THE BLITZ

To Germans, blitzkrieg means " lightning war", but for Britain the 'Blitz" means eight long, slow months of devastating air raids.

THE FIRST COUNTRY TO EXPERIENCE BLITZKRIEG WAS POLAND when the German navy and air force began bombarding that country's major cities and ports and the swift, mobile armored units of the German army swept across the border. Compared with the trenches of World War 1, " lightning war" was an apt term for this new form of warfare. In Britain the RAF prevented the process of blitzkrieg from progressing beyond the stage of aerial bombardment, and " lightning war" turned into a slow war of attrition as the Luftwaffe attempted to bomb the country into submission.

THE BLITZ ON LONDON

Air raids on London began on "Black Saturday," September 7, 1940, and continued every night for more than two month with the exception of November 2, when bad weather grounded the Luftwaffe. However, the Blitz on London did not have the desired effect. It was a tactical error it that it allowed the RAF to regroup and ultimately win the Battle of Britain, and it was a psychological error in that did not break the morale of Londoners, but instead made them more defiant and more supportive of prime Minister Winston Churchill's dogged determination to fight on at all costs.

Churchill inspects Bomb
damage to House of Commons

London during the Blitz (1941)

Bomb Damage in London December 1940

THE BLITZ ON BRITAIN

The Blitz was soon extended to most of Britain. When it became clear the capital would not be bombed into submission, the Luftwaffe began systematically bombing other industrial cities important to the war effort, as well as continuing intermittent raids on London. 

After the almost total destruction of Coventry on November 14, 1940, the Germans coined a new verb: Coventrisieren,   "to annihilate or raze to the ground." Over the coming months many other cities would be Coventrized, including Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Southampton. Some 42,000 people were killed and countless homes and historic buildings destroyed in the eight months of the Blitz, but Britain did not buckle, and reprieve eventually came with Hitler's decision to turn instead on his former ally, the USSR