September 7 were only the beginning. The Blitz continued for 76 consecutive nights, with the exception of a single night of bad weather. Bombs fell on London, Liverpool, Manchester, and several other cities in England and Wales. All told, some 43,000 British civilians died by the time Hitler called off the Blitz in May 1941, and more than a million homes were damaged or destroyed. The Blitz cost the Germans most of their air force, however: they lost most of their airmen and hundreds of planes.
Imagine having a leader like Churchill in a crisis, who could rally the American people to stand together for a common purpose.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Imagine, indeed. I just turned off Trump’s so-called “press conference,” which is really a mere delivery system for Republican-Trumpism talking points. The real press should collectively walk out and take their cameras with them. CBK
yes, just imagine this were today…
I like Garrison Keillor–a lot–but he is no historian (not that I am either, but I try). Churchill is attributed with the quote, “History is written by the victors.” Thanks to the victory of the allies, he was able to white-wash much of his own history, indeed to rewrite it. He was a man who bungled virtually every major issue he touched. He was opposed to women’s suffrage, using the excuse of supporting it only if a majority of males voted in favor of the issue, thus he could eventually claim to be on both sides of the issue, whichever served him best. He opposed democracy in India and South Africa. He opposes “socialist” issues like unemployment insurance, an 8 hour workday, he was the key figure who ordered the death of more than 250,000 on each side in the futile WWI Battle of Gallipolli, he convinced the allies to join (including 5,000 Americans, as documented in the book The Polar Bear Expedition), under British leadership, an ill-fated invasion of Bolshevik Russia just prior to the WWI armistice that lasted well into 1919–in the dead of a Russian winter, no less! He was effusive in his praise of Mussolini and Hitler when each came into power. He was thought to be anti-Semitic and not unduly concerned by indisputable reports of Jewish persecution in Germany in the 30s. When Chamberlain appointed him as head of the admiralty following Germany’s invasion of Poland on Sept 1, 1939, Churchill undermined the governments policy at every step to gain power for himself. He initiated the Phoney War, which undermined French defenses, tried to preemptively take Norway, which led to the Nazi invasion and subjugation of Denmark and Norway, and the threatened Germany without having the military means to back up his taunting.
I too unquestioningly accepted the history of the Blitz as it had been popularly told. Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke made me understand that it’s real history, like everything in history is not so simple and clear cut. Everything I’ve read since backs it up. Baker is also not an academic historian, but he does know how to present history. Human Smoke is one of the most interesting books I’ve read. Baker doesn’t write, as such. He compiles a chronological collage of writings from newspapers, diaries, and other contemporaneous stories about events leading up to WWII and lets it speak for itself. The first entry is from 1892 about Alfred Nobel at the World Peace Conference, the last is from the last day of 1941. It is, inarguably, from a pacifist’s perspective and provides some disquieting facts that don’t fit into a good guy-bad guy narrative, which the sanitized history of the Blitz inarguably is.
He quotes author John Gunther from 1940 in a telling remark about Churchill, “He is the only top rank cabinet officer or leader on either side during the last war who survives to hold important office today.” He didn’t learn much, apparently, other than a love of violence and war. After the German invasion of Poland, Chamberlain adopted a policy that forbade the bombing of German civilians. His Admiralty Lord, Churchill, opined on about why Germany had not bombed England on January 27, 1940, “Is it that they are saving up some orgy of frightfulness which will soon come upon us?” concluding, “Ought we, instead of demonstrating the power of our Air Force by dropping leaflets all over Germany, to have dropped bombs?” The first bombing was indeed a German bombing of British territory:
Churchill now had his excuse to escalate, it was only a matter of maneuvering Chamberlain out of office and taking it himself. The Phoney War, orchestrated by Churchill, turned out to be a disaster. “‘Norway was Winston’s adventure, and poor Neville blamed for it,’ wrote Chips Cannon in his diary.”
Churchill had his chance to escalate in the second day of his prime ministership on May 11, 1940.
I don’t cite these examples to be judgmental, indeed, I would have argued, I hope, for a more aggressive military policy against military targets. But Churchill knew what he was doing, it was part of his plan to widen the war, get more materiel support from the U.S., if not full engagement with troops. Under his orders, Britain continued to engage in selective bombing or German civilian targets until the German army countered with the full force of the Blitz after more than four months of Churchill’s intentional policy to escalate the war.
Churchill was no hero. He was a cynical opportunist who was vilified in private by his own commanders, one who noted in his diary, “He is so like a child in many ways. He tires of a thing, and then wants to hear no more of it. It is most extraordinary how mercurial he is.” He is closer to Boris Johnson with a precocious intellect than an Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson, each of whom personally felt every death and tragedy on both sides of the conflicts in which they were engaged. For Churchill they were pawns to feed power in a desperate–and ultimately successful–effort to obscure his lifetime of failure that cost millions of people their lives.
Greg, I was commemorating the launch of the Blitz, not making judgments about history. Whether or not you like Churchill, his eloquence united the British people and encouraged them to stand strong against the Nazis.
Of course, the most endlessly futile debate is one of historical “what ifs.” And we could easily go down that rabbit hole on this subject and never find common ground. My main point is that Keillor’s observation: “The German Luftwaffe, or air force, had been engaging the Royal Air Force for a few months, but without much success. Hitler changed his strategy: rather than focusing on military targets, he set out to crush the morale of the British people through relentless attacks on its major cities.” is factually incorrect; rose-colored propaganda of hindsight at best. And what you term to be eloquence is, in my opinion, is a cynical illusion and strategy to sidestep the hard work of diplomacy and a committed policy of containment. Was, for example, the Cold War policy of containment, which led to decades of repression behind the Iron Curtain, more or less desirable than a cataclysmic war that would have been shorter in years and more costly in lives? How different might world history have been if the U.S. engaged in war with Japan following Pearl Harbor and a containment strategy rather than war in Europe? I do not profess to know the answer. But it is an important question to consider before beatifying Churchill, a mass murderer whose crimes were obscured only because Hitler was far more successful in his murderous policies which, in some or large part was imposed on history by Churchill.
So you think the British should have negotiated “peace in our time” with Hitler and allowed the Nazis to control all of Europe? Of course, every Jew in Europe would have gone to the gas chambers, as well as dissidents, socialists, and homosexuals. I must say I don’t agree. Hitler was a homocidal maniac. And yes, I think Churchill was amazingly eloquent.
Nope, not at all, not even close, and don’t impose that on me. In fact, if you will check history, General Ludwig Beck was ready to lead a coup against Hitler in 1938 and was stymied by Chamberlain’s “Peace in our Time” proclamation. It delayed the coup attempt by 6 years and still proved to be futile. If you will read history, you will know that Eichmann was tasked to enable the emigration of Jews out of Europe, but the Allies were the biggest obstacle to that policy. Britain would not allow them in, the U.S. would not allow them in (the sage of the ship St. Louis, which was turned away at Miami and subsequently led to most on the ship being exterminated, the Arab states, and even South American states would not allow it. The Wannsee Conference, indeed, was organized to create a final solution when the policy of force emigration was deemed to be impossible.
The point is, it is reasonable to assume that the policy of the Final Solution was created because failure of forced emigration led to the ideological, practical response of exterminating “undesirables.” A policy of containment would have continued a policy of repression, but not necessarily of elimination. Or, likely more accurate, would have significantly slowed down elimination while accelerating repression. And, using the logic of containment, over time that repression would have led to a change in domestic views. The Cold War, for example, lasted about 40 years. Would the repression of “undesirables” over that period have been more or less palatable than the death machinery of slightly more than four years? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that no one asks the question.
Yes, Hitler was a homicidal maniac. Churchill admired him from 1933 to 1937 or 38, certainly through the 1936 Olympics, when there was no question about Hitler’s motives. Does that make him a homicidal maniac as well? Churchill’s pre-WWII policies led to a minimum of 1 million needless, arbitrary deaths. His acceleration of hostilities in the first year of his prime ministership willingly sacrificed tens if not hundreds of thousands of his own civilians in order to bring the U.S into the war on his nation’s side. Again, I refer you to Churchill’s dictum, “History is written by the victors.” How different might history’s verdict have been had he not been a victor? How different might the verdict of any war been? What, for example, would history’s verdict be on Abraham Lincoln had the so-called confederacy won or imposed a stalemate? I point these out not to be argumentative with you, but to consider the complexity of history and it’s verdicts. To bring us back where we started, the verdict on the Blitz is not as clear cut and simple as many would want us to believe. It has too much of a “rocket’s red glare” mythology to it.
You lost me with all your counterfactuals.
What if Hitler had never been born?
GregB I wasn’t going to say anything; but after this last “blitz” about Churchill, Hitler, and WWII, I have to say this: though I appreciate anyone’s actual knowledge of “what happened” in history, you do your own knowledge a disservice by offering such severe abstractions from it, followed by a raft of “what if” fantasies, and then assigning blame according to them. I know you can present a balanced interpretation . . . I’ve seen you do it here. CBK
saga of the St. Louis
I am well aware of the St. Louis tragedy
Germany declared war on the US a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The blame belongs on Hitler.
This is what is so frustrating about this medium and especially one that claims to be “A site to discuss better education for all.” There is no denying that the anniversary of the Blitz was yesterday. There is no denying Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor. These are facts. But they way they are presented in this “discussion” is simplistic and the world is complex, chaotic and by no means absolute. A history teacher who devolves lessons into absolutes of good and evil, who avoids thorny issues that don’t fit into a preconceived narrative, who does not ask his or her class to ponder “what ifs” and compare them to “what happened” is a drone, not a teacher. I am not arguing that Hitler was not evil, that war may have been inevitable, nor that there are some theoretical absolutes–human rights, freedoms of religion, speech and assembly–which are rarely realized in the real world. It is not a matter, in this case, a real teacher does not engage in the discussion of “liking” Churchill or not. A real teacher points out, as much as is possible, the intricacies behind actions, which never, regardless of the individual or historical circumstances, are tidy or logical. A real teacher would point out the circumstances of time and place–the events of the 30s help inform but do not explain the events of the WWII. A real teacher would not say it was Hitler’s fault without first explaining the Versailles Treaty, the world wide Great Depression, Weimar, the America First movement, the changing views of Churchill, etc, etc. etc. We now have an occupant of the White House and a cult that props him up because the world to them is not in any way complex. Myths, sanitized and contrived history is the basis of their theological ideology. I am not arguing above that I am correct and you are not. I am arguing that confronting complexity and uncomfortable facts prepares our next generation to better confront their emerging world of complexity and uncomfortable facts–there are no simple or simplistic answers and claiming there were in past history does a disservice to them and us.
I don’t disagree with what you say about the complexity of history, the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, the Suffering of the German people after the War, the fascism in the US…but the only purpose of a very short entry was to acknowledge the anniversary of the Blitz. I did not offer a history lesson, just noted a fact that you do not deny.
Eloquence is overrated , in my opinion. Far better to have someone who bluntly and ineloquently tells you the truth, which most of our presidents (not just the current one) are simply incapable of doing.
Obama was/is quite eloquent and used it to justify attacking Libya and 16 year old American citizens in Yemen. For what purpose, I don’t think most of us will ever know. And those who do know will certainly never admit the real reason because any thinking person would not buy it.
Mellow hence
Jelloquence
Is eloquence
Without an ounce of substance
Hello
Is just Jello
If “good buy” is quintessance
How about articulate? In times of national crisis, when people are frightened, its important to have national leadership who can rally people for the common good, like explaining why we should wear masks to protect others.
Some DAM You are a poet . . . and I hope realize that truth and eloquence are not necessary opposites. Though eloquence is a common tool of propaganda, it doesn’t follow that liars own it. CBK
I could teach a parrot to tell people that masks work to protect the general public, which is more than our Surgeon General (an eloquent man) initially told us.
Like I said, telling the truth is far more important.
And, unfortunately, some people have learned to use their eloquence(articulateness, or whatever you want to call it) to actually hide the truth.
Of course I realize they are not opposites, but my point was that ineloquent truthtelling is preferable to eloquent lying hands down and far too often, people simply use their eloquence to bamboozle people.
Twooth Telling
Give me a tweeter
Who tells the truth
Over a leader
Who won’t, foresooth
Unfortunately, in the current case we have neither.
We agree. Truth matters most. Even better when the leader can persuade people to follow. A stumbling ineloquent speaker will lose to a master dissembled like Trump when it’s time to win hearts and minds.
George Lakoffinceexplained to me that winning hearts matters more than winning minds. Conservatives aim for a great story, even if false. Liberals p, he said, rely on facts and reason, but that’s not enough to persuade. Advertisers know this.
diane Shame on us: “Liberals” (Lakoff said) “rely on facts and reason, but that’s not enough to persuade. Advertisers know this.” CBK
Please forgive typos and poor proofreading of Spellcheck errors. Sylt, not Salt. Never mind the commas, missing and imposed. Oy! My mythical kingdom for a proofreader who had the discipline to do his/her job before posting! And please forgive my OCD retentiveness on certain issues. I just can’t help myself sometimes. With few exceptions, I generally agree on the big picture with most folks here. There are just niggling details that, for some reason, try as I might, I can’t let go. You know, like the character Monk (as played so wonderfully by Tony Shaloub.)
My friend, Ralph was 9 growing up in London. He recalls waking to see the ground covered in a material sort of like tin foil the fighters would eject to distort radar. Older boys would be placed on scaffolds to spot incoming aircraft. from these perches, they would sound alarms and people would go underground to shelters in various places. He was too young to realize how horrific it was.