1.2 Context of London and WW2, 1939-45 PDF

## PART 2: Warfare and British Society, c.1250-present ### 1.2 The Context of London and the Second World War, 1939-45 Let's begin by exploring the location - London during the Second World War **A QUICK HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR** 1. Read through the timeline on pages 120-21 once. * P...

## PART 2: Warfare and British Society, c.1250-present ### 1.2 The Context of London and the Second World War, 1939-45 Let's begin by exploring the location - London during the Second World War **A QUICK HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR** 1. Read through the timeline on pages 120-21 once. * Produce a living graph of the war like the one opposite to record the hopes and fears of Britons during the war. * Then focus in on Londoners in particular and make a living graph for them. When would their hopes have peaked? When would they have felt most scared? 2. Discuss with a friend and see if you can divide the Second World War into different phases, or times when things seemed to be going better or worse. 3. Why might the bombing in 1940 stand out as being so terrible in Eileen Duggan's memory? | Time | Hopeful | Fearful | |---|---|---| | 1938 | | Germany invades the Sudetenland | | 1938 | | | | 1939 | | | | 1940 | | | | 1941 | | | | 1942 | | | | 1943 | | | | 1944 | | | | 1945 | | | **1938** German forces marched into Austria, then threatened the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. In London gas masks were given out to the population and mock gas attacks were carried out. Trenches were dug in parks and squares, to give some shelter in the case of air raids. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain travelled to Munich to meet Hitler. He agreed to Germany's take-over of the Sudetenland. **September 1939-April 1940** The long period of Phoney War. For the eight months immediately after Britain and France entered the war, there were no major military land operations on the Western Front. Germany then quickly conquered Norway, Belgium, Holland and France. They used new tactics of armoured units moving quickly with air support, called Blitzkrieg or lightning-war. **Summer-Autumn 1940** Germany planned a sea-borne invasion of Britain but first tried to destroy Britain's air defences. The Battle of Britain was fought by British fighter planes against German bombers and fighters to stop this destruction. **Autumn-Winter 1940** As the weather changed, the window for a sea invasion closed and German tactics shifted to bombing towns and cities, a campaign which became known as the Blitz. Councils, Fire Authorities and the ARP wardens were close to being overwhelmed. Shelters were crowded, insanitary and often unsafe. **Spring 1941** A lull in the bombing in London ended on 10 May 1941 when the largest raid of the war took place. Almost 1500 people died, and 11,000 homes were destroyed. **Summer 1941** There were a few small raids in June and July, but when Germany attacked Russia in June 1941 it became clear that her attention had shifted away from Britain. **Autumn-Winter 1941** The Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, and then took over American and British territory in Asia. Food shortage eased as supplies from America arrived. Diaries suggest that people in London turned their attention to the wider war, rather than just their own circumstances. **Spring 1942** Bad news continued. Defeats in North Africa and across Asia led to low morale, and a further shortage of material and food such as tin, rice, spices and rubber. ARP wardens and firefighters continued to train and to carry out mock gas attacks and bombings, but only scattered attacks occurred. **Autumn-Winter 1942** There was news of victories in North Africa, then celebrations when the German army was defeated at El Alamein in Egypt. **1943** Sporadic small air raids continued. Enemy forces were slowly pushed back after a series of victories in North Africa, Russia and the Pacific. In the summer blackout restrictions were relaxed - lights in trains stayed on, as did traffic lights, and people were allowed to carry torches. **Spring 1944** By March the threat of air attack vanished as German airbases and V-weapon launch sites in Northern France were captured. **Summer 1944** Smaller-scale air attacks which Londoners called ‘Little Blitz’ faded as the Luftwaffe losses mounted up. The D-Day landings in June and the fall of Rome to American troops made Londoners fear a large revenge attack. V1 and V2 ‘pilotless’ weapons began falling in September 1944. **Spring 1945** On 8 May 1945 Germany surrendered. Crowds flocked to central landmarks like Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace to celebrate VE Day. VJ (Victory over Japan) followed in August. ### **WHY WASN'T LONDON A TARGET BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1940?** The long Phoney War ended with the attacks on Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940. For the rest of the summer of 1940 German fighters and bombers attacked RAF ground bases and aircraft. It wasn't until September that the first targeted raids on London took place. Why did the Luftwaffe take so long to target London? The answer isn't clear, but there are two possible reasons: * Firstly, it seems that German military planners did not think that a 'knock out blow' to a capital city could quickly defeat a country. Their Blitzkrieg tactics actually meant using bombers as support for infantry and mechanised armies as they took enemy territory. Therefore, they did not see any military reason to target large cities unless these were also under attack from their infantry. * Secondly, the historian George Quester has also suggested that both sides wanted to avoid bombing cities in the early days of the war as they were afraid of 'retaliation bombing' that would damage their own population and morale. Quester argues that Hitler only ordered attacks on London after Churchill ordered an attack on Berlin on 25 August to divert the Luftwaffe's attention from its attacks on British airfields and radar stations. If this was the case, it was effective. Three weeks after the British attack on Berlin, the Blitz started. ### The Historic Environment- London During the Second World War We need to know about the important places that made London a target, the places where the bombs usually fell, as well as the names of the boroughs that made up London. We should also look out for the parks and buildings where shelters and deep shelters were built, and the underground rail stations where thousands sheltered from the bombing raids. #### **Key** 1. County Hall 2. Houses of Parliament 3. Buckingham Palace 4. Waterloo Station 5. Tower of London 6. Whitehall 7. St Katharine Docks 8. Wapping 9. Isle of Dogs 10. Downing Street 11. St Paul's Cathedral 12. Victoria and Albert Docks 13. Battersea Power Station #### London and Central London in 1939 (Since 1945, the boundaries and names of some of these boroughs have changed) | Borough | Borough | Borough | Borough | Borough | |---|---|---|---|---| | 1. Pall Mall | 2. The Mall | 3. Vauxhall Bridge Road | 4. Waterloo Road | 5. Blackfriars Bridge | | 6. London Bridge | 7. Tower Bridge Road | 8. The Thames | 9. Isle of Dogs | 10. Wapping | | 11. St Paul's Cathedral | 12. Victoria and Albert Docks | 13. Battersea Power Station | | | #### Recording Your Knowledge about the Different Parts of London during the Second World War Make a Knowledge Organiser to record the different reasons why each part of London was a target. Use a table like the one below. Write in any evidence that suggests each reason was important in those areas being targeted. | Place | Reason 1: To damage London's economy | Reason 2: To damage the Population's morale | Reason 3: To damage the Government | Reason 4: To damage Britain's military | |---|---|---|---|---| | The East End | | | | | | Westminster | | | | | | The City of London | | | | | | The Suburbs | | | | | #### The East End The East End (see the map on page 122) is the area on the north of the River Thames, to the east of the Tower of London, which is marked on the map. In 1939, it was a mixed area of dense housing, often in terraces or tenement flats; cinemas; theatres; pubs; shops; gas works; warehouses and factories. However, the most important targets were the docks, where food, raw materials and weaponry were loaded and unloaded. Wapping, where the Dead End Kids lived, was the riverside part of the borough of Stepney, which was one of the biggest boroughs of the East End, and is on a slight curving bend of the river just to the west of the famous loop which makes up the Isle of Dogs. The East End was the first part of London hit, during a mis-targeted raid in August 1940, and was then actively targeted during the first Blitz in 1940-41. The East End was a focus of the attacks throughout the Blitz of the winter of 1940-41, and into the spring of 1941 because of the port of London, and because of its eastern position nearer the German air bases in northern France. In the ‘Little Blitz’ of January to April 1944, and the V1 and V2 rocket attacks of summer 1944 into the spring of 1945, the East End of London was hit badly again. Sources A and B are two peoples’ recollections of the Blitz in the East End. **Source A** **Gerry Michaels remembering how he and his family would shelter in a warehouse in Tilbury in Stepney during the raids, from the archive of the Museum of London** At eight years of age, I, with my sister who was twelve, would gradually work our way to the front so that when the doors opened in we would rush to claim our bed spaces by spreading our blankets if possible against the wall in one of the empty loading bays. People who came late would have to spend the night sleeping on the rolls of unyielding newsprint or stacks of boxes of margarine. The latter wasn’t so bad as gradually during the night the heat of their bodies would seep through the cartons softening the margarine which would gradually assume the shape of their bodies. **Source B** **Len Jones an East End resident, member of the Home Guard, and survivor of the war, from John Marriot’s book Beyond the Tower: A History of East London, published in 2011** I went out to see how our house was, and when I got there the front door was lying back, and the glass of the windows had fallen in, and I could see the house had virtually disappeared. Inside, everything was blown to pieces, you could see it all by the red glow reflecting from the fires that were raging outside. Then I looked out the back and suddenly I realised that where my father’s shed and workshop used to be was just a pile of rubble, bricks. Then I saw two bodies, two heads sticking up and I recognised one head in particular: it was a Chinese man, Mr Say. He had one eye closed , and then I began to realize that he was dead. #### **The East End** 1. What does Source A tell us about: * Why this part of London was a target? * What conditions were like in the shelters? 2. What does Source B tell us about the effects of the first attacks on ordinary Londoners? #### Westminster Westminster is home to Buckingham Palace, which was the residence of King George VI. The centre of national government was also at Whitehall, by the river in Westminster, and therefore the place where the war effort was organised. Downing Street, where the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer still work, is also in this area, and the Palace of Westminster nearby is where the Houses of Parliament sat during the war. Westminster wasn’t directly targeted in the first few days of the Blitz. Buckingham Palace was hit on 13 September, but it wasn’t until May 1941 that this part of London was heavily hit. On 10 May 1941, the last of the large raids of the Blitz, the House of Common’s chamber was destroyed by a fire started by an incendiary bomb on the roof of the Palace of Westminster. #### The City The City of London is the area to the east of Westminster, and covers the area that was the original walled Roman city. It is the financial centre of England, and contains important buildings such as the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange and important rail and telephone links, such as the Faraday Building which contained London’s telephone exchange. You couldn't just dial a phone number in the 1940s; you had to talk to an operator to connect you with the person you needed to talk to, so this building was vital for communications. During the war these institutions kept the economy working, and the Bank raised money through war bonds to enable the Government to spend money on the war effort. The City was the target of intensive bombing on 29 December 1940. The fires that threatened St Paul's Cathedral in the centre of the City became known as the Second Great Fire of London. St Paul's was saved, but large areas of the City were destroyed as a result of the 1500 fires started by more than 100,000 incendiary bombs. #### Suburban London Most of London’s population lived in the suburbs surrounding the centre, in places that were technically part of Essex, Kent, Middlesex or Surrey. Some of these places were towns in their own right, such as Croydon. Many suburbs had been built since the early twentieth century, so there were regulations which set out minimum sizes for each house, and houses often had good-sized gardens with room for Anderson Shelters (see page 129). However, we should not assume that all these places were the same or had the same experiences during the war. Those to the east such as Croydon, Greenwich, Barking and Bromley seem to have suffered a larger tonnage of bombs than those to the west of London. When we take into account the size of each borough, the central and eastern boroughs definitely suffered the greater density of bombs. Those suburbs to the west were not on the flight path from German bases in northern France, and tended to have fewer bombs dropped on them, though even some of these western boroughs did see terrible bombings and casualties. ### London as a Target 1. What made the East End a particular target throughout the different bombing campaigns? 2. Explain why the Luftwaffe targeted: * Westminster * The City * The suburbs 3. Explain why the Dead End Kids' experiences during the war might have been different from those of many children living in the suburbs. 4. Read the timeline on pages 120-21, and the description of the different parts of London again, and make a list of the different kinds of weapons that the Luftwaffe used. ## Using Online Sources of Data in Your Enquiry I wanted to know which parts of London were hardest hit. I used a website created by the University of Plymouth, www.bombsight.org, which gives an estimated total for the number of bombs dropped in each borough of London between October 1940 and June 1941. Their data is collected from the reports made by the London Fire Brigade during the Blitz. I decided to take the totals for each borough and place them in a spreadsheet, so that I could compare them by the number of high explosive bombs dropped. I then added a column for the area of each borough, and used a formula to calculate the bombs per square mile. When I’d done this I started to think that each part of London would have had a very different population density - the number of people living per square mile. Using data from the Greater London Authority’s ‘London Datastore’, at http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/population-change-1939-2015, I was able to add another ‘population’ column and work out, with another formula, the number of bombs that had fallen in each area for each 1000 people living there. The differences are remarkable, even as we remember that these are estimates. The data was collected using modern boroughs, which were re-organised after the war. The old borough of Stepney, where the Dead End Kids worked, is now part of Tower Hamlets. | Worst Affected Area by Number of Bombs Dropped | Borough | High-Explosive Bombs Dropped | Borough | Bombs per Square Mile | Borough | Bombs per Resident | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | 1. Bromley | 1. City | 2,228 | 1. City | 242 | 1. City | 30 | | 2. Southwark | 2. Westminster | 1,651 | 2. Westminster | 173 | 2. Bromley | 9 | | 3. Westminster | 3. Tower Hamlets | 1,436 | 3. Tower Hamlets | 165 | 3. Bexley | 7 | | 4. Greenwich | 4. Southwark | 1,396 | 4. Southwark | 148 | 4. Greenwich | 5 | | 5. Croydon | 5. Islington | 1,338 | 5. Islington | 119 | 5. Richmond-Upon-Thames | 5 | | 6. Bexley | 6. Lambeth | 1,296 | 6. Lambeth | 117 | 6. Croydon | 4 | | 7. Tower Hamlets | 7. Hackney | 1,259 | 7. Hackney | 100 | 7. Westminster | 4 | | 8. Newham | 8. Kensington and Chelsea | 1,240 | 8. Kensington and Chelsea | 100 | 8. Newham | 3 | | 9. Lambeth | 9. Camden | 1,215 | 9. Camden | 97 | 9. Southwark | 3 | Look carefully at the map on page 122 , and use a modern map of London to work out where the places in these tables are. Look at the descriptions of the different places in London (pages 123-25), and see if you can understand why these places might have been a particular target for the Luftwaffe. So the Duggans and the Dead End Kids were living right in the eye of the storm in 1940 when the bombs started falling. Not only did they live in a heavily populated area, which meant that attacks there could affect morale, the same area was filled with businesses, warehouses and ports which meant that attacks here could affect the economy and affect supplies for the military. Finally, Stepney and the East End were on the flight path from the German bases in France to the rest of London, where there were other economic, military and government targets. Explain each of the reasons why London was a target in September 1940. Use what you have read and the map below to help you. | Area | Target | |---|---| | Westminster | Government and morale | | City of London| Economy, Government, military and morale| | Suburbs | Morale and Economy | | East End | Morale, economy and military|