The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945

by Richard Overy

  211. TNA, PREM 3/22/3, Churchill to Sinclair, 20 Aug 1941; AIR 2/5245, Douglas to Balfour, 13 Aug 1941.

  212. BA-MA, RL2 IV/28, Luftflotte 3, ‘Gefechtskalender Juli–Dez 1941’.

  213. BA-MA, RL2 IV/149, ‘Gedanken zum Einsatz der Luftwaffe im Luftkriege über See’, 23 Jan 1944, 23–4.

  214. Dobinson, Building Radar, 483–5.

  215. TNA, PREM 3/22/1, ‘Night Air Defence: Progress Report’, 12 Nov 1941, 2–4.

  216. Ibid., Progress report from C-in-C, Anti-Aircraft Command, 20 Apr 1942; Progress report by C-in-C, Fighter Command, for Night Defence Committee, 16 Mar 1943.

  217. BA-MA, RL36/52, ‘Bericht über Reise zu Luftflotte 3 von 11–12.3.1943’, 13 Mar 1943.

  218. Willi Boelcke(ed), The Secret Conferences of Dr Goebbels: The Nazi Propaganda War 1939–43 (London: 1967), 233–4.

  219. IWM, Milch papers, vol 62, conference at Carinhall, 6 Mar 1942.

  220. On Paris see AHB Translations, vol 4, VII/79, ‘Conference with Reichsmarschall Goering’, 6 Mar 1942, 1. Hitler’s order in Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, 512, App xxxvi. See too IWM, Milch papers, vol 62/5208, ‘Besprechungsnotiz: 16.5.1942’.

  221. AHB Translations, vol 4, VII/79, ‘Conference with Reichsmarschall Goering’, 16 May 1942, 8; on Weston-super-Mare see vol 2, VII/26, ‘A Survey of German Air Operations 1939–1944’, 21 Sept 1944, 9. Karl Baedeker, Great Britain (Leipzig: 1927), 133.

  222. Raid details in Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, 513–16, App xxxvii and xxxviii.

  223. Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg’, 332ff, for discussion of the background to the renewed offensive.

  224. BA-MA, RL36/52, ‘Kommando der Eprobungs-Stellen, Besprechung in Rechlin’, 13 Mar 1943; ‘Aktenvermerk über Besprechung über verstärkten England-Einsatz’, 27 Mar 1943.

  225. IWM, Milch documents, MD 53/732, telegram from Göring to Milch, 12 Oct 1943; MD 63/6290-308, ‘Besprechung beim Reichsmarschall’, 9 Oct 1943.

  226. BA-MA, RL2 IV/48, ‘Zusammenarbeit Marine-Luftwaffe im Seekrieg gegen England’, 28 Feb 1944; ‘Unterlagen für Lagebesprechung beim Führer’, 19 July 1943.

  227. AHB Translations, vol 2, VII/37, ‘General Kessler to General Jeschonnek’, 5 Sept 1943.

  228. Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg’, 372–7.

  229. IWM, Milch documents, 63/5877, ‘Besprechung beim Reichsmarschall’, Nov 1943.

  230. TNA, HO 191/11, ‘Chronological Record of Air Attacks on Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, 28 Sept 1945.

  231. TNA, PREM 3/18/2, Air Ministry, ‘Enemy Night Activity, 22/23 February 1944’; PREM 3/22/1, Progress report from C-in-C, Fighter Command, 1/9/43–22/2/44.

  232. Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg’, 380–85; G. Kirwin, ‘Allied Bombing and Nazi Domestic Propaganda’, European History Quarterly, 15 (1985), 344–5, 355–6.

  233. Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg’, 385–418. See too Michael Neufeld, ‘The Guided Missile and the Third Reich: Peenemünde and the Forging of a Technological Revolution’, in Monika Renneberg, Mark Walker (eds), Science, Technology and National Socialism (Cambridge: 1994), 62–6; Duffy, Target America, 66–73, 78–83.

  234. Figures from Collier, Defence of the United Kingdom, 523–26; see too Boog, ‘Strategischer Luftkrieg’, 397, 402.

  235. BA-MA, RL36/52, ‘Niederschrift über die Besprechung in Berchtesgaden am 29.5.1944’, 1–2.

  236. Ibid., ‘Jägerstab [Fighter Staff] Besprechung beim Herrn Reichsmarschall’, 2 July 1944; ‘Besprechung beim Herrn Reichsmarschall’, 14 July 1944.

  237. TNA, PREM 3/18/2, Churchill to Sinclair and Herbert Morrison, 8 June 1943; Sinclair to Churchill, 10 June 1943, enclosing ‘Notes on the Protection of Dams and Reservoirs in the United Kingdom’.

  238. FDRL, Map Room files, Box 49, message for US Navy Intelligence from Stockholm, 6 Oct 1944; telegram from US military attaché, Madrid, 6 Sept 1944.

  239. Ibid., PREM 3/18/2, Portal to Churchill, 22 Mar 1945; War Cabinet paper, ‘Protection of London against Low-Flying Attacks’, 29 Mar 1945; Hollis to Churchill, 5 Apr 1945, enclosing CoS memorandum, ‘Likelihood and Possible Form of a Last Desperate Throw by the German Naval and Air Forces’.

  240. Geoffrey Brooks, Hitler’s Nuclear Weapons (London: 1992), 112, 122–4, 128–30; see too Rainer Karlsch, Hitlers Bombe: Die geheime Geschichte der deutschen Kernwaffenversuche (Munich: 2005), 189–92, for plans to create a long-range missile for use against Allied cities, and 228–237, for the argument that an atomic test took place in Germany in March 1945. On the failure of the German atomic research programme see Rolf-Dieter Müller, ‘Albert Speer und die Rüstungspolitik 1942–1945’, in Bernhard Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit, DRZW: Band 5/2: Organisation und Mobilisierung des Deutschen Machtbereichs, 1942–1944/45 (Stuttgart: 1999), 738–43.

  241. Louis Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries (London: 1948), 139, entry from 27 Apr 1942.

  242. NARA, RG 332 Box 115, Keitel interrogation, 22.

  243. Evans, ‘Göring – beinahe Führer’, 5.

  244. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, SZ/BBSU/75/1, Interrogation Detachment, US Air Headquarters, Enemy Intelligence Summary, Hermann Göring, 1 June 1945.

  3. TAKING IT? BRITISH SOCIETY AND THE BLITZ

  1. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ponsonby papers, C682, J. H. A. to Ruth Fry, 16 Sept 1940.

  2. TNA, ED 136/111, ‘Planning of Evacuation’, Jan 1939, 2.

  3. TNA, MH 79/178, Home Office, ‘Pamphlet on Shelter from Air Attacks’, 1939, 3.

  4. TNA, PREM 3/27, draft article, ‘The War in East London’, 28 Sept 1940, 1.

  5. TNA, HO 186/927, Regional Commissioner, South-West region to all town clerks, 20 Dec 1940.

  6. On citizen warriors see Sonya Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: 2003), ch 5.

  7. TNA, PREM 3/28/5, Note for the prime minister, ‘Working after the Siren’, 10 Sept 1940.

  8. Foreword to Stephen Spender, Citizens in War – and After (London: 1945), 5.

  9. Terence O’Brien, Civil Defence (London: 1955), chs iii, v; Bernd Lemke, Luftschutz in Grossbritannien und Deutschland 1923 bis 1939 (Munich: 2005), 342–62. See too UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/56/3, memorandum, ‘Regional Machinery, Policy, Personnel’.

  10. For one example see E. Doreen Idle, War over West Ham: A Study of Community Adjustment (London: 1943), 59–63.

  11. TNA, PREM 3/27, note by Edward Bridges for Churchill, ‘London Regional Commissioners’; HHC, TSCD/1, Note on Civil Defence Regions, 24 Sept 1941.

  12. TNA, HO 45/19762, Order in Council, 4 Sept 1939; Cabinet paper, ‘Powers of Regional Commissioners’, 21 Mar 1939.

  13. HHC, TSCD/1, City of Coventry, ‘Air Raid Precautions: Outline Scheme of Organisation’, Apr 1937; City of Manchester, memorandum, ‘Air Raid Precautions’, 21 Oct 1936; City of Leeds, ‘Local Scheme of Air Raid Precautions’, 23 Sept 1936; City of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ‘Report of Special Committee as to Air Raid Precautions, 1 July 1937’.

  14. CLSC, JN20/16/C, minutes of Hampstead Civil Defence Committee, 5 Oct 1939.

  15. YCA, Acc 89/1a, ARP Emergency Committee, minutes of meetings, 10 Oct, 17 Oct, 27 Oct, 10 Nov 1939.

  16. CLSC, JN20/16/C, minutes of Civil Defence Committee, 26 Sept, 25 Oct 1939.

  17. Calculated from TNA, HO 186/602, Statistics on Civil Defence Personnel, Summary of all Services, 30 June 1940, 14 Nov 1940.

  18. Shane Ewen, ‘Preparing the British Fire Service for War: Local Government, Nationalisation and Evolutionary Reform, 1935–41’, Contemporary British History, 20 (2006), 216–19.

  19. TNA, HO 187/1156, ‘Manpower in the National Fire Service’, historical survey.

  20. Henry Green, Caught (London: 1943), 16.

  21. LMA, LCC/CL/CD/1/252, memorandum by Deputy Chief Officer, London Fire Brigade, 5 June 1940; LCC to London Ambulance Service, 22 July 1940; Clerk of the LCC, memorandum, ‘Civil Defence Services: Employment of Conscientious Objectors’, 13 Mar 1941. More general
ly see Denis Hayes, Challenge of Conscience: The Story of the Conscientious Objectors of 1939–1949 (London: 1949), 182–4; Rachel Barker, Conscience, Government and War (London: 1982), 51, 61–5; Rose, Which People’s War?, 170–79.

  22. Charles Graves, Women in Green: The Story of the W.V.S. (London: 1948), 14–20; O’Brien, Civil Defence, 128–9.

  23. HHC, TYW/1/W5, Synopsis of lecture courses in ARP, WVS June 1940; WVS to chief warden, 4 Nov 1941, ‘Emergency Cookery Demonstration’.

  24. HHC, TYW/1/W6, League of Good Neighbours circular, ‘The Housewives’ Service’; ‘Help Rendered during Air Raids by Women Wardens and League of Good Neighbours’, 8 Jan 1942.

  25. YCA, Acc 89/2, Notes of meeting with the chief warden, 24 Apr 1940.

  26. HHC, TYW/1/W6, ‘Duties of Women Wardens’ [n.d.]; The Manchester Guardian, 6 Sept 1940, ‘Hull’s Wardens and Shelters’.

  27. TWA, MD-NC/276/3, ‘Further Report on the Staffing of Dormitory Shelters’, 19 Apr 1941; Newcastle Emergency Committee minutes, 3 Aug 1944; O’Brien, Civil Defence, 586–7. Pay in 1940 was £3.10.0 for men and £2.7.0 for women; in 1944 the final rates were £4.0.6 for men and £2.16.6 for women.

  28. Calculated from O’Brien, Civil Defence, 690, App x.

  29. John Strachey, Post D: Some Experiences of an Air-Raid Warden (London: 1941), 66–7.

  30. O’Brien, Civil Defence, 678; Graves, Women in Green, 139.

  31. HHC, TYW/1/A58-1, Circular to wardens from chief warden, 4 July 1940.

  32. YCA, Acc 89/1a, Emergency Committee minutes, 15 Apr 1940; ARP Officer to chief warden, 19 Oct 1939.

  33. CLSC, JN20/16/C, minutes of Hampstead Civil Defence Committee, 20 Sept 1939.

  34. TNA, HO 207/386, London CD Region, ‘Instructors Course for Officers’, June 1941, 3.

  35. TWA, MD-NC/276/5, Newcastle ARP Committee minutes, 12 Apr 1943; O’Brien, Civil Defence, 587–8.

  36. HHC, TSCD/1, Borough Engineer, Stoke Newington to City Engineer, Hull, 2 Mar 1938, ‘Progress Report No 1’, 2.

  37. HHC, TYW/1/T5, ‘Demonstration of Bombs and Their Effects’, 13 July 1939; ‘Proceedings at Bomb Demonstrations’.

  38. TWA, MD-NC/94/15, ARP Special Committee minutes, 2 July 1936.

  39. TNA, ED 136/111, Ministry of Health, ‘Report on Evacuation Rehearsal’, 28 Aug 1939; ‘Report on Visit to London Schools’, 26 Aug 1939.

  40. HHC, TSCD/1, Leicester Evening Mail, 25 and 28 Jan 1938; News Chronicle, 1 Apr 1939; Manchester Chief Constable, ‘Instructions in Connection with Night Exercises 1 April 1939’.

  41. YCA, Acc 89/1a, minutes of Emergency Committee, 17 Nov 1939; TNA, HO 186/2944, London Region Operational Circulars, Nov 1939–Aug 1940.

  42. Green, Caught, 93–4, 178.

  43. TNA, INF 1/264, Home Intelligence, summary of daily reports, 28 Mar 1940; HO 186/2201, Factory Department, Ministry of Labour, circular for all factory premises, Apr 1941.

  44. TNA, ED 136/111, ‘Planning of Evacuation’, Jan 1939; Ruth Inglis, The Children’s War: Evacuation 1939–1945 (London: 1989), 1.

  45. Richard Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: 1950), 171–6; Inglis, Children’s War, 25–6.

  46. TNA, HO 191/28, ARP Department, MHS, ‘Statistics of Shelter Provision’, 23 Apr 1940.

  47. Dietmar Süss, ‘Wartime Societies and Shelter Politics in National Socialist Germany and Britain’, in Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, Richard Overy (eds), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940–1945 (London: 2011), 31–3.

  48. George H. Gallup, The Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain 1937–1975, 2 vols (New York: 1976), 34–5.

  49. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/59/13, draft ‘Shelter habits’, Table B, Table C.

  50. HHC, Memorandum from borough engineer, Hull, ‘Domestic Surface Shelters’, 17 May 1939; TWA, CB-GA/13/1, Gateshead Emergency Committee minutes, 5 Apr 1939; minutes, 18 Sept 1941.

  51. Idle, War over West Ham, 108–9.

  52. HHC, TSA/CD/100, ARP domestic shelters canvass sheet; note for City Engineer, 5 July 1940.

  53. YCA, Acc 89/1a, Emergency Committee minutes, 16 Jan, 20 Feb, 27 Feb 1940.

  54. HHC, TSCD/1, Rate Estimates 1939–40, 24 Jan 1939; TWA, MD-NC/276/5, ‘Report of the City Treasurer’, 19 June 1944.

  55. TNA, PREM 3/27, Note by Minister without Portfolio (Maurice Hankey) for Churchill, 26 Sept 1940; Anderson to Churchill, 6 Sept 1940.

  56. O’Brien, Civil Defence, 224–6.

  57. TNA, HO 186/2066, letter from Anglo-Iranian Oil to ARP Controller, Glamorgan, 24 July 1940; Chief Constable of Liverpool, Police duty form, 20 Aug 1940.

  58. O’Brien, Civil Defence, 363–5; NC, Lindemann papers, G99, draft memorandum, ‘Air-Raid Alarms’.

  59. Marc Wiggam, ‘The Blackout and the Idea of Community in Britain and Germany’, in Baldoli, Knapp, Overy (eds), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe 1940–1945, 43–53.

  60. TNA, HO 186/720, MHS memorandum, ‘Lighting (Restrictions) Order’, 9 Jan 1940; Metropolitan Police Commissioner to Home Office, Mar 1941.

  61. Peter Donnelly (ed), Mrs. Milburn’s Diaries: An Englishwoman’s Day-to-Day Reflections 1939–1945 (London: 1979), 17, entry for 7 Sept 1939.

  62. TNA, MH 76/555, Ministry of Health, ‘Proposed Shelter Bye-laws’, 31 Oct 1940.

  63. TNA, INF 1/254, Home Morale Emergency Committee Report, 4 June 1940.

  64. CLSC, JN20/16/C, Hampstead Civil Defence Committee, ‘Review of ARP Services’, 18 Nov 1939.

  65. TWA, DX 875/4, ‘A Farewell Message from the Regional Commissioner Sir Arthur Lambert’, Apr 1945, 4.

  66. HHC, TYW/1/A58-1, Circular to Hull wardens from the chief warden, 4 July 1940.

  67. North Devon at War: The Home Front, Part II (Barnstaple: 1996), 4, 7, 35.

  68. A. B. C. Kempe, Midst Bands and Bombs (Maidstone: 1946), 120–29.

  69. Philip Graystone, The Blitz on Hull (1940–45) (Hull: 1991), 9–11.

  70. H. Twyford, It Came to Our Door: Plymouth in the World War (Plymouth: 1945), 98–9.

  71. TWA, DX 875/4, ‘Farewell Message from the Regional Commissioner’, 12.

  72. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/59/13, draft report, ‘Evacuation’ [n.d.], 1.

  73. TNA, MH 76/555, memorandum by Minister of Health, 14 Dec 1940; London figures from O’Brien, Civil Defence, 396–7.

  74. TNA, INF 1/264, report for 9 Sept 1940. See Titmuss, Social Policy, 355ff, and Wilbur Zelinski, Leszek Kolinski, The Emergency Evacuation of Cities (Savage, MD: 1991), 86–7, 95–6.

  75. TNA, HO 186/606, report from Sir George Gater, 31 Mar 1941.

  76. On East End, TNA, INF 1/264, Home Intelligence report, 6 Sept 1940; on Plymouth and Southampton, TNA, HO 186/606, Gater report, 1; Note of an Interdepartmental Committee, 5 May 1941. On Liverpool, ‘Bombers Over Merseyside: The Authoritative Record of the Blitz 1940–41’, Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, 1943, 16. On Clydebank, TNA, AIR 40/288, Air Intelligence, ‘The Blitz’, 14 Aug 1941, Folder 3; I. M. MacPhail, The Clydebank Blitz (West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Museums, 1974), 48–9.

  77. TNA, HO 186/1861, Town Clerk Hull to Regional Evacuation Officer, 31 July 1941; Regional Commissioner to Harold Scott (MHS), 11 Aug 1941; ‘Report on the Trekking Situation in Hull’ [n.d.]; minute for the Regional Commissioner on Hull trekkers, 21 July 1943.

  78. MacPhail, Clydebank Blitz, 64; UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/50/2, REDept, ‘The Effects of Air Raids on the Port of Liverpool’, 22 Mar 1943; ‘Effects on Labour in Clydebank of the Clydeside Raids of March 1941’.

  79. TNA, MH 76/491, London CD Region, ‘Air Raid Shelters: Progress Report’, May 1941.

  80. On Newcastle, TWA, Newcastle City Council, minutes of meetings, 9 Nov 1940, 8 Jan 1941. On London, TNA, MH 76/491, London CD Region, Shelter Census, 5 May 1941.

  81. TWA, DX 52/6, Tynemouth Evening News, 13 Oct 1944: ‘Official Figures of Tynemouth’s Air Attacks’; Pat Jalland, Death in War and Peace: Loss and Grief in England 1914–1970 (Oxford: 2010), 126.

  82. MO
-A, TC 23, File 5/B, ‘Air Raid Alarm’, 15 Aug 1940; ‘Air Raids’, 8 Sept 1940 (both in London).

  83. UEA, Zuckerman Archive, OEMU/56/3, Zuckerman to Stradling, ‘Memorandum on Attitudes to Shelters’, 11 Nov 1941.

  84. F. Tennyson Jesse, H. M. Harwood, While London Burns (London: 1942), 72, letter 30 Aug 1940.

  85. Strachey, Post D, 117–26.

  86. Donnelly (ed), Mrs. Milburn’s Diaries, 54; Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble (London: 1941), 439, 443.

  87. Vera Brittain, England’s Hour: An Autobiography, 1939–1941, 115, 142, 188.

  88. Idle, War over West Ham, 110–11; John Gregg, The Shelter of the Tubes (London: 2001), 18; Phillip Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red (London: 1948), 73–4.

  89. NC, Cherwell papers, F396, Harrod to Lindemann, 30 Sept 1940.

  90. TWA, MD-NC/276/3, ARP Emergency Committee, ‘Provision of Deep Shelters’, 9 Oct 1940; HO 207/664, Islington town clerk to London Regional HQ, 6 Nov 1940; Ministry Home Security to town clerk, 25 Nov 1940; Idle, War over West Ham, 70–71. See too Geoffrey Field, Blood, Sweat and Toil: Remaking the British Working Class, 1939–1945 (Oxford: 2011), 39–41.

  91. Joseph Meisel, ‘Air Raid Shelter Policy and its Critics before the Second World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 5 (1994), 310–11.

  92. TNA, INF 1/319, ‘A Call to the People: National Committee of the People’s Vigilance Movement’ [Sept 1940]; Andrew Thorpe, Parties at War: Political Organization in Second World War Britain (Oxford: 2009), 129, 201; Dietmar Süss, Tod aus der Luft: Kriegsgesellschaft und Luftkrieg in Deutschland und England (Munich: 2011), 324–5.

  93. HHC, Edgar Young papers, DYO 2/31, People’s Convention papers, ‘Speakers’ Notes: No. 1’; ‘Memorandum on the tasks of the People’s Convention’, 26 Sept 1941. By the end of 1941 there were only 1,650 supporters countrywide. See too Thorpe, Parties at War, 159–60, 198–9.

  94. TNA, MEPO 2/6354, Note for Metropolitan Police Commissioner, 27 Sept 1940; MHS to MP Commissioner, 30 Sept 1940.