London in the Blitz

Six hundred thousand in sixty days

In 1937 the Committee of Imperial Defence told the government what it expected from a German air attack on London: 3,500 tons of bombs on the first day, 600 tons a day after that, and 600,000 dead in the first sixty days, with twice as many injured. The estimate was wrong by a factor of ten, but nobody knew that in 1937, and every preparation London made was made to meet it. The target was obvious. London held 8.6 million people, one in five of the whole country. It held the King, Parliament, Whitehall and the Bank of England. It held the largest port in the world, forty miles of docks handling around a third of the imports of an island that could not feed itself. It held the Woolwich Arsenal, the Ford works at Dagenham and the factories of the Lea Valley. And the Thames, silver under a bomber moon, led a pilot from the sea to the heart of all of it, ninety miles from the airfields Germany would hold after June 1940. So the preparations began two years before the war. The exam asks why London mattered, why it was vulnerable, and what was done to get it ready: evacuation, shelters, gas masks, wardens, the blackout. It asks in the historic-environment shapes, two features for four marks and two sources for eight. This module gives you the figures and the shapes.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with the moment it mattered, because a bare definition earns nothing in a four-mark or eight-mark answer.

Getting ready, in order

Put these six preparations in the order they happened.

• The Committee of Imperial Defence forecasts 600,000 dead in the first two months of bombing
• The Air Raid Precautions Act makes councils responsible for wardens and shelters
• During the Munich crisis trenches are dug in the London parks and gas masks handed out
• Anderson shelters begin to be delivered free to poorer households
• Operation Pied Piper begins and the blackout comes into force
• War is declared and the first air raid siren in London sounds, a false alarm

Why was London the target?

Germany could have bombed any British city. Which explanation best accounts for London being the first and the most heavily attacked?

• London was the seat of government and the King, so that bombing it struck at the ability of Britain to direct the war; it was the largest port in the world and an industrial centre, so that bombing the docks and the Arsenal struck at supply; it held one in five of the population, so that bombing it struck at morale on the largest scale; and it was the easiest big target to find, ninety miles from the French coast with the Thames as a signpost.
• London was the only city German bombers could reach.
• Hitler bombed London purely in revenge for a British raid on Berlin.
• London had no defences at all.

What was ready and what was not

The two-features question can be asked about the preparations, and the usefulness question about sources on them. Know what had been done by September 1939 and what had not.

Question 2(a): reading a source for usefulness

Source A: a description of a government leaflet, Your Anderson Shelter This Winter, issued in autumn 1939. It shows a drawing of a family sitting on bunks inside a corrugated shelter with a lantern, and tells householders to bail out water, lay duckboards, fit a door curtain and keep the shelter stocked with blankets, a torch and a first aid box. A student is asked how useful the leaflet is for an enquiry into the preparations London made against air raids. Tap the TWO details that most directly support the view that the leaflet is useful for that enquiry.

• The leaflet tells householders to bail out water and lay duckboards, which shows that the shelters were flooding and that the government knew it.
• The drawing shows a family of four in a shelter meant for six.
• The instruction to stock blankets, a torch and a first aid box shows that the government expected people to spend whole nights in the shelters before a bomb had fallen.
• The title uses the word Anderson, the name of the minister in charge.
• The leaflet was printed in autumn 1939, during the Phoney War.

Evacuation

Select the THREE statements that are true of the evacuation of London in 1939.

• Operation Pied Piper moved around 1.5 million people nationally in three days from 1 September 1939, around 600,000 of them from London, mostly school parties with teachers, each child carrying a gas mask and a label.
• Evacuation was voluntary, and fewer than half of eligible London children went, because many parents would not be parted from them or could not believe the bombing would come.
• When no bombs fell in the autumn of 1939 the evacuees drifted home, and by January 1940 about half were back in London, so that a second evacuation had to be organised when the Blitz began in September 1940.
• Every London child was ordered to leave by law.
• Most evacuees were sent to Canada and the United States.
• The reception areas were well prepared and the evacuees were universally welcomed.

The estimate that shaped everything

The usefulness question rewards a student who can test a source against the situation it came from. For London in 1939 the situation was the estimate of 1937, and knowing it explains almost every preparation. What the estimate did. Because the planners expected 600,000 dead in two months, they prepared for the dead: coffins, mass graves, and the removal of the living from the city. Evacuation came first, and gas masks, because gas was expected. Shelters came second and were designed for a short raid by day, which is why the Anderson had no drainage and no heat. Deep shelter was refused because a population underground was thought to be a population that would not come up. What it missed. The Blitz killed around 43,000 civilians nationally in eight months, terrible but a fraction of the forecast, and by night, so that the real needs were rest centres, feeding, rehousing and somewhere to sleep. This meant that the preparations of 1939 were extensive and pointed in the wrong direction, and a source from 1939 is useful for what the government feared, while a source from 1940 is useful for what actually happened. An answer that uses the date of a source to say which of the two it shows will reach the top level of Question 2(a).

In the shoes of the Home Office, 1937 to 1939

Four decisions about getting London ready. Choose what was actually decided, and notice what each choice led to.

• 1938. You are planning for the 600,000 dead the committee expects. The Anderson Committee on evacuation asks whether to move the children out of London by compulsion or by choice. What do you decide?
• Late 1938. Shelters are needed for millions and the Treasury will not pay for deep tunnels. What do you provide?
• Summer 1939. London Transport asks whether the Underground will be used as a shelter in air raids. What do you say?
• 31 August 1939. War is a day or two away. What do you order for the night of 1 September?

From cause to consequence

Because London held the government, the largest port in the world and one in _____ of the population, it was the obvious target for a German air attack. Because the planners of 1937 expected _____ dead in the first two months, the government prepared for the dead and moved the children out. Because gas was expected, _____ million masks were issued by the Munich crisis. Because the Treasury would not pay for deep shelter, poorer households got a steel hut in the garden called the _____. And because the expected raids did not come in the autumn of 1939, about _____ of the London evacuees were home by January 1940.

The forecast

In 1937 the Committee of Imperial Defence expected 600,000 civilian deaths in the first 60 days of bombing. Spread evenly across those 60 days, what daily death toll were the planners preparing London for?

Question 1: describe two features

Question 1 reads: Describe two features of the preparations made in London against air attack before September 1939. It is marked feature plus supporting detail, twice. Which answer scores all four marks?

• One feature was the provision of shelters: from February 1939 Anderson shelters of corrugated steel were delivered free to households earning under 250 pounds a year, and around 1.5 million were in place by the outbreak of war. Another was the plan for evacuation: the country was divided into evacuation, neutral and reception areas, and Operation Pied Piper moved around 600,000 people out of London by train from 1 September 1939.
• They built shelters. They evacuated children.
• London made a great many preparations and was as ready as it could be.
• London prepared because the government expected 600,000 dead and knew the city was the target.

Question 2(a), one source, marked

Question 2(a): How useful are Sources A and B for an enquiry into the preparations London made against air raids in 1939? Source A is the Anderson shelter leaflet of autumn 1939 described earlier. Source A is useful for the enquiry because it shows the kind of shelter the government relied on for most London families and what living in one involved: the instructions to bail out water and lay duckboards show that the Anderson, sunk three feet into the ground with no drainage, flooded in wet weather, and the list of blankets, a torch and a first aid box shows that whole nights were expected to be spent in it. From my own knowledge I know that around 1.5 million Andersons had been delivered by September 1939 and that they were free only to households earning under 250 pounds a year, so the leaflet describes the preparation made for the majority. Its provenance adds to its usefulness, because it is an official leaflet and so shows what the government itself thought people needed to be told, but it also limits it: it says nothing about the families in the East End tenements who had no garden to put a shelter in, and it presents the shelter as a solved problem when the government knew from its own inspections that many were unusable. It is useful for what was provided and for the confidence of official advice, less so for how far the provision reached. What earned the marks: content tied to the enquiry; own knowledge used to test the source rather than to decorate the answer; provenance used both ways, as a strength and as a limit; and a judgement about usefulness for this enquiry. Do the same for the second source and you have the eight marks.

Write the Question 2(a) answer for one source

Source B: a description of a photograph taken at Paddington station on 1 September 1939, showing a platform crowded with schoolchildren in coats and caps, each with a cardboard gas mask box on a string and a luggage label pinned to the lapel, with teachers holding numbered boards and a poster on the wall reading Evacuation: Why and How. How useful is Source B for an enquiry into the preparations London made against air raids in 1939? Write the paragraph on Source B alone.

• Say what the source shows that is useful for this enquiry: pick two details from the description and say what each tells you
• Bring in your own knowledge to test it: the scale of Operation Pied Piper, the label and gas mask rules, the voluntary nature of the scheme, or the return of the evacuees
• Use the provenance both ways: what a press photograph of the first day of evacuation is good for, and what it cannot show
• Say what the source does not tell you about the preparations, and why that limits it
• Finish with a judgement on how useful it is for this enquiry, not in general

Question 2(b): the follow-up

Question 2(b) gives you a detail from a source and asks how you would follow it up. The detail is the instruction in the Anderson leaflet to bail out water and lay duckboards. Which follow-up would score all four marks?

• Question: how many Anderson shelters in London were found to be flooded or unusable in the winter of 1939 to 1940? Source: the reports of borough ARP inspections or the Ministry of Home Security shelter surveys of that winter. Reason: an official count of unusable shelters would show whether the flooding the leaflet admits was a local nuisance or a failure of the main shelter provision for London.
• I would find out more about Anderson shelters by looking on the internet.
• Question: how many people died in the Blitz? Source: a history book.
• Question: did the shelters flood everywhere in London? I would ask my grandparents.