By Jeff Burgess © 2002
Rudolf Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, visited London this February. One of the things he did was to tour the local museums and memorials dedicated to the 1940 Battle of Britain, and the Blitz that followed. The toughness exhibited by the inhabitants of London in those dark days, he explained, had helped to inspire him in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Americans consider the September 11th attack on New York to be one of our greatest tests of national will, and rightly so. But it pales in comparison to what Londoners endured in World War Two.
By the summer of 1940 the British stood alone against Hitler and his military forces seemed invincible. They had already conquered much of the European continent, including Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and, most recently, France.
But Hitler was surprised when the British refused to consider surrender terms, so he planned an amphibious invasion of England. First, however, he wanted his Luftwaffe's planes to neutralize the British Royal Air Force (RAF). In the subsequent Battle of Britain, the Germans first focused their air raids on the RAF's fighter plane bases and early warning radar stations. The British lost planes and pilots faster than they could replace them. Then Hitler made the mistake of changing his military strategy.
On September 7, 1940, it began with an attack on London by 400 German bombers, protected by 600 fighters. The raids caused widespread damage and ignited enormous fires, while killing hundreds of civilians. And it was just the beginning of the Blitz.
Hitler thought the destruction of London would destroy the will of the British people to fight. But it didn't. Instead, Hitler's decision to change the focus of his air attacks gave the British fighter defenses the break they needed to rebuild and grow stronger. Eventually, the losses they inflicted on the Germans forced the Luftwaffe to abandon bombing during the daytime.
By the end of 1940, the worst was over for London. The British hadn't surrendered, the RAF fighter defenses were stronger than ever, and Hitler had been forced to abandon his plan to invade England. It had, however, been costly. British civilian casualties stood at more than 13,0000 killed and almost 18,000 injured.
The German air attacks on London continued to decrease as the war progressed and the Allies began to win. But the suffering of Londoners still wasn't finished. In the summer of 1944 Hitler launched his new vengeance weapons against the city. First, there were more than 6,000 V1 guided missiles, of which more than 2,000 hit London killing more than 5,000 and injuring about 16,000. The V1 attacks continued until Allied troops overran the V1 launch sites in France in August, after the D-Day invasion. Then there were the V2 supersonic rockets that began to rain down in the fall of 1944. More than 500 hit London killing almost 3,000 and injuring about 6,000. The Germans continued launching them until early 1945.
While the September 11th terrorist attack on New York City was certainly a terrible tragedy, it still pales in comparison to what the citizens of London endured during World War Two. Perhaps we Americans can take some comfort from that.
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References
Hough, Richard: The Battle of Britain, New York, W.W. Norton, 1989.
Kieser, Egbert: Hitler on the Doorstep: Operation Sea Lion; The German Plan to Invade Britain, 1940, Annapolis, Naval Institute, 1997.
Price, Alfred: Blitz on Britain, 1939 - 1945, Gloucestershire, Sutton, 2000.
Winston, Churchill: The Second World War (6 volumes), Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
