The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The authorities had to combine popular mobilization with a capacity to deliver what the population needed after bomb attack. The bombed populations became dependent on public authorities as the only potential source of aid in ways quite different from peacetime. Official analyses of the Blitz conducted later in 1941 suggested that the critical thing was to provide concrete, material assistance and to be able to do so rapidly after a raid. This meant the ability to provide solid information at once about where to go to find assistance, food and shelter. The initial problems in Southampton and Coventry were caused by a failure of communication. In Coventry loudspeaker vans were eventually brought in inviting the public to come and ask questions, which officials noted down: ‘where they could get a meal’; ‘where they could get coal’; ‘how they could be evacuated’; ‘how soon would the “pictures” be resumed?’; and many more questions on housing repair and food.²²¹ Instructions to Regional Commissioners after the crisis in Southampton emphasized how important it was that the situation ‘should be taken in hand at once. Speed in re-establishing effective machinery of town management is the essence.’²²² In all cases it was observed that the morale of the population depended more ‘upon material factors acutely involving their lives, than upon the ebb and flow of the events of the war’.²²³ The Regional Commissioners instructed local authorities to focus everything on ‘energetic action’ immediately after a raid to cope with welfare, food supply, communications, repair and salvage. Of all these factors food (particularly hot meals) and a secure place to sleep were the most important. The Air Ministry report on the Blitz concluded that civilians could stand up to continuous night raids if they could be sure ‘that there is a safe refuge somewhere for themselves and their families’.²²⁴ The record in the bombed areas was uneven, and took time to develop, but the capacity to feed, shelter and rehouse the bombed communities was sufficient to prevent social breakdown and to encourage reliance on the state even in the worst-affected inner-city areas.

The second factor was the capacity of ordinary people to find ways of ‘normalizing’ daily life under bombing by restoring some sense of order or devising psychological mechanisms for coping. The authorities also placed a premium on restoring ‘the wheels of Civic Government and normal life’ as quickly as possible.²²⁵ Life after bombing was for a fraction of the population far from normal, but there are numerous eyewitness accounts which suggest that establishing new routines or restoring some or all of pre-bombing habits was an essential aid to coping with disaster. ‘The better we wrest order out of potential chaos,’ wrote Vera Brittain in 1940, ‘the more effectively we counter not merely the attacking Nazis but war itself.’²²⁶ Observers were sometimes surprised to find life continuing much as usual despite the bombs. Even Clara Milburn, so shocked by the major raid on Coventry, drove into the city a few weeks later to buy a new car battery and found the car dealer open and working with broken doors and cracked walls.²²⁷ In the shelters and Rest Centres displaced families, where they could, turned a temporary billet into a space they could regard as home. A survey in south-east London in 1941 found that shelterers would pass four or five available shelters in a raid in order to get to the one they had first started to shelter in. Poorly constructed shelters were sometimes boarded up for repair, but users would tear the boarding down and re-enter a familiar space rather than change to a more comfortable shelter. Shelters could be decorated with paint provided by the council, while curtains, lampshades and pictures were common. ‘These small points,’ ran the report, ‘add up to definite aid against fear and help to keep the atmosphere normal.’²²⁸ This also explains the strong desire expressed by the temporarily homeless to return to a damaged house rather than have to live somewhere unfamiliar.