The Blitz | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубликовано: 9 июн 2024
- "On the 7th of September, 1940, a year into World War Two, Germany launched an unprecedented bombing raid on London..."
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Background
03:42 - The Blitz
10:14 - The Aftermath
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
► Air Raid Siren by SoundEffectsFactory
SOURCES:
► "The Blitz: The British Under Attack" by Juliet Gardiner, published by Harper Collins, 2010. Link: books.google.co.uk/books/abou...
► "At Home and Under Fire" by Susan R Grayzel, published by Cambridge University Press, 2012. Link: www.google.co.uk/books/editio...
► "The Blitz: Sorting the Myth from the Reality" by James Richards, published by the BBC, February 2017. Link: www.bbc.co.uk/history/british...
► Imperial War Museum Website published by the Imperial War Museum. Link: www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-bl...
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
I recorded some first-hand accounts of being in London during the Blitz over on my other channel - including a terrifyingly vivid description of the night it all began in 1940. Here's a link: ruclips.net/video/u7EYmsEPkeo/видео.html
I think you must've missed two 0's on the number of killed😅 @FascinatingHorror
Very useful information and insight to that which wasn't taught in schools. Especially being on the brink of war. Fascinating horror, you're choice of videos during the timeframe of uncertainty in the world is beyond helpful! Brilliantly timed and very much appreciated. Thank you. 💐🏆❤️🔥🔥
Thank you for this link. Not only was the video excellent I also got introduced to your other channel. My second subscription to your work.
You can find original Blitz broadcasts from famous US newsman Edward R. Murrow. I use OTRCat (sorry I can't link) History/News/1940.
I wonder if the strike on Berlin, was a tactic used by the British to get Germany to focus their attention away from the military targets.
I mean, they must have known Hitler would react in kind and redirect at least some of his air force toward other targets.
Wouldn't be the first time the public was used as a human shield.
If it was part of a plan, it worked. The total cost of lives and property lost was likely lower than it would have been otherwise.
UK could be all speaking German rn.
The fear didn’t end in the morning. Another thing I remember my mother telling me was the feeling the morning after a raid of going to school and worrying which desks would be empty.
That is heartbreaking
Your comment brought me to tears.
😭😭😭
Wow, yeah.
That's one of those details you don't think about right away, but that hits *hard* when you finally do.
I have a friend who was a child in Belgium. Same thing with her. Another was a child who ended up in a concentration camp. He never saw his parents again.
It must have been absolutely terrifying. My grandmother refused to discuss the bombing in Cardiff. She was a nurse in the war. My absolute respect to these people 😢❤😢❤😢❤
I never knew that Cardiff was bombed! Thank you for educating me on that.
War trauma is very overwhelming. People who survived usually don't talk about it because the cerebral cinema 📽️ is running while they try.
That picture of Saint Paul's dome rising above the firestorm has always terrified me since I first saw it at an exhibition at Saint Paul's as an American student in 1985. What a miracle it survived!
My mother also suffered with two small children, my half-sisters in bombing raids.
By the American and British bombing raids of 1944-45.
The civilian casualties on all sides with getting what you give out. War is never a good thing to do.
My father, grandparents, as well as other relatives were here in the U.S. during WWII. My grandfather passed in 1944 of a heart attack brought on by worrying. My father joined the Navy at 16 so my grandmother could have a source of income. His older brother, an electrian/fireman, did nothing to support their mother.
Far too many people today are eager to start wars because they don't know what it's like to live through one.
I have always said that if the 'leaders' had to fight them, rather than sending young people off against their will to kill other young people and maybe die themselves, there would be far fewer if any conflicts and wars between nations. That said, we little people do bear some of the responsibility for the kinds of people we put into power - people seem to always favour the bellicose strongman who spits hate over the quiet negotiator. Hitler was elected, and even today, most of the world's warmongers - Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Modi, Netanyahu etc - were voted into their positions.
@@rich_edwards79 It's like the line from Troy: "War is old men talking and young men dying." Some warmongering leaders have actual wartime experience (i.e. Hitler), but others don't.
@@Erin-rg3dw I always forget Hitler was actually a soldier in WWI
Wrong there buddy. Trump did not start any new wars while he was POTUS. Matter of fact he discouraged them. Brandon and his Commie minions however, surely do. So stop watching CNN. @@rich_edwards79
@@Krexelwhich kind of negates the trite rubbish of the original comment
My mother was a teenager in WW2 and lived through many bombing raids though not the Blitz as she didn’t live in London. In the 1980s we were visiting Germany when they suddenly tested their air raid sirens which sounded pretty much the same as the U.K. wartime ones. I can honestly say my mother nearly literally hit the ceiling and turned white as a sheet as she was thrown back into the terror of her youth - witnessing your mother in abject terror is itself pretty scary as a youngster.
Same with my mother-in-law. Sirens like that make her a wreck. She still cannot stand them. And she has lived in the U.S. for over 70 years. It had to be bad to leave such an impression on the British people.
FYI: if you come to the US, we use similar sirens to warn for tornados or call firefighters. Many towns test them daily. But most cities people think of visiting when they come here aren't on that list.
😱 ~ 🇬🇧, unfortunately that those civil-defence/air-raid sirens = actually a public alarm system, do [initially] sound terrifying but they are to draw your attention to a warning; something is wrong/a danger to life in your local area and you must act = most would turn on the radio/television to find out what the warning is/information/news/weather alerts and act upon them. We in 🇬🇧 had our sirens (public alarm system) dismantled in the 90s after the Cold War, but some sirens are still around; as [disconnected] war relics, some companies have them as an external alarm system; chemical factory’s, nuclear power stations, Ministry of defence sites, some water treatment sites (in case of a chlorine spill/gas cloud) and “most famously” Broadmoor mental health hospital for escaped lunatics - after one killed a child in the local area. Now we have a message with an alarm tone on our smartphones to replace the sirens, but some country’s still use sirens for warning the public
She did live in London…
@@samuelfellows6923 Down in Plymouth in the southwest of the UK, Devonport Naval Base test the sirens at 11:30 am every Monday morning. They are an alert if there is a nuclear accident in the dockyard, I expect they would be used for other emergencies too, as long as they are not at 11:30 am on a Monday morning it should all be fine !! Still it is a bit spooky hearing them even after many years.
A few years ago, an unexploded bomb was found in Birmingham, where I worked, bringing widespread travel disruption until it was destroyed in a controlled explosion. A colleague of mine - in her thirties, so only a few years younger than me - asked where the bomb had come from. At first, I thought she was joking, but sadly wasn’t. “It’s a German bomb, dropped in the Second World War,” I explained. “Britain was bombed?” She was absolutely incredulous. I am amazed that anyone born and raised in this country, as she was, could be so ignorant.
They should teach all children about the wars in history at school. But they don’t apparently
And kids in the USA say “Hold my beer.” I don’t know what they are teaching kids in schools, but history, mathematics and common sense isn’t it.
@@lolcatz88They definitely do, as it’s a key part of the national curriculum. It’s just that people can, for whatever reason, forget what they were taught, or may have been absent from school at certain times. I did a maths degree, but I did one mainly based around statistics, and I struggle to remember stuff like the quadratic formula, because it’s not something I have used for a long time. I can imagine people forgetting what they learned in history at school, especially as it’s not a core subject, and that WW2 tends to be a primary school subject, where they mainly look at the home front, and for what are hopefully obvious reasons, they don’t talk much about the horrors of war with 7 year olds. The really in depth stuff doesn’t come in til GCSE or A level (A level in my case), when people are more mature and can process the more horrific aspects of war.
@@rixxroxxk1620in some places, that’s true. Especially today. I know we learned about the World Wars, the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. The Vietnam war. Plus lots of smaller battles. My grandfather fought at the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. If my kids aren’t taught that history, I’ll teach them.
We definitely learned about this is middle school in US. For some people, that was a long time ago! Other people don't care for history.. also 60% of people on this planet all share the same brain cell. I hated history when I was in school but can't get enough now that I'm much older
My Grandfather was a fireman in London during the war, he endured being buried in rubble from collapsing buildings three times. Many years later whilst serving in the Army, I had the privilege of working with a Royal Engineer EOD unit that was still called upon to defuse German munitions that had not detonated, truly a test of skill and courage.
Amazing they’re still being found, even a few from WWI!
@@mariekatherine5238 I imagine that we will be finding them for many years to come as well, mainly because they could bury themselves so deep underground if they failed to explode on contact, both sides used delayed fusing, so if the shock of the impact was bad enough, the fuse may never have been engaged.
My grandfather was also a fireman in the blitz suffered the exact same things as your pop
I was told he had to go to a train station that got bombed he was never the same after the war bless them all
Those firemen had balls of steel. Out and about when the bombs were falling.
I read a book about the EOD people some years ago, the unexploded bombs show up in some crazy places at times. One I remember from the book, concerned a pre-war house in London, where in the 1970s or 80's, the owners decided they wanted to install attic insulation. The installers arrived, climbed into the attic, only to beat a hasty retreat a few moments later. A German bomb had fallen through the roof, but not exploded, and was laying there in the attic! Whoever had done the hasty roof repair had assumed the damage was from another bomb that had exploded nearby, and no one had been in the attic since.
My grandmother often tells me stories of growing up in the UK around this time. Apparently one of her first "real" jobs as young teen was running letters back and forth during the raids, in between all the rubble and what was still standing. She chuckles at the memories but god knows some of the horrors they all lived through.
"Keep calm and carry on"" is a phrase she would regularly tell us young grandkids when things seemed stressful, but obviously we didn't learn the origin of the phrase or it's significance for her generation until years later.
She survived it all and more. Worked hard all her life in so many places around the world, including emigrating here to Australia in the 60s. She'll be 93 this year, and has outlived everyone, even most of her own children. Every time I see her I'm always up for cup of tea and a couple of her stories
The wisest, toughest old girl I'll ever know. I'll miss her when she's gone.
You will. Cherish this. I lost my last grandparent, my Gimma, 3 weeks shy of her 107th birthday, in march of 2018. Her life was unlike anything I could imagine today. I miss her so much it hurts…😢 If you can, write down her stories for future generations to read. ❤
Record as many of her stories as you can!!! You will wish you had if you dont!
She sounds wonderful
You should write her stories down with permission of course
I lived Coventry for a couple of years, and the city still wears its Blitz scars. The old cathedral still stands, gutted and charred by the firebombs, though a new one stands next to it (you can visit the old one for free, which I would recommend). It looks out over the university, whose symbol is that of a phoenix, enblematic of how the city had to rebuild itself from the ground-up. There are still buildings that survived the Blitz but you have to go looking for them; few are fully intact.
After the war, Coventry reached out and partnered with the German city of Dresden, a city also devastated by fire bombs that the Allies dropped, in the spirit of reconciliation.
Yes, when I was a kid I remember learning about the Coventry Blitz in school, I think it was for the 40th anniversary which was also covered extensively on the local news.
So sad to see how beautiful a city it was before, with all the mediaeval, Tudor / Elizabethan and Georgian buildings, hundreds of years of history all wiped out forever in a single night.
I grew up in Worcester which is architecturally very similar with an incredible cathedral, and am very grateful that it survived not only the war but (mostly) the postwar fad for car-centric 'modernisation' which of course started with the need to rebuild blitzed cities like Coventry.
As you say, whilst the Luftwaffe caused horrendous damage to many of our cities, Germany reaped the 'whirlwind' tenfold when the British under Bomber Harris took their vengeance by wiping places like Dresden and Hamburg off the map.
War is such a needless, hideous waste of human life and potential... I wish we could learn from our history but sadly I fear we never will.
The Allies also bombed Rotterdam which is not heard about much.@@rich_edwards79
My Grandma was there when it happened
CORRECTION: 'Keep calm and carry on' was actually never used though most erroneously think it was; It was planned to be used and printed ready to go, but it was only to be used IF/WHEN the invasion actually started so they were never put up. Ironic that the best remembered slogan of the time is one which was never used.
(edit: maybe it survived and became popular because a} its a good slogan and b} the ones which were used were pasted up, so didn't get preserved whereas this one would have been lying around in boxes all over the place so did survive?)
Yes - i too have pointed that out in my above replly. too many myths surround the blitz!
Happens a lot - Queen Victoria never said "We are not amused" is one example!
Yes - the poor reception of the 'Your Courage' poster meant it was never officially displayed. The toffs misjudging everyone else... sounds familiar!
Great video. My Dad was born in 1925:in the old St Thomas' Hospital opposite the Houses of Parliament. As a teenager he was bombed out of his house twice (but survived unhurt) he worked as a young ARP looking out for incendiary bombs from his post on Lambeth Bridge. Towards the end of the war he was enlisted into to the RAOC Royal Army Ordinance Corp and later was posted to Berlin to help out with the famous Air Lift campaign. He died in 2007 and I miss him RIP Dad.
Well said 👍
Well that made me tear up. I miss my dad too. He lived almost the same time span.
My Father was a young boy, not far from Lambeth Bridge, He was a fire warden in the old Beaufoy School, along Black Prince Road.
I never knew anything about this until he took me for an interview before starting at the school in 1964, we were sitting there, waiting to be called in, and the old man, looking around suddenly said, i used to be a lookout on the roof here during the war, i was stunned, i looked at my dad, full of even more admiration, love and pride, than i usually had, totally gobsmacked.
@@daneelolivaw602 wow, thank you sharing that. I have no doubt they would have crossed paths. Amazing generation. The world is poorer without them. Just a few hard nails hanging on in there. ❤️
@@Who.Knew-The.Salt.MustFlow
"Amazing generation" never a truer word spoken.
Thank you for the reply.
I wasn't expecting this topic to be covered, but I'm pleasantly surprised
Yep. This is all news to me. I've never heard of this, it's not taught in the southern hemisphere.
@@donniedeville5102 At first blush, I thought "no, he's wrong", but then I thought back to school (I did history as a minor subject) and you're right. I guess I learned of it after school.
Well, it's both fascinating and horrific, but I see what you mean.
He forgot to mention "Oily Lizzy" who spent half her time rebuilding the damaged engines of London Ambulances and the other half driving them.
At the time, only a small handful of people knew that she was to become our future Queen.
Almost all of this had been airbrushed out of our history, but their have been a few references since her death.
Among her few close staff at Bucking Palace. When a vehicle broke down, their was a standing joke about sending Lizzy out to fix it, rather than calling the AA.
No wonder she was so well loved by almost everyone in this country and beyond.
Her security cost less in a year, than America spent on its president in a day. Throughout her entire reign, their was never a threat made on her life.
FH always delivers.
Very good! My mother-in-law went through the blitz when she was a young girl living in a London suburb. It still haunts her today. If she hears a siren, she gets sick. Her dad was a shelter warden, or what they call that job, and he corralled people into shelters and turn off any lights. For all the suffering Canada and the U.S. endured, at least we mostly weren’t threatened by bombing.
for the rest of her life my mum absolutely hated when they would use those sirens in movies, it made her jump a mile in the air every time and took a while for her heart rate to come back down to normal. I even hate that sound, and I wasn't even born during the Blitz. I was visiting kin in Oklahoma once when that siren went off, that's when I learned the US uses them for tornado warnings and other things of that sort. brrr!
The U.S almost did get bombed. During the war, Hitler and his followers devised a plan called Operation Felix and the goal was to invade Spain and Portugal ( with Franco's help) and then build a base on the Portuguese Açores islands so they could use the base as a place to refuel their aircraft and u- boats. With their aircraft and u- boats having enough fuel, they then would of flown to the cities in the east coast of the U.S and Canada and bombed there as well.
But this operation was put on hold because they voted to do Operation Barbosa first. Which was the invasion of Russia. Also, Franco knew that Hitler was trying to manipulate him so he didn't make a deal with him, which further complicated their plans for invading Spain.
The only states in the U.S to be attacked during the war were Hawaii, Alaska and Oregon by the Japanese
I love this format covering larger-scale historical events, would be great to see more of it! Keep up the great work 🫡
I hate it. This video is seriously _so_ lame. WW2 has been covered _TO! _DEATH!_ on RUclips, in documentaries, TV series, movies, books, _everything,_ and this video doesn't cover anything even remotely new. So Germany and Britain bombed each other - WHO KNEW?? This channel is fascinating _horror._ There are countless horrific topics in recent and distant history that can be found with just to most miniscule research and effort. This video was garbage.
When I was in my 20's in the early 80's, I had a landlady who grew up in England during WW2. I don't know exactly where she lived, but she told me a story of walking to school with a friend when a bomb was dropped. Her friend who was literally right beside her was killed instantly. My landlady was physically unharmed, but I know the things she saw and endured as a child affected her emotionally and mentally for the rest of her life, and likely contributed to an alcohol problem that she had. She was a dear, kind woman and rarely talked about her life before moving to the U.S.A.
First time in a while I was able to catch a freshly released video. Its quite interesting to hear more about the blitz besides "gun ho, we'll get through this" or "we're British we carry on" with just how terrifying it probably was.
J Draper made a very good video that dives deep into the Blitz Spirit, it's very interesting to hear the reality of living through the Blitz in comparison with the movies.
I mean it’s nightly bombing for 2 months.
Has to inherently be terrifying
@@jtgd It does sound terrifying
@@julian2626Yes! That was a fantastic video.
Same. I think the concept of "blitz spirit" has been used - to be fair - in the way it was always intended, but that we've bought our own propaganda and forgotten our actual history.
This made me almost cry just thinking about what's going on in the Middle East right now. It's like a parallel scene. Regardless of the politics, people--children--are being terrorized, injured, and killed. Survivors are traumatized. The bravery of civilians to carry on is astounding, but they should not have to endure such punishment. No one should be subjected to such cruelty regardless of geography or politics or religion. Terrorism and war are simply insane. I think your choice to create this video is timely and important in many ways. You always make us think and reflect. Thank you.
terrorism yes. but war is not insane. without war you wouldn't be there where you are today. countries wouldn't exist like they do today etc.
A successful explanation of why countries are evil, thank you for supporting border abolition
@@glasperle77 I feel like maybe you refer to defense against aggression being necessary. People go to war to defend themselves against war made by others. But my point is that no one should start a war in the first place. Starting a war is insane. I should have been clearer on my point. But thank you for considering my comment.
@@glasperle77WAR IS INSANE. What’s even the point? One generation 2 conflicting parties duke it out over different ideas, next generation they’re best friends. Just look at the history of Europe. How many times have those countries warred against each other one generation and then became friendly another generation? Terrorism is a reaction to big government/ corporation playing with people’s livelihoods. No one wakes up in the morning and says “hey, I think I’ll just bomb this house down the block from me”. Come on now.
I feel your sorrow 💔
My grandfather survived the Blitz in Greenock, Scotland. He hid in a bomb shelter with his neighbors, and a bomb had fallen just near where he was. He was 12 or 13. RIP 2020, Grandpa, I love you. 💚
My Grandfather was in a reserved occupation (the docks) so worked in the day at his job and worked at night with ARP during the blackout. He was killed going to his post during a raid. My Grandmother was left a Widow with 3 small children, her house was bombed, then her youngest baby tragically died. The whole community rallied around to look after and feed the remaining children while she worked at a munitions factory, scraping a living. I cannot begin to imagine how anyone can cope with this, but she did. My Aunt however, maintains that all the kids felt the war was exciting, like an adventure!
The Greatest Generation, indeed!
The film Hope And Glory nicely captures that childlike sense of adventure about the Blitz. It also deals with the horror of it, but it provides a nice balance.
There are still physical reminders of the Blitz all over Britain, even today. There's a row of terraced houses in Liverpool that ended with an empty plot, which used to be a house. The outer wall of the house next to it has fireplaces and scraps of wallpaper from where its neighbour used to be. The house was obliterated in the Blitz and was never rebuilt. According to local rumour, until as late as the 1980s, there were still picture frames on the wall
Do you know the location?
There's an old cinema on Beverley Road in Hull that was bombed and never rebuilt. Ironically the film showing when the bomb fell was The Great Dictator starring a certain Charlie Chaplin
There's also St Lukes in the city center and i go passed it most days for work and a lot of us locals call it the bombed out church for obvious reasons
My mom Grew up in Manchester and had to endure this. She had schrapnel wounds from one of the air raids. As a young boy, we would ask her about the blitz and she would tell me stories about it. She married a “yank” and moved to the US where I was born and raised. But I’ve always been very proud of my British roots. Thank you for posting this amazing piece!
My maternal grandparents who were living in London with their families survived the bombings. One of my grandparents' children (my uncle) really loves memorabilia of the war and he found a book where he spotted a picture of his dad (my grandad) as a boy who was hiding in his bunker in the back garden and sent it to my mum so she can share it to me. Pretty amazing story.
The air raid siren will forever be one of the most haunting sounds in history. Can't imagine hearing this in the middle of night and knowing this could be the night I die an awful death.
the odd thing which i dont get is the fear of those who only know them from modern times. like here we have them still present for any kind of danger and they are also tested yearly. but even tho i was born in 1980 i never witnessed war and i wasnt traumatized by sirens -movies in my childhood, these siren sounds scares the heck out of me. but i dont get why. i mean evolutionary wise or biological wise i dont understand why humans fear that sound.
in France, in my area at least (alsace, which was first in line when the germans invaded), I heard those sirens once a month for the scheduled alarm test. though we usually expect them to warn of a natural disaster more than a war nowadays. Point is, Every person of my generation is very familiar with those sirens (they were still tested well into the 2000s)
Imagine the dread we felt when one time, there was a malfunction and the siren sounded on an unscheduled day though, not knowing why they were on at all, thinking some nutjob decided to start WW3
@@glasperle77its designed to invoke a fight or flight response in you, because certain noise patterns do this.
@@glasperle77 In the US they use them as tornado alarms, so they still mean you might not make it through.
@@p4ngolinSame happened with the sirens when I lived in north London in the 1980's. It was the middle of the night and I was terrified.
I can not imagine what it was like to live through this.
The constant fear and terror of running for your life every night.
It is hard to believe that the Palestinian people are being subjected to this same kind of hell.
@@celieboo and Ukraine
The fact is in just 3 months the civilian death in Gaza has eclipsed the number of civilian casualties inflicted over the entire 2 years of the Ukrainian conflict. Anyone with two eyes and a IQ above 80 can realize the obvious differences.
Yeah it would be a shame if it were still happeni-
Oh wait, Isreal is trying to do a genocide right as I type this.
@@celieboo This isn't the time or place for such comments. Show some respect or simply grow up.
And imagine the psychological effect the fatigue would have had as well. You're traumatised and exhausted...what a horrible combination in the face of relentless attacks.
The comraderie in the underground wasnt really the romanticised narrative we like to give. Ive seen many other accounts of what it was really like. Cramped, poor sanitaation, violence, the works...war does bring out the best and worst in people. Severall documentaries have been done on this topic.
My grandmother gave birth to my father in London during a bombing in Dec 1943. The house next door was blown up an hour after he was born. Looking back, I'm sure she suffered from PTSD. 💔
When this American first visited Liverpool in the late 1980s, there were still bombed-out buildings and blast craters to be seen. My father was a WWII veteran, but this was the first I'd ever seen of direct war damage.
My grandmother was just a baby during the Clydebank Blitz and the family was living in the area called 'The Holy City' which was heavily bombed while they were evacuating, my Great Grandfather went back in for my Grandmother's baby bottle. The house was bomb and they had lost them.
About six weeks later, my Great Grandmother was going to the movies with her sister and a man asked her for a cigarette. It was my Great Grandfather who had had amnesia after the bomb hit the house. He had survived.
I hope your great grandfather was able to recover eventually.
my nan said there was 2 moments during the war that she never forgot, 1) the germans bombed a stables thinking it was a factory and she heard the horses dying or in her words "screaming" 2) her friends on the end house on her street hid in their shelter and but was full so many of the family hid in the shelter in the pub, both the house was hit and the pub all of them died 12 people in one family, 3 generations of one family
This is what's happening in Palestine 😢
My mum was a copper, in Hitchen, Hertfordshire, that first night of targeting civilians. She could see the glow of the fires on the horizon. Her family were in London.
Did her family make it through okay?
You could see Londons burning glow from Hitchen? Bloody hell, that's miles away.
@@babscabs1987
38 miles (61km) to central London, in case anyone else is curious...
That's not that far away to be seeing large fires at night.
We recently had some bushfires in my area (NSW Australia), and you could see the bright glow of the fires all night for about a week. Closest it got was about 15km (roughly 10 miles), but it spent most of its time working through an area roughly 50-60 km away... which is almost the same distance.
My grandfather still remembers Liverpool being bombed while he was a kid, even now in his late 80’s he doesn’t like talking about it. It’s crazy knowing there are still people alive who have experienced this tragedy, and as far away as it seems, it wasn’t even that long ago.
Thank you for covering this. Can't help but think of other current events that are happening and the parallels.
My favourite picture from the blitz is one of a store that’s blown open at the front, and someone made a sign that said “we’re open, just more than usual!”
My Dad was born in 1933, in Liverpool. Wow the tales he can recall would make a film in itself. The day they bombed the gasworks. He saw the bomb coming down on a parachute. His evacuation stories are heartbreaking. He hated every minute. (He's 90 now).
My Dad was a 1927 baby. Many years ago I recorded him talking about his wartime experiences - evacuation from London, Army roles etc. After he died in 2019, I got the original tape recording transferred onto CDs to give to close family members.
@@karenrussell8704 aaw what a lovely idea
Correction - the Clydebank blitz was by far the most intense. Out of 12,000 homes only 8 were left undamaged. 8,500 were destroyed. 1,200 killed. That was in 2 nights.
I mean, he said Coventry was *one of* the worst attacks so not sure what you're correcting...
@@planescaped it was that he said London had the most "intense" bombing. There's no question that London received the most bombs.
I mean, the intensity comment was clearly about the duration of the bombings, I'm sure if you really wanna get all snarky about it then there's probably a few villages near military bases that were simply wiped off the map. The point is that nowhere spent nearly as long under the stress of constant raids as London, in large part because nowhere else in Britain was large enough to be hit by so many bombs and still have so many people and buildings left.
Thank you for making and sharing this video, my mum was 13 when the war started, she lived in London she told me many things about that time, but this video really did give me better insight into what she and so many others suffered,
When I visited the UK last year one of the most interesting places I visited was chistlehurst caves it has history back to the romans and was used as a shelter during WWII and is actually still done up as a shelter
There's stuff like that all over the UK. There are buildings in my city that are older than the US! 😆😂
Thank you for making it clear it wasn't just London. A greater tonnage of bombs fell on Liverpool than London but we get forgotten in the accounts.
Interesting. You got any stats for that?
Plymouth was also badly hit and Chatham and Swindon. Anywhere with dockyards, docks or railway works.
Are you sure about that? According to the Imperial War Museum, London got the bulk of the bombings,with Liverpool following second. Even Wikipedia stats supports that, with London (18k tons) getting bombed more than Liverpool (2k tons) during the Blitz.
Hull too, the place was pretty much annihilated. My home city of Leeds got off very lightly - one stick of bombs dropped on the city centre by a lone, rogue bomber (possibly separated from its squadron after a raid on the NW). The shrapnel marks can still be seen around the Town Hall, the only major building hit was the city's museum (which lost its front but was patched up until being pulled down in the late 70s.)
Tbh the scrap metal drives which saw thousands of tons of gates and railings sawn off and gathered up (and then apparently jettisoned into the North Sea because the Victorian metal was of insufficient quality to be used for armaments) had a more lasting effect on Leeds than anything the Luftwaffe did. The stone walls outside my own home still bear the stumps of where ornate railings were cut down and taken more than 80 years ago.
Maybe make a video about the bombing raids on dresden. Molten asphalt and a firestrom so strong it depleted the air in the city of oxygen and people suffocated. 35000 dead in one night.
Thank you for focusing on the fact that it wasn't all 'keep calm and carry on for everyone. I can only imagine the PTSD, and I'm guessing people didn't get any help with it afterwards either.
I didn't know about the flimsy bomb shelters and that the government had to be pressured to let people shelter in underground stations. Governments really have to be pressured to take care of people, nothing changes 🙄
heh, this is where the "stiff upper lip" philosophy came from though. Tragedy was everywhere, but life had to continue anyways.
@@marhawkman303 We all have to carry on anyway, but it does no one any good to ignore pain or its long-term effects.
@@Tilly236 Ah, but that's the thing... it wasn't ignoring pain. Just not letting it take over your life.
@@marhawkman303 If it was that easy, there would be no long-term mental illness/unaliving. You're very lucky if you haven't experienced pain that disrupted your life, despite your best efforts not to let it. We're not all born with the same capacity for that.
@@Tilly236 AHAAHAHAAH, you really don't get the line of discussion at all you sweet summer child.
Great video as always 👏
One minor point to reflect on here is the misconception that the RAF were at breaking point at the end of the Battle of Britain and only saved by the start of The Blitz. The opposite is true, Fighter Command remained fully effective and it was the Luftwaffe that was losing the war of attrition with unsustainable losses in both aeroplanes and aircrew.
The entirety of the BoB and Blitz were colossal mistakes by the nazis: they tried to use a tactical airforce to achieve a strategic objective. The losses in men and material would cost them dearly in years to come and as the war progressed.
This of course takes nothing away from the suffering and sacrifices of those who opposed and were subjected to these attacks over the UK.
Well said.
Covering this topic in this current times is impeccable timing on your part. Perhaps some of them will know the horrors of airstrikes.
Growing up in America I had no idea the severity of these bombings, we had briefly touched on them in school but not nearly to the extent that you explained everything. Thank you again for another very informative video!
I'm American too, I can't support what our government is condoning right now. This should give us all pause 😔
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Chislehurst caves. Thousands of people took shelter in there for years. There were bathroom facilities, a hospital, a cinema and a chapel. If you ever get a chance to visit please go. It's absolutely fascinating.
Does he have to cover EVERYTHING? Please stop that
As a middle-aged German man, I know that I bear no responsibility for the actions of previous generations, nor do I think that an apology would be meaningful in any way.
However I would like to say this: I have been raised with sustained awareness of all events surrounding WW2, and it has shaped my character to the unwavering position that I will never play any supportive part in a political act of aggression, whether by Germany, nor by Canada, which is where I currently live. I will refuse and bear whatever consequences follow.
Being a father myself, the picture of those crying children broke me, and any government, be it my own or another, that wilfully commits acts that threaten the life and well-being of children forfeits any and all claims on support, allegiance or authority.
Just wanted to say thanks, this channel is one of my favourites, informative, well edited and consistent. Kudos 👏
...and beautifully narrated👍🏻
Being not from UK, I've only heard very little about the Blitz - little enough that I didn't actually know what it was. Just another detail in "Wars in the World Through History"-concept, that was always over-shadowed and, in my education, basically ignored
And most I've head of it has always been told on the basis that you already knew what it was, giving very little understanding to someone like me.
So, thank you for this. I've loved your channel for a long while now, but I'm still amazed how you manage to both dig up, explain and showcase these wildly different kinds of tragedies on your channel, and how they both affected the past, and how it's changed the present. It's very educational, but also incredibly fascinating, and I'm happy to have found your channel
Thanks for this interesting one. Coventry was another terrible one that decimated the town, my dad lived in Leicester and they could see the glow in the sky. I was also told that the people in Northants who lived near the high ridge around Cold Ashby could see it happen. The death toll was worse as many in Coventry had decided not to camp out for the night in the local fields as there hadn't been any recent raids.
German air force used to bomb civilians during the Spanish Civil War, just before WW2. One of the most infamous episodes of such bombings is the one suffered by the city of Guernica, made famous by Picasso's painting.
Bath was hit during the Blitz, too, and while I lived there, an unexploded bomb was found under the playground of school near a friend's house. There are still unknown numbers of unexploded bombs to be found all around the country.
Good Lord, under a playground?! 😰
My back garden still has fragments of glass in the soil from when a German bomb destroyed by gran's greenhouse. Gardening as a child I once cut myself on a piece of the glass and gran said the Germans had got me too. I didn't understand what she meant until later. It's a real shame we never rebuilt the greenhouse which had been built in Victorian times, it would have been nice.
6:13 The iconic photograph of the milkman picking his way through the rubble was staged by the photographer -- he's not even a milkman.
Thank you so much for this concise and chilling look at the wartime horror in Britain. So many of us in the U.S. only learned about the blitz in vague background scenes in books or movies, and it's shameful how self-centered our history books are. We have no idea what something on that kind of scale is like to experience, and until we do we are doomed to shrug and push our weight around the planet like we are god-chosen. I grew up watching "British comedy" on our local stations, but there are aspects of British humor I have never "gotten" or been able to appreciate. Humor is - we forget - a coping mechanism for the harsher realities of life, and culturally shaped by shared experience. Don't get me started on mainstream humor in the U.S. - I hate it passionately. Raising my coffee cup to you all across the pond.
I was only 9 when we left the UK, but to this day most American humour just leaves me cold. I can't stand most sitcoms or standup acts. old Goon show recordings have me laughing till the tears roll down, though. just an old fart more British still than not, lol.
Are you really trying to argue that history books don't talk about the blitz? Why are you lying?
Babe, wake up. Fascinating Horror just posted a new video!
On a serious note, I always look forward to your uploads and the excellent content you provide. Thank you for shedding light on this horrendous part of the war.
My husband was little during the raids. Debris of London was something he played in as a lad.
Many thanks! I'm surprised I never knew most of this. In spite of being born in 1950 - not long after WWII ended - I don't remember being taught any history about either of the great wars of the 20th century; school history started at 1492 and ended at the end of the Civil War. What I do know about WWII came from TV shows like "Combat" which focused on American participation and mystery novels that touched on the subject. Nigel Strangeways' wife Georgia was killed in the Blitz (ruining the series for me), and the children's dentist in "Brat Farrar" was mentioned as killed back then when his practice took a direct hit. "The Blitz" was a phrase I knew and associated with WWII, but that was about all. I feel kind of cheated that I only learned the details at age 73. You really packed a lot of information into this video. Again, thank you.
My grandma grew up in Nuneaton. Before she went to boarding school she would hide under the stairs during the bombings, because the staircases would be all that was left of the houses around them after they'd been hit. My great grandfather, her father, was a member of the RAF and one night just didn't come back. His name was Percy Arnott and he flew planes.
Thank you for this! I am a little obsessed with WW2 but much of my focus has been on the holocaust and the Pacific theater. It was interesting to hear about the blitz! Although not unfamiliar, hearing it through the FH voice made it new again ❤
As an American in the modern era, I can't comprehend what it would have been like to live through the Blitz. It would have been terrifying enough to experience this as an adult, so I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a CHILD during that time! I've heard that one reason why the morale in London didn't break was because people who got scared easily left the city, but I can imagine how plenty of people still suffered mental breakdowns in London during this time, and even after the war ended and life returned to normal, or what passed as normal in the postwar era. The air raid sirens are, IMO, one of the most chilling sounds known to man. I've never been in a war zone, thankfully, but I live in the American Midwest, and these sirens are used to warn people about tornadoes, and I find them terrifying, even if know that the city is just testing them (thankfully, they warn people well in advance when they do.) My mom was born in France two months before the Nazis marched in, and she still remembers the sounds of these sirens warning of air raids, even as a very small child. The people of London were so incredibly courageous back then -- I can't imagine carrying on with life as normal with work, school and other things, for months on end, not knowing if each day would be your last day on earth, and if you survived the war, still being left halfway sane. My hat is truly off to the people of that generation!
My mother, her parents and two sisters along with aunts, uncles and cousins were residents of London during the war. She was 16 when the war started and 22 when it ended. She met my father, an American B-17 mechanic during the VE celebration at Trafalgar Square. She suffered from PTSD even though there was no diagnosis for it until recently. She had moments of distant blank staring and would mention how loud thunder reminded her of the bombs exploding. She said the most frightening thing of the war were the V2 rockets which gave no warning and the explosions were deafening and extremely destructive. Even though our Sunday dinners of roast beef and yorkshire pudding always included stories of the war from both parents, I never really realized what my mother experienced till I was much older. Even though she lived in the U.S.for over sixty years, she was English as the day she left England.
the thing that gets me is that the british high command likely knew and intended for the switch to civilian targets to happen. they knew that the few bombs dropped on london by a couple lost luftwaffe bombers was a navigational mistake, but they chose to bomb berlin in retaliation anyway knowing full well hitler would likely change his focus to bombing london and civilian targets in kind. it did end up saving the RAF. so maybe it was all worth it.
as the son of a US WW2 Vet.
my hat is off to the people of the west who endured such bombing raids.
im thankful my family was born in a country where WW2 was optional and not nightly..
Cheers!
"...a country where WW2 was optional and not nightly" That's a great way to express that 🤗👍
Thanks for covering this. I had no idea that the government was actually opposed to the idea of allowing citizens to shelter in the Underground. You cleared up quite a few misconceptions I had about this. Really, thank you!
A well-balanced documentary on the Blitz. My parents and grandparents lived through it and all survived physically. My father came through it fairly well, but I suspect it left my mother with PTSD.
I once heard the effect of living in these cities described as "listening fatigue". Listening for the sirens, listening for the bombs, listening for the cries and screams of survivors.
They found an unexploded bomb on the lane I grew up on just recently. It's in the countryside, so my parents were initially confused as to why anyone would target our village. Then they remembered the tunnels nearby (thought of locally as a former nuclear bunker) had originally been built as an underground factory for fighter planes. That bomb must have been dropped before 1940!
It hits hard to hear how people kept trying to carry on and keep their heads up despite the horrors going on around them. Fucked up how the govt wouldn't even let them use the subway tunnels until they protested enough. I couldn't imagine what it was like to have to live under these conditions. Huge respect to the people who fought in this war.
What people forget about these times before America joined the war. Is that America was giving aid to the UK based on the fact it could see Britain standing up to Hitler. If the people of London and other places that were bombed showed signs of giving up. Then America wouldn't have been so keen of giving aid. There were many the American government that saw Britain as a lost cause. So in the end it really was down to every person in the UK that ended up saving it.
We were always going to enter the war. Neutrality was a pretense Roosevelt engaged in until he could find an excuse to get involved with another European conflict.
The british government using laziness as an excuse to deny shelter from bombing to London citizens is really damn grim.
"Glad" to see that governments haven't been particularly original when it comes to excuses to refuse to be helpful to their people.
I'd like to see more videos like this about the Second World War. Historic events such as these, as shocking and terrible as they were, need to be remembered, as much as for the victims as for the heroic actions for those who played their part in saving lives and protecting our country at the time. The Coventry Raid being one example.
I don't think that the British are in any danger of forgetting WW2, it's taught extensively in schools and a common topic for documentaries, films, newspaper articles etc as well as the big remembrance events (Battle.of Britain, D-Day, VE day commemorations, plus the annual Armistice in November.) If anything, it's a massive part of our collective culture and our national mythos, of the plucky little island country that stood alone against the might and fury of the Reich and prevailed against all odds. I do think we need a more frank and honest discussion about that though, rather than the somewhat rose-tinted nostalgic narrative that's sprung up around it in the years since (as the video mentions, there was a lot of crime and opportunism amongst the 'Blitz spirit', and suppression of the collective trauma because it didn't fit the 'stiff upper lip' narrative that the Govt wanted to promote.)
If you're interested, there's a series called "The Wartime Farm" (not sure what network did it) where a bunch of historians lived like average people during the war for a year, including showing what Christmas in the Blitz was like. They cover other time periods, too.
My grandfather was an air-raid warden in Ilford (which, at the time, was in Essex, but is now part of London). I never heard him speak about that time.
My grandmother was an evacuee from east London. She was sent to live out in the country for (I think) the entirety of the war (so five or six years.) Apparently "Operation Pied Piper" (as the mass evacuation of children was called) moved more than 1.5million kids out of urban areas in the first 3 days of the war. More than 2 million people altogether were relocated. Some kids liked living in the country so much they didn't want to return to their city homes when the war ended in 1945, some had horrible experiences (some were abused and neglected by their hosts, many were traumatised by the separation from their parents.) The thing I remember my grandmother talking about the most was how all the children had to carry around their gas masks in a square cardboard box attached to a piece of string that they wore like a bag at all times. They had to practise putting it on and would get in trouble if they left their gas mask and box lying around. They were supposed to have it with them at all times. There were even special gas masks for babies (like a diving helmet with a baby grow attached and a little bellows on the side.)
I’m from the States and I didn’t learn about the Blitz until I was around 21 or 22 and met my friend’s grandma who had grown-up during it.
My education had been so heavily focused on America that even crucial world events like the Blitz weren’t covered. We basically didn’t cover WWII until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I was really ashamed of this lack of knowledge, and read up on it after that.
My kid showed a lot of interest in WWI and WWII, so I made sure he learned about how these wars affected the common people in various nations, and the major beats of both wars even if they had nothing to do with the United States (shock, horror).
I’m glad this video is out there now, because I can’t have been the only person that had such a narrowly-focused education that the Blitz either wasn’t covered at all, or was barely touched upon.
Your history teacher really sucked. Mine started WW II in the 'beginning' - with WW I and the interwar years.
This is absolutely one of your best videos yet.
My mum was almost 10 years old by September 1940, she's 93 now. She generally refuses to speak about the War but she does remember air raids, and Anderson sjelters, which people built from a kit. She also remembers the telegram boys arriving daily to people's homes. Her family owned a number of business including a cafe where they fed the nation every day, she remembers rationing, they had the money but it didn't make much difference as there was nothing to buy. Her father worked for the MOD driving and maintaining lorries and vehicles, he was asked to go to Margate and collect men who were being dropped off after Dunkirk. My other grandfather served as home guard in Hull, which was bombed often. Everyone was at war made no difference who you were, we were all the same she says
First deliberate man-made tragedy to be featured on Fascinating Horror.
I was just thinking that, interesting choice of subject matter
Well he did cover the List murders and Jack the Ripper a long time ago
That's untrue given the other intentional man-made tragedies he's covered, including the sinking of the Lusitania just a few months ago. This is "merely" the largest of the man-made tragedies he covered so far.
@@warmaster8247 Different kind of tragedy. Each is a tragedy.
@@MusicoftheDamned Ah, I forgot about the Lusitania.
Please do a video on Dresden as well
My Grandfather refused to join the Army. Killing was wrong he said. Instead he joined the London fire and rescue teams. He was out in the blitz every night fire fighting and looking for bodies, body parts and the injured. He would not speak of it, he had seen too many horrors. He was the bravest man I knew...
Really well done, you do such a great job of weaving the pieces of history together into a brief digestible narrative with a human touch. I hope you do more big historical events like this. Bravo!
Been watching you every Tuesday since you had only a couple of videos up, and your quality is always high. Keep it up!
I remember visiting London in 1986 and seeing there were buildings hit in the Blitz that were still standing in their ruin, left as monuments to the enduring spirit of London and its people. I imagine they are still there?
Most of the seriously damaged or gutted buildings in the East End and Docklands area were demolished when the area was redeveloped, not too long after you visited. There's still a few around that were solid enough to be rebuilt or repaired. To this day, where I live on the Thames Estuary, they still find unexploded munitions and parts of downed aircraft.
Wonderful! Thank you for dispelling the myth that people back then weren't psychologically damaged by traumatic events.
My Grandma survived one of the lesser known but most disastrous attacks in the Blitz,
The Coventry Blitz, she's in her 90s now but she still has a good memory of what happened that night.
Her stepfather neighbours were almost all killed, except for the young daughter, who went back into the house to get her doll.
The air raid shelter her parents in was destroyed that night and that unknowingly saved her life.
The cities cathedral was almost completely destroyed
My great grandad was a fire fighter during the blitz, on the 8th of September 1940 he swapped his night shift with a friend, that friend died that night!- if he didn’t swap that shift my grandmother wouldn’t of been born! My great grandmother had bad ptsd from the blitz and actually had electric shock therapy after the war!
Wait, THATS WHERE THE *”KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON”* POSTERS CAME FROM?!?!
Yep. But they didn't actually get used.
The posters were intended to be shown in the event of actual ground invasion, never displayed during the war.
….so when did they first appear?
A lot of this stuff concentrates on London but places like Hull and Coventry were flattened as well. Last bombed building in hull ( a cinema ) is waiting to be repaired for use soon .
My Nana and Grandad both lived in central London during the blitz. Nan was from Clapham Common, Grandad from Sheppard’s Bush. My Nana tells me she still doesn’t sleep well at night due to being awoken every night in the early years of her childhood during the Blitz. My grandad wouldn’t talk about it, preferring to leave it mostly in the past. When we went to the Britain at War museum on a visit to London, we did the mock blitz shelter museum attraction. My Nana almost immediately burst into tears, the entire experience had traumatized her. I can’t imagine how god awful it was for everyone living in England and Scotland at the time.
Wow. Thank you. I, too, am particularly impressed by the effort to tell all sides of this amazing story.
I'd love if you would cover the courrières catastrophe. It is a fascinating and terrible incident that I believe is severely undereported.
What's that one about? I've never heard of it. 🤔
@@daviddunsmore103 google search
I can’t imagine how people can be this evil toward each other without feeling any semblance of guilt or shame
People are infinitely corruptible. We should all be thankful if our experiences haven't led us down that path.
I refer you to the current disagreement at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. All down to religion - at least Hitler was a total and utter (insert appropriate expletive here) and we all knew it.
It's easy, just don't consider you opponent is actually human.
Soldiers don't always carry the same animosity as their leaders do. For example, a number of German POWs ended up staying in the UK and America after the war and married locally. The book "My Enemy, My Friend," is about soldiers reconciling after the Vietnam war, even though they were enemies during the war.
Ask the Allies who bombed central Europe to rubble over two years of unrestricted bombing.
i was really hoping you’d do a video on the Blitz, but didn’t want to ask. God bless all those who lost their lives in WW2
This was really well put together and put things in a simplified and understandable way. Thank you for sharing it.
Could you make a video about the cruel bombing of Dresden?
It's only fair and interesting as well
It would make the inclusion of this video look like the utter farce that it is.
next, document the Hamburg or Dresden firestorms...
That pic of smoke swirling around St Paul's is the emblem of the blitz for me.
The Blitz started on my grandad's seventh birthday. He remembered the war oddly fondly, despite having been bombed out twice. He would casually talk about days at school where the teacher would ask where one of the boys was, and someone would just say "oh, they're dead, Sir. They got bombed last night." Whereas my grandad was later evacuated to help on his cousins farm, my Nan was only evacuated for a short while but was so homesick she went back home and spent the entirety of the war in the east end of london with her mum and sisters. The mental strength and resilience that generation had is nothing short of incredible to me.
We appreciate your insights on this matter. We look forward to see more.
10:03 guess they understood that feeling when cities got Dresden’ed and Hamburg’ed
I always love how you summarize everything and have empathy for what happened. great work ❤
Excellent overview on the civilian side of the Blitz, FH.
For those of you so inclined, IKS Exploration has quite a few videos on surviving deep air raid shelters on their channel. Even after having been abandoned for decades, there's an eery atmosphere to them.
Cheers.