My grandmother was a little girl in London during the blitz. One of the first things I learned about it was that at one point my great-grandfather, then a police officer, had seen a child's hand sticking out from under some rubble, and went to pull the child out - but the arm simply came away in his grip. He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards. My great-grandmother once felt the need to take her daughter aside and tell her that if there was a situation where it was a choice, she would save her husband and not her children, so my grandmother needed to be ready to fend for herself. 'Cases of neurosis' may not have been diagnosed and attributed to air raids at the time, but just by looking at my own family I'm pretty sure that's just because anybody who was up and walking was considered 'fine' and not because of a genuine lack of lasting trauma among the population.
@sweetlorikeet Definitely. Also what a horrible and traumatizing thing to say to a small child. I wonder what her thinking behind that decision was. "He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards." : yeah sudden changes in personality are either the result or illness or (when no illness is present) trauma.
My grandmother was a little girl in Hamburg when the allied bombers came. She doesn't really tell much about it, as it is a hurtful memory. I hope children never have to experience something like this again.
both of my grandfathers, who were in Uganda, fought for the British in the first and second world Wars. When they came back - and from what I can glean (I never met them myself, but I’ve only heard stories) one of them suffered serious, PTSD, and the other took an injury to his leg, and walked with a walking stick for the rest of his life. Thank you for mentioning the efforts of those from across the empire, especially Africa and the subcontinent as they often get forgotten.
my great grandfather had poor eyesight (something we have all since inherited, thanks grandpa) so he wasn’t drafted into the war. however, he was allowed to be a firefighter during the war. the blitz caused him to see horrors he’d never seen before. my great grandmother and their daughter (my great aunt) were evacuated, but he stayed and saw multiple people who’d refused to leave their houses crushed from bombs in their homes, often trapped in their bedrooms. children, babies, parents all dead. it was extremely harrowing for him. very occasionally he would find live children with deceased parents and he would always choose to adopt them. despite the horrors he had seen, he remained just as kind and gentle as he had always been. when my grandpa was born in 1945, he grew up around multiple adopted siblings which he is still close to. one of them named lillian i met, and she was still afraid of loud noises even in her old age before she passed. balloons terrified her. my great grandfather’s father was a jewish immigrant from lithuania who had escaped during the pogroms so they grew up in abject poverty. after the war finished he became a barber and used to cut my great grandma’s hair- she still wore finger waves into the 1960s because that was the only style he knew how to do on women lol. im very proud of him and to be his descendent.
When I was still working in law enforcement I worked in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina and the people lost everything barely had anything to start with. I still go to therapy from what I saw and had to do. I'm much happier being a Historian now.
@@mistersir3020 "more nuanced". Comparative. Mainstream perception of events will always be simplified and skewed. Doesn't mean you can't improve it at all by offering more nuanced analysis to the mainstream public.
My mum was born in 33 in South London. Her and her sisters were evacuated a number of times but eventually stayed at home. They stopped going dow the shelters because they were so bad. They slept in one room so if a bomb hit them they would all go together.
Funnily enough my mother was born in 1933 in south east London. She had two younger brothers, they were moved to a place i spent 13 years in outside London to the south, and returned home. They had an anderson shelter in the bottom of their garden. Survived the war. But as she lived on what would have been a flight path to the docks, they had a fair few stray bombs and one tkme a close near miss when a German fighter flew over her school did nit touch it, and then flew over a boys school down the road and fired at the kids at play during their lunch break.
I had the same experience with tornado shelters in Oklahoma sit in there with a neighborhoods worth of crying kids no thanks I’ll take the shrieking winds and sideways rain
I'm on the autism spectrum, thankfully not non-verbal, but still enough to have great difficulty understanding the bonds in the family unit, but even through that Indiscrepancy in my brain functions, I would still choose to be with all my immediate family should we we be faced with the threat if imminent death.
My grandparents were children in the north of England during the war. My grandmother grew up on Yorkshire, and for the rest of her life she couldn't sleep during a thunderstorm because of the trauma of the bombs. She never sought help for it. PTSD was very likely more common than reported for all the reasons you gave, as well as the shame or embarrassment that you didn't have "blitz spirit", or you needed help from someone else. It's really sad to see, and I hope we continue to normalise seeking help for mental health issues.
Unreported PTSD must indeed have been common. Mild cases may still be left unreported, if it mostly does not interfere with daily life - I've seen and heard of this with the peace keepers. Some may call a peer support phone at the worst times, and that's all. And I think that there were certainly not enough therapeuts for all the cases at the time!
My grandparents were children during WWII, their stories were definitely more nuanced than the ones we were told at school. My grandma told us a story about one day she was eating lunch at school when the air raid siren went off, so she ran across the school field to the shelter with her pudding in her hand because she really wanted to eat it. There's of course the slight comedy of childhood logic and what's important. However, it also struck me as a kid because of how relatable and yet alien it was to my own life. My grandad's story is a bit darker. He was evacuated during the war and went to live with "a good Christian couple" in the country. Behind closed doors, this couple were both alcoholics and there was a lot of domestic violence. After a few months, my grandad wrote to his mum (who was apparently quite a fierce woman) to tell her what was happening. She immediately went to get him and bring him home with her, because she decided that he would be safer with the bombs than with that family. He obviously survived to become my grandad, but I can't imagine what a difficult decision my great-grandma had to make at the time. So yeah my family stories weren't all rosy and blitz spirit. I remember seeing similar things during the pandemic as well with the whole "we're all in the same boat" thing. Except we weren't - we were all in the same storm, but some were in the midst of it whilst others were barely affected and some had luxury cruise liners to weather the storm whilst others had a dinghy with a hole in it. As you say, I think it's important to tell all sides of the story, not just the parts that make us look good.
We’re all in the same storm. We’re not all in the same boat. That is a truly brilliant analogy! I will definitely remember that. Good on you for coming up with it.
@@mikaylaeager7942 I'm pretty sure I stole it from someone else and just embellished it a little! But I definitely think it's a better metaphor than "we're all in the same boat", because that's rarely true.
"some had luxury cruise liners to weather the storm whilst others had a dinghy with a hole in it" isn't that always the case. when people say everyone has problems in life, they reduce reality to outside factors, and conveniently forget the obvious advantages some (the ones using that argument mostly) have.
The only thing my grandfather would tell me about the blitz was that it became painfully boring after a while, he just wanted a nights sleep without the air raid going off I think after the lockdowns I understand him, the end of the world is slow, painful and we eventually all just get used to it. I know he was an evacuee but he would never speak about it, and it all got so awful that his mother moved the family back to Ireland.
My Nana said she spent countless hours at cat's cradle because you could play it in a dark shelter, and it was easy enough to always have a piece of yarn or string about you in case the sirens went off. One time I was watching a documentary with her, and they played the sound of a V1 'doodlebug' bomb. She went paper white and started shaking, she tried so hard to recover her equilibrium in front of me but she was tremulous for hours afterwards.
@@sweetlorikeet It is really strange and scary how history repeats itself now. I can undertstand very well how your grandma felt. I am scared of drums because they remind me of rockets exploding; my good friend finally managed to get a small bus tour after living in constantly bombed Kyiv and had a half-an-hour panic attack when she heard fireworks nearby.
My paternal Great Grandfather was a Canadian (Well, Newfoundlander at the time, NFLD hadn't joined Confederation yet) Merchant Marine (An Engineers Mate) and between 1939 and 1943 made 84 crossings and survived two sinkings by U-Boat. My maternal Great Grandmother, a British Ex-pat who emigrated to the US after the war, lived through the Blitz, and stories of how her millinery shop in the east end was looted and on another night, narrowly survived one air raid by running to a tube station, are still shared at family gatherings today, years after her death. This is one Canadian who was taught the truth about what happened in WWII, not in school, but by those that lived through it.
My grandmother was moved *to* London and was convinced the "Blitz Spirit" shit was accounts of bombings in other parts of Britain retold in London. Not that she didn't have stories of good happenings and people pulling together in London but my extended family still has bad views of Londoners to this day because of the difference in stories we heard from there compared to other places.
"Kitty Vitty" or "Qwy-dah Vie-dah"? My branch of folks from pre-Canadian Confederation Nfld were "over there" too. Unfortunately they wouldn't talk about that part of their lives. But I remember when planes were diverted to Gander on 9/11, several older family members + friends referenced Blitz spirit, which after watching this video makes me wonder even more, bc in hindsight it's clear the events brought up some buried recollections.
My mom grew up in Lancashire, and her dad helped out clearing rubble from bombed out buildings. Some days he would come home sick to his stomach, and those were the days they knew he had found the remains of someone's child. I once said to my mom that it was horrible she had to grow up like that, and she said it was just normal for us. Yes, I said, but it was horrible that this was normal. She just quietly said, yes, I guess you're right. As if she had never really considered that before.
Mom? No moms in Lancashire. My MUM, still with us at the age of 100, was born in Ashton-in-Makerfield, grew up in Bolton and has lived in Cleveleys since 1959. Her mum died following a back street abortion when my mum was six years old. Mum worked for AVRO, making Lancaster wings during the war (my dad worked for de Havilland as an engineer on Mosquitoes).
She probably had not. She never knew anything different so she probably never questioned it. It is the same with people growing up in abusive households. Unless it is pointed out to them or they go through therapy, the depth of exactly how bad things really were does not really register. It is a survival mechanism so that they can keep going. Also it is hard to compare with something you have never known.
My grandmother was bombed out of her house she got so much brick dust and fragments in her eyes she was legally blind for the rest of her life. Her husband (my grandfather) was killed at the front. She remarried a year later and the man I grow up calling Granddad fought D-day to Germany. She described the Blitz as 'terror in the dark'.
My mum was a London teen in WW2. COVID came along. No fuss, got her jabs and wore a mask. The Luftwaffe didn't get her at 16 so she wasn't going to let a virus get her at 96! As ever, no grumbles, kept calm and still carrying on.
Similar things went on here in the US. The worst thing of all that happened was the 110,000 law abiding Japanese Americans from the west coast (that were actually American citizens) that were put into internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were given sometimes just 48 hours notice that they had to take one suitcase of belongings and report to the bus station, where they were bussed to camps that had armed guards watching over them 24/7. In their absence, their properties and businesses were auctioned off by local governments. And even while in the internment camps, hundreds of Japanese men begged to be allowed to enlist in the US Army to prove their loyalty to their country. They were eventually formed into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated unit in US military history and was composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry. Eventually the US government issued a formal apology and paid some compensation to the families of those who had been imprisoned in the camps.
I've heard similar stories from the UK about Germans living here who were sent to internment camps on (I believe) the Isle of Man in case they were spies. They weren't as bad as the nazi concentration camps, but they weren't pleasant places to be either and their only crime was being German or of German descent.
The Niihau incident influenced this dark chapter in our history. Unfortunately a Japanese immigrant family in Hawaii helped a crashed Zero pilot try to escape. And boy was America racist as hell back then in 1941...
Also consider "the second happy time" for German u-boats. Where for a period of about 1 year, German submarines had free rein to destroy shipping off of the US coast and were choosy about their targets mostly only because they had limited supplies of torpedoes and sank 600+ ships (about 3.1 million tons) and cost thousands of lives of merchant sailors. Where submarines had an easy time of things sinking ships at night that were silhouetted by the lights on the coast. But the US government was loathe to even request that coastal communities darken their lights and never required it because they did not want to "offend tourism, recreation or business sectors".
Unfortunately desperate times call for desperate measures... You have to be realistic and realise that it became total war And in hindsight options took look somewhat archaic... What would you have done without the option of hindsight
@@MegaRyan123456 I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state. If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely (google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
I’m a history teacher in England but I’m Spanish and have had a very continental European history training in Spain and France. Some of these nationalistic topics are difficult for me because as some of the narrative sounds very propagandistic, but I want to be respectful as an outsider. I’m finding your videos incredibly useful to inform me for my lessons and make sense of my reads. Thanks so much for your amazing videos and all of the sources that you always add too and that allow me to do further reading on the topics. You’re amazing, thanks so much.
I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state. If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely ( google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
@@matthewclaridge8063 While I don't disagree there would be those willing to be puppets. There is plenty of evidence they were in a extreme minority. When you know (as I do) that my uncle (inlaw) who grew up in London during the Blitz (he was 8) in the East end was taught by his father (along with all of his siblings) how to use hand grenades. Along with all the other kids in all the neighbouring houses. Every house have several boxes of grenades the father's brought home from working in the munitions factories. They had no intention of surrendering to the Nazis. They were going to go down fighting as both a family and a neighbourhood. That is just once example I know of. The Blitz spirit (propaganda version) did not really exist in my opinion, but that does not mean there was not a grain of truth to it (I believe there was, just nowhere universal as the typical version as it as).
@@matthewclaridge8063 uhhhh where on earth do you get the idea that the upper class and nobility preferred a fascist state to a “true democracy”??? Please, let’s tone down some of this ‘rich man bad/autocratic/fascism’ nonsense
I've seen videos about Mosely and I also read about him. His wife was upper class and a fascist enthusiast. Yes there were some British upper class individuals who were sympathetic to fascism.
In my experience as a former history teacher, every Allied nation was extremely self-centered in their own propaganda. I've spoken with Brits who believe (as was said in the video) they "stood alone" without acknowledging Canada or Australia at all, or French people who get nearly violent at the idea that French police and city leaders worked with the Gestapo, Russians who believe they basically won the war on their own with England and America merely helping out, and one Czech I spoke to who honestly didn't realize there was a war in the Pacific, besides the atomic bombs but no context on why they were dropped. The history lessons about WWII in India, parts of South Asia, and Egypt are something else! Sometimes no mentions of the Holocaust at all, according to a friend raised in Cairo, she was taught "some say it happened, some say it didn't, but we're forced to tell you about this thing that the Jews TOTALLY deserved." Yikes! A friend in India said Hitler is seen as merely a "political idealist" and some even view him as a failed savior because he had promised to free the people from British rule. As an American, I know for a fact that our propaganda was wildly inaccurate, yet it was published in history books, taught to 4 generations, and trying to deconstruct the lies in order to teach properly has been a headache.
As a Canadian I think they say Britain fought alone partly because they were the only great power fighting Germany and because although Canada and Australia (and others) were fighting, we were dominions at that time, and therefore part of the British empire, therefore they say alone but we are included there. Interestingly in Canada, our part in WW2 is somewhat minimized, for us the first world war is considered more important but we focus mostly on how horrific it was rather than how heroic we were. Recently i came across “new” research that in our important war Canada committed quite a lot of war crimes, something i had never contemplated before.
Comparing the modern propaganda in schoolbook versions of history would be really interesting Growing up in the United States, my classrooms never taught World War II. We always studied the same old US history and never reached anything as recent as that
Honestly I'm almost afraid to dig into the history of my country (Poland) because my history teacher already painted a pretty grayish picture of the war. Basically there was no "good" or "bad" side (difficult to see it differently when you're stuck between two authoritarian regimes), there were only victims and victimizers. And sometimes, in certain circumastances, the lines between one group and another got blurry It doesn't help that USSR didn't care about seeking genue justice post WWII. It's inevitable that certain soldiers of Polish Underground Army commited war crimes. But which of them did it and was it in any way justified given the difficult situation? We will never know because Soviets only cared if those people followed the "right" (authoritarian) kind of communism. Many innocent people got tortured into confession, many war criminals were freed How do you even seek the historic truth in this circumastances? One man can be a hero and a war criminal at the same time. We like to be proud to be relatively one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe at that time but it means nothing when your neighbours were literal nzis
@@angelikaskoroszyn8495 hey, as some from Sweden I just want you to know that our history books (that tends to be fairly unbiased from some of my own research) paint a grim but positive view on your country, basically it boils down to this “ Despite the impossible situation of Poland the people stood proud and as far as I know (granted I can’t read Polish so I’m definitely missing some data) the amount of war crimes especially towards women and children seem to have been pretty dang low. But they do exist and are as gruesome as one would imagine.. despite that I highly recommend learning more about your country’s history, many parts of it are interesting and quite lovely.
One of your videos just got shared on Reddit. I'm happy to discover you as a result, and your speaking style and explanations are wonderful. Subscribed to this channel and Minuteknowledge too! This documentary is enlightening. The writers of history love to lath and plaster over the actual circumstances. The parallels with our current situation (minus the shoveling up of neighbours) show that people really aren't that different in their selfishness from then until now.
The education in the UK is very carefully curated parts of history that can be made to portray Brits as being victors, survivors, and defenders, never showing we have instigated wars, stole from other countries both minerals and money, and enslaved people. I'd love to see the way we teach history improved to include true accounts of events and not hide the bad stuff we have done.
@@emmarainbow9557 I'm rather ashamed of our past, but nothing like the shame of leaving school realising how carefully we were taught about success and how wonderful we are, not how we raped and pillaged our way through the world and overthrew governments to steal assets and minerals, still doing it today under the guise of fighting terrorists and people with WMD. When we do learn about these things you realise how helpless you are to do anything about it. Ask a child who the terrorists are and they might tell you it's the people who bombed their town, and if that child is the from certain parts of the world we are the terrorists. But you'll never hear this in school, just a carefully whitewashed history.
I understand that this narrative (because that is what it is) is important to you, but you have extrapolated pretty far from the original video, in order to make your point. The lesson we should be drawing from this is not the generic modern obsession with the evils of empire, or the purported rewriting of history to obscure them, but the fact that, among the instances of heroism, bravery, and communal spirit, you will always find cowardice, selfishness, and hatred, no matter how rose-tinted your history books. This is not peculiar to the British, or the Blitz, and neither is it unexpected, or even unethical, not to loudly trumpet it, either in classrooms or books, decades later. It is, rather banally, just human nature, and it happens just as much now as it did 80 years ago. People, unfortunately, have a history of behaving horribly to each other, and until we can reverse millions of years of evolution, they will continue to do so.
Almost every nation was done the same or worse. Britain ended slavery. We fostered the age of industry and though our empire brought it to every corner of the globe. Places like India for the first time in thousands of years where United and free from corruption and division (something they can’t claim to have today), places in Africa saw prosperity and quality of life they had never seen before and many places wish they where still a colony like Guyana. We also taxed (perhaps you prefer the term stole) we stated wars for our own benefit and we indeed benefited from slavery. But as someone who has claimed to have learned the truth that schools hid from us, perhaps you will be willing have an open mind to the truth of our world. Do not be ashamed of our history, rejoice in it. For you owe it the luxury’s you have today and ultimately the empire certainly did more good then bad to the world, whether she is underappreciated or not.
My late grandmother was one of the children who was not evacuated from London during the Blitz. She was 10 years old when this was going on. I can guarantee you that she developed some very serious mental issues from it. She lived her life constantly as an anxious mess, always worrying about the slightest thing. She had a massive distrust of strangers. Loud bangs would put her on edge too. The biggest thing that told me she had severe C-PTSD is that nobody ever managed to get her to even mention that part of her life. Anything she remembered from before or after and you could get her chatting away for hours about life back then - however, between 1940 to 1945 was a time she just would not talk about.
I remember my mother worked with a lady in Australia who came from England. She was sent home from work when a thunderstorm was coming or if she wasn't able to someone she chose would sit next to her as she was under a table begging for it to stop. Apparently our thunderstorms sounds like the bombing she heard as a small child and brought back memories. Only a handful of people helped her, but like the times, would scoff and think she was being stupid. That was all she would tell anyone if the Blitz. Just the thunderstorm sounds like bombs.
This is so interesting! I'm Dutch, and as a child I always heard stories of my grandfather 's heroic fighting in resistance groups. Now that me and my dad are actually doing the research, we're finding out that it was much more about helping people in hiding and avoiding German labour drafting then actually fighting the occupation. It wasn't really about the Dutch resistance fighters being morally against the Germans, they were just helping people out who were getting screwed by them.
The tea violation is the way of making tea I assume? I watched you preparing it and thought "this must taste like tar with milk, who would want to drink st like this?" well, you didn't, obviously 😁
Tea bags weren't a thing back then, of course. It was LEAF TEA wot won the War!! And its demise is the sole cause of our subsequent decline and let no-one tell you otherwise!
Interesting. My mother lived through the blitz in Belfast, which occurred over a much shorter period. I think she told me the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of her siblings and relatives old enough to serve served in WWII save an older sister, who served by making military uniforms. She talked about sheltering a few times and how people pulled together (yes, they sang, etc.)-perhaps they, not having endured so much for so long, maintained their spirits. She put out incendiary bomb on the roof of her home because her father was disabled and her mother too heavy to climb the ladder to throw sand on the bomb. She reported walking home past a bombed out area and seeing a woman’s head and another time seeing a pair of women’s shoes as if they had been set together in a pile of rubbish on purpose. When she told the last two stories you could see the trauma on her face. 100,000 people were left homeless after one of the bombings and her family took in a couple-the couple they took in later stripped the family home of all of their possessions when she and her mom and dad went on holiday, which included all of the family photos. She later saw a photo of herself in a pawn shop window. She ended up with PTSD from the sound of the bombs and after moving to the US, would hide in the closet every time there was an electrical storm. No one in our family takes sugar in our tea as a left over of our parents’ given their sugar ration to their parents during the war.
my great grandfather grew up during the blitz in Belfast too. he had a few stories about nearly being bombed i just cant remember them off the top of my head.
Excellent rendition of the realities of WWII. I've lived abroad for over 50 years and have long since realised that "the good old days of the blitz" were far from good and do wish people would stop glorifying them and wishing it back. PS: My mother was evacuated to a farm in Cornwall and tells of not being wanted there and being so harshly treated that eventually her father came and took her back to London. So much for the blitz spirit there.
My mums godmother was 4 when World War II broke out - in Germany. His parents were fairly well off, educated, and aware of the danger of hitlers regime, so they moved to England as soon as they could just before the war started. Both of them spoke English and they refused to let him speak German in the household or even have a German accent. They changed the surname from Dieter to Light so that they seemed more British. To this day, even though he has since moved back to Germany, he can’t speak German without an English accent, so German people always try to speak to him in English instead, thinking he’s a tourist. It’s very sad that they had to do all that to avoid such xenophobia
Thank you for mentioning the colonies! I am currently studying the Life in the UK in order to become a British citizen and am on the part how "The British army have defeated the Japanese at Burma", where in reality it was Nigerians. As part-Nigerian, that made me quite annoyed to be fair.
@@wingnut71 Sure, but god forbid anyone recognize that the soldiers could also be Nigerian... Not every country or individual under British rule was proud to be a colony
British is not an ethnic group. British simply means part of the British empire. Nigerians were part of the British empire, and it was because of British logistics, training, and politics that those Nigerians ever saw combat outside their own borders.
Seeing as Canadian forces were often mentioned I agree it would have been logical AND good for moral to mention other specific peoples of the Empire/Commonwealth.
I was taught about the war like you were, This is an interesting video. . . Thanks for putting the parallels on there too about todays current situations of the world.
The fact that war damage still being evident is crazy. Ozzy Osbourne, who was born in '48, talks about playing in bombed out ruins in Birmingham as a kid. So even in the '50s, there was still rubble all over.
We still have some damage left in Finland from the civil war in 1918. Not in many places, but I know of at least one church (probably not the only one) and many headstones on a graveyard that saw some of the worst battles. I even know another graveyard in this city has similar signs in its old part. And this did not even include bombs, those signs are mostly just from rifles. There were small cannons used in the waw, but not many. (One side had a sharpshooter in the church tower, dominating a large area and it took some brutal warfare to win over that. But the other side eventually won.)
It's the old stone buildings that are mostly spared, so that they are not demolished, but get some damage on the outside, that carry the signs throughout the decades. You cannot just change one stone from the exterior - and also they are kind of a memorial. A wooden house would be painted over. Also plaster would be redone at some point, but the oldest fine stone buildings are not plastered.
05:00 The hyper focus on the tea preparation had me remembering Arthur Dent trying to explain a cup of tea to the computer on the Heart of Gold. "Boiled leaves?" "With milk!" "Squirted from a cow?" And trying to create it shuts the computer down for an inconveniently long time!
Thank you for this vid. At the beginning of the pandemic, I wondered if there had been any resistance to the blackouts similar to what we saw with masks and lockdowns. My google searches came up with nothing, so I had to leave it unanswered, until your video came up in my suggestions today! Very informative, and the sources section was an interesting read too.
I'm a teacher in Canada. Born and raised Canadian. Where I teach, we get a lot of students who have emigrated from the U.K to here, especially it seems from metropolitan areas such as London, Manchester or Birmingham (West Midlands). I am shocked that they have no idea that Canadians fought in WWII !!!
American here, former history teacher. When I taught kids about how, during D-Day as the USA was getting slaughtered at Omaha Beach, the Canadians had already cleared their beach so they offered to come help out, but the American Army refused all help so they wouldn't look weak (the US Army was extremely self-conscious in the face of the Marines getting all the glory in the Pacific Theater, declaring Europe was THEIRS and "no Marine shall set foot on European soil") I was amused as the teens shouted out, "Wait, CANADA was in the war too???" Ooh boy, they were in for a lesson!
A friend told me that he went from the US to Canada before 1940 so he could enlist to fight as he wasn’t sure the US would join the fight. That’s how I learned about the Canadian contribution.
@@nickdanger3802 I tried to find which book I read that in. I'm going to guess it's not one I own, but one I checked out. It was around 2014-19, I was doing a lot of research during those years into 1944 France. I even tried to search online, but it's not the sort of story Americans like to admit happened. Heck, I learned from my dad (a Marine) about the Army at Omaha Beach turning down an offer of help from the Marines on the ships, who tried to demand to go ashore and take the lead as they saw the chaos getting men killed. George Marshall declared that no Marine shall set foot on European soil as long as he was in charge, because they felt the Marines were getting too much of the glory in the Pacific. So the Army refused help from the Marines and the other Allies and would rather have 2400 dead than swallow their pride and ask for aid. (Okay, that last bit is kinda unfair, they had to keep up appearances for morale back home. The war was NOT popular, and many Americans felt we shouldn't bother with Europe. Many like Charles Lindbergh supported a truce with Hitler.)
When I was at school in the seventies, I was told in my English book, that Great Britain stood alone against Germany for a whole year (? can't remember the time given) - and I thought, they were tough. I was flabbergasted when I found out much later that, lo and behold, a significant part of the planet stood by their side and helped with men power and goods. So yes, propaganda going strong there!
I attended a boarding school in East Anglia for a year in 1988-89, and based on my experiences there, I'm not at all surprised. The casual xenophobic, ablist, classist, and other discriminatory cruelty, combined with a weird sense of national superiority, I experienced and witnessed daily still baffles me to date.
From my point of view, you hear all those stories about the British being multiculti, openmided, interested in world cultures, knowledgeable, .... and then you find out the truth. And the "classiness" which you do not expect because of the mixture of US and British E. background most foreigners get with E. You need some time and strong will to see it and understand the Brits' POV and not starting to hate them. And being in a boarding school which means among kids that person must have got the essence of the worst.
My father was born in Kent and was sent to Wales as a young boy! He was lucky because he went to live with a district nurse. His younger brother had an awful time the people took away his clothes and he wasn’t fed properly! Eventually my grandmother took him home! My father didn’t see his parents for five years! Sadly he never talked about his experiences - he was so traumatised!!!
As a German I really don't know how different or alike the experiences of people were on these two opposing and certainly ideologically very different sides of the war, but living through having your city bombed every night must have been traumatic for the people on either side. My dad used to work in a nursery home and he told me of some old people who still get traumatic flashbacks every time they hear a siren or a firework. Sadly the bombing of cities, especially Dresden, far too often gets utilized by right wing extremists and Nazis to make some kind of claim that we were the victims after all.
Do you know in which city he was working? Of course, we are all people; no matter whether we are British, German, Chinese or whatever, our responses to crisis are very similar. It is a uniting factor for humanity in a way. It is always a shame when a terrible historical event, like the bombing of Dresden or any other place, gets hijacked by political extremists and other unsavoury groups. But I find it beautiful that the new cross on top of the rebuilt Frauenkirche was given to Dresden by the British and that Dresden and Coventry are twin cities.
There was a Polish woman that worked for my parents in the 80s. Whenever there was a big thunderstorm she had to leave due to PTSD from shelling she experienced asva child during the war.
I love the Parallel between the blitz and lockdown you show because in my opinion the best way to learn about historical events is comparing them to stuff that happens in modern day
Never heard this side of The Blitz. This seems like a more realistic depiction of what was really going on. Loved you getting into character, added to the story. I was surprised by your reaction to T and defaulting to a monster, those thing tear me up! ( coffee for me)
This is reminiscent of the research I did during my undergrad! we were exploring the post-war French examining their own approach to Vichy France. Henry Roussou wrote a book called "vichy syndrome" which argued that the french reimagined the role of France, downplaying its collaboration and over-emphasised the resistance.
Mum keeps telling me things were better during her childhood - I keep reminding her bombs were dropping (at least three of her neighbours killed on first air raid on London and more subsequent, while she didnt have official evacuation - her dad was too old for war duties (+injured in WW1) but worked on a road making gang and they were sent to Cornwall to lay aircraft runways etc in prep for D-Day, her mum and her went down too for what should have been a two week visit . they stayed for six months and mum was a pupil teacher to younger evacuees from east london, so she never got a school leaving certificate !.
Color me shocked that rich people treated others (especially poor people) like shit... there's nothing quite like Christian values when it comes to helping others.
My grandmother lived in London through the blitz. She said she didn't feel the spirit in the way it was portrayed, she was constantly terrified and saw some horrific sights. But she did say there was a great sense of community in her local area (Putney) and people helped one another - everyone was scared, so people had empathy for one another. But there were also times when it was not like that, and it was everyone for themselves, especially in the earlier days when there was more panic. She worked in a munitions factory manufacturing bullets, and said there was a lot of camaraderie amongst the workers, but not because of "high morale" - because everyone was scared, stressed, missing loved ones, uncertain about the future, and traumatised. She was certainly traumatised herself. She didn't speak about it until she reached 90 years of age. I was privileged enough to have a full conversation with her about it (initiated and driven by her, I was scared to push her too far...) Thank you for this ❤️
I've often wondered about the housing. Were homes usually rented or privately owned? Would people have had mortgages to pay on properties that had been destroyed?
Britain was pretty much near the end of its tether, when Hitler had to turn his attention to Russia coming at him from the East. That's not to denigrate the amazing and heroic actions of our RAF, but the fact is, it is rarely mentioned that Hitler had to rally his forces to fight a new foe and that was at least partially responsible for Britain holding on during those grimmest of years. That take may upset the purists, but it is a factor nevertheless - it just doesn't get mentioned very often in the 'accepted narrative'.
Extremely interesting and educational. Here in the US, there were unsavory things during WWII as well. Japanese-Americans weren't trusted and many were interned in camps. On my Mother's side of the family with German ancestry, they changed their surname...more out of embarrassment than actual bias. Owning a dachshund was frowned upon as ridiculous as that sounds.
Getting on for nearly a year later and those early comparisons already seem ridiculous "wear a mask and don't hoard" compared with "you're being bombed to death and you your kids are going away". Feels like they were relishing the idea of embracing so called Blitz spirit for nostalgia.
People like to compare so many things to WW2. In Germany, where I live, we had anti-mask-protesters seriously comparing themselves to Sophie Scholl and other figures of the anti-Nazi-resistance. I think that people want to feel like they are part of some great heroic historical movement or effort. They want to feel important.
I remember phoning my Dad early on during lockdown, "I keep hearing about the 'great British blitz spirit". You lived through the war Dad. When the German bombers turned up, did people rush out and buy up as many toilet rolls as they could find?" He informed me that they did not.
There was lots of talk about the run on toilet paper at the start of the pandemic, and how previous generations would be outraged, but every country in WW2 had rationing in effect, as far as i know. They knew they couldn't leave it up to people's sense if duty, to only buy the prescribed amount of things. You had to have a ration card. Everything but the most common items, would be stripped from the shelves, without rationing. It's similar to the economic principle Tragedy Of The Commons.
My journey of where I am today, started when I watched Midwives. To discover there is a world beyond what we were taught sent me on a trek of discovery to learn ALL I could about the Human experience and development. What I found was that we are the real stories behind history, that are worth uncovering. We must always challenge ourselves to go beneath the surface so as to not remain shallow, 😉.
My parents survived the blitz. So many family members did not. Horrific stories. They emigrated to Canada after the war to escape the sadness and the increased rationing during this time. I appreciate your video.
Great video. In Germany we have a similar story concerning the months after the 2nd world war ended. It is told, that Germany was re-built by the Trümmerfrauen, by women, who worked in the rubble of destroyed cities to manually clean brick of mortar for re-use. There is a historical truth to this, as this did happen in Berlin for a short period. But they mostly didn't do it on their own accord - they were recruited by the Allied forces as workers. They were paid for their work. The vast majority of the rubble however was removed by male workers using heavy duty machines. The picture of the Trümmerfrau was often used for political reasons. To show how heroic female workers (and working mothers) are in the former DDR. To show that these women were not Nazis but rather victims themselfes and selfless heros. A picture that is much more agreeable and palatable.
I’m Australian. Two of my great uncles were lost in the war. My grandfather survived, but not for long. Britain didn’t stand alone. We do have a similar lionisation of this time, though. Hearing the stories from my grandmother have a much clearer picture of the truth. How could moral have been high when their world was falling apart and, even in far Australia, the war was cutting holes in families while old prejudices suddenly seemed even more important. You don’t see people who lived it hankering for that time. If it was so rosy surely they would.
Us Australian's gave so much. My Grandfather point-blank refused to talk about the war, and it wasn't until after he died that we found out he had received 2 medals. His Sister married 'her boy' the day of his 18th birthday and he joined up the next day and didn't come back. She never remarried.
Eric Blair aka George Orwell's account of pulling his books out of the rubble of his house is one personal account I will always remember...( Hurricane Katrina was very much like the real Blitz....) fact it helped me a great deal when my home in New Orleans was ruined by a large fire... Seeing the Fire rolling up the Stair Case was unforgettable so was the Flood.
There's also the secrecy regarding the bombing of east coast harbour towns such that many think that there was no bombing of them at all (Hull and Grimsby being an example)
I love that the Zadok the Priest scene shows the sheer Englishness of a song written by a German composer from a text about a Jewish coronation. There's a message in that for everyone who thinks foreigners need to stay out of Britain...
My goodness, what a little gem your channel is! Your discussions about history are very unique and insightful. I shall be binge watching all your videos tonight! As for the topic of this video, I have read in various history books little hints that the reality of the blitz was very different. The maintaining of class bondages was very true, which is why the bombing of Buckingham Palace was such a PR win for the King. The Queen famously said "I can now look the east end in the face".
I was imagining how it would be to live with you or visit you, during the tea building scene. Me, drinking monster ultra white, and you and your friends or relatives having the high ground of posh drinks. And then I saw you pull out a monster too. You’re awesome!😅
Amazing. Even we yanks have a romanticized notion of Brits and the Blitz. I always enjoy a good thought provoking subject, especially those that peel away the facade. Thank you.
Im a Coventarian who walks past the bombed-out ruins of our cathedral practically every day. The British govt's catastrophic failures in preparing for war enabled so much more destruction than fascist bombers could have inflicted on a prepared country One example: Demands in pre and early war to move water hydrants below ground were routinely ignored by British govt who had more than enough manpower to carry out the work. So when the Germans bombed and burned cities, these 4ft-tall hydrants were instantly knocked out and left firefighters with little chance in controlling fires that claimed horrifying amounts of historic wooden buildings, preciously few of which still survive today in Coventry I spoke to an 83yo woman at a 75th anniversary ceremony outside the cathedral in Nov 2015 who had actually been in the cellar of the cathedral when it went up in flames. Afterwards she fled to a cellar in a nearby shop which wasnt even a public shelter but allowed by the shop owner. The emotion in her eyes was so intimate and real Im so glad ppl are finally looking past the leftover propagandistic narratives that are used to reinforce modern nationalism. Best vid on this topic that I've yet seen. Blessed
I'm American but my mother had a wonderful older married couple from the UK that went to church with us and through them and their stories I learned about the Blitz and the War long before I learned about it in school. I also learned about tea time which I loved. I am a historian myself now, I was originally in law enforcement but I'm not being shot at now but I credit the stories of Britain in the War with what I became.
So relatable! Thanks! My grandmother, in rural Leicestershire, took in a Jewish girl and her young son from Berlin. She had aunt in London, hence she gained entry, but the aunt wouldn't house her, and come the blitz, they were evacuated.
Anyone that has lived in a war zone knows instinctively that all too many humans don’t rise above human nature….particularly under stress. The people of London reacted pretty much the same as those of Berlin when the tide was turned. The mass bombing on both sides were as much failed strategic moves hoping to smash morale as they were tactical to reduce war production. The empire offered great assets in manpower and food, but couldn’t much contribute the industrial capability needed to win a war. An inherent weakness of the Brit empire was its concentration of industrial capability in the UK on the mercantile industrial model. In brief, it was policy to make manufactured goods in the UK and export them to a captive colonial market, while receiving raw materials for UK industry in return. Easily 90% of the empire was out of reach of German, and later Japanese planes, but 90% of the empire’s industrial capacity was within reach. Knowing this, the average Brit in any of the industrial cities should be considered a hero of the empire for carrying on at any level, bad behavior be damned.
My great nana told me many stories about the war but when I heard battle stories from men while working in a care home I can see how so many of them ended up so damaged by the events. One of the gentleman was too young to be drafted (just 14) but as things developed further they had them assisting ike handing out sandbags etc. Because he was ‘older’ he was designated as a body collector. They would drive a large van down the streets of London and pick up bodies of the deceased. That sounded horrific enough for a person you boy to be doing but he said the think that haunts his nightmares was a time he went to move a body and as he did the head rolled away. I have so many stories of the war from men and women all of them facing hardship but banding together to look after one another, they supported each other where now people tend to only think of themselves (look at the food and sanitary products being a gold mine and everyone having enough toilet roll left over for another year!) My great nana grew certain vegetables then a different neighbours would all grow a variety of fruits and vegetables so they would all share produce and have a more plentiful array. My nanas strength and resilience always gave me courage. Growing our own crops has just carried on in my family. My Grandy (her son) is 81 now and his health has taken a blow so I tend to whatever is growing and try to keep the growing cycle well oiled. We will sit together and plant seeds which I leave in his greenhouse and he will sit in the garden at his house and shake off the soil for planting and I’ll do the physical side. We make enough for me to plant and then do the family tradition of swapping produce. It’s really nice, maybe it’s because nourishing someone is an act of care. My nana used to always say I had fruit picker fingers which meant the ability to pick all berries without cutting myself or other fruits that squish easily and manage to get them all off without squashing them. Plus, I make sure all of our fruits are doing and the when I harvest them the excess gets made into crumbles, pies and cakes so you get something delicious and no food waste. I was so thankful to have my great nana until I was 25 and I spent the last two years moving in and doing physical care rather than dropping in a couple of times a day especially in the summer where you get lost in time and she would be still gardening at 9:30pm thinking it was 6pm. That was rather cathartic for me. Probably no interest to anyone else but I always push people to maintain a close relationship with grandparents and if you have children do the same. They are the biggest link to your past and having worked with the elderly it became apparent the sadness it would bring when family only visited at Christmas or occasionally their birthday. Ironically most of the family members still lived in the general vicinity. There will always be at least a small window of time where you could pop in for a cup of tea for 20 minutes and people will never understand the joy that brings. Particularly when sons/daughters/grandchildren and their children come in it illuminates almost everyone living there including the men. Give back the love and care they have for you, Anyway, if you managed to get through my dissertation I at least hope that people realise it wasn’t all doom and gloom!
Handel although born in Germany emigrated to England. Hence his compositions the vocals are in English (Judas Maccabeus, The Messiah) unlike his contemporary J.S. Bach who remained in Germany.
I shake my head in wonder that England endured so many months of air terror by Germany. The resilience and courage of the English people should always be remembered and admired.
My great grandmother lived through both world wars. She was in her 20's during the second world war, and would tell me of how bad the bombing in Bristol was. I remember one time she told me a tale of the one time there was a air raid, her husband wanted to go to the local comunity shelter, but she was a bit nervous about going. So they took sheler else where. She then told of how the shelter had a direct hit, and nealy all the inhabitants perrished. She said they managed to get ahold of a anderson shelter, and set it up at the bottom of their guarden after that.
Very brave intro, half expected the comments to go "how dare you imagine our plight of having to wear masks to a time where people had no choice" unironically. Also, a channel celebrating British history and admitting tea is not your cup of tea? Heroic.
I could relate to the story in a number of ways. Here. First, of course we had a similar narrative. Of a People's War against Nazis IN Soviet Times and even after Ukrainian independence. The complex history of WWII still has to be properly analyzed and understood. But I also can relate to the history of London in the Blitz because for instance my city, Kharkiv, was bombed almost. Every day (or night, whatever Russians fancied) for. Months. It was both for the terror purposes, as people could not sleep due to the sound of explosions, in order to destroy infrastructure, factories and homes. Our East End was Saltovka, a huge area with high houses. Every house with multiple. Families and no proper underground nearby and most bomb shelters going to ruin. Thousands of people homeless. And we had looters, and pretenders who dressed as volunteers and policemen too. And also my family did not go to shelter because our own cellar had been spoiled by sewage water and it was too far from the underground, so we also huddled together with our dog and cat in one room. And the struggle to achieve blackout when my daughter was so afraid of the dark, and no real. Resources to really re- enforce windows. And treatment of the refugees varied too. So really in some cases you could feel you traveled in time. It is still. Like WWII repeats all over again. I can believe it all happened because it also happens now. If you do not understand history properly it does repeat. Unfortunately.
"Concentrated...in camps..." Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear... In regards to morale: I heard that in some cases the V-weapon attacks later in the war were worse, though I can't prove the assertion. The V-2 was especially terrifying however, as you couldn't hear it coming...
My grandfather was an auxilary fireman during the Blitz and later served as an infantryman in Italy. He was very very patriotic but very critical of the Blitz mythos. He managed a brief spell as a spiv between his two acts of service.
Excellent balance! My Austrian Jewish grandmother fled Vienna where she had lived her whole life as a reasonably wealthy family to come to Britain and go into service, for 6 years she didn’t know if her parents or brother were alive - she never saw her father again. She experienced much racism etc - her family were not even practicing Jews, only of Jewish descent but it didn’t seem to matter 🤷🏼♀️
I thought it was very interesting to hear about anti-Semitism in Britain during the war. My Great-grandma was in love with a Jewish man before the war, but we found while doing family research that he didn't actually marry her until the war ended. I wondered if he was afraid it might put her in danger? Especially if the Nazis won?! Anyway, although her family disowned her, they ended up happily married ❤
Actually I have a question. How did Britain deal with the Spanish Flu? I always hear about the wars, admittedly a monumental “scar” (both literal, mental, emotional, financial, and so on) but I very rarely hear about how more accurate comparisons to our modern day plague such as the Spanish Flu, small pox, yellow fever, even the Black Death left scars on Europe in general let alone Britain. Was Spanish Flu only a massive thing in North America? Or did it and others like it leave “visible” scars that can be seen or felt into modern day? My personal research is inconclusive and would appreciate other takes on a more human level as opposed to “this is just what we know from historical accounts.”
Didn't hear much from my family, they were a music hall family but one ran away in the early 1910's and joined the Royal navy Marines (pre war), went through the Siege and evacuation of Antwerp, Jutland, the Zeebrugge raid, got demobbed in 1919, went on a fortnights holiday to the south coast. Fell ill after a week and was dead from the flu by time his holiday was up! What did seriously impact that generation of my family was seeing whole branches of the family die from TB in the 20's and 30's. It was a slow constant attrition that when it got into a household, it would devastate. One relative lost his wife, his only and new born child and his mother in law to it. That's right, he was the ONLY one to survive from that home. And that, that is why that generation wanted to bequeath us something like the NHS.
I believe, in most countries, it was almost forgotten about quite soon after. It sounds unlikely, if you read about how bad it was, but a similar thing happened after the polio epidemic in the fifties. I remember it. Saw lots of kids at school with braces on their legs. I know my parents kept a lot of it from us, but I picked up enough to know about the people in Iron lungs, and the cripples. You certainly don't hear about it now, or for many decades. I believe there are still a couple of people who are still in Iron lungs since the fifties.
It's good you mentioned Jewish German refugees. My great grandmother was a German jew. She survived the starvation in Germany during ww1, the rise of the nazis, and when she moved to London to escape the nazis she was viewed with extreme suspension, and only the Jewish community in London really helped her and her children. Edit: it's important to note that despite that she was forever grateful to the UK for saving her and her children. The UK might have had some problems, but Germany was way worse.
A lot of that “Bomb damage” was the result of our own anti aircraft fire. AA shells exploding in the air blasted out chunks of shrapnel - designed, of course, to destroy or damage any enemy aircraft nearby. What goes up however must come down, and a large number of deaths and a great deal of damage was caused by huge lumps of metal falling onto buildings and into the streets from a great height.
just thinking the same thing. An excellent series, showing some of the less “honorable” behavior that happened routinely, especially the differences between the classes in how they were affected by the war.
If I'm not mistaken "keep calm & carry on" was never actually used during the war. It was only discovered after the war. It was going to be used if there was occupation.
I think that to keep calm and carry on is mostly a facade, anyway. It's what can be seen and it keeps life continuing - it's not what it feels like inside your head.
I watched a documentary on this the other week that was great. Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley on BBC. It’s was really interesting and I’d recommend that too. Anyhoo love your videos 🙂
11:38, I paused the screen at that point and I tried to read the newspaper article. Although I couldn't read all of it, I got the distinct impression that the writer was talking about their experience of dealing with youths in the juvenile courts and trying to be sympathetic to their plight - although using language we wouldn't use nowadays.
On the general theme of war-time spirit, there is a book that I read a few years ago that I still think about often. It's called "War's Unwomanly Face" by Svetlana Alexievich, and it is a collection of first-hand accounts of women who were fighting on the Eastern Front in WWII (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). The author won a Nobel Prize for her work. The accounts range from heroic to mundane to heartshattering (heartbreaking didn't seem strong enough a term). It is well worth a read, though, proceed with EXTREME caution because the book is very traumatizing. I also feel like we need more books like that, with firsthand accounts of major events in history, not just the official government stories.
An excellent video. For anyone interested in watching a fictional but accurate representation of what life was like during WW2, I recommend the TV programme, Foyle's War which illustrates the many experiences covered in the video.
There's a book called "Citizen of London" about a select group of journalists and diplomats, mostly Americans, who worked in London during the war. I already knew about Edward R. Murrow's time as CBS radio's correspondent but I was astonished to learn about U. S. Ambassador Wynant who put the entire embassy staff on the same diet as the Londoners and did a turn as an air raid warden.
Thank you for a very interesting programme. You, have talked about things my husband and I have discussed about the blitz sprit, that we have very rarely heard else where.
My father was a soldier in BAOR in the early 1960s so I spent time in Germany. When I returned to England in 1964, I was stood against a school wall and shot as a Nazi because I could speak German. In 1964.
Yes and the same happened on pur school exchange in 1993. Brits are entirely too self impressed with themselves. This fake pride for sth that didn't even happen made them arrogany and it hurt everyone.
This is proper researched and thought out content. Unbiased, even, honest. I saw the tiktocs and the pretty, bright presenter with the cheekbones but I'm staying for the quality historical content 👍
I'm really glad you mentioned the Empire. Something that irritates me is when I hear people claim "plucky little Britain" stood up to the "might of Germany". At the start of the war Britain and France both had the huge resources of massive empires to call on, while Germany had been forced to limit its military drastically by Versailles, and had lost what little Empire it had after the First World War. The question I think needs to be asked is how was Britain, with its massive advantage so incompetent that it was essentially losing the war up until the USA joined? Not to mention that there were Free French and Poles and Danes and people from all over occupied Europe fighting in the British armed forces, and the USA was always providing tacit help, even before lent-lease, we were hardly alone.
I think Ms. Draper missed the point. She describes how horrific the Blitz was. She says people suffered, and it showed in their behavior. Okay. But who won? The British are humans, yes, imperfect, falling short of their ideal. But it is only nations which HAVE ideals, brave and courageous ones, who can fall short. The British survived against cruel & inhuman bombings, a torture that by all rights should have worked. It should have broken their morale. But it didn’t work. The British won the war, defeating true evil, not as models of human perfection, but as flawed, limited people who fought way above their weight. The world owes a debt to Britain, not because they were perfect, but because they were flawed humans who outdid themselves against an overmatched evil regime.
My grandmother was a little girl in London during the blitz. One of the first things I learned about it was that at one point my great-grandfather, then a police officer, had seen a child's hand sticking out from under some rubble, and went to pull the child out - but the arm simply came away in his grip. He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards.
My great-grandmother once felt the need to take her daughter aside and tell her that if there was a situation where it was a choice, she would save her husband and not her children, so my grandmother needed to be ready to fend for herself.
'Cases of neurosis' may not have been diagnosed and attributed to air raids at the time, but just by looking at my own family I'm pretty sure that's just because anybody who was up and walking was considered 'fine' and not because of a genuine lack of lasting trauma among the population.
A fascinating perspective... certainly full of trauma.
@sweetlorikeet Definitely. Also what a horrible and traumatizing thing to say to a small child. I wonder what her thinking behind that decision was.
"He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards." : yeah sudden changes in personality are either the result or illness or (when no illness is present) trauma.
Just the arm...damn...what...a...visual...
My grandmother was a little girl in Hamburg when the allied bombers came. She doesn't really tell much about it, as it is a hurtful memory. I hope children never have to experience something like this again.
Some “Mother”! 😡
both of my grandfathers, who were in Uganda, fought for the British in the first and second world Wars. When they came back - and from what I can glean (I never met them myself, but I’ve only heard stories) one of them suffered serious, PTSD, and the other took an injury to his leg, and walked with a walking stick for the rest of his life.
Thank you for mentioning the efforts of those from across the empire, especially Africa and the subcontinent as they often get forgotten.
I am glad we are recognising the efforts of our overseas compatriots at last. It is terrible that we didn't before!
We should never have declared war on Germany in the first place.
Thank you for your grandfather’s service
This has been a Pathé news reel!
my great grandfather had poor eyesight (something we have all since inherited, thanks grandpa) so he wasn’t drafted into the war. however, he was allowed to be a firefighter during the war.
the blitz caused him to see horrors he’d never seen before. my great grandmother and their daughter (my great aunt) were evacuated, but he stayed and saw multiple people who’d refused to leave their houses crushed from bombs in their homes, often trapped in their bedrooms. children, babies, parents all dead. it was extremely harrowing for him. very occasionally he would find live children with deceased parents and he would always choose to adopt them. despite the horrors he had seen, he remained just as kind and gentle as he had always been.
when my grandpa was born in 1945, he grew up around multiple adopted siblings which he is still close to. one of them named lillian i met, and she was still afraid of loud noises even in her old age before she passed. balloons terrified her.
my great grandfather’s father was a jewish immigrant from lithuania who had escaped during the pogroms so they grew up in abject poverty. after the war finished he became a barber and used to cut my great grandma’s hair- she still wore finger waves into the 1960s because that was the only style he knew how to do on women lol. im very proud of him and to be his descendent.
what a lovely story!❤
That is an amazing tale
what a wonderful man. definitely someone to be proud of :)
your great grandfather was a legit hero for those kids
What a true hero ! May His Memory Be Blessing. 👌🏻
When I was still working in law enforcement I worked in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina and the people lost everything barely had anything to start with. I still go to therapy from what I saw and had to do. I'm much happier being a Historian now.
Please write a book about your experiences. People have forgotten.
That was a very bad time for the city of New Orleans and the other nations that were affected.
Thank you for your service 🙏🏼
Genuinely excellent critique of a narrative which deserves more nuanced mainstream analysis. Thanks for sharing.
nuanced mainstream
oxymoron
Exactly. Well said.
@@mistersir3020 no it isn't
The editing was really powerful, too.
@@mistersir3020 "more nuanced". Comparative. Mainstream perception of events will always be simplified and skewed. Doesn't mean you can't improve it at all by offering more nuanced analysis to the mainstream public.
My mum was born in 33 in South London. Her and her sisters were evacuated a number of times but eventually stayed at home. They stopped going dow the shelters because they were so bad. They slept in one room so if a bomb hit them they would all go together.
Funnily enough my mother was born in 1933 in south east London. She had two younger brothers, they were moved to a place i spent 13 years in outside London to the south, and returned home. They had an anderson shelter in the bottom of their garden. Survived the war. But as she lived on what would have been a flight path to the docks, they had a fair few stray bombs and one tkme a close near miss when a German fighter flew over her school did nit touch it, and then flew over a boys school down the road and fired at the kids at play during their lunch break.
I had the same experience with tornado shelters in Oklahoma sit in there with a neighborhoods worth of crying kids no thanks I’ll take the shrieking winds and sideways rain
@@jimbo6059 oh my thats horrible. Kill the bloody children! Ugh just horrible.
I'm on the autism spectrum, thankfully not non-verbal, but still enough to have great difficulty understanding the bonds in the family unit, but even through that Indiscrepancy in my brain functions, I would still choose to be with all my immediate family should we we be faced with the threat if imminent death.
@@nothanks9503 Username comment synergy 10/10
My grandparents were children in the north of England during the war. My grandmother grew up on Yorkshire, and for the rest of her life she couldn't sleep during a thunderstorm because of the trauma of the bombs. She never sought help for it. PTSD was very likely more common than reported for all the reasons you gave, as well as the shame or embarrassment that you didn't have "blitz spirit", or you needed help from someone else. It's really sad to see, and I hope we continue to normalise seeking help for mental health issues.
Unreported PTSD must indeed have been common. Mild cases may still be left unreported, if it mostly does not interfere with daily life - I've seen and heard of this with the peace keepers. Some may call a peer support phone at the worst times, and that's all.
And I think that there were certainly not enough therapeuts for all the cases at the time!
My grandparents were children during WWII, their stories were definitely more nuanced than the ones we were told at school.
My grandma told us a story about one day she was eating lunch at school when the air raid siren went off, so she ran across the school field to the shelter with her pudding in her hand because she really wanted to eat it. There's of course the slight comedy of childhood logic and what's important. However, it also struck me as a kid because of how relatable and yet alien it was to my own life.
My grandad's story is a bit darker. He was evacuated during the war and went to live with "a good Christian couple" in the country. Behind closed doors, this couple were both alcoholics and there was a lot of domestic violence.
After a few months, my grandad wrote to his mum (who was apparently quite a fierce woman) to tell her what was happening. She immediately went to get him and bring him home with her, because she decided that he would be safer with the bombs than with that family.
He obviously survived to become my grandad, but I can't imagine what a difficult decision my great-grandma had to make at the time.
So yeah my family stories weren't all rosy and blitz spirit. I remember seeing similar things during the pandemic as well with the whole "we're all in the same boat" thing. Except we weren't - we were all in the same storm, but some were in the midst of it whilst others were barely affected and some had luxury cruise liners to weather the storm whilst others had a dinghy with a hole in it.
As you say, I think it's important to tell all sides of the story, not just the parts that make us look good.
We’re all in the same storm. We’re not all in the same boat. That is a truly brilliant analogy! I will definitely remember that. Good on you for coming up with it.
@@mikaylaeager7942 I'm pretty sure I stole it from someone else and just embellished it a little! But I definitely think it's a better metaphor than "we're all in the same boat", because that's rarely true.
"some had luxury cruise liners to weather the storm whilst others had a dinghy with a hole in it"
isn't that always the case. when people say everyone has problems in life, they reduce reality to outside factors, and conveniently forget the obvious advantages some (the ones using that argument mostly) have.
The only thing my grandfather would tell me about the blitz was that it became painfully boring after a while, he just wanted a nights sleep without the air raid going off I think after the lockdowns I understand him, the end of the world is slow, painful and we eventually all just get used to it.
I know he was an evacuee but he would never speak about it, and it all got so awful that his mother moved the family back to Ireland.
My grandad's mum used to shove him under the stairs and go back to bed rather than putting him in the bunker
Dad hated his evacuation - in part he was separated from his older brother , (the younger stayed at home with his mum and his sister joined the WRAF)
Dude, lockdown are always better than bombs over your head.
My Nana said she spent countless hours at cat's cradle because you could play it in a dark shelter, and it was easy enough to always have a piece of yarn or string about you in case the sirens went off.
One time I was watching a documentary with her, and they played the sound of a V1 'doodlebug' bomb. She went paper white and started shaking, she tried so hard to recover her equilibrium in front of me but she was tremulous for hours afterwards.
@@sweetlorikeet It is really strange and scary how history repeats itself now. I can undertstand very well how your grandma felt. I am scared of drums because they remind me of rockets exploding; my good friend finally managed to get a small bus tour after living in constantly bombed Kyiv and had a half-an-hour panic attack when she heard fireworks nearby.
My paternal Great Grandfather was a Canadian (Well, Newfoundlander at the time, NFLD hadn't joined Confederation yet) Merchant Marine (An Engineers Mate) and between 1939 and 1943 made 84 crossings and survived two sinkings by U-Boat. My maternal Great Grandmother, a British Ex-pat who emigrated to the US after the war, lived through the Blitz, and stories of how her millinery shop in the east end was looted and on another night, narrowly survived one air raid by running to a tube station, are still shared at family gatherings today, years after her death.
This is one Canadian who was taught the truth about what happened in WWII, not in school, but by those that lived through it.
My grandmother was moved *to* London and was convinced the "Blitz Spirit" shit was accounts of bombings in other parts of Britain retold in London. Not that she didn't have stories of good happenings and people pulling together in London but my extended family still has bad views of Londoners to this day because of the difference in stories we heard from there compared to other places.
"Kitty Vitty" or "Qwy-dah Vie-dah"?
My branch of folks from pre-Canadian Confederation Nfld were "over there" too. Unfortunately they wouldn't talk about that part of their lives. But I remember when planes were diverted to Gander on 9/11, several older family members + friends referenced Blitz spirit, which after watching this video makes me wonder even more, bc in hindsight it's clear the events brought up some buried recollections.
My mom grew up in Lancashire, and her dad helped out clearing rubble from bombed out buildings. Some days he would come home sick to his stomach, and those were the days they knew he had found the remains of someone's child. I once said to my mom that it was horrible she had to grow up like that, and she said it was just normal for us. Yes, I said, but it was horrible that this was normal. She just quietly said, yes, I guess you're right. As if she had never really considered that before.
Mom? No moms in Lancashire. My MUM, still with us at the age of 100, was born in Ashton-in-Makerfield, grew up in Bolton and has lived in Cleveleys since 1959. Her mum died following a back street abortion when my mum was six years old. Mum worked for AVRO, making Lancaster wings during the war (my dad worked for de Havilland as an engineer on Mosquitoes).
You have to put a little honey in the tea. And a little milk,. Your cup is pretty
She probably had not. She never knew anything different so she probably never questioned it. It is the same with people growing up in abusive households. Unless it is pointed out to them or they go through therapy, the depth of exactly how bad things really were does not really register. It is a survival mechanism so that they can keep going. Also it is hard to compare with something you have never known.
@@stevenholt4936 Some Brummys and Americans use 'Mom' !
Most of Birmingham I think use mom.
My grandmother was bombed out of her house she got so much brick dust and fragments in her eyes she was legally blind for the rest of her life. Her husband (my grandfather) was killed at the front. She remarried a year later and the man I grow up calling Granddad fought D-day to Germany. She described the Blitz as 'terror in the dark'.
My mum was a London teen in WW2. COVID came along. No fuss, got her jabs and wore a mask. The Luftwaffe didn't get her at 16 so she wasn't going to let a virus get her at 96! As ever, no grumbles, kept calm and still carrying on.
As long as she didn't insist on anyone under 70 getting jibbed - especially children! We saw enough adults hiding behind children during the mild flu.
lights on but no ones home here @@garyphisher7375
Similar things went on here in the US. The worst thing of all that happened was the 110,000 law abiding Japanese Americans from the west coast (that were actually American citizens) that were put into internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were given sometimes just 48 hours notice that they had to take one suitcase of belongings and report to the bus station, where they were bussed to camps that had armed guards watching over them 24/7. In their absence, their properties and businesses were auctioned off by local governments. And even while in the internment camps, hundreds of Japanese men begged to be allowed to enlist in the US Army to prove their loyalty to their country. They were eventually formed into the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated unit in US military history and was composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry. Eventually the US government issued a formal apology and paid some compensation to the families of those who had been imprisoned in the camps.
I've heard similar stories from the UK about Germans living here who were sent to internment camps on (I believe) the Isle of Man in case they were spies. They weren't as bad as the nazi concentration camps, but they weren't pleasant places to be either and their only crime was being German or of German descent.
The Niihau incident influenced this dark chapter in our history. Unfortunately a Japanese immigrant family in Hawaii helped a crashed Zero pilot try to escape. And boy was America racist as hell back then in 1941...
Also consider "the second happy time" for German u-boats. Where for a period of about 1 year, German submarines had free rein to destroy shipping off of the US coast and were choosy about their targets mostly only because they had limited supplies of torpedoes and sank 600+ ships (about 3.1 million tons) and cost thousands of lives of merchant sailors. Where submarines had an easy time of things sinking ships at night that were silhouetted by the lights on the coast. But the US government was loathe to even request that coastal communities darken their lights and never required it because they did not want to "offend tourism, recreation or business sectors".
Unfortunately desperate times call for desperate measures...
You have to be realistic and realise that it became total war
And in hindsight options took look somewhat archaic...
What would you have done without the option of hindsight
@@MegaRyan123456 I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state.
If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely (google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
I’m a history teacher in England but I’m Spanish and have had a very continental European history training in Spain and France. Some of these nationalistic topics are difficult for me because as some of the narrative sounds very propagandistic, but I want to be respectful as an outsider. I’m finding your videos incredibly useful to inform me for my lessons and make sense of my reads. Thanks so much for your amazing videos and all of the sources that you always add too and that allow me to do further reading on the topics. You’re amazing, thanks so much.
I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state.
If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely ( google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
@@matthewclaridge8063 While I don't disagree there would be those willing to be puppets. There is plenty of evidence they were in a extreme minority. When you know (as I do) that my uncle (inlaw) who grew up in London during the Blitz (he was 8) in the East end was taught by his father (along with all of his siblings) how to use hand grenades. Along with all the other kids in all the neighbouring houses. Every house have several boxes of grenades the father's brought home from working in the munitions factories. They had no intention of surrendering to the Nazis. They were going to go down fighting as both a family and a neighbourhood. That is just once example I know of. The Blitz spirit (propaganda version) did not really exist in my opinion, but that does not mean there was not a grain of truth to it (I believe there was, just nowhere universal as the typical version as it as).
@@matthewclaridge8063 uhhhh where on earth do you get the idea that the upper class and nobility preferred a fascist state to a “true democracy”??? Please, let’s tone down some of this ‘rich man bad/autocratic/fascism’ nonsense
@@jamiengo2343 Most of the 'ruling class' don't care who's in power, only who sets the best economic circumstances for their wealth to accumulate.
I've seen videos about Mosely and I also read about him. His wife was upper class and a fascist enthusiast. Yes there were some British upper class individuals who were sympathetic to fascism.
In my experience as a former history teacher, every Allied nation was extremely self-centered in their own propaganda. I've spoken with Brits who believe (as was said in the video) they "stood alone" without acknowledging Canada or Australia at all, or French people who get nearly violent at the idea that French police and city leaders worked with the Gestapo, Russians who believe they basically won the war on their own with England and America merely helping out, and one Czech I spoke to who honestly didn't realize there was a war in the Pacific, besides the atomic bombs but no context on why they were dropped. The history lessons about WWII in India, parts of South Asia, and Egypt are something else! Sometimes no mentions of the Holocaust at all, according to a friend raised in Cairo, she was taught "some say it happened, some say it didn't, but we're forced to tell you about this thing that the Jews TOTALLY deserved." Yikes! A friend in India said Hitler is seen as merely a "political idealist" and some even view him as a failed savior because he had promised to free the people from British rule. As an American, I know for a fact that our propaganda was wildly inaccurate, yet it was published in history books, taught to 4 generations, and trying to deconstruct the lies in order to teach properly has been a headache.
As a Canadian I think they say Britain fought alone partly because they were the only great power fighting Germany and because although Canada and Australia (and others) were fighting, we were dominions at that time, and therefore part of the British empire, therefore they say alone but we are included there.
Interestingly in Canada, our part in WW2 is somewhat minimized, for us the first world war is considered more important but we focus mostly on how horrific it was rather than how heroic we were.
Recently i came across “new” research that in our important war Canada committed quite a lot of war crimes, something i had never contemplated before.
Comparing the modern propaganda in schoolbook versions of history would be really interesting
Growing up in the United States, my classrooms never taught World War II. We always studied the same old US history and never reached anything as recent as that
Honestly I'm almost afraid to dig into the history of my country (Poland) because my history teacher already painted a pretty grayish picture of the war. Basically there was no "good" or "bad" side (difficult to see it differently when you're stuck between two authoritarian regimes), there were only victims and victimizers. And sometimes, in certain circumastances, the lines between one group and another got blurry
It doesn't help that USSR didn't care about seeking genue justice post WWII. It's inevitable that certain soldiers of Polish Underground Army commited war crimes. But which of them did it and was it in any way justified given the difficult situation? We will never know because Soviets only cared if those people followed the "right" (authoritarian) kind of communism. Many innocent people got tortured into confession, many war criminals were freed
How do you even seek the historic truth in this circumastances? One man can be a hero and a war criminal at the same time. We like to be proud to be relatively one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe at that time but it means nothing when your neighbours were literal nzis
@@angelikaskoroszyn8495 hey, as some from Sweden I just want you to know that our history books (that tends to be fairly unbiased from some of my own research) paint a grim but positive view on your country, basically it boils down to this “ Despite the impossible situation of Poland the people stood proud and as far as I know (granted I can’t read Polish so I’m definitely missing some data) the amount of war crimes especially towards women and children seem to have been pretty dang low. But they do exist and are as gruesome as one would imagine.. despite that I highly recommend learning more about your country’s history, many parts of it are interesting and quite lovely.
Putin is now promising 'to free the people from Western (British) rule'. He is probably lying too.
One of your videos just got shared on Reddit. I'm happy to discover you as a result, and your speaking style and explanations are wonderful. Subscribed to this channel and Minuteknowledge too!
This documentary is enlightening. The writers of history love to lath and plaster over the actual circumstances. The parallels with our current situation (minus the shoveling up of neighbours) show that people really aren't that different in their selfishness from then until now.
The education in the UK is very carefully curated parts of history that can be made to portray Brits as being victors, survivors, and defenders, never showing we have instigated wars, stole from other countries both minerals and money, and enslaved people. I'd love to see the way we teach history improved to include true accounts of events and not hide the bad stuff we have done.
Oh yes, I learned about how Britain "stopped the slave trade" at school, but nothing about empire...
@@emmarainbow9557 I'm rather ashamed of our past, but nothing like the shame of leaving school realising how carefully we were taught about success and how wonderful we are, not how we raped and pillaged our way through the world and overthrew governments to steal assets and minerals, still doing it today under the guise of fighting terrorists and people with WMD.
When we do learn about these things you realise how helpless you are to do anything about it. Ask a child who the terrorists are and they might tell you it's the people who bombed their town, and if that child is the from certain parts of the world we are the terrorists. But you'll never hear this in school, just a carefully whitewashed history.
So agree!!! we learn from our mistakes and history, but if that history isn't told how will we learn from it.
I understand that this narrative (because that is what it is) is important to you, but you have extrapolated pretty far from the original video, in order to make your point. The lesson we should be drawing from this is not the generic modern obsession with the evils of empire, or the purported rewriting of history to obscure them, but the fact that, among the instances of heroism, bravery, and communal spirit, you will always find cowardice, selfishness, and hatred, no matter how rose-tinted your history books. This is not peculiar to the British, or the Blitz, and neither is it unexpected, or even unethical, not to loudly trumpet it, either in classrooms or books, decades later. It is, rather banally, just human nature, and it happens just as much now as it did 80 years ago. People, unfortunately, have a history of behaving horribly to each other, and until we can reverse millions of years of evolution, they will continue to do so.
Almost every nation was done the same or worse. Britain ended slavery. We fostered the age of industry and though our empire brought it to every corner of the globe. Places like India for the first time in thousands of years where United and free from corruption and division (something they can’t claim to have today), places in Africa saw prosperity and quality of life they had never seen before and many places wish they where still a colony like Guyana. We also taxed (perhaps you prefer the term stole) we stated wars for our own benefit and we indeed benefited from slavery. But as someone who has claimed to have learned the truth that schools hid from us, perhaps you will be willing have an open mind to the truth of our world. Do not be ashamed of our history, rejoice in it. For you owe it the luxury’s you have today and ultimately the empire certainly did more good then bad to the world, whether she is underappreciated or not.
Man this is genuinely the most interesting video I have watched in awhile. My mind is blown to be honest. Thanks for this video!
My late grandmother was one of the children who was not evacuated from London during the Blitz. She was 10 years old when this was going on. I can guarantee you that she developed some very serious mental issues from it. She lived her life constantly as an anxious mess, always worrying about the slightest thing. She had a massive distrust of strangers. Loud bangs would put her on edge too. The biggest thing that told me she had severe C-PTSD is that nobody ever managed to get her to even mention that part of her life. Anything she remembered from before or after and you could get her chatting away for hours about life back then - however, between 1940 to 1945 was a time she just would not talk about.
I remember my mother worked with a lady in Australia who came from England. She was sent home from work when a thunderstorm was coming or if she wasn't able to someone she chose would sit next to her as she was under a table begging for it to stop. Apparently our thunderstorms sounds like the bombing she heard as a small child and brought back memories. Only a handful of people helped her, but like the times, would scoff and think she was being stupid.
That was all she would tell anyone if the Blitz. Just the thunderstorm sounds like bombs.
Absolutely brilliant analysis. Splendid work.
This is so interesting! I'm Dutch, and as a child I always heard stories of my grandfather 's heroic fighting in resistance groups. Now that me and my dad are actually doing the research, we're finding out that it was much more about helping people in hiding and avoiding German labour drafting then actually fighting the occupation. It wasn't really about the Dutch resistance fighters being morally against the Germans, they were just helping people out who were getting screwed by them.
Helping people avoid Nazi work camps sounds pretty heroic. That’s definitely part of the resistance.
That's still well and truly resisting the Nazis.
Good video, very informative. I'm glad I watched despite the tea violation. ;)
The tea violation is the way of making tea I assume? I watched you preparing it and thought "this must taste like tar with milk, who would want to drink st like this?" well, you didn't, obviously 😁
Tea bags weren't a thing back then, of course. It was LEAF TEA wot won the War!! And its demise is the sole cause of our subsequent decline and let no-one tell you otherwise!
Interesting. My mother lived through the blitz in Belfast, which occurred over a much shorter period. I think she told me the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of her siblings and relatives old enough to serve served in WWII save an older sister, who served by making military uniforms.
She talked about sheltering a few times and how people pulled together (yes, they sang, etc.)-perhaps they, not having endured so much for so long, maintained their spirits. She put out incendiary bomb on the roof of her home because her father was disabled and her mother too heavy to climb the ladder to throw sand on the bomb. She reported walking home past a bombed out area and seeing a woman’s head and another time seeing a pair of women’s shoes as if they had been set together in a pile of rubbish on purpose. When she told the last two stories you could see the trauma on her face.
100,000 people were left homeless after one of the bombings and her family took in a couple-the couple they took in later stripped the family home of all of their possessions when she and her mom and dad went on holiday, which included all of the family photos. She later saw a photo of herself in a pawn shop window.
She ended up with PTSD from the sound of the bombs and after moving to the US, would hide in the closet every time there was an electrical storm.
No one in our family takes sugar in our tea as a left over of our parents’ given their sugar ration to their parents during the war.
My mother was a child during the war in Belfast, too. She didn't talk about it much.
my great grandfather grew up during the blitz in Belfast too. he had a few stories about nearly being bombed i just cant remember them off the top of my head.
That’s so fucking cruel that they took family photos.
Excellent rendition of the realities of WWII. I've lived abroad for over 50 years and have long since realised that "the good old days of the blitz" were far from good and do wish people would stop glorifying them and wishing it back.
PS: My mother was evacuated to a farm in Cornwall and tells of not being wanted there and being so harshly treated that eventually her father came and took her back to London. So much for the blitz spirit there.
My mums godmother was 4 when World War II broke out - in Germany. His parents were fairly well off, educated, and aware of the danger of hitlers regime, so they moved to England as soon as they could just before the war started. Both of them spoke English and they refused to let him speak German in the household or even have a German accent. They changed the surname from Dieter to Light so that they seemed more British. To this day, even though he has since moved back to Germany, he can’t speak German without an English accent, so German people always try to speak to him in English instead, thinking he’s a tourist. It’s very sad that they had to do all that to avoid such xenophobia
Lots of Jews changed their names too.
Thank you for mentioning the colonies!
I am currently studying the Life in the UK in order to become a British citizen and am on the part how "The British army have defeated the Japanese at Burma", where in reality it was Nigerians.
As part-Nigerian, that made me quite annoyed to be fair.
Weren't they in the British army though?
@@wingnut71 Sure, but god forbid anyone recognize that the soldiers could also be Nigerian... Not every country or individual under British rule was proud to be a colony
British is not an ethnic group. British simply means part of the British empire. Nigerians were part of the British empire, and it was because of British logistics, training, and politics that those Nigerians ever saw combat outside their own borders.
@@greyfells2829 you say this like they should be grateful to get dragged into a European war
Seeing as Canadian forces were often mentioned I agree it would have been logical AND good for moral to mention other specific peoples of the Empire/Commonwealth.
I was taught about the war like you were, This is an interesting video. . . Thanks for putting the parallels on there too about todays current situations of the world.
The fact that war damage still being evident is crazy. Ozzy Osbourne, who was born in '48, talks about playing in bombed out ruins in Birmingham as a kid. So even in the '50s, there was still rubble all over.
I was born in Croydon in 55 we were still playing in bombsites.
We still have some damage left in Finland from the civil war in 1918. Not in many places, but I know of at least one church (probably not the only one) and many headstones on a graveyard that saw some of the worst battles. I even know another graveyard in this city has similar signs in its old part. And this did not even include bombs, those signs are mostly just from rifles. There were small cannons used in the waw, but not many. (One side had a sharpshooter in the church tower, dominating a large area and it took some brutal warfare to win over that. But the other side eventually won.)
It's the old stone buildings that are mostly spared, so that they are not demolished, but get some damage on the outside, that carry the signs throughout the decades. You cannot just change one stone from the exterior - and also they are kind of a memorial. A wooden house would be painted over. Also plaster would be redone at some point, but the oldest fine stone buildings are not plastered.
05:00 The hyper focus on the tea preparation had me remembering Arthur Dent trying to explain a cup of tea to the computer on the Heart of Gold. "Boiled leaves?" "With milk!" "Squirted from a cow?" And trying to create it shuts the computer down for an inconveniently long time!
Thank you for this vid. At the beginning of the pandemic, I wondered if there had been any resistance to the blackouts similar to what we saw with masks and lockdowns. My google searches came up with nothing, so I had to leave it unanswered, until your video came up in my suggestions today! Very informative, and the sources section was an interesting read too.
Do NOT have the effrontery to conflate blackouts with Lockdowns. Gas masks didn't have to be worn to go shopping like those dreadful face nappies did.
I'm a teacher in Canada. Born and raised Canadian. Where I teach, we get a lot of students who have emigrated from the U.K to here, especially it seems from metropolitan areas such as London, Manchester or Birmingham (West Midlands). I am shocked that they have no idea that Canadians fought in WWII !!!
American here, former history teacher. When I taught kids about how, during D-Day as the USA was getting slaughtered at Omaha Beach, the Canadians had already cleared their beach so they offered to come help out, but the American Army refused all help so they wouldn't look weak (the US Army was extremely self-conscious in the face of the Marines getting all the glory in the Pacific Theater, declaring Europe was THEIRS and "no Marine shall set foot on European soil") I was amused as the teens shouted out, "Wait, CANADA was in the war too???" Ooh boy, they were in for a lesson!
@@rhov-anion Source?
A friend told me that he went from the US to Canada before 1940 so he could enlist to fight as he wasn’t sure the US would join the fight. That’s how I learned about the Canadian contribution.
@@nickdanger3802 I tried to find which book I read that in. I'm going to guess it's not one I own, but one I checked out. It was around 2014-19, I was doing a lot of research during those years into 1944 France. I even tried to search online, but it's not the sort of story Americans like to admit happened. Heck, I learned from my dad (a Marine) about the Army at Omaha Beach turning down an offer of help from the Marines on the ships, who tried to demand to go ashore and take the lead as they saw the chaos getting men killed. George Marshall declared that no Marine shall set foot on European soil as long as he was in charge, because they felt the Marines were getting too much of the glory in the Pacific. So the Army refused help from the Marines and the other Allies and would rather have 2400 dead than swallow their pride and ask for aid. (Okay, that last bit is kinda unfair, they had to keep up appearances for morale back home. The war was NOT popular, and many Americans felt we shouldn't bother with Europe. Many like Charles Lindbergh supported a truce with Hitler.)
When I was at school in the seventies, I was told in my English book, that Great Britain stood alone against Germany for a whole year (? can't remember the time given) - and I thought, they were tough. I was flabbergasted when I found out much later that, lo and behold, a significant part of the planet stood by their side and helped with men power and goods. So yes, propaganda going strong there!
I attended a boarding school in East Anglia for a year in 1988-89, and based on my experiences there, I'm not at all surprised.
The casual xenophobic, ablist, classist, and other discriminatory cruelty, combined with a weird sense of national superiority, I experienced and witnessed daily still baffles me to date.
why baffles you?, the same has happened in every big European nation and in the states
From my point of view, you hear all those stories about the British being multiculti, openmided, interested in world cultures, knowledgeable, .... and then you find out the truth. And the "classiness" which you do not expect because of the mixture of US and British E. background most foreigners get with E. You need some time and strong will to see it and understand the Brits' POV and not starting to hate them. And being in a boarding school which means among kids that person must have got the essence of the worst.
@@Vanda-il9ul well put.
What’s wrong with having a sense of national superiority.
@@J-678hdj every country has it in some way, but if England has it, despite having accomplished many more things than most, its apparently wrong.
My father was born in Kent and was sent to Wales as a young boy! He was lucky because he went to live with a district nurse. His younger brother had an awful time the people took away his clothes and he wasn’t fed properly! Eventually my grandmother took him home! My father didn’t see his parents for five years! Sadly he never talked about his experiences - he was so traumatised!!!
As a German I really don't know how different or alike the experiences of people were on these two opposing and certainly ideologically very different sides of the war, but living through having your city bombed every night must have been traumatic for the people on either side. My dad used to work in a nursery home and he told me of some old people who still get traumatic flashbacks every time they hear a siren or a firework.
Sadly the bombing of cities, especially Dresden, far too often gets utilized by right wing extremists and Nazis to make some kind of claim that we were the victims after all.
Do you know in which city he was working? Of course, we are all people; no matter whether we are British, German, Chinese or whatever, our responses to crisis are very similar. It is a uniting factor for humanity in a way.
It is always a shame when a terrible historical event, like the bombing of Dresden or any other place, gets hijacked by political extremists and other unsavoury groups. But I find it beautiful that the new cross on top of the rebuilt Frauenkirche was given to Dresden by the British and that Dresden and Coventry are twin cities.
There was a Polish woman that worked for my parents in the 80s. Whenever there was a big thunderstorm she had to leave due to PTSD from shelling she experienced asva child during the war.
My German friend simply says, "They were different people. Thats not who we are". Good.
I love the Parallel between the blitz and lockdown you show because in my opinion the best way to learn about historical events is comparing them to stuff that happens in modern day
Never heard this side of The Blitz. This seems like a more realistic depiction of what was really going on. Loved you getting into character, added to the story. I was surprised by your reaction to T and defaulting to a monster, those thing tear me up! ( coffee for me)
This is reminiscent of the research I did during my undergrad! we were exploring the post-war French examining their own approach to Vichy France. Henry Roussou wrote a book called "vichy syndrome" which argued that the french reimagined the role of France, downplaying its collaboration and over-emphasised the resistance.
Mum keeps telling me things were better during her childhood - I keep reminding her bombs were dropping (at least three of her neighbours killed on first air raid on London and more subsequent, while she didnt have official evacuation - her dad was too old for war duties (+injured in WW1) but worked on a road making gang and they were sent to Cornwall to lay aircraft runways etc in prep for D-Day, her mum and her went down too for what should have been a two week visit . they stayed for six months and mum was a pupil teacher to younger evacuees from east london, so she never got a school leaving certificate !.
Seeing 2020 compared to the Blitz and their effects is so chilling, yet it makes so much sense
Color me shocked that rich people treated others (especially poor people) like shit... there's nothing quite like Christian values when it comes to helping others.
Yup. Don't want those smelly peasants ruining the furniture. But we continue to accept it for some reason
My grandmother lived in London through the blitz. She said she didn't feel the spirit in the way it was portrayed, she was constantly terrified and saw some horrific sights.
But she did say there was a great sense of community in her local area (Putney) and people helped one another - everyone was scared, so people had empathy for one another. But there were also times when it was not like that, and it was everyone for themselves, especially in the earlier days when there was more panic.
She worked in a munitions factory manufacturing bullets, and said there was a lot of camaraderie amongst the workers, but not because of "high morale" - because everyone was scared, stressed, missing loved ones, uncertain about the future, and traumatised.
She was certainly traumatised herself. She didn't speak about it until she reached 90 years of age. I was privileged enough to have a full conversation with her about it (initiated and driven by her, I was scared to push her too far...)
Thank you for this ❤️
I've often wondered about the housing. Were homes usually rented or privately owned? Would people have had mortgages to pay on properties that had been destroyed?
Good point! I'm very curious about this as well.
"And he gave up on Britain and went to take on an easier project instead... like Russia" 🤣🤣
Britain was pretty much near the end of its tether, when Hitler had to turn his attention to Russia coming at him from the East. That's not to denigrate the amazing and heroic actions of our RAF, but the fact is, it is rarely mentioned that Hitler had to rally his forces to fight a new foe and that was at least partially responsible for Britain holding on during those grimmest of years. That take may upset the purists, but it is a factor nevertheless - it just doesn't get mentioned very often in the 'accepted narrative'.
@@jamesbarbour8400 I was laughing at the fact that they said Russia was an easier project...
Extremely interesting and educational.
Here in the US, there were unsavory things during WWII as well. Japanese-Americans weren't trusted and many were interned in camps. On my Mother's side of the family with German ancestry, they changed their surname...more out of embarrassment than actual bias. Owning a dachshund was frowned upon as ridiculous as that sounds.
Getting on for nearly a year later and those early comparisons already seem ridiculous "wear a mask and don't hoard" compared with "you're being bombed to death and you your kids are going away". Feels like they were relishing the idea of embracing so called Blitz spirit for nostalgia.
People like to compare so many things to WW2. In Germany, where I live, we had anti-mask-protesters seriously comparing themselves to Sophie Scholl and other figures of the anti-Nazi-resistance. I think that people want to feel like they are part of some great heroic historical movement or effort. They want to feel important.
And even at the time the myth was utilised to stop people from going feral and it didn't even really work
I remember phoning my Dad early on during lockdown, "I keep hearing about the 'great British blitz spirit". You lived through the war Dad. When the German bombers turned up, did people rush out and buy up as many toilet rolls as they could find?" He informed me that they did not.
Well most people used old bits of newspapers in those days… :)
Probably because
a) the pandemic was not a world war
b)the quality of the average British citizen has dropped significantly
there were probably some people hoarding food or trying to get around the food rationing system.
@@dariusanderton3760 That would be rich people and criminals. :)
There was lots of talk about the run on toilet paper at the start of the pandemic, and how previous generations would be outraged, but every country in WW2 had rationing in effect, as far as i know. They knew they couldn't leave it up to people's sense if duty, to only buy the prescribed amount of things. You had to have a ration card. Everything but the most common items, would be stripped from the shelves, without rationing. It's similar to the economic principle Tragedy Of The Commons.
My journey of where I am today, started when I watched Midwives. To discover there is a world beyond what we were taught sent me on a trek of discovery to learn ALL I could about the Human experience and development. What I found was that we are the real stories behind history, that are worth uncovering. We must always challenge ourselves to go beneath the surface so as to not remain shallow, 😉.
Fabulous and informative as always. I loved the little edits to show the parallels.
You are wrong about tea though.
My parents survived the blitz. So many family members did not. Horrific stories. They emigrated to Canada after the war to escape the sadness and the increased rationing during this time. I appreciate your video.
Ahh yes the Mail and Express, being the same for over 80 years.
Hurrah for the blackshirts...
Very well put. At first I was put to argue but I listened and you made good solid points. History & people repeat themselves.
Yes. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Great video. In Germany we have a similar story concerning the months after the 2nd world war ended. It is told, that Germany was re-built by the Trümmerfrauen, by women, who worked in the rubble of destroyed cities to manually clean brick of mortar for re-use. There is a historical truth to this, as this did happen in Berlin for a short period. But they mostly didn't do it on their own accord - they were recruited by the Allied forces as workers. They were paid for their work.
The vast majority of the rubble however was removed by male workers using heavy duty machines.
The picture of the Trümmerfrau was often used for political reasons. To show how heroic female workers (and working mothers) are in the former DDR.
To show that these women were not Nazis but rather victims themselfes and selfless heros. A picture that is much more agreeable and palatable.
I’m Australian. Two of my great uncles were lost in the war. My grandfather survived, but not for long. Britain didn’t stand alone.
We do have a similar lionisation of this time, though. Hearing the stories from my grandmother have a much clearer picture of the truth. How could moral have been high when their world was falling apart and, even in far Australia, the war was cutting holes in families while old prejudices suddenly seemed even more important.
You don’t see people who lived it hankering for that time. If it was so rosy surely they would.
I am Australian as well and I never new my grandfather due to "Shell shock" and I see the respect of the Narrative.
Us Australian's gave so much. My Grandfather point-blank refused to talk about the war, and it wasn't until after he died that we found out he had received 2 medals. His Sister married 'her boy' the day of his 18th birthday and he joined up the next day and didn't come back. She never remarried.
Eric Blair aka George Orwell's account of pulling his books out of the rubble of his house is one personal account I will always remember...( Hurricane Katrina was very much like the real Blitz....) fact it helped me a great deal when my home in New Orleans was ruined by a large fire... Seeing the Fire rolling up the Stair Case was unforgettable so was the Flood.
There's also the secrecy regarding the bombing of east coast harbour towns such that many think that there was no bombing of them at all (Hull and Grimsby being an example)
It's 2022 and the refugee thing is now about Ukrainians. Some things just don't fucking change.
I love that the Zadok the Priest scene shows the sheer Englishness of a song written by a German composer from a text about a Jewish coronation. There's a message in that for everyone who thinks foreigners need to stay out of Britain...
My goodness, what a little gem your channel is! Your discussions about history are very unique and insightful. I shall be binge watching all your videos tonight!
As for the topic of this video, I have read in various history books little hints that the reality of the blitz was very different. The maintaining of class bondages was very true, which is why the bombing of Buckingham Palace was such a PR win for the King. The Queen famously said "I can now look the east end in the face".
I was imagining how it would be to live with you or visit you, during the tea building scene. Me, drinking monster ultra white, and you and your friends or relatives having the high ground of posh drinks. And then I saw you pull out a monster too. You’re awesome!😅
The idea that a stewed cuppa like that is "posh" is ridiculous. Builder's tea is as working class as anything ever has been.
Aight.
Amazing. Even we yanks have a romanticized notion of Brits and the Blitz. I always enjoy a good thought provoking subject, especially those that peel away the facade. Thank you.
We sure do have a glorified view. I remember visiting London a few years back looking at the queues and thinking respect!
Im a Coventarian who walks past the bombed-out ruins of our cathedral practically every day. The British govt's catastrophic failures in preparing for war enabled so much more destruction than fascist bombers could have inflicted on a prepared country
One example: Demands in pre and early war to move water hydrants below ground were routinely ignored by British govt who had more than enough manpower to carry out the work. So when the Germans bombed and burned cities, these 4ft-tall hydrants were instantly knocked out and left firefighters with little chance in controlling fires that claimed horrifying amounts of historic wooden buildings, preciously few of which still survive today in Coventry
I spoke to an 83yo woman at a 75th anniversary ceremony outside the cathedral in Nov 2015 who had actually been in the cellar of the cathedral when it went up in flames. Afterwards she fled to a cellar in a nearby shop which wasnt even a public shelter but allowed by the shop owner. The emotion in her eyes was so intimate and real
Im so glad ppl are finally looking past the leftover propagandistic narratives that are used to reinforce modern nationalism. Best vid on this topic that I've yet seen. Blessed
I'm American but my mother had a wonderful older married couple from the UK that went to church with us and through them and their stories I learned about the Blitz and the War long before I learned about it in school. I also learned about tea time which I loved. I am a historian myself now, I was originally in law enforcement but I'm not being shot at now but I credit the stories of Britain in the War with what I became.
So relatable! Thanks! My grandmother, in rural Leicestershire, took in a Jewish girl and her young son from Berlin. She had aunt in London, hence she gained entry, but the aunt wouldn't house her, and come the blitz, they were evacuated.
Anyone that has lived in a war zone knows instinctively that all too many humans don’t rise above human nature….particularly under stress. The people of London reacted pretty much the same as those of Berlin when the tide was turned. The mass bombing on both sides were as much failed strategic moves hoping to smash morale as they were tactical to reduce war production. The empire offered great assets in manpower and food, but couldn’t much contribute the industrial capability needed to win a war. An inherent weakness of the Brit empire was its concentration of industrial capability in the UK on the mercantile industrial model. In brief, it was policy to make manufactured goods in the UK and export them to a captive colonial market, while receiving raw materials for UK industry in return. Easily 90% of the empire was out of reach of German, and later Japanese planes, but 90% of the empire’s industrial capacity was within reach. Knowing this, the average Brit in any of the industrial cities should be considered a hero of the empire for carrying on at any level, bad behavior be damned.
An incredibly well put observation
My great nana told me many stories about the war but when I heard battle stories from men while working in a care home I can see how so many of them ended up so damaged by the events.
One of the gentleman was too young to be drafted (just 14) but as things developed further they had them assisting ike handing out sandbags etc. Because he was ‘older’ he was designated as a body collector. They would drive a large van down the streets of London and pick up bodies of the deceased. That sounded horrific enough for a person you boy to be doing but he said the think that haunts his nightmares was a time he went to move a body and as he did the head rolled away.
I have so many stories of the war from men and women all of them facing hardship but banding together to look after one another, they supported each other where now people tend to only think of themselves (look at the food and sanitary products being a gold mine and everyone having enough toilet roll left over for another year!) My great nana grew certain vegetables then a different neighbours would all grow a variety of fruits and vegetables so they would all share produce and have a more plentiful array.
My nanas strength and resilience always gave me courage.
Growing our own crops has just carried on in my family.
My Grandy (her son) is 81 now and his health has taken a blow so I tend to whatever is growing and try to keep the growing cycle well oiled. We will sit together and plant seeds which I leave in his greenhouse and he will sit in the garden at his house and shake off the soil for planting and I’ll do the physical side.
We make enough for me to plant and then do the family tradition of swapping produce.
It’s really nice, maybe it’s because nourishing someone is an act of care.
My nana used to always say I had fruit picker fingers which meant the ability to pick all berries without cutting myself or other fruits that squish easily and manage to get them all off without squashing them.
Plus, I make sure all of our fruits are doing and the when I harvest them the excess gets made into crumbles, pies and cakes so you get something delicious and no food waste.
I was so thankful to have my great nana until I was 25 and I spent the last two years moving in and doing physical care rather than dropping in a couple of times a day especially in the summer where you get lost in time and she would be still gardening at 9:30pm thinking it was 6pm.
That was rather cathartic for me. Probably no interest to anyone else but I always push people to maintain a close relationship with grandparents and if you have children do the same.
They are the biggest link to your past and having worked with the elderly it became apparent the sadness it would bring when family only visited at Christmas or occasionally their birthday. Ironically most of the family members still lived in the general vicinity.
There will always be at least a small window of time where you could pop in for a cup of tea for 20 minutes and people will never understand the joy that brings.
Particularly when sons/daughters/grandchildren and their children come in it illuminates almost everyone living there including the men.
Give back the love and care they have for you,
Anyway, if you managed to get through my dissertation I at least hope that people realise it wasn’t all doom and gloom!
Excellent video, informative, well researched, bold and well done. Thank you for all the work that went into it!
I love it that you're playing the music of a German born composer throughout.
Ha ha. I've been scouring the comments so see who else noticed! A lovely bit of irony from J 😍
what piece was used in the beginning?
@@halfcadence1417 Zadock the Priest (Coronation Anthem No 1) by Georg Friedrich Handel.
Handel although born in Germany emigrated to England. Hence his compositions the vocals are in English (Judas Maccabeus, The Messiah) unlike his contemporary J.S. Bach who remained in Germany.
I shake my head in wonder that England endured so many months of air terror by Germany. The resilience and courage of the English people should always be remembered and admired.
Well said Antonio,very well said👏
Intro: Brilliant, Jenny!
Everything else: also brilliant!
My great grandmother lived through both world wars. She was in her 20's during the second world war, and would tell me of how bad the bombing in Bristol was. I remember one time she told me a tale of the one time there was a air raid, her husband wanted to go to the local comunity shelter, but she was a bit nervous about going. So they took sheler else where. She then told of how the shelter had a direct hit, and nealy all the inhabitants perrished. She said they managed to get ahold of a anderson shelter, and set it up at the bottom of their guarden after that.
Very brave intro, half expected the comments to go "how dare you imagine our plight of having to wear masks to a time where people had no choice" unironically. Also, a channel celebrating British history and admitting tea is not your cup of tea? Heroic.
It did looked a bit like a weak tea 😬😬😬
I could relate to the story in a number of ways. Here. First, of course we had a similar narrative. Of a People's War against Nazis IN Soviet Times and even after Ukrainian independence. The complex history of WWII still has to be properly analyzed and understood. But I also can relate to the history of London in the Blitz because for instance my city, Kharkiv, was bombed almost. Every day (or night, whatever Russians fancied) for. Months. It was both for the terror purposes, as people could not sleep due to the sound of explosions, in order to destroy infrastructure, factories and homes. Our East End was Saltovka, a huge area with high houses. Every house with multiple. Families and no proper underground nearby and most bomb shelters going to ruin. Thousands of people homeless. And we had looters, and pretenders who dressed as volunteers and policemen too. And also my family did not go to shelter because our own cellar had been spoiled by sewage water and it was too far from the underground, so we also huddled together with our dog and cat in one room. And the struggle to achieve blackout when my daughter was so afraid of the dark, and no real. Resources to really re- enforce windows. And treatment of the refugees varied too. So really in some cases you could feel you traveled in time. It is still. Like WWII repeats all over again. I can believe it all happened because it also happens now. If you do not understand history properly it does repeat. Unfortunately.
"Concentrated...in camps..." Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear...
In regards to morale: I heard that in some cases the V-weapon attacks later in the war were worse, though I can't prove the assertion. The V-2 was especially terrifying however, as you couldn't hear it coming...
5:06 WAY too much milk. I'm sorry, I had to say it.
My grandfather was an auxilary fireman during the Blitz and later served as an infantryman in Italy. He was very very patriotic but very critical of the Blitz mythos. He managed a brief spell as a spiv between his two acts of service.
Excellent balance! My Austrian Jewish grandmother fled Vienna where she had lived her whole life as a reasonably wealthy family to come to Britain and go into service, for 6 years she didn’t know if her parents or brother were alive - she never saw her father again. She experienced much racism etc - her family were not even practicing Jews, only of Jewish descent but it didn’t seem to matter 🤷🏼♀️
I thought it was very interesting to hear about anti-Semitism in Britain during the war. My Great-grandma was in love with a Jewish man before the war, but we found while doing family research that he didn't actually marry her until the war ended. I wondered if he was afraid it might put her in danger? Especially if the Nazis won?! Anyway, although her family disowned her, they ended up happily married ❤
Actually I have a question. How did Britain deal with the Spanish Flu?
I always hear about the wars, admittedly a monumental “scar” (both literal, mental, emotional, financial, and so on) but I very rarely hear about how more accurate comparisons to our modern day plague such as the Spanish Flu, small pox, yellow fever, even the Black Death left scars on Europe in general let alone Britain. Was Spanish Flu only a massive thing in North America? Or did it and others like it leave “visible” scars that can be seen or felt into modern day?
My personal research is inconclusive and would appreciate other takes on a more human level as opposed to “this is just what we know from historical accounts.”
Didn't hear much from my family, they were a music hall family but one ran away in the early 1910's and joined the Royal navy Marines (pre war), went through the Siege and evacuation of Antwerp, Jutland, the Zeebrugge raid, got demobbed in 1919, went on a fortnights holiday to the south coast. Fell ill after a week and was dead from the flu by time his holiday was up!
What did seriously impact that generation of my family was seeing whole branches of the family die from TB in the 20's and 30's. It was a slow constant attrition that when it got into a household, it would devastate. One relative lost his wife, his only and new born child and his mother in law to it. That's right, he was the ONLY one to survive from that home. And that, that is why that generation wanted to bequeath us something like the NHS.
I believe, in most countries, it was almost forgotten about quite soon after. It sounds unlikely, if you read about how bad it was, but a similar thing happened after the polio epidemic in the fifties. I remember it. Saw lots of kids at school with braces on their legs. I know my parents kept a lot of it from us, but I picked up enough to know about the people in Iron lungs, and the cripples. You certainly don't hear about it now, or for many decades. I believe there are still a couple of people who are still in Iron lungs since the fifties.
It's good you mentioned Jewish German refugees. My great grandmother was a German jew. She survived the starvation in Germany during ww1, the rise of the nazis, and when she moved to London to escape the nazis she was viewed with extreme suspension, and only the Jewish community in London really helped her and her children.
Edit: it's important to note that despite that she was forever grateful to the UK for saving her and her children. The UK might have had some problems, but Germany was way worse.
In any desperate and harrowing circumstances, I think you will always see both the worst and the best of humanity.
That tea was made so badly, Britain is ashamed of you. 🤣
Not enough milk?
@@hektor6766 didn't do the standing spoon test
A lot of that “Bomb damage” was the result of our own anti aircraft fire. AA shells exploding in the air blasted out chunks of shrapnel - designed, of course, to destroy or damage any enemy aircraft nearby. What goes up however must come down, and a large number of deaths and a great deal of damage was caused by huge lumps of metal falling onto buildings and into the streets from a great height.
In “Foyles War” a lot you have touched on was portrayed. Your postings are always so entertaining and educational, thank you
just thinking the same thing. An excellent series, showing some of the less “honorable” behavior that happened routinely, especially the differences between the classes in how they were affected by the war.
Another brilliant video, thank you very much.
It hit me during lockdown what a slap in the face the phrase “keep calm and carry on” really was
If I'm not mistaken "keep calm & carry on" was never actually used during the war. It was only discovered after the war. It was going to be used if there was occupation.
I think that to keep calm and carry on is mostly a facade, anyway. It's what can be seen and it keeps life continuing - it's not what it feels like inside your head.
It's going to be VERY interesting to see how public perception of the covid lockdowns is perceived of in fifty years or so.
This video is absolutely terrific. Interesting and informative. Thumbs up.
I watched a documentary on this the other week that was great. Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley on BBC. It’s was really interesting and I’d recommend that too. Anyhoo love your videos 🙂
11:38, I paused the screen at that point and I tried to read the newspaper article. Although I couldn't read all of it, I got the distinct impression that the writer was talking about their experience of dealing with youths in the juvenile courts and trying to be sympathetic to their plight - although using language we wouldn't use nowadays.
5:41 The Draper just draped!
On the general theme of war-time spirit, there is a book that I read a few years ago that I still think about often. It's called "War's Unwomanly Face" by Svetlana Alexievich, and it is a collection of first-hand accounts of women who were fighting on the Eastern Front in WWII (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). The author won a Nobel Prize for her work. The accounts range from heroic to mundane to heartshattering (heartbreaking didn't seem strong enough a term). It is well worth a read, though, proceed with EXTREME caution because the book is very traumatizing. I also feel like we need more books like that, with firsthand accounts of major events in history, not just the official government stories.
Fantastic video. Loved the parallels you've made here. Well done.
An excellent video. For anyone interested in watching a fictional but accurate representation of what life was like during WW2, I recommend the TV programme, Foyle's War which illustrates the many experiences covered in the video.
Love that series! I agree. Have watched Foyle’s War at least twice, and learned a lot.
There's a book called "Citizen of London" about a select group of journalists and diplomats, mostly Americans, who worked in London during the war. I already knew about Edward R. Murrow's time as CBS radio's correspondent but I was astonished to learn about U. S. Ambassador Wynant who put the entire embassy staff on the same diet as the Londoners and did a turn as an air raid warden.
Thank you for a very interesting programme. You, have talked about things my husband and I have discussed about the blitz sprit, that we have very rarely heard else where.
My father was a soldier in BAOR in the early 1960s so I spent time in Germany. When I returned to England in 1964, I was stood against a school wall and shot as a Nazi because I could speak German. In 1964.
@tinwatchman FW
Yes and the same happened on pur school exchange in 1993. Brits are entirely too self impressed with themselves. This fake pride for sth that didn't even happen made them arrogany and it hurt everyone.
This is proper researched and thought out content. Unbiased, even, honest. I saw the tiktocs and the pretty, bright presenter with the cheekbones but I'm staying for the quality historical content 👍
Jay Draper , You ROCK! Cheers from California 😊
I'm really glad you mentioned the Empire. Something that irritates me is when I hear people claim "plucky little Britain" stood up to the "might of Germany". At the start of the war Britain and France both had the huge resources of massive empires to call on, while Germany had been forced to limit its military drastically by Versailles, and had lost what little Empire it had after the First World War. The question I think needs to be asked is how was Britain, with its massive advantage so incompetent that it was essentially losing the war up until the USA joined? Not to mention that there were Free French and Poles and Danes and people from all over occupied Europe fighting in the British armed forces, and the USA was always providing tacit help, even before lent-lease, we were hardly alone.
I think Ms. Draper missed the point. She describes how horrific the Blitz was. She says people suffered, and it showed in their behavior. Okay. But who won? The British are humans, yes, imperfect, falling short of their ideal. But it is only nations which HAVE ideals, brave and courageous ones, who can fall short. The British survived against cruel & inhuman bombings, a torture that by all rights should have worked. It should have broken their morale. But it didn’t work. The British won the war, defeating true evil, not as models of human perfection, but as flawed, limited people who fought way above their weight.
The world owes a debt to Britain, not because they were perfect, but because they were flawed humans who outdid themselves against an overmatched evil regime.