There is remembrance service today at St Paul's Cathedral to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Blitz. The date of 7 September has been chosen as it is exactly 70 years to the day since Hitler's war offensive switched to non-military targets. The casualty figures, even to read them now, are truly astonishing and horrifying, with not just London but also cities such as Belfast (900 killed in one night), Coventry (400 killed on the first night of bombing) and Merseyside (4000 in total killed) suffering greatly from the Luftwaffe's onslaught.
All the destruction and mayhem didn't achieve Hitler's main objective though, which was to "soften up" the British population and to destroy morale before the planned invasion".
The BBC today has a set of Blitz photos here.
3 comments:
Terrible affront to humanity which of course the vengeful RAF paid back in spades for similarly erroneous military (sic) reasons.
It wasn't the RAF who were vengeful, it was those who gave them the orders but it wouldn't surprise me to hear there were representatives from Dresden etc there yesterday.
Oneill
I'm glad you never took that as a 'whatabout' because it wasn't, these were horrific events.........mass murder perpetrated on innocents.
Oh and it wasn't Churchill who made the decision on Dresden and Hamburg, it was Harris and bomber command. They were fully aware that there was no military worth to speak of, and in the case of Dresden fully aware that it was a transit point for fleeing refugee's from the Soviets. Perhaps 3 times the population at the time.
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