The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945

by Richard Overy

  The most notorious case was the east coast port of Hull where severe damage to the residential areas around the docks created a large population of trekkers who moved into schools and improvised dormitories in the rural areas north of the city. Sustained bombing through the summer of 1941, against a target that was easy to find across the North Sea, turned the trekking into a permanent evacuation every night of around 7,000–9,000 people. Some slept in barns or pigsties, some in schools, chapels and cinemas. The government tried to control the movement, but eventually conceded that dockworkers were disciplined enough to return each day to work and the problem of homelessness was a real one. A cushion belt with facilities for up to 35,000 people was organized and properly resourced. Even by 1943 there were still over 1,600 trekking regularly out of the city every night.77 The government was most worried about the loss of workers, but research showed that workers who fled the worst effects of a raid returned to work remarkably quickly. A survey of Liverpool after the major raids in 1941 showed that labour shortage accounted for only 5 per cent of the delay to the port’s activity. In Clydebank, only a few days after the Blitz, five major firms reported that out of a workforce of 12,300 around two-thirds were back at work. Only 6 per cent of workers were lost through death, injury or flight.78 Local surveys found that many of those who fled the raids soon returned to their damaged houses, preferring home to an alien billet.

  The sudden evacuations following a raid highlighted the generally poor state of shelter provision, particularly among the most vulnerable working-class populations in the congested city centres, many of whom lacked a domestic shelter or easy access to nearby safety. The government priority of dispersing the population worked only where there was confidence in the level of shelter provision. The public distrusted most the numerous trench and brick surface shelters. A nearby hit would often be enough to kill or maim those inside, a direct hit a certainty; the heavy concrete roofs of brick shelters collapsed on those inside when the weak brick walls gave way. Trenches were prone to flooding and in some cases were not braced laterally, so that a blast could sweep down a trench killing all its occupants. It took only a few bombs to persuade people to boycott a shelter they regarded as a potential tomb. When a survey was made in London, 1,400 surface shelters were condemned as unsafe.79 In Newcastle news that Londoners had rejected surface shelters led to a city-wide investigation and 560 shelters were closed down. Heavy rain had in some cases been sufficient to make the shelters collapse without the help of bombs. The poor level of provision meant that in central London only 3 per cent of the population used public shelters, in the suburban areas only 1 per cent. A shelter census showed that a mere 7 per cent of the available capacity of trench shelters and 8 per cent of brick surface shelters were actually occupied by the spring of 1941. Propaganda designed to show that brick and trench shelters were safe enough was disregarded.80 Even the domestic Anderson shelters were not fully utilized since they too were easily destroyed by nearby bombs. Basements were safe only as long as they could withstand the collapse of the building above them. In Tynemouth a single bomb killed 102 people when the basement ceiling of a large communal shelter gave way, burying the occupants in debris. In Stoke Newington, north London, in October 1940, 154 people were drowned or mutilated when a basement collapsed, fracturing the water mains.81

  The shelter crisis may well help to explain why casualties were so high during the early major bombing raids. In September the 6,968 deaths and 9,488 serious injuries was the highest monthly total of the Blitz. But it was also evident from the start of the bombing that many people deliberately chose not to shelter or found the most rudimentary and imperfect solutions. Mass Observation (MO) reporters in the late summer and autumn of 1940 were struck by the lackadaisical response to taking shelter.82 Later in 1941 the government scientist Solly Zuckerman tried to find an answer to the question of why so many people had run the risk of not sheltering. He drafted a set of possible explanations based on interviews with civil defence personnel who had worked through the Blitz: ‘Whether people have fatalistic attitude i.e. “name on bomb” ’, ‘Whether truly apathetic or careless of life’.83 There was almost certainly no single or even obvious explanation, but the evidence is overwhelming that many of those killed in London and in the bombed provincial cities died in the open, or in bed, or in unprotected spaces. Like the pacifist whose letter opens this chapter, there was an element of fatalism in popular attitudes to the bombing, or an exhilarating willingness to run risks, or simply a stubborn desire to defy an enemy who expected his victims to cower underground. After the first raids the author F. Tennyson Jesse wrote from London to an American friend, ‘the English get bored so much more quickly than they get anything else, and nobody is taking cover much any longer’.84

  These were hardly rational responses but it is unlikely that any general psychological account would explain them. Circumstance clearly played a part. One of Clara Milburn’s neighbours had no garden shelter and sat during raids in an opening under the stairs decorated with Union Jacks. Many civil defence workers were compelled to sit in their posts during raids with minimal protection. John Strachey at Post D complained to the local council, but it was months before the wardens’ room in which he served was given strengthened joists and pillars to protect it.85 In many cases the refusal to shelter was deliberate if often temporary. The journalist Virginia Cowles found many examples in London of an active choice not to shelter: the caretaker and his wife in her block of flats eating supper with a raid overhead; a soldier and his wife arguing about whether to drive home during a raid; Cowles herself choosing to sleep in her bed because a shelter ‘was no safer against a direct hit than staying at home’.86 There was an element of bravado as well. Vera Brittain reported the popular society game ‘Playing No Man’s Land’, which involved bright young things dodging bombs on their way from one party to the next. Even Brittain, sober by comparison, slept in her bed some nights from sheer exhaustion rather than go to the shelter. The attitude she found among Londoners of ‘grim, resigned patience’ could be mobilized for running risks. ‘It’s them that are careless what get it,’ she was told by an ARP worker.87

  The high level of casualties and poor level of shelter provision forced the population of London to take events into their own hands. People gravitated to structures they regarded as sufficiently sturdy, such as railway arches, where informal shelter communities were set up despite the evidence that they were as vulnerable to a direct hit as anything else. The Chislehurst Caves in Kent were occupied by migrants from London’s East End. In West Ham three large underground stores were forced open and occupied by local people, though one area had no ventilation, sanitation, or a floor fit to sleep on. On 14 September 1940 the Stepney communist, Phil Piratin, led a group of 70 protestors from the borough to occupy the plush basement shelter of the Savoy Hotel on the Strand in the heart of London’s prosperous West End. They found a shelter divided into sections painted pink, blue and green, with matching bedding and towels, and an array of armchairs and deckchairs assembled for the long wait underground. The group settled down in the chairs and refused to leave when police were called; sympathetic waiters served bread and butter and tea on silver trays. Piratin led them out again when the bombing that day was over.88

  This incident was part of an uncoordinated but widespread demand for deep shelters, which were not unreasonably regarded as the only real guarantee of safety. Roy Harrod, one of the economists brought into the government Statistical Branch, wrote to Churchill’s senior scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann, that the time had come for a deep-shelter policy, despite the official hostility to them:

  a very formidable discontent is now arising. On all sides one hears the same opinion. People do not mind risk by day but ask for a safe and quiet night. It is not only noise but also risk that keeps people awake and impairs their efficiency. It also impairs their morale and loyalty. It is generally thought that deep shelters were provided in Spain. It is thought that the
Government is inert or pig-headed in not doing so here.89

  Churchill and his Cabinet colleagues were not persuaded and dispersal remained the priority. When local authorities applied for permission to build deep shelters, the Ministry of Home Security refused or made them a secondary priority. Newcastle’s ARP Controller wanted local tunnels to be converted for the poorer dockside population, who it was felt would be difficult to control if serious bombing began. The Ministry allowed surveying to continue but did not regard it as a priority. In the London borough of Islington demands were made for deep shelters at least 100 feet (30 metres) underground because of popular pressure to abandon the poorly constructed trench shelters, but the government refused; in West Ham local protesters constructed models of deep shelters to demonstrate their viability and relative value for money (less per head of population, it was claimed, than the cost of their funerals), but failed in their bid.90

  The question of deep shelters had been a political issue even before the war when the communist scientist J. B. S. Haldane launched a campaign in 1937 to get adequate protection for the urban working class.91 After the outbreak of war the British far left, and particularly the Communist Party, faced the problem that they opposed what Moscow had declared to be an imperialist war. Leading Marxists were expelled from the Labour Party, including the radical lawyer Denis Pritt, and the Home Office and Ministry of Information closely monitored left-wing activity. For the radical left the shelter issue became a way of avoiding the accusation of unpatriotic behaviour and turning the tables on the government. In the late summer of 1940 the People’s Vigilance movement was set up by Pritt and other Communists with a manifesto that called, among other things, for ‘Adequate protection from air raids’.92 In January 1941, the same month that the Communist Daily Worker was banned, the movement launched the People’s Convention to try to mobilize popular demands for accountable government and a programme of what were now called Haldane shelters, as well as financial compensation for the threatened urban communities. But by the summer of 1941 the movement began to peter out; political activity of all kinds was difficult to sustain under persistent air attack and official pressure not to undermine the political truce established between the main parties in 1940, while the German invasion of the Soviet Union turned Communists overnight into enthusiasts for the war effort.93

  In the end the onset of heavy and persistent bombing in London in September forced the government’s hand. On 7 September, the first day and night of heavy bombing in London, several thousand Londoners bought tickets for the Underground and stayed put in the stations and tunnels. Over the following weeks the numbers increased to a level that neither the police nor local London Transport officials could control. At first they blamed ‘husky men, foreigners and Jews’, but it soon became clear that there were plenty of what police reporters later chose to call ‘Aryans’.94 The official position, already decided before the war, was not to open the Underground rail system for use as shelter because the priority was for traffic through the capital. On 21 September Churchill asked Anderson why the ban could not be lifted and received the reply that in the absence of any means of preventing access except military force, he had agreed to allow shelterers onto platforms at night. Not every station could easily be used, but the decision soon led to a regular influx of Londoners every night, sleeping on station floors, escalators and platforms, with the minimum of comfort. In September over 120,000 used these new deep shelters; as the bombing declined over the winter the number hovered around 65,000.95 This was a small fraction of the population that needed shelter, but the occupation of the Underground highlighted the widespread public disquiet over the lack of safety, and at the same time highlighted the poor conditions and limited welfare available to the mainly working-class communities seeking shelter. Investigations were carried out in Underground stations to monitor their levels of comfort and hygiene. The lower platforms at South Kensington were found to house around 1,500 people, mostly women packed closely together; there were no beds but a mass of dirty bedding and litter, ventilation was poor, there was no hot or cold water supply, no canteen and no effective first aid.96 Other stations revealed the same improvised and insanitary conditions.

  The poor level of amenity and hygiene in all public shelters was immediately evident once the bombing began. One of the most notorious shelters was the ‘Tilbury’ shelter in Stepney in east London, a warehouse and cellar area near Liverpool Street Station. Part of it was an official public shelter, the rest not, and an estimated 14,000–16,000 clustered into the area during raids. When the Minister of Health, Malcolm MacDonald, visited the site in early October he told Churchill that the sanitary facilities were appalling. Churchill wrote back a despairing note: ‘If we cannot cope with a problem like this, we are certainly not going to be able to beat the Hun.’97 Other public figures visited the shelters and reported back to the government. Kingsley Martin, the editor of the New Statesman, sent his account of the shelters to MacDonald in September, who passed it on to Churchill. Martin found the stench indescribable. At the Aldgate shelter there was one tap serving the whole shelter, situated by the men’s toilet; the floor was soiled and dotted with contraceptives; the racial mix, he thought, promoted conflict. The most severe critic was Clementine Churchill, the prime minister’s wife, who complained after trips to view East End shelters that people continued to live in conditions of ‘cold, wet, dirt, darkness and stench’. She observed few first-aid posts, overcrowding, latrines side by side with the beds, no hot drinks, few washing facilities, poor lighting and ventilation. Hers was by no means the only account presented to the government but her avenue to her famous husband was direct and, from the evidence of the correspondence, forcefully exploited.98

  The lack of amenities did not reflect an absence of planning and preparation. There had been no intention of turning either public or domestic shelters into dormitories, since it was expected that most of the bombing would be done by day. The preoccupation with the prospect of gas attack had also distorted pre-raid training. There were thousands of decontamination squads, decontamination chambers and civil defence and nursing personnel thoroughly trained to cope with the consequences of every type of poison gas. This remained an idle resource while the shock of heavy explosive and incendiary raids had to be met without sufficient forethought or experience. Even the nature of the casualties had not been properly calculated. Solly Zuckerman with Lindemann’s support persuaded the Ministry of Health in October to establish a Casualty Survey under his direction, which would examine the physiological effects of bombing to better understand how to protect the body against its effects and reduce death and injury. Bomb blast was a particular concern since it was capable of killing a victim without any external signs of injury. On the other hand, blast could also inflict mutilating damage; wounds to the eyes were typical, including numerous cases where glasses had been driven into the wearer’s eyeballs by shock waves.99 The effect of blast on air-raid shelters was also poorly understood. The Building Research Laboratory was recruited in 1939 to study the physical blast effects, but many of the inquiries were not undertaken until after the raiding had started and there were ruined shelters to examine.100 In both cases the completed surveys and reports were available only after the main bombing was over.

  The sudden shock of heavy raiding did not prevent the civil defence structure from operating as an organization, but the immediate assistance needed for the bombed population was in some cases poorly understood. The system of Rest Centres set up by each authority had few beds, no centre for giving information to the homeless and disorientated population, and a standard and inadequate diet of tea, biscuits and bully beef. The lack of bunks and beds was a severe difficulty. In Streatham and Wandsworth, in south London, the local authorities distributed hammocks, which Churchill also favoured, but they were unpopular with the public (‘Stout women do not like hammocks, nor do pear-shaped men,’ ran one report) and were eventually rejected by the Ministry of Home Security.101 Th
ere was a lack of canteen facilities for aid workers and for the bombed-out which was most marked in the East End, where the heaviest bombing took place. In September 1940 in West Ham there were no shelter canteens, mobile canteens or communal feeding centres. A local pie-maker, working among the ruins of his neighbourhood and his shop, improvised the sale of 2,700 dinners to the homeless after a major raid. The ARP Controller was eventually replaced at the insistence of the Regional Commissioners.102 It was in the East End that the absence of sufficient first-aid posts with adequate stocks was also most marked. By late September 1940 there were fears that the front line in parts of London might well give way.

  The reaction to raiding varied widely from area to area, but in the opening weeks it was clear that the civil defence system could not deliver everything the bombed population needed. The problem was in some respects worse in the smaller cities outside London where a heavy raid could destroy much of the civil defence structure and dislocate a higher proportion of the population. The major raids on Southampton on 30 November and 1 December 1940 exposed the problems of dealing with a sudden disaster even when it had been anticipated. The attacks destroyed the telephone system and made communication difficult; the Control Room in the city’s civic centre building was knocked out but, contrary to instructions, no auxiliary control centre had been prepared; the water mains were severely disrupted, producing an acute water shortage; food was available but not distributed effectively; the thousands of evacuees who fled into the countryside could not be properly provisioned or disciplined; a number of full-time first-aid staff abandoned their posts at the risk of prosecution; the almost 3,000 soldiers and workers who were sent to help could not be properly fed or housed. In his report for the government, the Regional Commissioner admitted that ‘The Civic Authorities were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster.’103 An official of the Ministry of Food, sent to Southampton after the raids, found the remaining population ‘dazed, bewildered, unemployed and uninstructed’. In the bombed areas people stayed in their houses without food or safe water; information on the location of Rest Centres and canteens could not be passed on because of a complete breakdown of communication. The five mobile canteens visited had no more than a handful of customers, and only tea and sandwiches to dispense; one arrived from London driven by two women with only supplies of tea, sugar and soap. The official could find no communal feeding facilities. ‘Over and above everything,’ he wrote in his report, ‘local authorities must once and for all be condemned. They have everywhere, I think, proved inefficient … they are parochial, slow and indecisive.’ Among ‘islands of good work’ he found half-measures and ad hoc arrangements which threatened ‘the progressive deterioration of morale in every English city’.104