Imperial London Day

The Blitz Blitz, the German word for 'lightning', was applied by the British press to the tempest of heavy and frequent bombing raids carried out over Britain in 1940 and 1941. Civil defence preparations had been started some time before 1939, both on a national and a local level. Simple corrugated steel Anderson shelters, covered over by earth, were dug into gardens up and down the country. Larger civic shelters built of brick and concrete were erected in British towns and a blackout was rigorously enforced after darkness. The night raids became so frequent that they were practically continuous. Many people who were tired of repeatedly interrupting their sleep to go back and forth to the street shelters, virtually took up residence in a shelter. This gave rise to a new spirit of solidarity and community. Our heritage industry has encouraged a 'Myth of the Blitz', that differs from the reality of wartime experience. The myth is that we all pulled together, that spirits were up as young and old, upper and lower classes muddled through together with high morale under the onslaught of the Nazis. But the 'Myth of the Blitz' is just that - a myth. As members of the establishment were able to take refuge in country houses, in comfort and out of the way of the bombs, or in expensive basement clubs in the city, the lower-middle and working classes were forced to stay in the cities and face up to the deadly raids with inadequate provision for shelter. It was a time of class war. At first no one in authority seemed concerned about the people of Britain's towns who, unlike the upper classes, could not leave their homes and find shelter in the country. Nothing seemed safe, as industrial and domestic buildings were equally threatened. There was a real fear that society would quickly collapse, under a concerted bombing campaign. Shelters In the first years of the Blitz, Anderson shelters were provided by the government, and distributed to houses with gardens. They were constructed of corrugated iron, and were usually cold and damp, but they did provide a little private shelter for those who had them. The Morrison shelter was an iron cage that doubled as a table, but was designed to protect the family as their house collapsed around them. The theory was that they would crawl out from the rubble unhurt. However, if they were trapped and the house was on fire, they would die, powerless to save themselves.

Communal shelters were also constructed in the basements of certain houses, to be used by those who happened to be out and about when the raid happened. The government also decided to build surface shelters, in streets. These were built of brick, with concrete roofs, and were for families in surrounding estates. On 7 September 1940, as the bombs began to fall on London, it quickly became clear to those seeking shelter that there was not enough space for everyone. And that even those in the poorly constructed surface shelters weren't safe. Without anywhere to sleep at night, public anger rose, and people felt that it was time to take the responsibility for shelter into their own hands. The demand for deep shelter returned, but this time more strongly. The obvious and most popular move in London was to take over the underground tube system. The government had previously ruled out - indeed forbidden - the use of the tube. But for many it was the last place of refuge. So by simply buying a ticket and staying underground for the duration of the raid, people slowly began to occupy the underground system. It was a common sight for a traveller on the Underground in wartime London to pass through a station crowded with the sleeping bodies of men, women and children and their belongings. Following the victory over the tube stations, people began to occupy the safe basements of other public buildings. In church crypts throughout the country, terrified people possibly missed the irony of sheltering among a room full of corpses. In late 1940, the tubes began to show their weakness, especially when bombs fell directly on Balham and Bounds Green underground stations. In early 1941, 50 people were killed when a bomb blasted through a ticket hall at Bank station. Perhaps after all it was not the tubes that were going to be the most successful solution. The people had helped themselves, and it was thanks to their action that the government began to build specially designed deep shelters, linked to the underground system. The class war was won, but the gesture was too little, too late, with the government using the lame excuse that the Germans were using heavier bombs to justify the change in policy. Eight deep shelters were eventually completed, 80ft to 150ft under the ground. Each of them could hold some 8,000 people. However, none of them was ready until the end of 1942, which was long after the Blitz had started, and thousands of British citizens died due to government incompetence and prevarication in the months immediately before the war.

World War I Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany moved from a policy of maintaining the status quo to a more aggressive stance. He decided against renewing a treaty with Russia, effectively opting for the Austrian alliance. Germany's western and eastern neighbours, France and Russia, signed an alliance in 1894 united by fear and resentment of Berlin. In 1898, Germany began to build up its navy, although this could only alarm the world's most powerful maritime nation, Britain. Recognising a major threat to her security, Britain abandoned the policy of holding aloof from entanglements with continental powers. Within ten years, Britain had concluded agreements, albeit limited, with her two major colonial rivals, France and Russia. Europe was divided into two armed camps: the Entente Powers and the Central Powers, and their populations began to see war not merely as inevitable but even welcome. In the summer of 1914 the Germans were prepared, at the very least, to run the risk of causing a large-scale war. The crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire decided to take action against Serbia. The German government offered unconditional support to the Austrians, despite the risk of war with Russia. Germany, painted into a diplomatic corner by Wilhelm's bellicosity, saw this as a way of breaking up the Entente, for France and Britain might refuse to support Russia. The most sinister interpretation is that Germany had been actively planning an aggressive war. In December 1912 the Kaiser held a meeting at which some historians believe it was decided to go to war some 18 months hence. A month after the war began, Germany drew up some far-reaching war aims. French power would be broken, Belgium reduced to vassal status, and a colonial empire carved out in Africa and elsewhere. In 1914 fate seemed to have offered Germany the opportunity to turn dreams into imperial reality. Germany now controlled most of Belgium and some economically important parts of northern France. Campaigns in 1915-17 conquered Poland and portions of Russia. The size and wealth of the conquered Eastern territories easily outweighed what would have been lost had the Germans withdrawn from Belgium and France. Had they done so, France might have made peace and the anti-German coalition collapsed. Instead, in March 1918, the German army struck on the Western Front in an attempt to knock Britain and France out of the war. The gamble failed and the Germans were themselves defeated by the Western Allies. Having played for everything, the German leadership lost everything. Despite some sporadic attempts to find common ground, it was not until autumn 1918 that Germany, clearly defeated, staged a deathbed conversion to the idea of a compromise peace.

Britain went to war because it saw a German victory as a threat to its security. For centuries, Britain had fought to maintain the balance of power in Europe, to ensure that no state became over mighty. The Kaiser's Germany followed Napoleon's France, and preceded Hitler, as a threat to stability. In particular, Britain was highly sensitive about Belgium. In the hands of an enemy, Belgian ports offered a major threat to the British naval supremacy and hence the security of the British Isles. Britain had no real option but to go to war in 1914. The British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, and the French Premier, Clemenceau, wanted to push forward the demands of their own electorates. Lloyd George won a crushing election victory in Britain in December, 1918, under the banner of 'making the Germans pay'. French opinion was even more vociferous in calling for security against future German aggression and for reparations for all the damage caused by the Germans in northern France. The Great War came to an end on 11 November 1918, the date when the Germans signed an armistice and agreed to peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Compared to the treaties which Germany had imposed on defeated Russia and Romania in 1918, the Treaty of Versailles was quite moderate. It stripped Germany of just over 13 per cent of its territory, much of which, in the shape of Alsace and Lorraine, was returned to France. It also reduced Germany's economic productivity by about 13 per cent and its population by ten per cent. Germany lost all of its colonies and large merchant vessels, 75 per cent of its iron ore deposits and 26 per cent of its coal and potash. Germany was to pay substantial reparations for 'civilian damage', because it was held responsible, along with its allies, for causing the war with its heavy losses.

World War II 1939

Hitler invades Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later.

1940

Rationing starts in the UK. German 'Blitzkrieg' overwhelms Belgium, Holland and France. Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain. British victory in Battle of Britain forces Hitler to postpone invasion plans.
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1941

Hitler begins Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of Russia. The Blitz continues against Britain's major cities. Allies take Tobruk in North Africa, and resist German attacks. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the US enters the war.

1942

Germany suffers setbacks at Stalingrad, Russia and El Alamein, North Africa. Singapore falls to the Japanese in February - around 25,000 prisoners taken. American naval victory at Battle of Midway, in June, marks turning point in Pacific War. Mass murder of Jewish people at Auschwitz begins.

1943

Surrender at Stalingrad, Russia marks Germany's first major defeat. Allied victory in North Africa enables invasion of Italy to be launched. Italy surrenders, but Germany takes over the battle. British and Indian forces fight Japanese in Burma.

1944

Allies land at Anzio, Italy and bomb monastery at Monte Cassino. Soviet offensive gathers pace in Eastern Europe. D Day: The Allied invasion of France. Paris is liberated in August. Guam (U.S. Colony) liberated by the U.S. Okinawa, and Iwo Jima bombed.

1945

Auschwitz liberated by Soviet troops. Russians reach Berlin: Hitler commits suicide and Germany surrenders on 7 May. Truman becomes President of the US on Roosevelt's death, and Attlee replaces Churchill. After atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders on 14 August.

Women at War World War II brought a lot of suffering and hardship to thousands of people. Families were broken up as men were sent to the front lines to fight, some never to return. Children were sent out of the cities to stay with strangers, away from the bombing. The peaceful routine of everyday life was shattered. But out of the terrors and hardship of war, a new role for women began to emerge which was to change their position in society forever. Before the war a woman's place was considered to be in the home. Her role in life was to be a good housewife and mother and she was trained for this from childhood. A girl would learn to cook and clean, knit and sew. Education was thought to be more important for boys, whose role it would be to work and support a family in future years. Some women did work, but usually in clean and gentle occupations or in domestic service for more wealthy families. It was quite unusual for middle class women, especially married ones, to go to work. Then came the war. As the men were sent away to fight, women were needed more and more to fill their jobs. At first this was done by volunteers, but as the need grew greater women were under more pressure to work in many different jobs. By the mid years of the war, all healthy women under the age of forty were required to work, in one way or another, for the war effort. In spite of poor conditions; food rationing; separation from loved family members; many women found that there were new possibilities opening up to them which gave them confidence and a sense of purpose that they had not had before. A wide variety of jobs were available to women for the first time. Some became mechanics and engineers; some drove tanks or built ships. Women were employed in factories, making bombs and aircraft parts; as air raid wardens; as members of the fire service and in various voluntary jobs helping the community to get through the war. Many women were very happy about the new situation. They had watched the men in their families go to war and had felt useless, although they knew that they were capable of 'doing their bit'. Many loved the new sense of freedom and independence that came with having jobs of their own. Other advantages were the company of other working women, the pay that they earned for themselves and the feeling that they were able to play a useful part in the war effort. Holocaust The Holocaust is the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Germans called this the final solution to the Jewish question. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. This word was chosen because in the ultimate manifestation of the Nazi killing
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programthe extermination campsthe bodies of the victims were consumed whole in crematoria and open fires. Even before the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they had made no secret of their anti-Semitism. As early as 1919, Adolf Hitler had written, Rational anti-Semitism, however, must lead to systematic legal opposition.Its final objective must unswervingly be the removal of the Jews altogether. Hitler further developed the idea of the Jews as an evil race struggling for world domination. Nazi anti-Semitism was rooted in religious antiSemitism and enhanced by political anti-Semitism. To this the Nazis added a further dimension: racial anti-Semitism. Nazi racial ideology characterized the Jews as subhumans. The Nazis portrayed Jews as a race and not a religious group. Religious antiSemitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation. While Jews were the primary victims of Nazism as it evolved and were central to Nazi racial ideology, other groups were victimized as wellsome for what they did, some for what they refused to do, and some for what they were. Political dissidents, trade unionists, homosexual men, Jehovah's Witnesses and Social Democrats were among the first to be arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. The Berlin Wall 1989: Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall The Berlin Wall has been breached after nearly three decades keeping East and West Berliners apart. At midnight East Germany's Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points. They surged through cheering and shouting and were met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier. It had been erected in 1961 on the orders of East Germany's former leader Walter Ulbricht stop people leaving for West Germany. Since 1949 about 2.5 million people had fled East Germany. After 1961, the Wall and other fortifications along the 860-mile (1,380-kilometre) border shared by East and West Germany have kept most East Germans in. Many of those attempting to escape have been shot dead by border guards.
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The first indication that change was imminent came earlier today when East Berlin's Communist party spokesman, Gunther Schabowski, announced East Germans would be allowed to travel directly to West Germany. The move was intended to stem an exodus into West Germany through the "back door" which began last summer when the new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border. The flow of migrants was intensified last week when Czechoslovakia also granted free access to West Germany through its border. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has hailed the decision to open the Wall as "historic" and called for a meeting with East German leader, Egon Krenz. In Context Within days troops began replacing the barbed wire with concrete blocks, and the wall became a permanent structure. The concrete section eventually reached nearly 12 feet (3.6m) high and 66 miles (106km) long. There was a further 41 miles (66.5km) of wire fencing, as well as more than 300 watch towers. Nearly 200 people died trying to cross the wall, and another 200 were injured. As the Iron Curtain over Eastern Europe began to lift in 1989, thousands of East Germans found another escape route, via Hungary and Austria. On 7 November 1989, the Communist government of East Germany resigned, and two days later a jubilant crowd tore down the Berlin Wall piece by piece. The following year, East and West Germany were finally reunited. The two architects of the Berlin Wall, East German leaders Erich Honecker and Egon Krenz, faced criminal charges over their actions. Honecker escaped conviction due to ill health and died in exile in 1994. Egon Krenz was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail. He was released early in December 2003 following an appeal.