Blitz on Britain (1960) - full transcript

What you're going to see
is a true record of the Blitz on Britain,

compiled from both
the British and the German archives.

It begins on the 10th of May 1940,

and ends with the Fire of London
exactly one year later.

GUARD REGIMENT BERLIN

On May the 10th, 1940,

the long, uncomfortable calm
of the Phoney War was shattered.

Ninety divisions of the German army,
with 47 still in reserve,

destroyed the bastion of the Maginot Line,

broke the Dutch armies in a week,
the Belgians in two weeks,

and overran most of the countries
of continental Europe.



And their dazed populations,

the rich and the poor,
the cunning and the innocent alike,

took to the roads like cattle.

It was an unbelievable joy to the Führer,

who had boasted
of conquering Europe in three months.

In less than three weeks,

he was at the gates of the old,
the favorite enemy.

While the people picked up
a few possessions and headed south,

the half-million men
of the British Expeditionary Force

fell back on the Channel ports,
and Hitler meant to trap them.

DUNKIRK

It was towards
the precarious foothold of Dunkirk

that the outflanked armies converged
and stood for the rescue.

Hitler meant to panic them



with the flying terror
of the European battlefields,

the Stuka dive bomber.

They did not panic.

It was all they could do to stay alive

and wait for a destroyer
or a dinghy to take them away.

And they left behind
all their material and equipment.

Churchill said at the time,
"We have only 67 tanks to call our own."

Fortunately, Hitler put this down
as a bit of crafty British propaganda.

After a brave but hopeless counterattack,
the French surrendered,

and thousands trooped back
into the prison of their own country.

One general, de Gaulle, jumped a plane,
and in Mr. Churchill's words,

carried with him a small suitcase
and the honor of France.

So now the Germans looked
across the thin strip of Channel

that divided them from the greatest prize,

the land
and the stubborn people of Britain.

For nearly 1,000 years,
only the tides have invaded these beaches.

This is what Hitler called
"the country of the plutocrats,"

which the British freely translate
as "the land of the free."

Across the Channel,
the Germans were also digging in.

And, with what turned out
to be prophetic thoroughness,

they fortified the continental coastline

and they planted
their great guns in concrete.

They all pointed at Britain
and its aroused population

which was trying to take in
a novel emergency

that had hardly
crossed an Englishman's mind

since the farmers of Dorset
put their ears to the ground

and listened
for the tramp of Napoleon's armies.

The people soon learned
what Hitler would not,

that the advertised shortage of arms
was nothing less than the truth.

They collected sticks, knives, spears,
and even formed a cutlass company.

And, since the war
had now come to the civilian,

the civilian was now the soldier.

These were the men
who expected to resist these.

Hitler had achieved
his first symbolic revenge

for the Treaty of Versailles,

the taking without a shot
of the Frenchman's beloved capital.

The German armies made the most
of this ceremonial humiliation.

And just to turn the knife in the wound,

the French were required
to surrender in the place

and in the identical railway carriage

where, in 1918, the Germans themselves
had signed articles of surrender.

It was yet another omen for the British,

another flourishing preliminary
to Hitler's supreme ambition,

the invasion and conquest of Britain.

Ready for anything but sure of nothing,

the Londoners, for the second time,
began the evacuation of their children.

Some sent them off to the country,

some eagerly or anxiously accepted
the haven offered by American families,

some chose to keep
their children by their side.

No one knew how or where or when

Hitler would drop the first blow.

But everybody knew
that wars against the British Isles

sooner or later entail a siege.

For Britain's food
and raw materials come in by sea,

and it was at sea that the strangulation
of Britain must begin.

The aim was as simple
as that of the Saxons and Jutes,

and as grand
as that of the Spanish Armada.

To cripple the British at sea,

to sink the freighters
and the tramp steamers,

and to kill or neutralize
the men who brought in the cargoes.

In the summer of 1940,
the food stocks were still high.

But people knew
they were bound to dwindle,

and in this, as in many other things,
they guessed their way into the future.

If this was the last battleground,

then every last man and woman
would be a commandant.

So every trade and type
and skill and profession was mobilized

against the mystery
that was soon to be revealed as the Blitz.

All they knew for sure
was there would be a battle

and H. G. Wells had taught them

that it would come
with dreadful ferocity from the air.

Hitler obliged by indulging his fetish

that what had panicked the Polish armies

and terrified the civilians
of the Low Countries

would petrify the British,

the Stuka bombers.

Their first targets were the ships at sea

and the coastal towns and harbors
that usually receive them.

As always, the menace of the new war

is any ghastly improvement
on the weapons of the old war.

Few people doubted that Hitler's
chemists had refined the poison gas,

which was an actual horror
of the First World War.

But wholesale bombing from the air
was something else,

and after Warsaw and Rotterdam,
was something sure to happen.

So for the first time,
an Englishman's castle acquired

a humble but serviceable storm shelter.

It was new in British life,

but so is everything else
in this weird emergency.

And soon the wireless barked out
a whole set of rules for living and dying.

Always wear your gas mask.

Keep sand and water on every landing.

Ring no church bells
until the day of invasion.

That day was pledged by Hitler

to a confident audience
of German and Italian officers.

If the British refused to surrender

and if air superiority
could be maintained,

the preparations
must be finished by August 15th.

LANDING SPACES

And here was the grand plan.

It was to be known as Operation Sea Lion.

And here was the first invasion map
of the opposing coastlines.

The first German layout
of the docks and piers and bargeways

which would launch
the flower of German youth,

and glorify their solemn oath
to serve Hitler till death did them part,

to live and fight and die
for one folk, one Führer,

and to dedicate themselves

to the setting up
of the world empire of the Reich

that was to last a thousand years.

Hitler was convinced the British
would follow the French

and sue for peace.

But just in case they lived up
to their reputation for mulishness,

he went ahead
with the plans and training for invasion.

The infantry rehearsed what would
become known as amphibious operations.

The parachutists practiced
the mass descents

that would support the bridgeheads,

capture the airfields,
and encircle the towns

once the Royal Air Force Fighter Command
had been shot out of the skies.

On their side of the water,

the British looked first to the protection
of the south and east coasts.

They hoped to do this
on somebody else's shore

but the home ground
was now the battlefield.

Where there had so lately been frisking
children and Punch and Judy shows,

there was now nothing
but barbed wire and batteries.

Veterans of Dunkirk stood side by side

with men who usually
mended bicycles or plowed fields.

And together they were initiated
into the mechanics of gunnery

and the clumsy marvels of shore defenses,

which here gave pause
to a former naval person.

Dover Castle, which he somewhere
called an ancient and gallant fortress,

was the closest watchtower
to the French coast,

and so Dover
was an early and a special target.

The old inhabitants soon knew it,

but they pretended to a jaunty unconcern,

with the bustle and bangings of
the young men 18 miles across the water.

Dover took it early and took it late,

and the day and night bombardments
came to be more of a nuisance

than a disaster.

But if uncountable numbers of
German shells landed on fields and hedges,

they were a steady reminder
that the Germans,

with their vast war machine intact,

had more shells and guns to spare
than the British had to use.

So to make up for the quarter-million men

and all their arms left behind in France,

it was time to free
every able-bodied man for fighting,

and turn over to every healthy woman
the factory jobs

that had always been done by men.

Women were conscripted as men were.

They exchanged elegance for duty.

They learned high precision skills

for which they were supposed not to have
the temperament or the patience.

The result was a dramatic improvement
in the production of airplanes.

Only a week or two
after France surrendered,

Britain had doubled
its winter production of planes

and had 400 to 500 fighters a month
coming off the lines.

By the time these Germans
were buckling on their uniforms,

the RAF had 650 fighters
in the front line.

The Germans had close to 1,000.

But it was not enough
to escort their bombers safely

against the do-or-die tenacity
of the Spitfire pilots.

Now at this stage, in mid-July,
Hitler had no intention

of beginning the full scale
air battle of Britain.

He never expected to have to fight it.

He was still confident
of convincing the British

that their resistance was hopeless.

So these first raids were undertaken
to soften up the coastal defenses.

And during these early raids,
incidentally,

the Germans began
to appreciate the peril to them

of these strange 300 foot towers.

The watchtowers
of British radar detection.

On the 16th of July,
Hitler issued a threat of invasion

and followed it up with an offer of peace.

Within 24 hours, he had his answer.

The whole fury and might of the enemy
must very soon be turned on us.

that he will have to break us
in this island or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him,
all Europe may be free

and the life of the world may
move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world,
including the United States,

including all
that we have known and cared for,

will sink into the abyss of a new dark age

made more sinister,
and perhaps more protracted,

by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore
brace ourselves to our duty,

and so bear ourselves that,
if the British Empire and its Commonwealth

last for a thousand years,
men will still say,

"This was their finest hour."

So now the land ended at Dover

and the battleground of the air began
wherever radar spotted an enemy plane.

Radar, developed by
two Birmingham University professors

on a Scotsman's hunch,

was a primitive tool in those days.

But no lynx could see so far,
and certainly no human.

It was a long time before
it could report the height of a plane.

For the moment though,
it could locate the direction and the size

of an oncoming force, such as this one,

which marked the first change of tactics
after Britain chose to go it alone.

Now Hitler left the coasts
and made his first daylight attack inland.

It was the start of his plan
to destroy these men

and the line of defense they manned,
the Royal Air Force.

These are the Spitfires,
and they had one unchanging task,

to break up the formation of bombers
and pick them off one by one.

The observers on the coast
would spot the formation,

relay its position
to an air control center,

which in turn
alerted the fighters and the ack-ack.

Later, when the proximity fuse came in,

it was easy to see
in the early ack-ack gun,

the most archaic weapon of the Second War.

It peppered the sky around a pilot,

its record of hits was lamentable,

but neither side knew this at the time.

And it did keep the bombers high
and confuse their aim.

And it rattled
the discipline of the pilots,

whose essential job was to hold formation

and so bring a massive fire to bear
on the British fighters.

Here is the complex
but classic pattern of the dogfight.

The fighter on the tail of a bomber,

he misses and peels away.

Several Spitfires
come after the German fighters,

the Messerschmitts 109.

He fires and downs one.

The Spitfires attack
the main bomber formation

and one of them attracts
the Messerschmitt,

who chases him

and knocks him out.

And the Messerschmitt
performs the victory roll,

the pilots' traditional little jig,
signifying a kill.

As long as the bomber formation holds,

the Spitfire's mission
is never accomplished.

They come back and back.

And here one kicks off
another Messerschmitt.

And it is the Spitfire's turn
to do the victory roll

while the German pilot
bails out in the Channel.

Very early on,
the Germans were remarkably accurate

at locating the stranded pilot
and were quick to pick him up.

A British pilot
bailed out onto English soil.

A captured German was
lost to the Luftwaffe forever.

Pretty soon the fighter stations
developed a daily routine.

The return to base.

The clocking in of the lucky ones.

The exchange of anecdotes.

And the tally of the day's kill.

Sometimes there was visible
evidence of the plane shot down,

but more often
you relied on the judgment of a pilot,

the enthusiasm
of the spotters on the ack-ack batteries.

The war had come with a bang
to the Air Force,

and this round of daily danger
and nightly inquests was its whole world.

Behind the fliers was the larger,
quieter world of the civilian,

and his preoccupation with invasion.

Every night,
the day's reconnaissance photographs

of the occupied French coast
brought into sharper focus

the progress of the German invasion bases.

Barges, new railroads laid down,
supply depots restocked,

the material proof
that Hitler was rightly quoted

when he set the date
for the middle of September.

Against this inevitable day,

every man, the high and the humble,
had a particular job to do.

To mark out the ground defenses.

To maintain every form of transport
if the railways were knocked out.

There was even a Home Guard taxi squad.

By now, the local defense volunteers
had turned into the Home Guard

and they would learn everything
from firefighting to machine gun training

and the uses of the Sten gun.

The women now moved into military jobs,

which, in the First War,
would have been reserved

for the fit but middle-aged servicemen.

In August,
Hitler tried a stroke of melodrama.

A mock invasion force dropped leaflets
offering a last appeal to reason.

He set off no terror,
but only a wave of rumors,

informed guesses,
and confidential nonsense,

which brought forth
a crisp, official reminder.

And then the Germans
proposed a new gambit.

They sent over their fighters,
the Messerschmitts,

in the hope of baiting the Spitfires

and exhausting their fuel
before the bombers arrived.

The gambit was refused.

Air Vice Marshall Park,

who was the commander
of the main fighter group,

ordered the Spitfires to patrol,
but not to intercept.

The Germans brought up
a small bomber force

to make a feint attack on the coast.

Still no interference from the Spitfires.

They were held back
and entrusted to the fast-improving radar

to detect the main German force.

And this was it.

The Spitfires took off
in the new confidence of knowing

that they maneuvered
better than the Messerschmitts,

they could stay longer in the air,

they had a battery of eight guns
against the Messerschmitts' four.

It was the dogfight again,

but it was also
the true beginning of the Blitz.

Between the 16th and 18th of August,

something like 500 or 600 aircraft

attacked and damaged
aerodromes and radar installations

at Biggin Hill, Manston,
West Malling, Gosport, Kenley,

Rochester, Tangmere, and Northolt.

The battle had begun fiercely,
but correctly,

against military targets.

The cities belonged to the citizens.

And the capital city
fed them diversion and good cheer.

The Germans too helped morale,
though not by design,

by broadcasting
the comments of a renegade.

Germany calling.

Here are the Reichssender Hamburg,
station Bremen,

and station DXB on the 31 meter band.

He was intended to cow
the British with his all-knowing mind.

In fact, he contributed much
to the gaiety of the nation.

A monotonous theme of Lord Haw-Haw

was the terror of the Stuka dive bomber.

Goering was not quite so lyrical about it.

It had taken a terrible beating
from the Spitfires at Dunkirk.

But it took several big Stuka raids
over coastal towns

to bring him to the reluctant conclusion

that it was an expensive
and handicapped weapon

against strong fighter opposition.

It was nearly 100 miles an hour slower
than the Hurricane,

it was deficient in armor plate,

it was slower
than the Spitfire in the dive,

and it never
seemed to get enough protection.

Screaming over the heads
of unprotected infantry

or scrambling refugees, it was a demon.

Up against the Spitfires,
its faults were demonstrable,

and the price it paid in machines and men
could be reckoned in scenes such as these.

The Stuka pilots
were as good as they come.

But when they lived to tell their story,
it was always the same,

murderous damage to the tail.

The natural consequence
of having one rear gun

against the Spitfires' eight.

As early as the end of July,

Goering had finished all the ground
and air preparations in France

for the air Battle of Britain.

He promised Hitler he would
achieve air superiority in a week

and he laid down how it was to be done.

To master the RAF in the air,
to destroy their airfields,

to demolish the plane factories.

The German crews were briefed accordingly.

The RAF briefing was simple:

"Down the Germans."

The defender
had another advantage over the attacker.

Here was a unique battle headquarters
controlling tactics,

plotting the positions of the enemy,

directing the fighters, continuously
in touch with their own men in the air.

Astonishingly enough, the Germans
never had ground-to-air communication

throughout the Battle of Britain.

A German pilot was briefed on the ground.

Once he was in the air,
he was on his own.

But on his own, he was a formidable man,

following Goering's precise orders,

the destruction
of airfields and factories,

the absolute prerequisite,
as Hitler put it,

before the invasion of Britain
could begin.

The plans for invasion were supposed
to be finished by August the 15th.

But it was a famous day
for other reasons.

On that day, Goering fatally decided

that radar stations
were too difficult to demolish.

As a consequence,
they went on improving all the time,

and so increasingly refined the work
of the nerve center.

A new tactic of raiding from Norway
across the North Sea

ran, by sheer fluke, into seven squadrons
of Spitfires and Hurricanes

that had gone to the north for refitting.

The raid was pulverized
by the usual ex-bookkeepers

and youngsters from the schools and slums,

whom Hitler called "the young lords."

Never in the field of human conflict

was so much owed by so many to so few.

They were soon joined
by carefree or vengeful volunteers

from the United States, Poland,

the Commonwealth,
from France, Czechoslovakia,

the Netherlands, and Norway.

The 24th of August
saw this very strange scene.

The loading of a Wellington bomber
for a visit to foreign parts.

For a raid on Berlin, no less.

A decision that stuck in the gullet
of some of the Air Force commanders

almost as much as Hitler's offer of peace
had stuck in the gullet of Mr. Churchill.

But the decision was made.
And for better or worse, it was done.

Eighty of these Wellington bombers

were to throw the Blitz in reverse,
if only for one night.

They took off at dusk.

And next morning,
they had electrified the British people

and outraged the Führer.

Stung by this reprisal, which underlined
the delay in the invasion,

Hitler, on the 4th of September,
answered his own misgivings.

"If the English cry, why doesn't he come?
My answer is, be patient.

He will come for sure.
and if they say they will bomb our cities,

then I say we shall
wipe their cities off the map."

So one retaliation begat another

and goaded Hitler
into the supreme reprisal,

the decision to begin the Blitz on London.

It was the day the civilians
had braced themselves for.

But for the RAF, it was, in retrospect,

a new lease on survival.

For Hitler was abandoning
Goering's successful strategy

of first immobilizing the factories

and destroying
the fighter stations and airfields.

The temptation was irresistible
to aim too soon at the heart of Britain,

to try for a grand slam
and dislocate the government

and paralyze the capital.

BOMB FLAPS ACTIVATOR

He laid the fuse the day after his speech

with a raid on Thames Haven,
an oil farm at the mouth of the river.

By night, its glare would be
a beacon to the oncoming bombers.

By day, they would always have

the wriggling arrow of the Thames itself
to guide them.

Two days after this fire,
reconnaissance reports from the Spitfires

disclosed invasion barges
at Calais and Dunkirk.

For weeks, the Spitfires had been tracking
the invasion train

all the way from Hamburg and Bremen
to Ostend and Flushing,

and finally to Brest and Calais.

On the 6th, the British government
issued an invasion alert.

It was not quite so pressing as that.

For none of us knew at the time

that a week before,
Goering had confessed to a pensive Hitler

that he had not yet
won air mastery over Britain.

Give him two or three days over London,
he said, and he would achieve it then.

It was at this conference
that Hitler agreed to the Blitz on London.

Now the Londoner came into his own,

and his life was rounded
with grim sights and grizzly sounds

and occasionally a little sleep.

Between them,
the all clear and the air raid siren

alternated for 63 consecutive nights,

after the first three days, during which
Goering had promised yet again

to obliterate the Royal Air Force.

Here again the day bombers
had probed out the oil depots

so as to light a beacon
for the night bombers.

By order of Air Marshall Dowding,

the ack-ack guns
were silent for three nights.

The fighters were to have
the freedom of the air

unharassed by the chance, which happened,
of being hit by their own guns.

But the Londoners were dismayed
by the sense of abjectness

that the silence suggested.

And on the fourth night,
tactics gave way to psychology

and to the audible comfort

of feeling that if they could
fire things that went bang in the night,

by God, so could we.

The Germans were
equally blind much of the time

and a lot of their
bombing was inevitably random.

But a lot of damage can be done
by 250 bombers aiming at random.

And every dawn,
another landmark had gone,

there was another
dazed and crumpled suburb.

The Lord Mayor of London
asked for £1,000,000

for the relief of the homeless,

and got it inside a month.

Hitler made a small but meaningful mistake

when he happened to bomb
Buckingham Palace.

It was to be hit six times subsequently,

once when the king
was completing his journal.

The bombing was added
to the events of the day.

One night a family had the cheeky idea
of buying a penny ticket

and sleeping in an underground station.

Soon hundreds were doing it,
and then thousands.

At first, it was officially thought
to be an uncitizenly act,

until a protesting MP was told

that the Aldwych tube station alone
could take 1,100 people.

It was then officially declared
to be a godsend.

A providential haven
for just such an emergency.

But it was a pretty rough and ready
sort of sanctuary.

And its many shortcomings encouraged
the setting up of standard shelters.

And which combined
the amenities of a snack bar

and a dormitory,

with the permissible rambunctiousness
of a choir picnic.

In the second week of September,
the news came in

that the RAF Bomber Command
had smashed 83 invasion barges

at Calais and Dunkirk.

It was now September the 15th,

five days beyond the time
Hitler had promised

to circle his invasion date
on the calendar.

He held his hand
and the crews were briefed

and went about their business.

And neither they nor the RAF knew,

until the survivors looked back
on the aerial history of the Blitz,

that September the 15th
was to be its peak.

Goering's last joust for air superiority
to warrant the invasion.

The Dorniers and Heinkels
took off as usual,

but the heavy losses among their crews
had already compelled a new rule.

Only one officer to every bomber.

On this day,
Goering himself flew to the Channel coast

to supervise this crucial test

and to lend his jolly presence
to the patriotic theory that all was well.

By day, British radar
could now spot formations at 200 miles

and relay their position in a few seconds.

These were the men
who were supposed, three weeks ago,

to be grounded forever.

The Germans flew in on a beam
transmitted from northern France,

which crossed another beam
to converge on the target.

When the two beams met,
the bomber pressed the button.

The British spent as much time
trying to frustrate this device

as the Germans had done in perfecting it.

It was, incidentally, one of the secret
roles of the London police stations

to confuse Goering's navigators.

The main role of the bobby was obvious,
he was the shepherd and watchdog

of the people.

Up to now, in all the day battles,

the spotter had been a specialist
in touch with headquarters.

He was, by mid-winter,
to be joined by any man and woman

who could stand on a roof
and grab an incendiary and throw it.

And the day had gone
when a factory worker ran for cover

at the sound of a siren.

Now he stayed on the job
until he was warned

that there was immediate danger overhead.

This day, September the 15th,

was meant to be
the day of judgment for the RAF.

And it very nearly was.

The Fighter Command
was down to a very slim reserve.

Air Marshall Park all but stripped
the fighter defenses from the north.

There was a time in the afternoon
when the 11th Fighter Group

had no squadron in reserve.

The gravity of the defense
of the air did not, however,

seep through
to the civilians on the ground.

Their morale was high
because the battle had come to them,

and because they now had an organization
that ticked like clockwork.

A Dornier bomber fell on Victoria station.

When evening came,
the Air Ministry had done its arithmetic.

The damage was grievous,
but so was the German casualty list.

And no figures that Goering looked over

added up
to mastery of the air over London.

The press of the Allied and neutral
countries take down the estimates which,

it came out when the war was over,

were nearly always too optimistic.

On the British side by two to one,

by three to one on the German side.

It was not
that the Germans were more prone to fake,

but that they had
to stem the rage of Goering

and the rising suspicion of Hitler

that the prospect of invasion
was shrinking to a fantasy.

175 German aircraft
have been destroyed

in today's raids over this country.

Today was the most costly for the German…

Nighttime,

and the Londoners
began to learn a flock of rules and duties

that were to become
the routine grind of more than 200 nights.

There was no manual for night fighting,

and from mid September on

both sides groped their way
towards its simplest elements.

For the Germans,
it was watch for the bisecting beam,

drop the bombs, and tear back to France.

For the fighters, it was into the dark
and hope for contact.

But if the RAF had been
the heroes of the day battle,

the firemen and the civil defense workers

were the heroes of the night.

And when the time came, it was bad,

but it was never worse
than the science novelists

had led them to expect.

If the mornings now added an acrid stench
to the usual ruins,

the noontimes improvised
an hour of cheerful calm.

But then it was the night again.

And the blackout.

And the siren.

And off to the shelter again.

Or the rooftop.

And the short sleep.

And the long night shift.

Till the dawn came in,
with its sweet music.

And the fresh ruins.

And the new homeless.

"In all my life," said Mr. Churchill,

"I have never been treated
with so much kindness

as by the people who suffered most.

One would think one had brought
some great benefit to them

instead of the blood and tears,
which is all I ever promised."

These people were in the trenches,

and like men
in the trenches in the First War,

they'd have to go some other place
to know how the war was going.

It would've been nice to know
Hitler already postponed the invasion,

and two days later would abandon it

under his new impulse
to reduce London to ashes

and its government to despair.

All these people knew was
that it was a time of trial.

And they would have to stay with it.

And maybe they would make
a little more than usual, of play…

…and jokes and flirtation.

And friendship.

For the people on duty, the Prime Minister
had the consoling thought,

it takes one ton of bombs
to kill 3/4 of a person.

In the First War,
sister Susie sewed shirts for soldiers.

In the second, she knitted
gloves and pullovers for the gun crews.

Some people would not go to shelters.

And never would.

Out of all this noise
and smell and exhaustion,

there came
a new military decoration from the king,

the George Medal,
given for conspicuous bravery,

and for obscure heroism in squalid places.

It gave a wry twist
to the traditions of chivalry,

which had always
conferred medals on the professional.

There was still no more meticulous
professional than the German airman,

and at this time, as the winter came on
and the days drew in,

the very primitiveness of night fighting
produced another irony.

The war was now between the German pro

and the British amateur, the civilian.

The German Air Force
began to spread its strength

on industrial targets throughout the land.

For the excellent reason
that British war production

was continuously spreading its components
in hundreds of shadow factories.

Any dozen of which could together
produce the airplane or the ammunition

that once came from a single,
easily identified place.

But the Battle of the Atlantic
and the war on the convoys

was reducing the stocks of raw materials

to the point
where railings and park benches

and posts and even ornamental gates
were reduced to scrap.

To this salvage campaign,

the occasional
German wreckage made its contribution.

Other hallowed institutions
were treated roughly.

The British licensing laws
were cheerfully ignored,

especially when the pub keeper
was an ARP warden.

In the country,
the evacuated children of London

had time and space
to make a game of the war,

which in the first days
had hung over them like Armageddon.

And little girls taught their elders
a lesson in child psychology

by gravely mimicking
the daily ritual of the hospitals.

Of all the civilian services,

probably the hospitals
were the best organized

because Hitler's threats had taught them
to expect nightly casualties of 100,000.

It was never remotely so bad,

but when the time came, they were
ready for operations by torchlight

and hospital wards
opened to the wind and rain.

Coventry, in the middle of November,
was the worst night raid so far.

It was the start of Hitler's
big attack on the industrial Midlands.

To its victims, it was a vast obscenity.

To Hitler, it was a plotted aim

at the town
that manufactured aircraft engines.

The devastation of Coventry Cathedral,

the Germans always maintained,
was a matter of happenstance.

Both the Germans
and the British reported to headquarters

that Coventry was a ghost town.

They were both wrong.

Within a week,
Coventry staggered to its feet.

And within a month,

the aircraft factories
were in their stride again.

Manchester,
the industrial capital of the North,

was soon on the list

and an early victim of parachute mines,
which weighed about a ton

and fell as quietly as snowflakes.

"Carry on London"
was a slogan that went around the world.

And in America,
there was a rising campaign

to make the United States,
in Roosevelt words,

"the arsenal of democracy."

His defeated opponent, Wendell Willkie,
came to the front line to see for himself.

I have been through four or five shelters.

I've seen, probably,
several thousand people.

I haven't seen one that was afraid.

November and December
converted an old enemy into a new ally,

the weather.

It was not so much that the British fog
baffled the German bombers,

as that the rains of France
muddied the German bases

and caused an alarming number
of overloaded bombers

to crash on the take off.

It gave the British a chance to improvise
a little Christmas make-believe,

where they could house it.

Dear Susie, I am harnessing up
Donner and Blitzen

and have taken note
of your request for a doll's house

and a bar of chocolate.

A few days before Christmas,

Britain's Air Command
ordered a raid on Berlin.

And Hitler broke the lull on the 29th
with a fire raid on London.

From January through April,
the Luftwaffe raids had dwindled

to a quarter of their autumn intensity.

The bombers were needed now
over Yugoslavia and Malta and Greece,

which Mussolini had failed to subdue.

In Britain,
Hitler had diffused his strength

to try and wreck the ports

and thus link the Battle of Britain
with the Battle of the Atlantic.

However, early in May,
the British staged another raid on Berlin.

It whipped Hitler into one last
enormous strike against the Londoners,

for which he threw in
even the bomber reserve

he was holding back
for a secret attack on Russia.

And Hitler's boast
of aiming only at military targets

could be technically justified

by the huge concentrations
in the capital of docks.

It was the 10th of May, 1941.

the anniversary
of the invasion of the Low Countries,

It was a Saturday night in spring
and people were out dancing,

at the theater, on the town.

But not for long.

The first raiders
came over at eleven o'clock.

Hitler released over 500 bombers,

thousands of incendiaries,

and all his venom

to start the Fire of London.

There were to be
more than 10,000 incendiaries

before the night was over.

By the middle of the night.
2,000 fires were out of control.

It didn't take so long
for the firefighters to sense

that this was
their finest and hottest hour.

Or to realize that no fire system
ever devised could automatically supply

the oceans of water that would
be needed to dampen this inferno.

Industrial warehouses
were packed with stores

that made explosive fuel.

A whipping southwest wind
turned narrow streets into fire paths.

This man was the only survivor

when a bomb fell directly
on his ground crew.

This is the flag of the mobile firemen.

They would be needed once the fire service
headquarters at Clerkenwell was bombed out

and 75 substations were
beyond reach of supplies or instruction.

So the hectic word was carried
by dispatch riders.

Gas mains had to be left to burn

for fear of a feedback
and a howling explosion.

Then the water mains
started blowing up, 600 in all.

And soon the firemen felt
the power in them sag to a trickle.

They had reserve sources to fall back on.

But after them, only the fire boats.

And the fire boats
called on the ultimate source,

the Thames River.

As luck would have it, it was low water.

And the fire floats
had to stay in mid river

while the relay crews waded through mud

to carry the hoses
to the fires a yard away.

Or a mile away.

These flames
were seen as far away as Oxford.

And their smoke could be smelled
on the Suffolk Coast.

It lasted seven hours.

And the industrial
East End was a smoking grate.

Westminster Abbey damaged,
Queens Hall gutted,

the House of Commons destroyed,

a quarter of a million books
aflame in the British Museum,

14 hospitals burnt to shells,

8,000 London streets
blocked by masonry and fallen rubble

and teetering ruins.

At evensong
on that remote afternoon of the 10th,

the Dean of Saint Paul's had prayed,

"Lighten our darkness,
we beseech thee, O Lord."

"This," as Edward R. Murrow
used to say, "is London."

It had survived the worst.

But it didn't know it.

And the firemen collected
the hoses again for another night.

And another.

And another.

That night was not to come.

Though none of the people
crawling back to familiar life

knew at the time that this
was the last mass bombing raid on London.

Hitler had vented his spleen.

And at this moment,
his air staff was dismantling

French, Dutch and Belgian bases

and transferring them to Eastern Germany
for the next grand plan,

the invasion of Russia.

The story ends where it began,
with the Spitfires,

which would celebrate
the Battle of Britain and the deliverance

with a legless hero taking them up
again into the skies that again belonged

to the people who lived beneath them.