AMERICANS REACT AND LEARN ABOUT THE BLITZ
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- Опубликовано: 14 июн 2024
- AFTER VISITING LONDON WE FOUND THAT AT A LOT OF THE TOP OF THE WAY IT STOOD TODAY WAS ALL AFFECTED BY TWO THINGS, THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON & THE BLITZ. WHAT WAS THE BLITZ , A RECENT AND A TOP 10 UK HISTORICAL EVENT THAT AFFECTED EVERYONE ON BRITAIN'S TINY ISLAND, FROM THE BOMBING OF LONDON ALL THE WAY UP TP THE BOMBING OF GLASGOW, WE TAKE A LOOK AT BRITAIN'S PART IN WW2 HISTORY. FROM THE LONDON TUBE TO THE STREETS YOU WALK ON THIS IS SOMETHING EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW BEFORE VISITING THE UK.
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WE DIDN’T RUN AWAY
We were at war. Thousands volunteered, then went through conscription. Children were evacuated, women joined the forces, worked in the fields and munitions factories. Everything was saved and recycled.
We built air raid shelters in our gardens.
We didn’t run away to another country.
People too old to fight became air raid wardens, police men, home guard, firemen etc. Women drove the ambulances and provided tea and sandwiches.
They trained to be nurses and left home for the first time.
We dug up our gardens and parks to grow food. We had our food rationed.
We didn’t run away. We fought for our country.
We learnt how to keep pigs and chickens. Delivered milk to towns.
We lived in the blackout for years, went to work in the dark.
We were bombed relentlessly week after week.
Many worked deep in the mines and in the fields.
but we didn’t run away.
Our men were slaughtered, our women and children were slaughtered,
our ships were sunk, our cities decimated, our aeroplanes shot down,
In every town and village, there was someone who died.
We did this for 6 years
. . .and still we didn’t run away.
Fantastic comment . Made me shed a tear.my family fought against both Germans and Japanese. British Army , Royal Navy.im going to copy and paste that comment if you don’t mind. 🇬🇧
@@gazza1196 That’s fine. I just couldn’t understand why so very many young men fled their countries instead of staying and fighting for them. It must be a cultural thing I suppose. From someone who’s Grandfather was in WW1 and Father in WW2 and me in the Navy for 12 years.
There's no one quite like the Brits, we're built different. Throughout history, through the ages there has been non-stop wars and invasions. The Brits are the only ones that will literally fight until the last man standing is standing no more.
Of course the main reason British people didn't leave was that there was nowhere to go and no means of leaving.
@@UltimateRestorations-ny9rhprecisely....plus the British government made it illegal to not join the army and join in the fight and were willing to arm and train the population, unlike many conflicts today where the government is killing its own people who can flee easily across land.
We have a problem in the UK we don't know how to give up,thousand years of history makes you like this.
Hi, I was one of those kids living in the centre of London Westminster England. I was born 1935. The night bombing was terrifying. The Brits even in the face of the enemy will fight back, and not show any weakness to our enemy. The women were so amazingly strong, encouraging every child to get on with life and be cheerful. They never stood for moaning and complaining. The only time I saw my mother cry, was when she found out my brother Freddie age 19 was shot dead in Germany on the 23rd of April 1945. That generation were a special breed. And so were the Americans who fought with us.
Rest in peace freddie x
My mum was born 1931 my granddad had been a docker, Surrey Docks before the war, was a tail end Charlie in Lancasters. They were bombed out twice once when the docks got bombed and then when they were taken in by family they got bombed out from the house they were staying in Sutton. I’m heading towards my seventies, and I was raised differently than kids these days, because we knew what our grandparents had gone through, it made us appreciate what we were able to have all the more. Rest in peace Freddy, you will not be forgotten ❤
If it were not for the Russian's, Britain would have been decimated.
The Blitz was dreadful for Londoners and those innocents in other cities. Spare a thought too for the innocent German civilians bombed and firebombed to oblivion in numerous cities including the awful experience that was Dresden. The poor people on both sides who had to bear the brunt as usual.
@@david-spliso1928 That has always been the case through time. And sadly it will never change, because no matter humanity’s various ideas of how to achieve a perfectly equitable society, the one thing that always hold us back from achieving it, is humanity itself. Thus the populace will always be the body that bears the brunt of the decisions made by the elites. There is nothing quite as corruptible as a noble man with good intentions 😔
I heard an American living in the UK say once that she felt that from the NHS to mini-roundabouts there was more of communal feeling here and more of a sense we need to co-operate, work together and look out for each other. My parents' generation always put it down to the blitz spirit. Not only London was bombed by the way. I don't know about that. Maybe the "British communal spirit" came first and resulted in the blitz spirit. Chicken or egg.
But Americans do well to tread carefully when talking about the war. We are, as a nation, deeply grateful for the sacrifices of young American lives as the D-Day landings commemorations reminded us. However, when you tell us how grateful we should be, we feel forced to remind you that we had been in the thick of the war for over two years before the USA joined in after Pearl Harbor. America rescued us because it knew if we fell they would be next. It was in their own interest. Which is right, fine and understandable. But be honest about it.
Neither should anyone forget that the Soviet Union was allied with Germany until mid-1941, just a few months before Pearl Harbour.
NO ONE SAVED US WE THOUGHT TILL THE END THE D DAY ARAMDA HAD 1200 PLUS SHIPS AND AT LEAST 850 OF THEM SHIPS WHERE BRITISH
Prior to WW2 the Emergency Medical Service was set up to provide free hospital care to people injured by bombs. It became a forerunner of the NHS.
@@KINGKONG-vh5tj - The Canadians also punched above their weight for the size of their population on their D-day landing beach and during the liberation of the Netherlands and Italy. Their convoys also supplied the UK at great cost of life and ships.
@@susieq9801 Canada was, I believe, the first Commonwealth country to join us and make common cause in WW2. God bless Canada.
Greets from Germany! My grandfather was forced to fight for a dictatorship he didn't agreed with. He was one of the few that survived the battle of Stalingrad and one of the even fewer who came back from russian imprisonment. I only remember him as a broken man who woke up screaming nearly every night. I have seen pictures of him as a proud young man, before the war. But I can't get these two personalities together as one person. I can't even imagine what he has gone through. He never talked about it, at least not with me.
Hello, from England. A lot of the old boys got made to do things that people weren't supposed to do. And even though your grandfather fought my ancestors, he did what he had to do to survive. War is awful but brings out the best in people, like the Christmas truce during WW1 where our ancestors played football before going back to killing eachother haha the whole thing is mad. But no hard feelings, England and Germany are like old brothers, we are fruit from the same Germanic tree haha That's why we hate eachother so much 😂.
Boys made to do atrocious things and suffer mentally all their life.For the greed and hubris of evil old men.I hope ur Grandad found some peace before he died.
traitor
Thank you for posting this. I am from Coventry. A city that was devastated by bombing on the 14th November 1940. My mother was a child then and she has just passed away aged 92. Although it grieves me greatly, I appreciate you sharing your experience. It reminds me that war is predominantly purpotrated by those who reject peace, by those who crave power. I send love to you and your family.
Most of us folk in UK realised your military forces ...were just following orders ..just as ours . As your Grandfather ..our relatives suffered the same mental torment on their return !! The lost of sons of parents of German families were just as real for us ...same pain ..same heartache same loss !! Heartbreaking !
An American name that deserves recognition is Gil Winant. He was a former Governor of New Hampshire and was then appointed by Roosevelt as the US Ambassador in London when Joe Kennedy bailed out because he believed that Britain couldn’t survive the Nazi onslaught. Gil was a real hands-on guy and was out on the streets, night after night, assisting Londoners during The Blitz. When he re-visited London a few years after the war he was recognized and greeted by Londoners. Gil unfortunately ended up committing suicide because of the traumas he had endured. I’m a Brit but I recognize him as a true hero.
‘Citizens of London’ is a very good book if you are interested in this history. It focuses on ‘Americans who stood with Britain in its darkest, finest hour’. It documents how Gil Winant, Ed Murrow and Averell Harriman worked tirelessly with Churchill to bring America into the war.
Roosevelt also believed Britain would seek peace or be invaded!
Thank you for that . That is something I did not know , though I did know about Joe Kennedy and his attitude to Britain.
Joe Kennedy hated us 🇬🇧
Many wonderful Americans helped us against the Nazi machine in the early days of WW2, ...... except Joe Kennedy and FDR !
Thanks for this, I didn't know either. That man was a hero and sad how he died.
It's also worth a moment to consider all the American, Canadian and other guys who came over but died helping us out. So much gratitude and sympathy for their families. I was lucky to grow up in a much more widespread, humane, considerate culture after the war. I hope we don't lose it altogether.
Çanada was part of the Empire. The USA was not.
My grandma a16 year old girl worked in a bomb factory in Birmingham, one evening she fell asleep at the cinema and missed work, she found out the next day a raid had dropped bombs and the shelter the factory workers were in was a direct hit and completely entombed all the workers.. there’s a plaque on the site where they just buried it over as survivors would be zero.. is now a massive memorial. If my grandma hadn’t fallen asleep i wouldn’t exist. X She still got fined for missing work.
The Battle of Bamber Bridge is a short, but interesting part of history. US military tried to dictate to OUR pubs to have segregated pubs. And in true English fashion, we obliged. By having signs on the doors saying 'Black Troops Only'. That went down like a lead balloon.
Bamber Bridge is a fascinating piece of history.
@adrianboardman162
Please don't' hold up the UK during WWII as a paragon of racial tolerance.
It's a pity that people in our cities didn't show the same antiracist sentiments towards black and Asian immigrants in the 50s.
"True English fashion" my hairy arse.
Then in the 50s we weren't in extremis as we were during WWII.
@@crackpot148I was going to say this. Don’t get me wrong, it makes us feel good to hear that story, but Britain was still extremely racist. We just weren’t as racist as America.
@@user-ki2jp1cp3o People need to travel more. In the 1950s, we were just as racist as the rest of the world is currently. It's only the West which obsesses over race.
@@crackpot148 The apparent sign in B&Bs & shops read, "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs". No mention of Asians. However, that sign was made up for a class project in the 1980s by the Irish Studies Centre of London Metropolitan University. John Draper contended that the photograph had been a fake."The photograph emerged only in the late 1980s, and the university has conceded to me that it is of ‘somewhat uncertain’ provenance. They have been unable to discover who took the picture, where or when.
“An old news clipping which I have presented to the university points to the image having been mocked up for an exhibition called “An Irish Experience” mounted at the now-defunct Roger Casement Irish Centre in Islington, London.
“This dubious picture has long been cited by politicians, academics, even the Equality and Human Rights Commission, all of whom no doubt believe it is genuine”.
I know that some US citizens have no idea of how hard the UK fought during WWII. I once had a US tourist say to me " You should be grateful to us because if it wasn't for us you would all be speaking German" Yeah... Right!
But what can you say ,in the face of such ignorance?
I hear that all the time online and it really pisses me off , if a tourist said that to me he wouldn't say it a second time ...
@@larkspur4714 lol, why, what would happen?
Pearl harbour where the US was taken completely by surprise, two years into a global war..😆
@@pauldunne822you’re ridiculously disrespectful.
Thank you for your positive and sensitive comments on us Brits. It makes a refreshing change as schools and colleges over here seem hell bent on educating the young on how bad we are and have been.
@osgar333 : Well said mate, you speak the truth.
Yes, I’m heartily tired of the UK bashing too.
Aussie here. I recently I stayed at a Airbnb in London with a woman in her 90's she was evacuated to the country & hated it so came back to her family in the west end. She came out in the morning and neighbors houses gone , running to get home when sirens screaming turned corner into her street when bomb blast threw her backwards and knocked her out, this is living history with people still alive who lived it. Another point is that all those people including air raid wardens got up in the morning and went to work in their day jobs, my admiration is boundless. BTW Americans should remember that it was the Russians won the war, the west was a sideshow, very important but history cannot be changed and the East took everything Germany threw at it and then fought back to Berlin and it is terrible that they are now invading another country, do they not remember what it is like to be invaded.
I think it is an exaggeration that the USSR won the war. True, Russians suffered immensely and pushed the Germans right back to Germany, But the Allies also played a huge part, including of course Australia.
Much of the western world seems to forget that when the Germans came we didn't give up and fought on with the help of our empire. BRITAIN held out until the USA came into the war after pearl harbour and Germany declaring war on America, Britain footed the bill and we didn't repay all our debts to the USA until the after the year 2000. Now this has been forgotten.
Britain was not only defending its country for many years but it was on the offence of attack in Europe. Freeing the french and liberating other countries of German occupation. Russia also played a big part in the war, which history books and western schools like to forget. Without the Russians we would of lost the war.
My Mum worked as a nurse during the Blitz, this was before I was born I am 75 now. She refused ever to speak about what she saw and so did my Dad he was a gunner. When I was a child the road I lived in had bomb sites some where the whole house had gone and many where only half were left. Kids played on those bomb sites for years afterwards (including me). We used to go for walks along the embankment by the Thames and Dad used to point out places along the river where you could clearly see that guns had shot chunks out of the walls along the river, bullet marks too from the planes flying over as the walls were I think Granite. The damage is still there so you can look and feel them. To see those planes heading toward you firing those guns must have been very Scary. I had two Uncles in Concentration camps they had some hair raising stories. War was very real for them and us as it was in our lives from an early age. My Grandma used to hide under the kitchen table! I can remember rationing just about, certainly rations for Children such as orange juice came in a tiny bottle like a medicine bottle and we had a teaspoon per day!
This is something no one should forget, we all just need peace in this world now.
@@horyzengaming3935Of all German losses in WWII, 85% of men and 75% of war materiel were against the Soviet Union. In the siege of a single city, Leningrad, more Soviet people died than the entire war dead of Britain, the USA, France and Canada combined.
No they did not held out until 1941 they held out till 1945. The US military was massively small in 1941 and it took till 1944 to get the men fully trained and sent over. Yes there was a campaign in Italy and the far east but they were side shows. Churchill wanted to invade Germany via Italy and it would have ended the war a few months early if it had. The main thrust was in northern Europe where the UK had over 1.1 million men and the US army had a 3 million man army. The French had in 1914 more troops on the western front but you never hear them say they won the first world war on their own, the same was in 1940, it is only the Americans who say that. It is true the US bankrolled the UK and USSR but that is becasue they had too esp. with the brits as they refused to pays for American weapons with gold et al - my previous rely. The US army was green and very inexperienced and we saw this Operation Torch, the Italian campaign, and in Northern Europe. Market Garden also showed how green the US army was and so did the Battle of the Bulge. Eisenhower gave away eastern Europe to Stalin because the US did not trust the British and the American elite thought they could trust the Soviets more. Please read up on the relationship between the allies and how it nearly collapsed and how lend lease came about. Ask yourself why? Red about the battle of Britain, The British defeating the Italians in 1940, Taranto raid that sunk the Italian fleet (the Japanese studied that raid and used it lessons on the Americans at Peral harbour), El alamien 1942 , the Battle of Imphal 1944. Also the the British has a massive force of over 8 million fighting in WW2 while the US had 16 million.
2006 to be exact. Roosevelt was determined to bankrupt Britain.
I live in Coventry, Germany tried to level my medieval home town-our Cathedral was burning and the whole city was aflame- they rose to the fight! God bless my Granny and Grandpa for their sacrifices xx
My mother was living in Leicester at the time of the Coventry blitz.
She told me that the fires were so significant that you could read a newspaper outside at night!
@@nicholaskelly1958 My famiy were in Dudley and they said they could see the glow in the sky and knew when Coventry was burning. As usual the other towns and cities get overlooked, in favour of London. My "aunty" was in Plymouth, her husband was in the Navy. She went into the shelter during an air raid and came out with just a wardrobe key that was in her pocket left to her name. . They went for all the strategic places, the docks, the ports, the manufacturing centres, not just London. To be fair, we did the same back! But strangely our attacks sometimes get called "War Crimes" It was Tit for Tat. As for my "aunty" my grandmother in Essex was having forces men billeted on her, and one was "Uncle Joe" He asked if she would take his wife in, and she did. It must have been nuts in that house, my only Real uncle still at home ( unable to fight due to being deaf!) used to sleep in the bath some nights. Or on the floor. despite that she still found room for my mother to visit and she told me some amazing tales of the people she met, just at my Nan´s house. I think despite the seriousness, they were actually having a great time! there is nothing like constant threat of oblivion to make you live life to the full! "Aunty " Win was soon joined by the wife of a man who had escaped Poland to fight with us. " It didn´t go too well, and my mother seemed to to write her off as "resentful" but I think now we would have a bit more understanding. This couple had just fled their country, lost everything, including friends and family, yet he was fighting on. She may well have had PTSD However deep these things go, there is always a layer deeper. That is the difference between a Refugee and someone still in their own land. At least you are "Home" however bad it gets. To leave everything, and go to a foreign place, with very little understanding of the language, the culture and so on, must have been monumental. Her husband was fighting, she could do nothing. She must have been in turmoil
it was the UK's most preserved medieval city up to that night - all those timber/beamed buildings burned in a massive firestorm.
Coventry was deliberately targeted due to this, incendiary bombs used to cause the place to burn.
After Coventry was bombed a new German word was born, 'Coventrieren', meaning utter destruction, especially of a city.
We stood alone for years, surrender was the best option as we had little food, and our civilians and soldiers dying in their thousands, but we proudly stood alone, and suffered, but we didn’t surrender, I’m not proud to be a Briton today, but I’m so proud of one of our greatest generations in our history
I was deeply moved by your reactions. I admire you both for your clear emotion, sentiment and intelligent analysis. I recall a recent story of a French woman visiting London with her English boyfriend. when she remarked to him that Paris is so much more beautiful than London. He replied "that's because we didn't surrender!"
You guys are so respectful....a lot of US keyboard warriors keep saying 'we saved your ass in WW2' of course your brave men fought and died....but if it had not been for the British and Empire fight against NAZI Germany and in particular the Battle of Britain, which made sure we had a staging post for D Day.....things would have been very different
It was Russia turning against Germany that really helped us win the war, as Germany had to split its forces to fight her. That had more of an impact on the war then America joining us in the fight.
Not only that but Britain being an island gave all defeated European nations a secondary base of operations where their legitimate Governments could govern all of their armed forces that had managed to escape the continent across the channel, even without Russia, the US and our own Commonwealth forces Britain was never alone, we were the leading contributor of a combined European military machine by default only because the other European nations were residing within Britain at the British tax payers expense "during the war", what may or may not have been paid back to Britain after the war to cover the costs of our financial support for those nations in exile is a different matter completely, but during the occupations of their nations the British people paid for them to be here.
Germany turned against Russia. Until that happened, they were allies.
Americans didn’t want to get involved as they were too busy selling arms to the Nazis. Companies like Ford were selling engines for German vehicles. They’d have lost their income , it was only the Japanese invading pearl harbour that forced them into the war.
When they did finally help us they loaned us weapons and money, something we were in financial debt for years after the war. One reason why many of our houses and buildings look the same, people needed somewhere to live after our cities were decimated.
@@josiebridle1947 Actually, Germany turned against Russia. Despite British warnings, Stalin refused to believe that Germany would attack, right up until it happened. The UK and the USA had to split their reinforcements to help supply the Russians with massive amounts of tanks, planes, metal, ammo, food, etc.
My maternal grandfather was a firefighter in London during the Blitz, and throughout the war, they were as much heroes as any soldier,sailor, or airman
If it hadn’t have been for Churchill, there wouldn’t have been a blitz.
So was mine!! (Though paternal, not maternal ;) Though he was only 29 when war broke out, he wasn't A1 (he'd had TB in his youth) and therefore was not eligible for service. But boy, did he serve! "A nightmare" was how he described it to me - without detail - when I was a little boy many years ago. My father described him as a "brave man", again with no details. I guess they just wanted to forget it by the 1970s.
Respect to your Grandfather and the other`s like him who fought the war their way.
The only emergency service not allowed to take shelter while the bombs were dropping. Keep fight the fires was the order
My Grandfather had suffered badly from TB so wasn’t fit to fight. He manned the AA guns in London night after night, made him deaf.
This video makes it look lik the Blitz was just aimed at London. There were other Blitzes in other parts of the UK. I’m Scottish and my town (Clydebank) suffered a two night Blitz on two successive nights in March 1941. Over 1,200 civilians were killed, 1,000 wounded, 8,500 homes destroyed or damaged. Only 8 houses in the town and 35,000 people were made homeless. Clydebank was targeted because of all the ship building which was its main industry.
When the internet first started in the 90’s one of the very first things I looked up was my village, Old Kilpatrick which was adjacent to Clydebank. The very first image that came up was a Luftwaffe reconnaissance image showing the huge navy fuel tanks on the edge of the village that would also be targeted during the Blitz.
Yes all the major uk cities were bombed. I’m from Liverpool and my family were bombed out.
London was bombed from 7 September 1940 - 11 May 1941. It must have felt never ending. The Duke of Windsor advised the Nazis that Britain would capitulate after two weeks of bombing. I doubt Hitler would have reinstated the Duke of Windsor but I wonder what he would have done to his brother and nieces given the opportunity.
Agreed, 3 of my grandparents survived close calls in Newcastle. My maternal grandma was a follow spot operator and my paternal grandparents both worked at Vickers factory.
There were parts of my old Victorian school building that were hit and obviously new.
Interestingly, they used to flood one of our main roads to the coast to mimic the river (where most factories were) and it worked. They ended up bombing a cigarette factory and a school. Luckily they were empty but other hits on the surrounding houses were not.
War is always more complicated than the movies, fair play to these guys for learning 🙂
@@lettucebee8425 My maternal grandad tried to join up in Sept 1939 but was turned down because he was a widower with five young children and in an essential occupation (Heavy Crane Operator). Every day he'd work an 8 -12 hour shift at the docks then patrol the streets at night as an ARP warden. One night a bomb fell less than 100 feet from him and he was blown 20 feet into a garden, luckily unhurt.
It wasn't until decades later, on his deathbed, that we discovered the lifetime of shame he'd carried because he'd been unable to fight while his mates served, and in some cases died. They were a different breed in those days.
My Mum & Dad lived in Stoke-on-trent until 1957. Mum told me that the night sky was lit up by the fires of Coventry burning in November 1940. That's 30 miles away!
Later in my childhood we lived 25 miles from London, and on a Junior School visit there were still bomb sites visible on Fleet Street and around St Paul's Cathedral. In fact the Cathedral was still undergoing repairs at that time, about 1958.
My mum worked in London as a maid in a large house (I am now 75). When the air raid sirens sounded to let Londoners know that an attack was imminent, one of the places used to take shelter was the London Underground. Thousands spent days and nights sleeping in the underground, in the freezing cold, and on the hard concrete platforms, night after night after night. Although she told me about it when I was older, I couldn’t imagine the trauma, the cold and the fear, that ordinary Londoners had to live through. My father, a Scotsman, had joined up and was a soldier in the Scots Guards. He was captured in Belgium where the Nazis were advancing further through Europe (and towards the United Kingdom) and became a prisoner of war. When he was eventually returned home because of illness, , he was a changed man, his health had suffered terribly, yet he went back to work to support his family although he was never same again. This was all before I was born.
My auntie was born in the underground during the blitz/blackouts.
My ex husband was in the RAF and we always lived on the RAF camps in service family accommodation. He retired a few years ago. On the last RAF station we lived, they tested the air raid sirens every Tuesday. I have recordings of them. Years and years of hearing those sirens being tested weekly and it never failed to stop me in my tracks and feel emotional. I'm in my late 40's so I'm not old enough to remember the war, but I'm old enough to have grown up listening to stories of the war from those who lived it and weren't so old themselves. So that air raid siren was always so emotional/humbling to me. I just couldn't imagine how intense the fear of hearing that sound would be, knowing you might die every time you heard it. And going to an air raid shelter, feeling and hearing the explosions and then coming out to sheer devastation once the attack was over for that day. Only to go through it again and again and again. It's heartbreaking
One of the Theatres in London was hosting a variety show ( Comedians, Dancers, Clowns, Singers etc ) in 1940. A comedian was halfway through his act, when the audience were sent to the shelters following an air-raid warning ! It suffered a direct hit and was not rebuilt until 1947. The owners thought it would be great publicity to ask the comedian who was performing to host the Grand re-opening .... he walked on-stage to a packed theatre, and when the applause died down, uttered the immortal line, " Now as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted " .... He brought the house down !!
I'm not saying this didn't happen but it was actually William Connor who wrote a regular column at the Daily Mirror for over 30 years between 1935 and 1 February 1967 with a short intermission for the Second World War, his column restarting after the war with the words "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it is a powerful hard thing to please all of the people all of the time." He took his pen name from Cassandra in Greek mythology, a tragic character who is given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but is then cursed so that no one will ever believe he. There is also a similar story about a BBC Television announcer using the same phrase on the resumption of the fledgling service in 1946.
He bought the house down, again!
As a Londoner whose family lived through the Blitz, thank you for your empathetic viewing.
My great Granddad was a fireman in Chatham in Kent. Chatham dockyards provided the first defence for the River Themes & was bombed a lot. He was never called to war as he was needed to fight the fires of the Blitz.
You might like a documentary called The 13 hours that saved Britain. Its all about one day on 15th September 1940...the battle of Britain x
Yes this is a good one to watch
Narrated by John Nettles, a favourite British actor from long-lasting tv series:
'Bergerac' (Police Detective series set on the Channel Islands' bigger* island
(?*) Jersey), and 'Midsomer Murders' where again, he played a British Police 'Inspector Barnaby'...and some of the older interviewees, in the '13 Hours' film were recognisable actors and TV presenters, Nicholas Parsons (R.I.P) and Jack(?) White*, ("chicken for dinner, Davy...!! ...oh...😳😟"
...*he's the older brother to favourite tv actor David Jason, of many roles, eg 'Inspector Frost',
'Open All Hours', 'Only Fools And Horses'
'Dangermouse' (voice of cartoon 'mouse hero') etc...
One of my fav documentaries 😊
My mother was a ‘blitz’ baby, so she was evacuated to the countryside, to here in Wales. Her father was an air raid warden. Her home was actually bombed, so she stayed here. The Germans then bombed Swansea, and Cardiff. She then married my father later on in life. My entire family on my father’s side fought in ww2. Two uncles’s died, another was sunk three times, and my father served in the navy throughout the war. He was on the Atlantic, Russian, and Mediterranean convoys. We are incredibly proud of this generation, as we are with the connection forged with the US during this period.
Hi guys 😊 I’m British born and raised in a sea side town called South end on sea, county of Essex in 1953 so I missed the war thank the Lord. My Father was called to do his duty @ the age of 20 and enlisted into the RCAF as the Canadian boys were short of Mechanics. Eventually he became leading Airman. With a ground crew of 12-15 engine mechanics for Hurricanes, spits and the Halifax. He was 2 tall to be a pilot which was a big disappointment to him at the time but becoming an Aircraft mechanic was so very important to keep those boys up in the air! He served in North Africa, Italy, with the with the Canadian boys, also the Polish contingent. He survived the war! thank god. Thank you guys. 🇬🇧🇨🇦🇺🇸
My Nan was a little girl in London during the blitz. She never really spoke about it, except to say that she had once been frightened by her mum grabbing her roughly and carrying and dragging her through the streets. She was too young to really understand that her mum was doing it because they needed to get to a shelter ASAP and that it possibly saved her life. It's weird that it hadn't occurred to me that if my nan or my grandad had been one of the unlucky ones, I would not be here watching your video today. Just as a side note, I only found out about 5 years ago that my great-grandad's family was German. My family only learnt this after my Nan had passed away. Excellent and sensitively handled video, sending greetings from England xx
My great-grandmother was a midwife in London during the war... she spent many nights, inbetween delivering babies, helping to dig out dead bodies from under all the rubble ... my nan her daughter told me that her mother was a tiny 4ft 10" woman who worked alongside the men moving large amounts of collapsed buildings to make sure the dead were recovered and treated with respect... I have so much respect for my great-grandmother and others like her... they never gave up!
What an amazing lady, I'd loved to have had a cuppa with her and listen to her stories.
I nursed a wonderful lady who was a nurse in the navy during wwII and she would often get her medals out and just look at them. I would sit with her and listen to her stories of the war during my breaks. Her hospital was bombed and she broke her leg when part of it collapsed on her. Like your great grandmother, she was a tiny little lady and she dug herself out of the rubble and proceeded to drag as many patients out to safety as she could. She did all this with a broken leg. She said adrenaline kicked in and she didn't feel a thing because all she could think about was saving her patients who were still alive and then finding her patients who didn't survive. It wasn't until she stopped that she finally felt the pain and realised bone was sticking out of her skin.
I think that events like the Blitz are the reasons why British people are the way they are! We learnt to see the best in every situation, we learnt to look for humour where we could. More generally, we learnt to survive, to accept what we had and, as they said in the video, to pick ourselves up and carry on.❤
`There`s always another day` and `Things could be worse`
That stoicism was accentuated by the Blitz but it was there prior to that. The Romans were given a bloody nose by the Britons who were their most ruthless adversaries. They came close to being beaten by Boudicca which was unheard of, as they reigned supreme at that time.
@@paulwild3676 And the European giant Napoleon.
Greetings! My grandad lived in Wanstead London where there was a POW camp, with Italian and then German POWs. Towards the end of the war and afterwards he said the camp was not as you would imagine - with only a few British soldiers, in the main the POWs managed themselves. There was a very low fence and after the war ended the fence was removed. The POWs would work for local firms and go to church and also played in local football teams. My Grandad employed a few German lads in his engineering firm and said they were best workers he ever had. He said they were just young lads who had no choice and had to fight it was not their decision to start the war. They would sometimes come to my grandads house for Sunday lunch, he has photos of him and my grandma sitting with them in his back garden drinking beer! Many opted to stay after the war and some married local girls. Some of the Italians stayed and opened italian restaurants and ice cream parlours - which is why we have Italian restaurants now.
@@55tranquility I was born in 1948 and my mother was living with my Dad’s aunt in the middle of nowhere in Suffolk. They didn’t even have running water. But their lives were made bearable by a couple of German men who had stayed on in England, when the war finished, and they, and a few others, worked on local farms. When they walked past the cottage, every day, they would drop off a few food items for the aunt, my mum and my sister. One of them was called Karol and I was given the middle name Carole in memory of him 😄
My Grandma worked in a shop called Marks and Spencer in Sheffield in her late 20's. Sheffield in Yorkshire was known as Steel City and made weapons for the war effort so was a target. She volunteered to sit on top of the building she worked in to spot planes/ bombing raids and radio to send off air raid sirens to alert the public to go into shelters. My Mum, a baby, was put in a cupboard drawer to protect her. Amazing stuff. My Grandma used to laugh about it and if anything bad happened she'd say ' praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.' a little throw back to that time. Sheffield was significantly damaged.
Don't forget that it was not only London that was blitzed during the Second World War. It was every city and town in Britain that had any industry or any ship-building. The Germans blitzed Clydebank, trying to destroy the Clyde shipyards. They did not succeed in doing this as bombing was not so accurate in those days, but in a town of about 200,000 inhabitants, seven dwellings were left unharmed. Most of the town was completely flattened. They even bombed neutral Dublin by mistake, killing about fifty people, while trying to bomb the shipyards in Belfast.
London was bombed more than anywhere else, and also, in 1945 suffered from V1 and V2 weapons, which did not have the range to go much farther.
You can appreciate how we were brought up by parents and grandparents who lived through WWII. Therefore, we tend to have a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' attitude to life. This has been necessary as we lived through terrorism threats/acts in the 1970s and 80s, and even in more recent times following the fallout of post 9/11 - e.g. July 2005 bomb attacks in London and others. You see that resolve and determination come through when a disaster or adversity strikes.
Not threats of terrorism when they actually made good on their threats. A threat is when something is threatened and not followed through, the IRA acted through multiple bombings and then admitted to being responsible!
@@David-sk9vv Fair point! Corrected. 👍
@@MarkmanOTW Nah. I understood your point and you made an excellent one for sure. It is me being overly picky about wording is all. I do apologise if I was sounding awkward and such. Take care mate and have a great day 👍
@@David-sk9vv Cheers! Enjoy the longest day and the weekend 👍
43,000 People died during the Blitz.
My gran lived through the Blitz, born in 1919 (died 1995) and she often told me how she has to get to shelter (The Tube Stations) but as soon as the raids where over, she and many others just came up to the surface and carried on with their lives, like nothing had happened at all. Doubt people of today would be that brave.
A lot, but when you consider that the single bombing of Hamburg caused as many deaths it all puts into perspective.
@@tancreddehauteville764 The ordinary people on both sides were totally innocent in this and every war. It's the crackpot megalomaniac leaders and their enablers who cause wars and so much bloodshed. Modern day Ukraine is the same because of that slimy little git Putin.
@@tancreddehauteville764wars a bitch my friend. "Lest we forget." We must strive to never let it happen again. Alas, with what is happening now, it seems we have not learned a thing. Shame on us.
I saw a snippet a few years ago, it was a bomb damaged shop with part of its building missing with a placard stating, ' open,,, more open than usual' typical Brit humour!
@@tancreddehauteville764Not again for God's sake. So what? It was war!
Thank you for your respect.🇬🇧🇺🇸
i live just outside of Coventry, the cathedral still to this day sits in the heart of the city bearing all of its damage (made safe for tourism of course) as a reminder of the cities past, its beautiful and haunting at the same time knowing that this building is what the entire city looked like not even 100 years ago
I’m so proud of my ancestors. They were ridiculously brave and still had their sense of humour ❤
In the UK if you have a mum, dad or other close relative who lived through that time, you have a living treasure in your midst. My mum was born 1940 so all she knew was that planes brought death. Half her street was wiped out in one night and she has a ruptured eardrum to this day from the blast. Soon there will be none left to tell all this as a lived experience. As far as I'm concerned if mum wants diamonds on the soles of her shoes, dad, give them to her. She, and those of that time, deserve nothing less.
You are kidding right? "A treasure in your mind set " My old man was on Lancaster's RCAF Mum was a dispatch rider trying to get into SOE ,her brother was at Dunkirk and Monty , another unc was in the American marine corps they were all psychopathic and the war affected them to the point they were suicidal . My mother committed suicide. my father attempted suicide twice . In short they all survived physically but not mentally, .Of course I now realise how damaged they were and for what ? I will tell you to hand over everything to another race with a religion that hates us
@@rolandhawken6628 No I'm not kidding; plus I am speaking from a British perspective, about those who went through the Blitz. I am sorry your experiences are sadly different.
@@rolandhawken6628 No she is not kidding and please don't scoff. I am in agreement with her. I was born in 1937 and lived thru 25 bombing raids when half of our street was flattened and I lost my mother and a sister.
Dawn Sutton. Still a few of us. I was born in 1931- endured the Blitz, the so-called Baby Blitz (Dec. 43 - June 44), where the family nearly copped it, and then rhe V weapons. The memories of those days will never leave me.
@@vincekerrigan8300 My mum likes to travel but still has to take valium to get on the plane.
Loved your reaction, you brought a tear to my eye. My nan as a young women was buried and rescued during the blitz. She told me that she also remembered the "Doodle Bugs" as you heard the engines as they came over head and when the engine stopped they knew it would fall from the sky and the bomb would follow! She was a different breed of person, lovely, kind hearted and definately a great character. It's a shame that generation are virtually gone. Love you nan x I will see you again xxx
Hello from Birmingham, home of the Spitfires! Thanks for being so respectful when learning about our history. It's great to see other cultures learning about our soggy little island and it's past (tragic or otherwise)! I'd also like to say thanks to all the countries who contributed (no matter how much) to the war effort at the time, without all of them the world would be very different today.
Thank you so much for your respect and admiration for us Brits who stood alone until Pearl Harbor. My parents lived through the bombing as kids, of their city of Bath. My great grandmother was killed, as was my Dad's uncle who was a policeman and was ushering people into a shelter when a bomb killed him. A bomb dropped near where my mother and her family lived . They were hiding under the stairs. all the roof slates blew off and all windows blown out but the house structure remained ok. The gas and electric were cut but my Gran had an old fashioned range and cooked for the whole street , all they needed to do was provide their rationed food to cook. My Mother once said to me "I pray to God you will never experience the fear we did"
Britain was never alone, on the declaration of war all the commonwealth countries sent their young men to defend Britain thousands died doing exactly that.
did not stand alone friend. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Greece, Norway, Poland et el with resistance throughout Europe helped us survive and they fought alongside us as well as transporting food and war materials to us.
Plus the USA used its enormous manufacturing power to build Liberty ships and sold them to Britain with out cost until after the war, with out those ships Britain would have been starved into submission.
We didn't stand alone there were lots of other nationalities helping too.
@@PatrickKelly-lz3pvAt the time of the Blitz Britain DID stand alone. There were some individuals who turned up to help, but too few to change the narrative.
You are right.... British stoicism was exemplified by the WW2 mantra.....'Keep calm and carry on'......and they did
It truly is, extremely evident and I feel it lives in the British people today
Thank you guys....US & UK best friends for a reason@Trippingthroughadventures
As Churchill called it KBO...keep buggering on
"When you are going through hell, keep going" Sir Winston
That poster was never used in the war - it was held back for use if the invasion took place.
What looks like a cage inside a house, is a Morrison shelter, specifically designed to try to ensure you survived a direct hit on your home. The Morrison shelter would - in theory - mean that even should your home come down on top of you, then you may still survive. Not everyone had a garden or the space to install an Anderson shelter outside their home, and the Morrison shelter was intended for those with limited space.
Brian. The Morrison was a damn sight more comfortable than an Anderson, being indoors, warm and dry. I know - the whole family slept night after night in one for months. We used it for table tennis during the day.
Thank you both for a tremendously respectful and dignified video.
During the Blitz my dad volunteered to become a fire watcher . Every night he sat on the roof next to the Albert Hall in London, armed with a tin hat and a telephone, his just was to watch where the bombs were falling and inform the fire brigade , as well as put out incendiary bombs that might land on his roof. He was 16- 17 years old. One bomb landed on his parent’s home, demolishing it, together with their business premises, luckily his family survived, although he didn’t find his sisters until the mid 1980’s. The day he turned 18 he joined RAF Bomber Command.
My father did the same, but on a gas storage tower (gasometer), done, as I’m sure your dad did, on top of an 80 hour working week.
Brits are often reminded of the bombings even now when unexploded bombs from WW2 are sometimes found as happened recently.
And even more reminders for Europeans from where we and the US bombed in Europe (especially Germany, but quite a lot in France too) - in Germany, street closures for WWII bomb removal are still commonplace and rarely make the news.
There's a 1980's TV drama called Danger UXB available to watch on YT about the men who had to defuse those unexploded bombs one after the other.
@@alexshapley8331I thought this video was about the UK? Stay on topic.
@@kburns70kb Why? It sounded like GB was only country that experienced thee things.
@@juliaforsyth8332 thanks - that's exactly how I read his comment, and I just wanted to put in some context
I'm a Londoner. 62 yrs of age now. Mum and Dad told us alot about the war when we were kids. I often wonder how they all survived it. I think it made a lot of them strong and resilient in life. Respect to my elders always.
The only thing I would say about the video you watched here, he doesn't go into enough detail about the Coventry Raid. Which was actually the most devastating raid outside of London. And most damaging per square mile of the entire Blitz.
That raid started at 7pm on the 14th November. And didn't end until 8am the next morning. It was continuous bombing for 13 hours straight. The city of Coventry was a historic city, made up of medieval houses and buildings, timber structures, in tight narrow streets.
So the Germans loaded their bombers with incendiary Bombs, rather than explosives. Which would melt into a molten metal onto the roofs of these buildings, setting them alight, and causing a huge firestorm that was so big, the next waves of German bomber pilots taking off from france could see it within 10 minutes of taking off.
Coventry also lost its medieval cathedral that night. The ruins of which still stand today innthe centre of the city, as a reminder to the world of the destruction of war.
Definitely worth looking into if this aspect of British history interests you.
I was there that night, I was five years old, under the stairs. My mother thought it was the safest place, as she had noticed in bombed buildsings the stair were always there!! She forgot the gas pipes and meters were also there! We were bombed on other nights too. I used to go to bed and say please don't let them come again. My Dad had fought in the first world war, wounded at Gallipoli, so was an Air Raid Warden during the second. Sometimes when we could hear the bombers overhead, Dad would say,"Oh Brums getting it tonight" Meaning Birmingham. Both my brother were called up, but before they went (one in the REME and one in the fleet Air Arm ), the youngest was a van driver and took us one night out of Coventry, we stopped at a house near Corley. Peope outside the City would always give shelter. It was a very noisy night and the next morning we discovers we were next to a gun site!!
Look up the German word, 'Coventrieren'.
Hull was almost decimated - 95% of their homes were lost. London was bombed almost every night for eight months. Even small seaside towns like the one I was brought up in in Sussex had bombs dropped randomly if there were any left from the raids. My stepmother said that the worst was the unmanned bombs towards the end of the war. The frightening silence when the engine cut out just before it descended. There were a lot of fatalities/injuries caused by the blackout as well.
I'm proud to be British 🇬🇧 My dad was a D-Day veteran and my Mum was at Bletchly Park for a few years ( code breaking territory). My grandparents stayed at home in central London, their stories were scary. Look up the story of Bamber Bridge, the US army tried to impose segregation in our pubs etc, some pubs put a notice on their doors ' only blacks allowed ' 😂 Thank you for your respectful comments. We're still tough 😂
My father in law was on the D Day Landings …on Sword Beach ..they were all so brave ..
@@joancline4844 They were
Same in Wellington, New Zealand. Look up The Battle of Manners Street. US vs locals angered by the treatment of local Maori boys.
@diane9656 I worked at Bletchley for a few months recently, is your mum on the Roll of Honour? Which hut was she associated with?
Jerry Springer was born in a tube station in The Blitz! My in laws were teenagers in the East End during the war and bore the brunt of the bombing. They would never talk about it. As a small child in the fifties, I was fascinated by the bomb sites in London. They seemed to be still smouldering. The village that I was raised in had a crater from a stray bomb that we children loved rolling down the sides of. Oh and my mother was fined 10 shillings ( half a pound ) for riding with her bicycle lamp on, in the blackout. As reparation she joined the RAF where she met my father. Excuse my nostalgic rambles!
There is a well screened news clip from the blitz, a Londoner stated, 'While Adolf is bombing us, he is leaving somewhere else alone, but we can take it and we can hand it out too, Adolf will get his soon'. Then came Dresden, a horror unleashed only surpassed by nuking of Japan. Today I see the same British spirit in the people of Ukraine, I thank all countries that support them, they are fighting for our liberty as Britain did before.
I see the same stoic resolve and determination in the Ukrainian people as the Brits during those dark days. They have my equal admiration.
My Mum would have been almost 10 years old at the start of the blitz. She lived in an area called Redriff which was amongst Surrey Docks. That first photo of the bomber it was right under that plane. One night on a particularly bad night of bombing they decided to evacuate kids to local schools. My Mum was due to go to a school called Keetons Road School. Many of her friends went there, but my Mum was taken to another school because Keetons Road was full. Keetons Road school took a direct hit killing many among them were my Mums friends. There’s a movie called The Battle of Britain. You might be interested in watching. It gives a reasonable account of what the Blitz must have been like. It stars Laurence Olivier Michael Caine Robert Shaw and many more. I recommend watching it.
My father's side of the family comes from there. Most of the males were deal porters in Surry Docks, although my dad joined the army and was evacuated from Dunkirk.
My dads mum stopped going down the shelters and one night a blast blew her out of bed slinging her across the floor and she said all she was annoyed at was sweeping up the glass, nothing bothered her.
I loved that woman. A hero of mine growing up
My great grandmother (88) was on a tram going across The Strand in Liverpool and she can still remember her mum gasping and crying saying "everything has gone" she was only 3 at the time but she remembers it well. Blackout was dusk and if you had any light showing the warden would come round and shout " put out that light"
Thank you for this. My father served in the British Army between 1939 - 45 and by maternal Grandmother was killed during an air raid on Portsmouth, my mother lost her mother at 16. Sadly, niether my father or mother are now with us, but I know they would have appreciated you film and your comments
I’d like to say a big thanks to you for posting this. I’ve watched loads of RUclips videos by Americans with their views on Britain but I really appreciate that you’ve gone off piste with this one. I’d just like to say that my mum used to tell us about the May blitz on Liverpool and a lot of it was incomprehensible to us. As Americans this must be really hard to understand. But your compassion and sincerity shines through. Thank you 🇬🇧 🇺🇸
At one point during the blitz the air raid siren went off, my mum said she was so tired that she didn’t care if she got killed at least she would have died comfortably. She refused to go to the shelter her aunt was trying to get her the shelter her uncle said he was going to take shelter. Unfortunately the bomb shelter took a direct hit and her uncle was killed instantly, she and her aunt received injuries as a result of the explosion.
During the war my mother was in the ATS, (Auxiliary Territorial Service), located just South of London manning the
Anti-aircraft guns to try and protect London from the VI Flying Bombs. They were very difficult to hit and the guns could not be fired when the British Fighters were also vainly trying to hit them. When the English Meteor Jets were introduced in 1944, they could catch up with the Flying bombs so managed to tip their wings between the coast and London, the guns were moved to the South Coast under the flight paths of the V1's, and were more successful. One night a V1's engine was hit just overhead of my Mum's battery but luckily landed half mile away.
Thank you for your respect , humility and willingness to discover. Subscribed
Scotland also suffered from "the Blitz" with both Glasgow (plus other Clydeside locations such as Greenock) and Clydebank all being bombed heavily in 1941. This was mainly due to shipbuilding on the Clyde.
Belfast NI also took a battering for the same reasons, the single biggest loss of life from a single attack happened in Belfast were almost all the bombs hit civilian areas.
brilliant reaction guys 👍 I'm from Birmingham UK that also took loads of heavy raids because of its industry and been the second biggest city. much respect guys 🇬🇧🇺🇲
Yes, although this video concentrates on London, it's well worth adding that all large cities were targeted the same way. My family in Liverpool were made homeless three times by aerial bombing.
The story of the blitz always concentrates on London. It wasn’t even the worst affected city.
@@ams1897Swansea per capita had the worst raids. Liverpool the longest continual raid, the May Blitz of 1941. Hull was wiped off the map, as was Plymouth. They always concentrate on a load of Cockneys sitting in Underground stations. The rest of the country was left undefended. That is why Coventry was destroyed. In Plymouth people had to go to Dartmoor every night and sleep in tunnels.Sheffield had horrendous raids as did Bristol. Then they started bombing our beautiful cities, like Norwich, York, Canterbury. Bath had a terrible raid which killed 600 people in one night. Manchester suffered the Flying bomb raids in 1944. This concentration on London as ever pisses the rest of the country off.
@@paulwild3676I understand your point but London is the centre of government whether we like it or not.im from Birmingham and we got it pretty bad
Video doesn't mention Birmingham, which after London and Liverpool was the most heavily bombed city. Half of the total number of Spifires manufactured were built in Birmingham. Hence why the concentrated bombing raids took place to try and cripple the production. The city also manufactured weapons and ammunition.
During the blitz, it was the law to blackout all lights at night. At 16 years old my mother was enlisted as a Fire Warden to go round the dark streets and tell people to keep the blackout if any light was showing. She was often scared. I asked her what she felt about having to do this. She said that it was her job, and she just had to get on with it. I am proud and grateful to her.
Britain stood alone for a short while, but our allies, including USA came to our aid. I am grateful to them
really enjoy your videos. i can see the compassion and understanding in you both when you learn about these things.
keep up the great work. much love from the UK.
My great-grandparents were killed by a direct hit in their London home in September 1940 when they didn't get to a shelter in time and were forced to go back and shelter inside their home. My grandfather, who was evacuated at the time, was affected by their deaths his entire life even in his old age.
Next to London, Liverpool was the most bombed city in England.
My Grandad was a WW1 veteran. Dad was in the Royal Navy and Uncle was in The Royal Marine.
My mum worked at Royal Ordnance making Lee Enfield rifles and Lmg Bren gun.
My Grandparents home was bombed thankfully they escaped but not only the house their property was also lost. Later on they were bombed out a second time.
My dad had recently married my Mum ( 1942) but was away at sea he didnt see her till 1946.
My uncle was on a famous raid called the St Nazaire raid. When he came back, he travelled back home to his dads house he was so knackered he crawled up into bed.
When he woke up the next morning, he was still in bed.. but the house was rubble around him. Grandad had been bombed been bombed yet again. So bombed out of three houses lost everything except his marriage licence, which is still slightly burned around the edges and a WW 1 photo of him in uniform.
That's the Blitz spirit.
Rationing lasted till 1955
What is never mentioned is the Bodies in the blitz some just body parts, some looked like they were simply asleep. In Coventry an air raid shelter with school children in was bombed killing many of them.
My mum and dads generation had no sympathy for Germans even after the war. But these days We are expected to apologise to Nazi Germany for bombing them.
I dont say it was right, but Nazi Germany got back what it had dished out.
So the Blitz is still relevant to many of us Brits living today.
Coventry was bombed as well
Liverpool Mill Road Maternity Hospital was hit by a sea mine and 90 odd people were killed.
A school near my grandparents house was hit by a sea mine and I think 176 people using the cellar as an air raid shelter were killed,a lot of them scalded to death by the boilers rupturing in the blast.
I remember being told as a child that in an effort to draw German bombers away from Liverpool ( which of course would have had nightly blackouts) Chinks of light were set up in the largely unpopulated hills of North Wales to the south of the city to fool the Nazis into thinking they were over Liverpool and dropping their bombs without causing death and destruction…believe it worked quite well except for the poor sheep that would have been grazing up there.
My mum was a child in Bootle, Liverpool. It was the most bombed area by square foot. One side of the street fronted the docks and behind it the railway lines
Hitler was trying to stop supplies coming in from America. Houses in her street were bombed. One story that stuck in my mind was her being evacuated due to an unexploded bomb.Brave men defused the bomb but we're killed when they went to the next job. They were brave men
When I was a kid in the 1950's, we often played on/around/on top of the abandoned air raid shelters. All the boys were obsessed with the War, even though we were all born after it had ended and most games we played were with toys guns. Many kids had actual war souvenirs such as British or German helmets, bayonets, gaiters, gas masks ( my Grandfather had a German airman's oxygen mask which he took from a shot down plane when in the middle east ) which relatives had bought home from their war service. The air raid sirens were still in use, not because of air raids, but to call out volunteer fire crews to emergencies and people were still members of volunteer organisations like The Civil Defence Force, which had assisted emergency service workers during the war. Bombed out buildings were very common play areas for us kids too, with very little regard to our safety 😀
You and me,we grew up when almost every man had served,our mothers too in their own way,the way we think and act is a direct result of us growing up around these people.
This is the first video I've seen from you two and I thought it was wonderful how thoughtful and open you both are to learning about other people's experiences
Thank you for the video - regards and respect from the UK.
Thank you for watching 😁 we want to show full respect, to a place that we adore 🥰 -Tiff
@@Trippingthroughadventures By the way the Blitz wasn't just London but all cross the UK , Manchester, Bristol , York ( although York wasn't too badly damaged) Coventry was really badly bombed it lost most of it's historical buildings. other towns and cities were bomb also
My father at 14 years old was woken up one night during a bombing raid on our home town of Scarborough. A large bomb was stuck on the stairs & he had to pass by it to get down, fortunately it didn't explode, though many had, destroying more than 300 houses. The bombers concentrated on the major city of Hull down the coast, but often off loaded any bombs they had left as they left to return to Germany. These bombings consisted of hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs almost every night, in cities & towns all across the country. They did this at night because the RAF had beaten them back in the earlier days when they tried bombing during the day. On D Day he was an engineer in a minesweeper listening to the heavy battleship guns firing shells over their heads at the enemy shore. Later his boat continued clearing mines on the French rivers & into the Baltic Sea. While civilians were being bombed at home, soldiers, sailors & airmen were fighting.
My late husband was a boy at that time in Hull.
Typical of a heedless youngster he told me how he would stand in the garden on the air raid shelter ,wearing a tin helmet ,to hear the shrapnel pinging down !
I live in scarborough, Yorkshire, and it was also bombed in the first world war,
@@user-en1zl7ii4h Yes ,that attack was famous because the ships got right in near the shore ,without being detected.
My mother was born in 1924 in South London, evacuated at 15 with her whole school to Kent initially, and then when that was no longer deemed safe, to Wales. After finishing school she returned to London and joined the war effort, working as a secretary to the scientists at Woolwich Arsenal. One day the place was bombed and several people were killed in the other building opposite where my mother worked. They all just ''kept calm and carried on'.
She loved ballet and theatre and would often go out in the evening, walking over the River to get to the theatres of the West End. Many of these refused to close down or cancel performances, even when they could all hear the bombs dropping nearby. After the show, she'd walk home again, through London's entirely blacked out streets - no lighting of any sort permitted, so the bombers coming in overhead would have difficulty finding their way and locating targets. Every little bit of resistance helped.
Like it said in the video, sometimes people didn't bother seeking shelter when the sirens sounded. This was the case with my mother, walking home at night. She just kept calm and carried on, Blitz be d*mned! It wasn't resignation, it was stoicism and a bl**dy-minded determination not to let Hitler get the better of them.
One effect psychologically was that for my post-war generation, our parents' ingrained stoicism could be irritating and I don't think we fully understood it. With no model of it from our elders, we had to learn for ourselves how to feel and express emotion, thus the explosion of interest in psychology, self-awareness and self-development, etc. Our parents had just learnt to shut down so many of their natural feelings, for the sake of survival.
I worked in Bethnal Green next to a Tube Station where about 70-80 people died in an accident while trying to get down to the air raid shelter during the Blitz. There is a memorial in the park next to it.
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 incuded for completeness.
UNITED KINGDOM
70,000+ (Largely due to German bombing raids, V1 and V2 attacks). 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.
Now do you understand? 🙂
What about German civilian numbers killed in massive night and day bombing raids?
@@juliaforsyth8332 ... They got what they voted for.
@@juliaforsyth8332
As Air Marshall Harris said in 1942:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
@@martinwebb1681
Yes. They did.
Hitler had made it absolutely crystal clear from the 1920s what his territorial ambitions were and what his racial hatred was. And they were happy to go along with it as it suited them. 😠
@@juliaforsyth8332
To quote Air Marshall Harris in 1942:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
I was born in 1958 but my parents were quite old (for the time) and were both adults during the war. My dad was in the army and served in North Africa for a while. He never talked about it.
He came home from leave one day and he and mum went on a date to the cinema. Halfway through the film, the air raid sirens went off outside and everyone just got up quietly and started filing out, heading for the nearest shelters.
Not my dad. He'd never encountered this before. He marched up to the box office and demanded his money back.
"Don't get no money back from a bloody air raid," he was told. "Go and get your money back from bloody Hitler."
That was a very thoughtful video, thank you.
My grandad was in North Africa, too. He gave up a reserved occupation to join the Army, did his bit and came home. When they sent him his medals, he opened the box and showed them to his mum before boxing them back up. Nan and I got them mounted after his death, and now I have them - the guy in the shop couldn't believe that they were still in the box, in the original paper, with the printed table of precedence that described the medal ribbon and what order they should be mounted.
Grandad never spoke of his time in the Army or anything that happened during the War. Everyone just did their bit.
Hi guys, thanks for your very nice comments… I was born during the blitz on the 18th of April 1941, now 83. The same night that St Paul’s took a bomb, but it didn’t explode..The blitz actually went on for 8 months & 5 days !.. and did you know that 'Jerry springer' was also born during a the blitz in a tube station in north London .. I remember very well of playing among the bombed out buildings.. we was also evacuated with our mum to the north of England deep in the safety of the country side while my dad was away in Italy in the army…
My grandfather was an engineer for Alvis in Coventry making tanks and armored vehicles and therefore did not serve with the military. However, he was required to be on “fire watch” at the factory during air raids. He was on duty on the night of the heaviest bombing of Coventry’s Blitz. He told a story of how a German bomb had come through the roof of the factory’s machine shop and become wedged in the rafters. They had to move all of the machines to allow a bomb disposal unit to reach the bomb and lower it will pulleys onto the back of a truck. It was then driven to the outskirts of the city to be detonated.
He said how brave the sergeant of the bomb disposal team was, driving a live bomb through cratered streets.
Years later I read of this incident in a book about the history of bomb disposal.
Thank you so much for learning about this horrific event. Perhaps now a few Americans can understand why rather than the US being hailed as saviours, many people see how the rest of the world was subjected to nearly two and a half years of blitzkrieg before America bothered to help. These tactics were used all over Europe and North Africa, not just London. The UK alone lost more people than the USA did in WW2, let alone France, Netherlands, Poland, etc. We are very grateful for the help we, and the allied nations, received from the USA, very grateful. But sometimes uninformed comments from Americans can be taken badly. So, thank you for taking the time to try to understand.
Alone? Kiwis, Australians, Canadians volunteered to help right at the start, And many other nations.
Even some Americans who came on their own initiative to help, and there were supplies just not the troops till later.
Check out November 1940, the blitz in Coventry city, west midlands..the most bombed city after London, hardly any buildings survived
I’m a Cov girl and I’m so glad u made this comment. Our city glowed red with the fires from the raids and we lost so many brave souls.
@@TheSneakyfiendhave the buildings been replaced
@@shaunbat5097 I was raised in Coventry and no, the buildings were not replaced. Coventry lost its medieval centre and built a new modern one. The old cathedral was destroyed and a new cathedral was built next to the broken walls of the old one. The British bombed Dresden and after the war Coventry and Dresden became linked in friendship.
@@shaunbat5097No they weren’t, I live there now mate-we lost a lot.
Thanks for putting this out there. My grandmother did ‘Fire watch’ in East London during the bombing raids whilst my grandfather was out in Asia as part of Allied pacific operations. She told me stories about the relentless bombing, day after day. It sounded utterly terrifying. She maintained there were things she saw, she’d never describe or talk about. My gran, a little lady in a tin hat out in the inferno . She was really brave.
You never, EVER forget about it. It bought back my fear and I started shaking and tears filled my eyes. It wasn’t only at night, traveling across London with my mother we were rushed into an underground station for shelter during a daylight raid. My war years were between age 4 and 10. I can tell you, you knew what death meant. Whole streets would disappear and in school that day children were missing, probably dead. NOW PLEASE remember the People of Ukraine who are going through just the same thing and are just as resilient and brave.
I am so grateful for this.As a Britain, we very much admire our cousins in the US. You have always come to help us. You have nailed our survival technique. Humour and sarcasm. That's just how we are.
Excellent reaction and thank you for the respect for the amazing people who lived through this terrible period. You are right about the British mentality, do not give up.
My Ma was a girl of 19ish, fresh over from Ireland and working as a housemaid for a family in Whitton, a South London suburb. It's not strictly a blitz story but she was out in the garden watching fighters in dogfights above. German fighters came over as cover for German bombers and the RAF had airfields all over the place. She was terrified out of her skin when her boss screamed at her to not move. She had been just about to pick up a piece of shrapnel from the ground that had caught her eye. It was, of course, white hot and would have done heaven knows what damage to her had she picked it up.
We British are tolerant and kind ,but if you poke the lion you will find a much different British people, we are resilient and we are really scary when riled,
The emergency metal stretchers were used during the blitz by Air Raid Protection officers, who would bravely carry those injured during the Blitz to safety. When the war ended there was no longer such a demand for these stretchers .
However, there was a need to replace metal garden/park fencing, which had been salvaged during the war and manufactured into weaponry.
With a large amount of metal stretchers suddenly free, the London City Council decided to have the stretchers welded together, fixed onto poles, and used to replace this missing fencing.
My family lived through the Blitz. The Battle of Britain was a vital battle had the R.A.F. lost the invasion of Britain would have taken place and if Germany had won the world would be a different place just for one example D-Day would not have taken place .
Frighteningly, Eric Melrose Brown (in my opinion, the best pilot that's ever lived) interviewed Goering, and the former Luftwaffe chief had concluded that the Battle of Britain had been a draw. When Brown mention what he had said to his higher-ups, he got no arguments, instead their response was 'weren't we rather lucky.'
Had Hiitler not pulled his resources away from Britain to go and have a go at the Soviet Union, its likely we would've seen a slow painful RAF and a ME109 using The Mall as a landing strip opposite a destroyed Buckingham Palace.
And Russia would've changed sides again and made use of the Concentration Camp plans that they were so interested in after the war and thought they were very good. Allies refused to hand them over.
@@EdgyNumber1 Very logical and the difference one man can make to a war the interesting question would have been would the British scientists changed sides including the secrets at Bletchley Park considering how persuasive the Gestapo could be with threats to peoples families ,and would the R.N. not surrender regardless of orders plus another thousand or so other possible scenarios.
A common held view but wrong. Even if the BoB had been lost the Germans would still have to invade. They had no landing craft, only river barges that would have sank in the slightest swell (and the Channel can get very rough), much of their navy had already been destroyed during the invasion of Norway. And if by some miracle the Germans managed to get an invasion fleet together and have perfect conditions the British would have just thrown their Home Fleet at it (and the Home Fleet alone was bigger than the German Navy) and damn any losses. It would have been a slaughter, a whole German army would have died.
My paternal grandfather was a firefighter during the Blitz in East London throughout the entire WW2 & during the Blitz the food warehouses in East London docklands were hit every night with incendary bombs, the temperature was so hot it damaged his eyes and almost blinded him as he fought the fires. My mother who was only 8 at the time, and her two younger sisters were split up & evacuated to different parts of the country until after the Blitz stopped.
Great video 👍🏻
I suppose it shows why the British people are so eager to support the people of Ukraine and Gaza. We've been there. My grandparents fought fascism and helped persecuted and attacked nations. Now it's our turn. I'm 56 so I can't go there but I can donate, spread the news, and pressure my representatives to take action against bullies and tyrants.
Hope to see you back on our shores soon, guys x
Maybe you should look into both of these because there are two sides to each of these cases.
For instance, look into the Ukraine nazi's, who are open about it. Look into Nato and their interferences in that area. When the soviet block dissolved, Russia was promised that it wouldn't happen. The USA installed the current puppet government and has constantly interferred in that area. Now Ukraine is being financed by them, mainly. After that, if Ukraine win, the US will own them in all intense and purpose. Their debt will see to that.
I'm not saying Russia is blameless. Ukraine has a lot of resources worth trillions. But this is really a war of proxy between the US/west and Russia, with the Ukrainians the pawns in all this.
As for gaza. Look into the Hamas coventant 1988 and see what you are supporting. Although there was a renewal a few years back, the old one wasn't scraped though.
You might want to look up a clip about a son of Hamas and the terrible things done to Israelis. Or a clip asking Palestians what will happen to the Jews when they get control . They will disappear was the answer, basically genocide.
So, for the Israelis to be accused of genocide is a bit rich. How many times do you have to get attacked by people who have genocide in mind before you need to destroy them before they destroy you.
Again, I'm not saying Israel is blameless and innocent.
But there are always two sides and not as clear cut as the narrative from the media.
You're clueless, we should not be finding Ukraine. They are the most corrupt country in Europe. And full of neo nazis
Ukraine yes, Islamists in gaza no.
They went into Israel and committed the most disgusting medieval crimes known to man.
Yes I feel sorry for the innocent civilians but they support hamas.
Are you saying Israel is a bully and a tyrant? Hamas is the equivalent of the Nazis, only much worse. 60,000 Israelis are displaced from their homes in the north duet to attacks by Hezbolla from Lebanon. What do you ecpect Israel to do?
I’m 75 and when I was little we used to play on a bomb site just a few hundred yards from our house. My mum told me when the bombs were coming down she took my older brothers and sisters who were small at the time and hid under the staircase, as they didn’t have an air shelter, it must’ve been absolutely terrifying
My mother was born in 1921. She was 18 in 1939. When war broke out, she and sisters wer evacuated to Cardiff. In 1940 after that first attack, she hitchiked back to London and enrolled in St. John Amblance as a trainee nurse.
In the next 60 days, she was bombed out 4 times, with one falling directly on their house, but failed to explode. It passed through my Grandfathers bedroom (without waking him, lol) and ended up embedded in the front room floor.
After that, the whole family spent several weeks in the Underground station at night, emerging to try and rescue survivors from the previous night's attack.
My Mom's from Scotland , she was born in 1941 she remembers having to at 4 years old having to pull a coal cart on top of her in a panic when the air raid sirens started. After the the sirens stopped she was trapped under it for hours til someone heard her screams. The man who rescued her said it was a miracle she managed to pull the metal bin on top of her it was so heavy...fear is an amazing motivator. Til the day she died she still couldn't stand anyone doing the bomb whistle around her , she would remain outwardly calm until you noticed she had a death grip on whatever she was holding. Yes they hold it in , til it's time not to. They immigrated to Canada after the war. Our older cousin Vivian David Currie moved here before the war but volunteered when the war started , became a Canadian war hero but that British resolve transfered with him. I know first hand after a terrible battle leading his men and all the enemies dead or dying and all were safe he passed out leaning on a pillar just after lighting a smoke. Landed on his face. Right up to that moment he kept a calm resolve and quiet command that was unnerving for some people to observe.
I come from South London and in the early 1969’s just old enough to remember streets still with bomb craters and shored up buildings - Gran still had the Anderson shelter in the back yard! Mum was evacuated to Wales; Grans house was hit by incendiaries and her chickens were seen running around on fire!
...I guess that's one way to get roast chicken.
You can walk down streets in my old home town (as in a lot of towns and cities, let's be real) and see where the bombs fell - Victorian and Edwardian terraces with gaps filled by ugly modern housing or flats. I recently moved from Gillingham in Kent and on the way back from the London raids, the Germans would drop any bombs they were still carrying to lighten the load on their way home - not to mention that Chatham Dockyard was a major Royal Navy base at the time and there were other military targets in the area.
I still have my dad's old metal tin box with about 10 pieces of bomb shrapnel he had collected as a boy during the Blitz. Although inanimate objects I am fascinated by them and have recorded the stories my father told me about each piece, and now my grandson's are destined to be as bored as I was when my dad would tell me about them when I was young. They will learn like I learned as I got older to appreciate how close we came to dodging genocide on this Island to one of the globes darkest periods in history.
My late aunty once told me about how once when she was a toddler and her family were living in Detling, Kent, she heard this enormous drone like sound, that just kept getting louder, and when looking up saw hundreds of aeroplanes flying overhead.
Too young to fully understand what was going on, she stood where she had been plying and just stared up at the airplanes flying overhead mesmerised.
As she got older she realised that she had seen a bombing run on the way to London.
It always blew my mind thinking about it, seeing all those planes..
I have never known/seen the detail given in this video.. Love your reaction to it, but I have to admit I am a Brit and I remember days of the war, so I am biased! Have to admit one major memory of the war was how on the screaming signal, the whole family went to the shelter dug into our back-garden; once there it was realised we hadn't brought the tea. Horror! Nobody was supposed to leave and return to the house when a bombing raid had been announced, but my grandmother insisted she was going back to the house to get it. Maybe somebody said not to, but she went back and got the tea. I don't remember any details after that, but it was just one bump in the calm that the adults managed to keep around us kids.
Yes, I remember the hole in our bedroom ceiling from bomb-blast. I guess it got fixed eventually, I don't remember always seeing it. I do remember hearing a plane overhead, opening the kitchen door, looking up and saying 'Oh, its one of ours'. I might have been 4 or 5 y.o. but by thenI think we were dealing more with what we called the 'doodle bugs' ,.
The adults around were great and as a child I don't remember ever feeling afraid. All thanks to our blessed Silent Generation folks but when I grew up and saw the huge gaps and empty land between buildings as I went through London in the late 40s and 50s it was a shock.
After 1945 my feisty grandma, (born c.1883), said 'I don't want to live through yet another war' . Bless them all, they'd Kept Calm and Carried On - now just came the clearing up the mess for us kid's futures!
My dad had been away in the RN being a dems gunner on the atlantic convoys he came home to london , his family hailed him has a hero, . .he confesed to me that the most he had been scared in the war (he served 6 years in the war) was when he had leave bacl home and had to shelter during a air raid, .he had to put on a brave face for his family
I was born two years after the end of the war. We lived in Deptford, a borough of south London that had suffered a great deal of bomb damage. We lived in a newly constructed block of flats ( apartments) on of the first to be built after the war. Our play area was the bomb sites which surrounded our building. No health and safety like today. Life was different then, nobody locked their front door and crime was minimal. Because Deptford was on the Thames and close to the London docks it was a main target for the enemy.
In 1944 the Germans started sending over rockets. First the V1 and then the V2. Which caused immense devastation.
Its great that you are educating yourselves as to how much our our island suffered but stood firm against an evil aggressor, Nazi Germany.
What you say at 19.35 is very apt. There might be millions of people who visit or even live in London who have no idea of these events. Similarly, I remember the horrific Moorgate tube disaster in the '70s. Many years later I was a regular visitor to Moorgate underground but it took a while for me to connect the name. I stood on the platform and thought, "Christ, this is where that happened......"
You have to realise we had only just fought ww1 only 20’yrs before.
My dad was a war baby and as a toddler stayed in London during the blitz. As a result he lived his entire life with ptsd. The siren would make him tremble even as an old man. His brother lied about his age. He said he was 16 to join up but he was only 15. He sadly died aged 17, when his ship was torpedoed. These people show our true British spirit. We have a dry sense of humour and use it to get through anything, together, as a community. We have such pride in our country, our spirit and our culture . We will always keep on going. No matter what ❤
My grandmother was living in London years after surviving the Blitz, she said to my Grandfather who was on leave at the time, that she thought something was wrong and she needed to visit her Mum.
Soon after they had both left their home, a V2 rocket landed nearby and destroyed the entire street.
They were just lucky I guess.