@ianburnley7786, Let's not forget though that when news reels were shown in America, a lot of Americans came to England to help the RAF. Big Joe MacCarthy for instance. My mother lived through the Blitz and my Dad was in the RAF. The Aussies and NewZealanders were great too! I suppose the "Battle of Britain" was our finest hour as Churchill said.
My mum was 10 when the war started in Liverpool. Her Dad and brother both fought in the war. Her brother was prisoner in the second world. My poor mum suffered from night terrors from the war, and unfortunately, she passed away on 3rd April 2022, aged 93, from dementia. It was a horrendous time for all, but they carried on with hope and spirit and eventually won the war.
Despite Hitlers generals telling him not to underestimate the British on numerous occasions he took no notice. His aim was to demoralise the British people & turn them against the government forcing us out of the war. However, he didn't bank on how stubborn & tough Winston Churchill & the British people could be when backed into a corner.
Bombing cities didn't get the results Hitler wanted or expected they would. But the UK ALSO made the same assumption when bombing German cities. (Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden), thinking they would bomb them into submission. The opposite is the case.
At the time of the Second World War starting - the UK was still paying off the debts from trying to stop the slavery problem (1830's+) & from WW1 (1914-18), so the UK's finances weren't great when it started . . . and were then even worse when it ended in 1945 . . . So for another 55-65 years - those three debts were still being paid off until the 2000's (I think 2014 was the last to be paid off) - so we finally began to save money again - and then Covid showed up to add further debt again . . .
my dad was born during a air raid in derbyshire uk in a cellar, my nan was a tram girl and remembered running to the shelters when the city got hit scary times. i feel for other countries around the world still going through this
Hi Xee & Cyn, sadly that was not the end though, as in 1944 AH brought his terror weapons to bear on our country. Starting with the V1 Flying Bomb & followed later by the V2 rocket, a lot more devastation was caused. Until the launch sites were overrun by our Allied ground forces along the French, Belgian & Dutch coastline. The last V2 attack happened on 27/3/45, whereas the last conventional bombing raid on London happened on 29/1/44.
Great reaction. My family lived in Coventry and sadly got bombed during the raid. My great uncle died on d day, one died on Dunkirk the other lived through the war and was stationed in ciro (egypt) in the middle east campaign & lived he came home but was never the same & my grandpa was in the late day of the war he's 94 now. They never told there stories but I'd they did I guess they would be incredible. My uncle that survived was crazy however when he came home he got a shotgun and robbed a Lloyd's bank, they're never the same after.
My Mum was quite young, living in London during the war. My Dad was in REME (the Army Engineers) working on secret stuff (Long Range Desert Group communications and so on). They got married soon after the war. I once asked my Mum what she did when the air raid sirens started. She laughed it off with "We hid under the kitchen table"...
We shouldn't be too quick to underestimate the psychological effect of the Blitz, despite the obvious bravery and ' keep calm and carry on' mindset'. So many were broken by it and the trauma affected the next generation deeply too. There were multiple 'un-alivings', alcoholism went through the roof and many, many people had what we would now recognise as severe PTSD. It didn't just affect London, either - Sheffield, Coventry, Birmingham, Plymouth and many more UK towns and cities took unimaginable hits. My grandad, who was from Sheffield, jumped into a burning truck that was full of munitions and parked in a residential area, and drove it whilst it was on fire to somewhere where it wouldn't harm civilians when it exploded. That was a result of Blitz damage. So many of my family members and my partner's family members never fully recovered from the horror they went through. I don't even think we can begin to imagine.
My father left home the day before the war began and didn't return , to Liverpool, for 6 years. The house he left was destroyed by a bomb. His family was able to find another house which was also bombed and they had to find another. When dad finally returned he had the address but wasn't sure where the street was. In the dark a policeman wanting to know what he was up to walked him to the street and the house.
Many children were sent into the countryside away from the bombing, but also, away from their families. The docks in Liverpool were on fire every night. Some houses that were flattened had the bodies left in them, new houses eventually covered the bodies.
Britain has fought many wars. WWII happened just 21 years after the end of WWI. Those wars shaped the British people. It is a little sad that without a major war since 1948, generations have grown up with a sense of entitlement that leaves them ill prepared for another war. I don't think the people of today are tough enough to go through what the Brits with support from the Empire went through from 1939 until the US came into the war in 1942.
I don't think that many Americans appreciate just how much the UK was on the Front Line during World War II. Just take a look at the figures for civilian war fatalities ON HOME GROUND in the two countries and you will get the picture: USA Hawaii*: 68 (Pearl Harbor Attack) Alaska* (Aleutian Islands Campaign, 1942 - 1943): 18 (2 civilians killed, 16 died in captivity) The 48 Contiguous States: 6 (Balloon Bomb, Oregon) TOTAL: 92 * : Although Hawaii and Alaska were not actual US States during World War II they are included for completeness. Also the US TERRITORIES US Territory of Guam: 13 US Territory of Wake Island 168 US Territory of The Philippines: 343 TOTAL: 524 COMBINED TOTAL: 616 UNITED KINGDOM 70,000+ (Largely due to German bombing raids, V1 and V2 attacks). That is roughly 1 in every 680 UK civilians. About 40,000 of those were in London and the surrounding areas. If you pro-rata that up to take into account the larger population of the USA at that time it would equal nearly 250,000 American civilian deaths due to enemy action over the now 50 States (or over 600,000 now!). Not the 92 who actually did die that way.
The problem with the shelters was that not everybody had a back garden to put a shelter in. The one provided, an Anderson shelter, consisted of two pieces of corrugated iron sheet which curved at one end. The idea was to dig a large hole, 6ft or more long and about 5ft wide, as deep as possible. The corrugated sheets would provide the side and you would bolt the pieces together. All the dirt taken out of the hole you put back on top. You would survive a near miss but not a direct hit. Being below ground they constantly filled with water and were very cold during winter.
Some people died in shelters when the entrances were bombed & blocked, so the people couldn't get out. Many hundreds could have been trapped & killed in the Tube system if they had gone into them too early, & the Government wasn't being mean not wanting to let them, but thought it unsafe, & if the people wouldn't come out from them in the mornings then the trains would all be stopped, & life would have become impossible, with no one being able to get around. They could never have enough shelters for 8 million people in London, or the other millions in other cities, it would be impossible. The British did not know the first bombs on London were 'accidental'. During the Blitz it wasn't few planes dropping a few bombs each once a night, but often hundreds of planes dropping thousand of explosive & fire bombs, several times every night from September through to May, not just on London, but also on many other towns & cities all over the country, including in Scotland, Wales, all parts of England, & even in Northern Ireland. The Germans had been bombing airfields, factories, ships etc all summer before the blitz on London & the other British Cities began. At least 50,000 civilians were killed in Britain by German bombing, & many more thousands injured. Following the German example, the British, then the Americans, began bombing German cities in just the same way as the British Cities had been bombed, causing thousands of casualties. Still later in the war the Germans fired many flying bombs & rocket bombs at London, doing a lot more death & destruction. It only stopped at the end of the war as the Germans were defeated. So all in all, Britain was being hit by bombs etc from 1940 to 1945, the Blitz was just one part of this, but perhaps the most intense.
Greetings from Coventry. We always commemorate the blitz on the 14th of November 1940..... and April 8th and 9th as well as a larger one on the night of the 10th and 11th of April 1941.
Although much safer than the surface, even underground tunnels were not completely safe. Several were hit with many casualties. It should also be remembered that this was the first time such a war had been fought, governments had no previous experience to call on, hence the apparently cruel decisions sometimes made. Hindsight is much easier.
It wasnt just london that came under attack, cities like Liverpool with docks were also attacked savagely, my family came from Liverpool and they lived near the docks it was night after night bombardment, but everybody did their bit, my fathers dad worked in an ammunitions factory as did my mothers mum a very dangerous job these sorts places where what the Germans were after.... I seen a video of a German pilot flying low and shooting at children playing in a school yard with a grin on his face that was their cruelty...
My father worked in SE London, after a double shift at work he would then. Spend several hours on fire duty. Standing on the roofs of factories and a gas storage unit with a bucket of sand and a stirrup pump with another bucket of water to put out any fires caused by incendiary bombs. I still have some of his paperwork from this.
World war 1, The first Soldier killed on British soil, was killed in the town I Grew up. There's a plaque memorializing him, they've turned the barricks into a museum. If you search Hartlepool War Museum plaque, it's not much just a little reminder. I can't remember why they didn't put his name on the plaque but inside they explain who he was he was a private called James I'm pretty sure
My Mother lived and worked in Central London during the Blitz, she worked in a factory during the day and slept under a heavy kitchen table at night to exhausted to go to the local shelter, hoping if the house was bombed she could survive. My father was ground crew at an airbase in the RAF, so he was spared the most of the bombing.
The banning people from the subways and things like fearing people wouldn't come out of bomb shelters, was not to be cruel it was more of a fear that industry and shops and production would come to a standstill, and that would be devastating to survival as time goes on, and you can't blame anyone for not wanting to come out and risking their lives to bombs to go back to work
Where I grew up, in Chelmsford, was the HQ of the Marconi company, which made most of the radar equipment. It was also a major manufacturing centre for ball-bearings, used by so much military equipment, so it was a major target for German bombers, and later V1 and V2 rockets. My father was 12 during the blitz, and every day when he walked to school, he would call on his friend and walk to school with him. Once day, he got there to find the entire street had disappeared and laying in the middle of the road was someone's head. My mother was 7 years old and her mother was in hospital with a difficult pregnancy. Her father was in the army, so it was just them at home. They had an Anderson Shelter in the house - a metal table with wire-mesh sides where they would go during the raids. She told me how she would sit with her younger brother and sister, in the shelter, as the bombs fell, and as each bomb in the 'sequence' of those dropped, got closer and closer. She soon learned how many bombs were in each 'stick' (each load dropped) and would count them as they exploded. I can't begin to imagine the horror of having to deal with that as a 7 year old. That generation were tough people.
At Chelmsford cemetery there is a mass grave of workers killed when the Hoffmans ball bearing factory was bombed, I can remember the factory covered in faded camouflage paint in the sixties.
My grandfather had a bomb dropped in his garden by a German bomber, to his shock, despite being told how inaccurate such bombs were, his bomb had his house number on it. Still, it saved digging one part of the garden that year.
The problem with the tubes is that most of London tubes were built just below the surface. A hit on the surface could penetrate and collapse the tube thus killing many people.
There's an old Scottish Song that includes the Lyrics that "Wars are only won by the puppet masters who care little for the bodies on the plain" I think something like this proves that when they werent even allowing their own civilians to shelter in the London Underground
The city I was born in was one of the worst bombed cities, 95% of the buildings were destroyed. But it was decided by Churchill that the city would not be named, so it was always just referred to as a Northern Town, it was named properly until 2017. As a consequence many lives were lost and many were homeless.
@@xeeandcynreacts my mother was critically ill in the hospital, my father slept out in fields at the edge of the city both were just 8 years old. They could both remember it vividly. Mum joined her brother and sister as an evacuee eventually, but my father remained in Kingston upon Hull, and kept sleeping in the fields with other children courtesy of a community minded shop keeper called Daddy Hunt who would use his grocery van to get them to safety each night. Mums older brother joined the RAF but was killed at 21, her older sister did war work, as did my grandfathers. There is a blitz memorial in the city as well as a communal memorial in the cemetery to all people killed during the war. Love watching your videos, by the way Hull was the birth place and home of a few famous people in our history J. Arthur Ranks Family, William Wilberforce slave abolitionist, Andrew Marvell Poet and member of Parliament, Philip Larkin Poet Laureate, Sir John Hotham who denied entry to King Charles 1st to the town sparking the beginnings of the English Civil War, Amy Johnson Aviator... And more. 👍🙂
My Mother was bombed out of two homes in Liverpool during the war - Dad was in the army, my two eldest sisters were evacuated to Herefordshire, mum and her baby to Wales 🏴🇬🇧
During the London Blitz, my mother was a Wren on the staff of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, near the docks, and spent most of her nights in the cellars there. My father was in the Merchant Navy. Sadly the Government knew that a huge raid was coming for Coventry but they could do nothing to improve the defence because the Germans would realise that their codes had been cracked and the British could read their signals; had the Germans realised that, they would have changed all their codes, leading to even more death and destruction. It's said that WW2 was the first war where a fighting man was as likely to hear that civilian members of his family at home had been killed by enemy action as they were to hear of his death in battle.
My (Recently Deceased) Maternal Grandparents, were put onto Evacuation Trains in London. Grandfather was sent West to 🏴, Grandmother and Great-Aunt were sent West to Somerset (relative safety). Grandfather Leslie died on September 21st 2021 aged 92 from Covid19, Grandmother Irene followed him in the same week (28/01/2021) also from Coronavirus aged 94
My mum was in the blitz. I took her to the Museum of London which has a mock up of a bombed streets with bodies. She just said "there should be a lot more blood". My grandparents were fire wardens but my Nan was so scared, my granddad would do na double shift.
'In the event of invasion we will close for half an hour'....That sign is not meant to be taken seriously...it is a sign of British calm, humour and defiance in a time of devastation...
The Imperial War Museum in London has an air raid shelter you can sit in then it goes into an air raid which the shelter moves then afterwards you walk out into a street. My grandad had an air raid shelter in his garden which he dug out and brought it above ground and filled in the hole and placed the air raid shelter in the same place and used it as a shed. There is also a First World War trench which you can walk through. I have visited The First World War battlefields and been in some trenches. I have been to Normandy beaches on British 🇬🇧 and Canadian 🇨🇦 beaches plus I have visited museums in both sections. I have visited museums in the British 🇬🇧, Canadian 🇨🇦 and american sectors as well as places where fighting took place.i have visited areas in London where bombing took place as well as my hometown Grimsby which suffered bombing as It is a fishing port my great uncle was a Captain on board a tanker one day while in port Grimsby docks were being bombed luckily his ship didn’t get bombed.
It must be remembered that these shelters were the first of their kind to defend against a type of war that had never happened before. And the governments responses are similar to those that have been given as 'do not tell people, they will panic' is still often given as reasons not to provide warnings even now. Experts are often wrong, but rea knowledge of best choices was absent. The fact that Government changed policy over time shows how long it take for reality to catch up.
Hi Xee & Cyn, the first German bomber was hopelessly lost on it's way to bomb a legitimate military target, so the pilot decided to return to base, standard practice was to jettison the bombs usually over water, so he asked his navigator to find him open countryside to drop them in. The real mystery is why he trusted the word of the man who had got them lost in the first place!
We still find unexplored bombs in England today , this year two bombs found in Plymouth and in London I walked pass an unexplored bomb for 10 years on my way to work it was in an old factory, they pulled it down to build a supermarket and found the bomb.
My mom and dad were alive when the Germans bombed Coventry, which is 10 minutes drive from where I was brought up. Many, many years later, (around 2003 I think) my mom and dad went on a tour of Europe and they went into a shop in Dresden to buy some souvenirs, but the owner, on hearing that they were British, told my parents to leave because of how the British had bombed Dresden in World War 2. But the Germans had even made up their own word, "Coventried", to mean total destruction because of how badly they destroyed Coventry. The situation of the shop owners forcing my parents to leave was so ironic. But, in true British character, not wanting to cause a scene, my parents left the shop without mentioning that they were from Coventry. I don't really blame the shop owners. Their people, probably relatives too, had been traumatized by the bombings, but, unbeknownst to them, so had my parents. War is such a ridiculous waste. Normal people who just want an ordinary life being forced to kill other people so that the people in power can feel good about being powerful and in control of everyone else. It makes me so mad.
This is one thing the US (apart from Pearl Harbour) has, unlike the UK, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Soviet Union and many other countries. (and of course the Japanese in S.E. Asia) never domestically experienced.
My mum was born during the bliz in London and as a child I used to play in the bomb site in London my mum was not evacuated as she was to Young her sister and brother were then her brother did go into it my uncle
While this mentioned other cities, it was mainly London. The clydebank blitz may have been shorter but just as devastating and not reported on. ruclips.net/video/XSyeIJ9ccII/видео.htmlsi=6_vTJ9l-qZzEgqc5
Imagine 911 for 8 months, thats how long the Blitz. over London was. American troops fought in the last war BUT America never suffered from being attacked. All the countries in Europe and Asia and N.Africa suffered war but not America. You were lucky.
It was not that easy my great aunt was horrified because her friend went to get get something and left the shop to fetch it and was killed by a bomb and my aunt was on the receiving end of the blast and thrown in England it was horrific at the time but the British still stayed strong and it’s a shame that Americans have never had to injure what the British went through even though they causes a lot of problems in the. World
Did they also show you how Germany looked at the end of the war. The British bombed Germany by night and the Americans by night. In the end Germany was bombed back into Stone Age. 8th of May 1945 Germany ceased to exist and was divided in 4 occupation zones.
I think you are confusing Germany with Japan - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pretty much destroyed. The allies bombed German cities in 1945 to cut off the supply lines to the Russian Front and try to end the war.
With our ships being constantly sunk carrying much needed supplies of food and raw goods to our ports, we already had very strict rationing for everything. WWI had ended just twenty years before and that War had cost us approximately 1 million men. We had not thought to fight again. WWl had been the 'War to end all Wars'. Everything was in short supply. We needed more ships, more planes, more guns, more tanks and so on. Metal too was a precious commodity especially as we were also supplying tanks, arms etc to Russia and America. The Government concentrated solely on the war effort. We even made aircraft out of wood. If Germany had succeeded with their plans to invade England our Fate and that of much of the world would have been sealed. Priorities had to be chosen and the people knew that. Although it had been feared that Germany would bomb our cities, it was generally thought that they wouldn't, that they would concentrate on military targets. We were wrong. We did not realise the first bombing of London was a mistake. How could we? Hitler's ambition is thought to have caused the deaths of 71 million in WW2. I don't think that included all those that were permanently injured. You might like to have a look at 'Why we Fight: Britain'. It's an American documentary, and a bit crackly in places, but really interesting. Its just over 50 minutes long. There's also one on China and one on Russia. Love your reactions by the way. Always drop by when I see one 'flagged'. Thank you for all your hard work and time.
The first bombing of London may have been an accident but how were we to know that? We had watched the bombing of the cities of Warsaw and Rotterdam - where the Germans targeted civilians. It was a reasonable assumption that London was next and thus a raid on Berlin to discourage this.
You watch this, and then consider Ukraine and Gaza and Israel and everywhere else in a state of conflict. It's always the common folk that really go through the worst
My mother was a child during WW2. One day coming out of school a german plane flew low over the school trying to gun down the children. My mother said she could clearly see the pilots face, she said she had never run so fast before or since. My grandfather was too old for the army so joined the fire service. No sure if he had a choice or went where he was sent. A bomb dropped on the house opposite and blew the windows and doors off my mother's house so my mother and her mother moved to the countryside and were called up to work in a factory.
The Blitz would never have happened if J.D. Rockefeller's American Standard Oil hadn't supplied the Luftwaffe & I.G. Farben with fuel & lubricants. 🤔🇺🇸🫣👎
The remarkable resilience and courage of the British people, and to this day always 'keep calm & carry on'
My god, the free world should be thankful, it was the British who stood alone, because who else would have carried on.
The free world owes a debt of gratitude and respect
@ianburnley7786, Let's not forget though that when news reels were shown in America, a lot of Americans came to England to help the RAF. Big Joe MacCarthy for instance. My mother lived through the Blitz and my Dad was in the RAF. The Aussies and NewZealanders were great too! I suppose the "Battle of Britain" was our finest hour as Churchill said.
My mum was 10 when the war started in Liverpool. Her Dad and brother both fought in the war. Her brother was prisoner in the second world. My poor mum suffered from night terrors from the war, and unfortunately, she passed away on 3rd April 2022, aged 93, from dementia. It was a horrendous time for all, but they carried on with hope and spirit and eventually won the war.
Despite Hitlers generals telling him not to underestimate the British on numerous occasions he took no notice.
His aim was to demoralise the British people & turn them against the government forcing us out of the war.
However, he didn't bank on how stubborn & tough Winston Churchill & the British people could be when backed into a corner.
Bombing cities didn't get the results Hitler wanted or expected they would. But the UK ALSO made the same assumption when bombing German cities. (Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden), thinking they would bomb them into submission. The opposite is the case.
At the time of the Second World War starting - the UK was still paying off the debts from trying to stop the slavery problem (1830's+) & from WW1 (1914-18), so the UK's finances weren't great when it started . . . and were then even worse when it ended in 1945 . . . So for another 55-65 years - those three debts were still being paid off until the 2000's (I think 2014 was the last to be paid off) - so we finally began to save money again - and then Covid showed up to add further debt again . . .
… and the Boer War, First World War etc.
my dad was born during a air raid in derbyshire uk in a cellar, my nan was a tram girl and remembered running to the shelters when the city got hit scary times. i feel for other countries around the world still going through this
Hi Xee & Cyn, sadly that was not the end though, as in 1944 AH brought his terror weapons to bear on our country. Starting with the V1 Flying Bomb & followed later by the V2 rocket, a lot more devastation was caused. Until the launch sites were overrun by our Allied ground forces along the French, Belgian & Dutch coastline. The last V2 attack happened on 27/3/45, whereas the last conventional bombing raid on London happened on 29/1/44.
Great reaction. My family lived in Coventry and sadly got bombed during the raid. My great uncle died on d day, one died on Dunkirk the other lived through the war and was stationed in ciro (egypt) in the middle east campaign & lived he came home but was never the same & my grandpa was in the late day of the war he's 94 now. They never told there stories but I'd they did I guess they would be incredible. My uncle that survived was crazy however when he came home he got a shotgun and robbed a Lloyd's bank, they're never the same after.
My Mum was quite young, living in London during the war. My Dad was in REME (the Army Engineers) working on secret stuff (Long Range Desert Group communications and so on). They got married soon after the war. I once asked my Mum what she did when the air raid sirens started. She laughed it off with "We hid under the kitchen table"...
❤❤❤❤ god bless you both ❤❤❤
We shouldn't be too quick to underestimate the psychological effect of the Blitz, despite the obvious bravery and ' keep calm and carry on' mindset'. So many were broken by it and the trauma affected the next generation deeply too. There were multiple 'un-alivings', alcoholism went through the roof and many, many people had what we would now recognise as severe PTSD. It didn't just affect London, either - Sheffield, Coventry, Birmingham, Plymouth and many more UK towns and cities took unimaginable hits. My grandad, who was from Sheffield, jumped into a burning truck that was full of munitions and parked in a residential area, and drove it whilst it was on fire to somewhere where it wouldn't harm civilians when it exploded. That was a result of Blitz damage. So many of my family members and my partner's family members never fully recovered from the horror they went through. I don't even think we can begin to imagine.
Well said Helena. It shouldn’t be underestimated at all.
My mother was bombed out twice. An amazing generation of people.
My father left home the day before the war began and didn't return , to Liverpool, for 6 years. The house he left was destroyed by a bomb. His family was able to find another house which was also bombed and they had to find another. When dad finally returned he had the address but wasn't sure where the street was. In the dark a policeman wanting to know what he was up to walked him to the street and the house.
Many children were sent into the countryside away from the bombing, but also, away from their families.
The docks in Liverpool were on fire every night. Some houses that were flattened had the bodies left in them, new houses eventually covered the bodies.
Newcastle also got it but people often forget that ,
Good video tho
You should react to the 13 hours that saved Britain
stay safe 👍
Sunderland as well
And Sheffield, Hull, Coventry etc etc
Britain has fought many wars. WWII happened just 21 years after the end of WWI. Those wars shaped the British people. It is a little sad that without a major war since 1948, generations have grown up with a sense of entitlement that leaves them ill prepared for another war. I don't think the people of today are tough enough to go through what the Brits with support from the Empire went through from 1939 until the US came into the war in 1942.
I don't think that many Americans appreciate just how much the UK was on the Front Line during World War II.
Just take a look at the figures for civilian war fatalities ON HOME GROUND in the two countries and you will get the picture:
USA
Hawaii*: 68 (Pearl Harbor Attack)
Alaska* (Aleutian Islands Campaign, 1942 - 1943): 18 (2 civilians killed, 16 died in captivity)
The 48 Contiguous States: 6 (Balloon Bomb, Oregon)
TOTAL: 92
* : Although Hawaii and Alaska were not actual US States during World War II they are included for completeness.
Also the US TERRITORIES
US Territory of Guam: 13
US Territory of Wake Island 168
US Territory of The Philippines: 343
TOTAL: 524
COMBINED TOTAL: 616
UNITED KINGDOM 70,000+ (Largely due to German bombing raids, V1 and V2 attacks).
That is roughly 1 in every 680 UK civilians.
About 40,000 of those were in London and the surrounding areas.
If you pro-rata that up to take into account the larger population of the USA at that time it would equal nearly 250,000 American civilian deaths due to enemy action over the now 50 States (or over 600,000 now!). Not the 92 who actually did die that way.
You may need to check your maths bro. How does 13+168+343 equal 307?
@@robbpatterson6796
Good point, thanks. Amended.
(I was tired! 😉).
The problem with the shelters was that not everybody had a back garden to put a shelter in. The one provided, an Anderson shelter, consisted of two pieces of corrugated iron sheet which curved at one end. The idea was to dig a large hole, 6ft or more long and about 5ft wide, as deep as possible. The corrugated sheets would provide the side and you would bolt the pieces together. All the dirt taken out of the hole you put back on top. You would survive a near miss but not a direct hit.
Being below ground they constantly filled with water and were very cold during winter.
My grandfather had a shelter in his back garden, but many neighbours refused to have shelters because they didn't want their gardens dug up!
You should watch 13 hours that saved britain if you want to realy see what it was like .
Some people died in shelters when the entrances were bombed & blocked, so the people couldn't get out. Many hundreds could have been trapped & killed in the Tube system if they had gone into them too early, & the Government wasn't being mean not wanting to let them, but thought it unsafe, & if the people wouldn't come out from them in the mornings then the trains would all be stopped, & life would have become impossible, with no one being able to get around. They could never have enough shelters for 8 million people in London, or the other millions in other cities, it would be impossible. The British did not know the first bombs on London were 'accidental'. During the Blitz it wasn't few planes dropping a few bombs each once a night, but often hundreds of planes dropping thousand of explosive & fire bombs, several times every night from September through to May, not just on London, but also on many other towns & cities all over the country, including in Scotland, Wales, all parts of England, & even in Northern Ireland. The Germans had been bombing airfields, factories, ships etc all summer before the blitz on London & the other British Cities began. At least 50,000 civilians were killed in Britain by German bombing, & many more thousands injured. Following the German example, the British, then the Americans, began bombing German cities in just the same way as the British Cities had been bombed, causing thousands of casualties. Still later in the war the Germans fired many flying bombs & rocket bombs at London, doing a lot more death & destruction. It only stopped at the end of the war as the Germans were defeated. So all in all, Britain was being hit by bombs etc from 1940 to 1945, the Blitz was just one part of this, but perhaps the most intense.
Greetings from Coventry. We always commemorate the blitz on the 14th of November 1940.....
and April 8th and 9th as well as a larger one on the night of the 10th and 11th of April 1941.
Although much safer than the surface, even underground tunnels were not completely safe. Several were hit with many casualties.
It should also be remembered that this was the first time such a war had been fought, governments had no previous experience to call on, hence the apparently cruel decisions sometimes made. Hindsight is much easier.
I’m mad they never told us this in school, the fact the tube is so deep underground I wish I realised sooner 😢
It wasnt just london that came under attack, cities like Liverpool with docks were also attacked savagely, my family came from Liverpool and they lived near the docks it was night after night bombardment, but everybody did their bit, my fathers dad worked in an ammunitions factory as did my mothers mum a very dangerous job these sorts places where what the Germans were after.... I seen a video of a German pilot flying low and shooting at children playing in a school yard with a grin on his face that was their cruelty...
My father worked in SE London, after a double shift at work he would then. Spend several hours on fire duty. Standing on the roofs of factories and a gas storage unit with a bucket of sand and a stirrup pump with another bucket of water to put out any fires caused by incendiary bombs.
I still have some of his paperwork from this.
Always love watching your videos ladies
World war 1, The first Soldier killed on British soil, was killed in the town I Grew up. There's a plaque memorializing him, they've turned the barricks into a museum. If you search Hartlepool War Museum plaque, it's not much just a little reminder. I can't remember why they didn't put his name on the plaque but inside they explain who he was he was a private called James I'm pretty sure
Why and how was he killed on British soil?
My Mother lived and worked in Central London during the Blitz, she worked in a factory during the day and slept under a heavy kitchen table at night to exhausted to go to the local shelter, hoping if the house was bombed she could survive. My father was ground crew at an airbase in the RAF, so he was spared the most of the bombing.
The banning people from the subways and things like fearing people wouldn't come out of bomb shelters, was not to be cruel it was more of a fear that industry and shops and production would come to a standstill, and that would be devastating to survival as time goes on, and you can't blame anyone for not wanting to come out and risking their lives to bombs to go back to work
When forbidden to shelter in the Underground the British bought a ticket.
Where I grew up, in Chelmsford, was the HQ of the Marconi company, which made most of the radar equipment. It was also a major manufacturing centre for ball-bearings, used by so much military equipment, so it was a major target for German bombers, and later V1 and V2 rockets. My father was 12 during the blitz, and every day when he walked to school, he would call on his friend and walk to school with him. Once day, he got there to find the entire street had disappeared and laying in the middle of the road was someone's head. My mother was 7 years old and her mother was in hospital with a difficult pregnancy. Her father was in the army, so it was just them at home. They had an Anderson Shelter in the house - a metal table with wire-mesh sides where they would go during the raids. She told me how she would sit with her younger brother and sister, in the shelter, as the bombs fell, and as each bomb in the 'sequence' of those dropped, got closer and closer. She soon learned how many bombs were in each 'stick' (each load dropped) and would count them as they exploded. I can't begin to imagine the horror of having to deal with that as a 7 year old. That generation were tough people.
Just to correct you, what you described is a Morrison shelter. The Anderson shelters were the outdoor garden ones.
At Chelmsford cemetery there is a mass grave of workers killed when the Hoffmans ball bearing factory was bombed, I can remember the factory covered in faded camouflage paint in the sixties.
My grandfather had a bomb dropped in his garden by a German bomber, to his shock, despite being told how inaccurate such bombs were, his bomb had his house number on it. Still, it saved digging one part of the garden that year.
The problem with the tubes is that most of London tubes were built just below the surface. A hit on the surface could penetrate and collapse the tube thus killing many people.
There's an old Scottish Song that includes the Lyrics that "Wars are only won by the puppet masters who care little for the bodies on the plain" I think something like this proves that when they werent even allowing their own civilians to shelter in the London Underground
The city I was born in was one of the worst bombed cities, 95% of the buildings were destroyed. But it was decided by Churchill that the city would not be named, so it was always just referred to as a Northern Town, it was named properly until 2017. As a consequence many lives were lost and many were homeless.
Oh my goodness 😢
@@xeeandcynreacts my mother was critically ill in the hospital, my father slept out in fields at the edge of the city both were just 8 years old.
They could both remember it vividly. Mum joined her brother and sister as an evacuee eventually, but my father remained in Kingston upon Hull, and kept sleeping in the fields with other children courtesy of a community minded shop keeper called Daddy Hunt who would use his grocery van to get them to safety each night.
Mums older brother joined the RAF but was killed at 21, her older sister did war work, as did my grandfathers.
There is a blitz memorial in the city as well as a communal memorial in the cemetery to all people killed during the war. Love watching your videos, by the way Hull was the birth place and home of a few famous people in our history J. Arthur Ranks Family, William Wilberforce slave abolitionist, Andrew Marvell Poet and member of Parliament, Philip Larkin Poet Laureate, Sir John Hotham who denied entry to King Charles 1st to the town sparking the beginnings of the English Civil War, Amy Johnson Aviator... And more. 👍🙂
so which city was it. you can tell us now.
My Mother was bombed out of two homes in Liverpool during the war - Dad was in the army, my two eldest sisters were evacuated to Herefordshire, mum and her baby to Wales 🏴🇬🇧
During the London Blitz, my mother was a Wren on the staff of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, near the docks, and spent most of her nights in the cellars there. My father was in the Merchant Navy. Sadly the Government knew that a huge raid was coming for Coventry but they could do nothing to improve the defence because the Germans would realise that their codes had been cracked and the British could read their signals; had the Germans realised that, they would have changed all their codes, leading to even more death and destruction. It's said that WW2 was the first war where a fighting man was as likely to hear that civilian members of his family at home had been killed by enemy action as they were to hear of his death in battle.
My (Recently Deceased) Maternal Grandparents, were put onto Evacuation Trains in London. Grandfather was sent West to 🏴, Grandmother and Great-Aunt were sent West to Somerset (relative safety). Grandfather Leslie died on September 21st 2021 aged 92 from Covid19, Grandmother Irene followed him in the same week (28/01/2021) also from Coronavirus aged 94
My mum was in the blitz. I took her to the Museum of London which has a mock up of a bombed streets with bodies. She just said "there should be a lot more blood". My grandparents were fire wardens but my Nan was so scared, my granddad would do na double shift.
'In the event of invasion we will close for half an hour'....That sign is not meant to be taken seriously...it is a sign of British calm, humour and defiance in a time of devastation...
The Imperial War Museum in London has an air raid shelter you can sit in then it goes into an air raid which the shelter moves then afterwards you walk out into a street. My grandad had an air raid shelter in his garden which he dug out and brought it above ground and filled in the hole and placed the air raid shelter in the same place and used it as a shed. There is also a First World War trench which you can walk through. I have visited The First World War battlefields and been in some trenches. I have been to Normandy beaches on British 🇬🇧 and Canadian 🇨🇦 beaches plus I have visited museums in both sections. I have visited museums in the British 🇬🇧, Canadian 🇨🇦 and american sectors as well as places where fighting took place.i have visited areas in London where bombing took place as well as my hometown Grimsby which suffered bombing as It is a fishing port my great uncle was a Captain on board a tanker one day while in port Grimsby docks were being bombed luckily his ship didn’t get bombed.
It must be remembered that these shelters were the first of their kind to defend against a type of war that had never happened before. And the governments responses are similar to those that have been given as 'do not tell people, they will panic' is still often given as reasons not to provide warnings even now. Experts are often wrong, but rea knowledge of best choices was absent. The fact that Government changed policy over time shows how long it take for reality to catch up.
Hi Xee & Cyn, the first German bomber was hopelessly lost on it's way to bomb a legitimate military target, so the pilot decided to return to base, standard practice was to jettison the bombs usually over water, so he asked his navigator to find him open countryside to drop them in. The real mystery is why he trusted the word of the man who had got them lost in the first place!
Incidentally, the pilot and navigator were recalled to berlin for a bollocking, and witnessed the British raid firsthand.
We still find unexplored bombs in England today , this year two bombs found in Plymouth and in London I walked pass an unexplored bomb for 10 years on my way to work it was in an old factory, they pulled it down to build a supermarket and found the bomb.
As our late Queen Elizabeth II said "Keep calm and carry on" is the British way
Kingston upon Hull where I live was the 3rd worst city to be bombed 90 per cent of the homes had gone
My mom and dad were alive when the Germans bombed Coventry, which is 10 minutes drive from where I was brought up. Many, many years later, (around 2003 I think) my mom and dad went on a tour of Europe and they went into a shop in Dresden to buy some souvenirs, but the owner, on hearing that they were British, told my parents to leave because of how the British had bombed Dresden in World War 2. But the Germans had even made up their own word, "Coventried", to mean total destruction because of how badly they destroyed Coventry. The situation of the shop owners forcing my parents to leave was so ironic. But, in true British character, not wanting to cause a scene, my parents left the shop without mentioning that they were from Coventry. I don't really blame the shop owners. Their people, probably relatives too, had been traumatized by the bombings, but, unbeknownst to them, so had my parents. War is such a ridiculous waste. Normal people who just want an ordinary life being forced to kill other people so that the people in power can feel good about being powerful and in control of everyone else. It makes me so mad.
This is one thing the US (apart from Pearl Harbour) has, unlike the UK, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Soviet Union and many other countries. (and of course the Japanese in S.E. Asia) never domestically experienced.
My mum was born during the bliz in London and as a child I used to play in the bomb site in London my mum was not evacuated as she was to Young her sister and brother were then her brother did go into it my uncle
While this mentioned other cities, it was mainly London. The clydebank blitz may have been shorter but just as devastating and not reported on.
ruclips.net/video/XSyeIJ9ccII/видео.htmlsi=6_vTJ9l-qZzEgqc5
7:54 I think ignorance is bliss in their case, remember at that time technology and information wasn't the same
Sad thing is all this is still happening now in Ukraine ba another mad man
U should react to World War II in 39 minutes
Only one of these ladies 'got' the humour.
The black market and gangsters boomed during the blitz, they made loadsa moneeey.
Imagine 911 for 8 months, thats how long the Blitz. over London was. American troops fought in the last war BUT America never suffered from being attacked. All the countries in Europe and Asia and N.Africa suffered war but not America. You were lucky.
It was not that easy my great aunt was horrified because her friend went to get get something and left the shop to fetch it and was killed by a bomb and my aunt was on the receiving end of the blast and thrown in England it was horrific at the time but the British still stayed strong and it’s a shame that Americans have never had to injure what the British went through even though they causes a lot of problems in the. World
Did they also show you how Germany looked at the end of the war. The British bombed Germany by night and the Americans by night. In the end Germany was bombed back into Stone Age. 8th of May 1945 Germany ceased to exist and was divided in 4 occupation zones.
I think you are confusing Germany with Japan - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pretty much destroyed. The allies bombed German cities in 1945 to cut off the supply lines to the Russian Front and try to end the war.
With all the money thats spent on mansions and weapons and war there should be proper protection for everyone
With our ships being constantly sunk carrying much needed supplies of food and raw goods to our ports, we already had very strict rationing for everything. WWI had ended just twenty years before and that War had cost us approximately 1 million men. We had not thought to fight again. WWl had been the 'War to end all Wars'. Everything was in short supply. We needed more ships, more planes, more guns, more tanks and so on. Metal too was a precious commodity especially as we were also supplying tanks, arms etc to Russia and America. The Government concentrated solely on the war effort. We even made aircraft out of wood. If Germany had succeeded with their plans to invade England our Fate and that of much of the world would have been sealed. Priorities had to be chosen and the people knew that. Although it had been feared that Germany would bomb our cities, it was generally thought that they wouldn't, that they would concentrate on military targets. We were wrong. We did not realise the first bombing of London was a mistake. How could we?
Hitler's ambition is thought to have caused the deaths of 71 million in WW2. I don't think that included all those that were permanently injured. You might like to have a look at 'Why we Fight: Britain'. It's an American documentary, and a bit crackly in places, but really interesting. Its just over 50 minutes long. There's also one on China and one on Russia.
Love your reactions by the way. Always drop by when I see one 'flagged'. Thank you for all your hard work and time.
Schools hospitals churches were not targeted. No such thing a a smart bomb then. Just a GOOD GUESS. Half mile area was on target.
The first bombing of London may have been an accident but how were we to know that? We had watched the bombing of the cities of Warsaw and Rotterdam - where the Germans targeted civilians. It was a reasonable assumption that London was next and thus a raid on Berlin to discourage this.
Britain stood alone at the time. US wasn’t involved yet.
You watch this, and then consider Ukraine and Gaza and Israel and everywhere else in a state of conflict. It's always the common folk that really go through the worst
Love you Ladies you make me smile😂
war is not to be romanticized take what is said with a pinch of salt ,comments included victors of war ,write the history of it
You Ladies are so beautiful
Give thought to the people of Gaza.
My mother was a child during WW2. One day coming out of school a german plane flew low over the school trying to gun down the children. My mother said she could clearly see the pilots face, she said she had never run so fast before or since. My grandfather was too old for the army so joined the fire service. No sure if he had a choice or went where he was sent. A bomb dropped on the house opposite and blew the windows and doors off my mother's house so my mother and her mother moved to the countryside and were called up to work in a factory.
You ladies seem very clever don't belive all this shite
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The Blitz would never have happened if J.D. Rockefeller's American Standard Oil hadn't supplied the Luftwaffe & I.G. Farben with fuel & lubricants. 🤔🇺🇸🫣👎