Primer for Londoners on being Bomber by Nazis, July 27, 1940.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 990

[Also see my The Bombing of Britain in the Illustreite Zeitung, July 1940 post; also here.]

The Battle of Britain was an air battle begun weeks after the surrender of France (22 June 1940) in preparation for the Nazi invasion of England.  Hitler and the High Command believed Britain to be vulnerable², and surrenderable, or at the least could be convinced not to interfere in the rest of the war.  But plans were made for the invasion—an invasion which could only be successful (it was reasoned) if there was complete naval or aerial superiority. The naval part was out of the question, especially since the Nazis had suffered such losses in the Norwegian campaign. The Luftwaffe was another story, and so the operation began. 

The Illustrated London News published this pictorial introduction to Nazi bombing on 27 July 1940, just weeks after the campaign began.  At this point in the war the Luftwaffe operations were delegated to coastal installations and aircraft industries. 

The terror bombing against citizens in cities—which was an idea not born here but rather 20 odd years before—wouldn’t begin for some months.  In the meantime, and at this early part of the campaign against England, the British citizenry was introduced in a very proper way how the bombing was being carried out.  IT really does seem to be to be a very constructive, non-alarmist, cogent distribution of information to the general public about the potential for massive devastation.  

 

Notes:

1. By the summer of 1941 the campaign was largely over, the Nazi effort doomed. England: 1,023 fighters: 376 bombers, 148 coastal command aircraft for a total of 1,547 aircraft and  544 pilots and aircrew killed.  There were also 27,450 civilians killed and 32,138 wounded.  The Germans lost 873 fighters and 1,014 bombers for a total of 1,887 aircraft and  2,500 pilots

2. The plan ‘Directive No. 16; On the Preparation of a Landing Operation against England’ read, in part, as follows:

“Since England, despite its militarily hopeless situation, still has not shown any signs of being prepared to negotiate, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England and, if necessary, carry it out. The objective of this operation is to eliminate the English home country as a base for the continuation of the war against Germany...”

“Included in these preparations is the bringing about of those preconditions which make a landing in England possible;”

“a) The English air force must have been beaten down to such an extent morally and in fact that it can no longer muster any power of attack worth mentioning against the German crossing…”

Comments

[Joy Holland]

Interesting. My home town was pretty much flattened by the time I arrived
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_Blitz

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks Joy. [The home town Joy is referring to is Hull, and we read of it from the link the following: "Hull was the most severely bombed British city or town apart from London during the Second World War, with 86,715 buildings damaged and 95 percent of houses damaged or destroyed.[2] Of a population of approximately 320,000 at the beginning of the war, approximately 152,000 were made homeless as a result of bomb destruction or damage. Much of the city centre was completely destroyed and heavy damage was inflicted on residential areas, industry, the railways and the docks. Despite the damage and heavy casualties, the port continued to function throughout the war..."