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The Blitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Blitz was the sustained bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, in the Second World War. While the Blitz hit many towns and cities across the country, it began with the bombing of London for 57 consecutive nights.[5] By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, had been killed by bombing and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone.

London was not the only city to suffer Luftwaffe bombing during the Blitz. Other important military and industrial centres, such as Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Clydebank, Coventry, Exeter, Greenock, Sheffield, Swansea, Liverpool, Hull (the most heavily bombed city outside of London), Manchester, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Nottingham, Brighton, Eastbourne, Sunderland and Southampton, suffered heavy air raids and high numbers of casualties. Adolf Hitler's aim was to destroy British civilian and governmental morale.

Its intended goal of demoralizing the British into surrender unachieved, the Blitz did little to facilitate potential German invasion. By May 1941, the imminent threat of an invasion of Britain had passed and Hitler's attention was focused on the east. While the Germans never again managed to bomb Britain on such a large scale, they carried out smaller attacks throughout the war, taking the civilian death toll to 51,509 from bombing. In 1944, the development of pilotless V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets briefly enabled Germany to again attack London with weapons launched from the European continent. In total, the V weapons killed 8,938 civilians in London and the south east.

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