The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The Ministry of Information found that, contrary to its early predictions, ‘gloomy apprehension’ was more marked among the middle classes and least evident among workers. Police fears that the ‘poorer classes’ would stand up less well to raids was quickly exposed as an illusion. Early reports from local Metropolitan Police stations in London confirmed that the poorer areas displayed no signs of panic or alarm. ‘Public morale in these areas, which are poor class,’ ran a report from Tooting, in south London, ‘was splendid.’ Middle-class shelterers, on the other hand, were easily distinguished by their sombre aloofness from the shelter community.¹⁸⁶ It was also found once bombing had started that communities which had not been bombed were much more prone to ‘self-pity and exaggeration’ than those on the receiving end. At the height of the London bombing, morale was judged to be generally good; an opinion poll conducted in November 1940 found 80 per cent confident that Britain would win.¹⁸⁷ Local reports after raids also suggested that after the initial shock and disorientation, panic subsided. ‘The spirit of the people,’ according to guidance notes issued to local army commands in November 1940, ‘though temporarily shocked, is never lost, perhaps it slacks a little.’ A Ministry of Home Security report in January on lessons learned from ‘intensive air attacks’ concluded that civil defence had ‘stood up well to a severe test’.¹⁸⁸

The construction of the image of stoical endurance was designed to augment the public pressure to participate in civil defence work, good neighbour associations, women’s voluntary organizations, and fire-watching. The government commissioned a documentary on the Blitz with the title London Can Take It! Produced by Humphrey Jennings and Harry Watt, with an American journalist as scriptwriter and voice-over, the film was aimed at the American market, where it was distributed by Warner Brothers to 15,000 American cinemas.¹⁸⁹ The 10-minute documentary was built around the contrast between the smoke and noise of a night-time raid on the capital and the population’s calm return to work the following morning; the script described the bombed communities as ‘the greatest civilian army in the world’. When it was released in Britain in October 1940, the film was prudently retitled Britain Can Take It! and the commentary altered to show that in each British city resistance was ‘every bit as heroic’ as in London. It proved popular with cinema audiences (though by the height of the Blitz in 1940, cinema audiences in London had fallen to 46 per cent of the pre-raid level).¹⁹⁰ In late 1942 the image of a courageous civilian army defying the German Air Force was solidified in the publication of Front Line, the official account of the population under fire in 1940–41. Like the film, Front Line emphasized the contribution of ordinary people, ‘the achievement of the many’ in the face of brute force. By January 1943, 1.3 million copies had been sold.¹⁹¹ The image of British defiance and endurance was easily borrowed by the public trying to find a cognitive shape and a shared language for expressing their ordeal. The American journalist Virginia Cowles asked two young girls carrying bedding for the night to an East End shelter whether they were still in danger: ‘Every bloody night! Cor, don’t you know we’re the front line?’¹⁹²

The Ministry of Information nevertheless understood that there were limits to the campaign. ‘Taking it’ was a rallying-cry as much as a description of reality and it invited hostility from those who experienced bombing first hand. In February 1941, following heavy raids on the Welsh port of Swansea, a BBC reporter broadcast a cheerful eyewitness account of what he saw:

But there are the usual smiles; even those who have lost friends or relatives are not really depressed… I saw some elderly men and women running through the streets clutching small cases and parcels in their hands… Many of them raised their hand and gave us a cheery greeting… The attitude of everyone here is just grand.