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| An Air Raid Shelter |
War came to Britain in September 1940, in the form of the Blitz. Germany’s frequent bombing raids aimed to wreck manufacturing, wear down morale and disrupt the British war effort.
It very nearly worked. Many citizens were furious that the government wasn’t doing enough to protect them.
From Exeter to Edinburgh, the bombs fell like rain. In less than a month, the Luftwaffe dropped over 5,000 tonnes of explosives on London. The worst was yet to come.
On November 14th 1940, the single most concentrated attack on a British city during World War II took place. The city of Coventry was subjected to a ten-hour ordeal by 500 German bombers.
Over 4,000 homes were destroyed, along with a quarter of the city’s factories. The casualties were high; over 550 dead men, women and children and another 800 injured.
People with gardens built Anderson shelters, made from corrugated iron and earth. But in urban areas, where the threat was greatest, there was little adequate refuge. In London, 60,000 people took to the safety of London Underground stations every night. But thousands of others lost their lives in official shelters.
Media propaganda invented the ‘Spirit of the Blitz’ to shore up morale, which was desperately close to breaking point. The myth lives on.
However, 42,000 civilians are estimated to have died during the campaign, with over 50,000 injured, and around 130,000 houses destroyed.
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