The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

179. Gallup, The Gallup International Polls, 43. A second poll on war problems taken in August 1941 had a figure of 9 per cent for bombing, but 17 per cent for the Second Front.

180. TNA, INF 1/254, Home Morale Committee, ‘First Interim Report, 22 May 1940’, 2; Harold Nicolson to Duff Cooper (Minister of Information), 5 June 1940, ‘Report of Home Morale Policy Committee’, 2.

181. TNA, INF 1/849, Policy Committee minutes, 8 July 1940, 23 July 1940; INF 1/264, Morale: Summary of Daily Reports, 20 July 1940.

182. TNA, HO 186/886, H. Rhodes (MoI) to S. Leslie (MHS), 29 Nov 1940; managing director, Liverpool Post and Echo, to Morrison, 4 Dec 1940; draft memorandum, ‘Publication of Casualties’; Duff Cooper to Morrison, 7 Jan 1941.

183. TNA, HO 186/886, Churchill to Morrison, 7 Mar 1941.

184. Cowles, Looking for Trouble, 445.

185. Brittain, England’s Hour, 141–2.

186. TNA, MEPO 2/6335, Croydon MP Station, ‘Air Raid – Notes’, 21 Aug 1940; Tooting MP Station, Aug 1940; East Ham MP Station, ‘Air Raid Warning’, 24 June 1940. On the class dimension of reaction to the raids see Süss, Tod aus der Luft, 332–3.

187. TNA, INF/264, Daily Morale Summary, 17 June 1940; INF/292 Pt 1, Weekly Home Intelligence Report, 30 Sept–9 Oct, 1; 4–11 Nov, 2.

188. TNA, HO 186/608, MHS memorandum, ‘Lessons of Intensive Air Attack: Working of ARP Services’ [n.d. but Jan 1941], 14; Gen. Gordon Finlayson, C-in-C Western Command to all Regional Commissioners, ‘Notes for Guidance of all Area Commands’, 26 Nov 1940.

189. TNA, INF 6/328, London Can Take It!, 14 Oct 1940; MoI, London Can Take It!, film commentary.

190. Cinema figures from UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/59/36, ‘Cinema Attendances’, 9 Aug 1945. Details on the film from Mark Connelly, We Can Take It! Britain and the Memory of the Second World War (Harlow: 2004),132–3.

191. TNA, HO 186/1220, MoI Publications Division to S. C. Leslie (author of the booklet), 12 Jan 1943; Robert Fraser (MoI) to Leslie, 29 Jan 1943.

192. Cowles, Looking for Trouble, 446.

193. TNA, INF/174a, Director of Broadcasting Division, MoI, to Controller-General, BBC, 26 Feb 1941; Mary Adams (Home Intelligence) to Kenneth Clark, 28 Feb 1941, encl. ‘Script of Broadcast on Swansea Blitz’; ‘A Cardiffian Woman’ to Churchill, 5 Mar 1941.

194. Edward Stebbing, Diary of a Decade, 1939–1950 (Lewes: Book Guild, 1998), 68, 80.

195. TNA, INF 1/292, Weekly Home Intelligence Report, 30 Sept–9 Oct, 1; Report, 18–24 Dec, 1; INF 1/849, Policy Committee minutes, 3 Apr 1941, 1; INF 1/249, Home Planning Committee, minutes 26 Dec, 30 Dec 1940.

196. Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: 1991); Rose, Which People’s War; and more controversially Samuel Hylton, Britain’s Darkest Hour: The Hidden History of the Blitz (Stroud: 2001).

197. James Doherty, Post 381: The Memoirs of a Belfast Air Raid Warden (Belfast: 1989), 92.

198. Firebrace, ‘Britain’s Wartime Fire Service’, 26.

199. Barbara Nixon, Raiders Overhead: A Diary of the London Blitz (London: 1980), 25–7.

200. TNA, INF 1/292 Pt I, Weekly Morale Report, 30 Sept–9 Oct, 1; AIR 40/288, Air Intelligence, ‘The Blitz’, 14 Aug 1941, App A, ‘Morale’, 2.

201. Jesse, While London Burns, 81–2.

202. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/57/5, Hull Survey, Table IIb. Fear as an expression of anticipatory silence followed by terrifying sound is explored in Peter Adey, ‘Holding Still: The Private Life of an Air Raid’, M/C Journal, 12 (2009), 3–5.

203. Royal Society, London, Blackett papers, PB/4/4, ‘Notes on effects of bombing on civilian population’, 15 Aug 1941; ‘confusion, depression and possible loss of morale’, in TNA, HO 186/608, ‘Notes for the Guidance of Area Commands’, 26 Nov 1940; AIR 40/288, Air Intelligence, ‘The Blitz’, 3, ‘damage beyond a certain point produces depression and defeatism’.

204. Nigel Nicolson (ed), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters 1939–1945 (London: 1967), 126, entry for 8 Nov 1940.

205. A Warden (anon.), From Dusk to Dawn (London: 1941), 71–2.

206. TNA, HO 186/608, Midlands Regional Commissioner to MHS, 5 Dec 1940; TWA, MB-WB/27/1, Whitley and Monkseaton Urban District Council, ‘After the Raid’, 28 Jan 1942, 6.

207. Cited in Robert Hewison, Under Siege: Literary Life in London 1939–1945 (London: 1977), 40.

208. A Warden (anon.), From Dusk to Dawn, 23; Sara Wasson, Urban Gothic of the Second World War: Dark London (Basingstoke: 2010), 145.