FRONT LINE 1940-1941 WW2 CIVIL DEFENSE BRITAIN LONDON BLITZ PORTS PROVINCES ARP
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FRONT LINE 1940-1941 WW2 CIVIL DEFENSE BRITAIN LONDON BLITZ PORTS PROVINCES ARP:
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FRONT LINE 1940-1941 WW2 CIVIL DEFENSE BRITAIN LONDONBLITZ PORTS PROVINCES ARP AFS HOME GUARD
THE OFFICIAL STORYOF THE CIVIL DEFENCE OF BRITAIN 1940-1941
ISSUED BY THEMINISTRY OF INFORMATION FOR THE MINISTRY OF HOME SECURITY
PUBLISHED BY HISMAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE 1942
Published by HisMajesty’s Stationery Office in 1942 this book is a well-illustrated account ofthe onslaught launched against the British Isles when Britain very much foughtalone. Following the eventschronologically the photographs are truly impressive with many taken in theheat of the action and some reproduced in double page size. Front Line is a tale of individual effort andperformance and a “snapshot” of the many accounts of individual heroismdisplayed during this period. It tellsof the fall of bombs and what was done about them by the men and women on theground. It says nothing ofadministration, national or local, except the little that is necessary toexplain the deeds of those in the field of conflict who coped directly with theraids and their after effects.
This is one of aseries of books issued by the Ministry of Information; this is one of the notso common publications.
Contents:
The Approach ToThe Battle
The Onslaught OnLondon
The Thing Happens
The Battle Of TheFlames
The Fight ForHuman Life
That The CityMight Live
The Man In TheStreet
The Londoner’sHome
A Borough In TheBlitz
The Ordeal Of TheProvinces
The Front Widens
The Attack On TheArms Towns
The Attack On ThePorts
The Countryman’sBlitz
SeasideTip-And-Run
The Army Of CivilDefence
The Plan Of Battle
The Front LineTroops
The Achievement OfMany
For its age this1942 publication is in very good overall condition, remaining tightly bound andwith no torn, missing, loose or significantly creased pages. The photograph of the cover page gives a goodindication of the overall condition. At162 pages (22.5cm x 18cm) this is a superb front-line account of the endeavoursmade during the dark days of the blitz published immediately after the threatof German invasion receded.
AdditionalInformation from Internet Encyclopedia
The German airoffensive was concentrated, aimed at the direct bombing of industrial targetsand civilian centres which began with heavy raids on London during the latterphase of the battle for air superiority over the United Kingdom which becameknown as the Battle of Britain. By September 1940 the Luftwaffe had failed togain air superiority. The German air fleets (Luftflotten) were ordered toattack London, thereby drawing RAF Fighter Command into a battle ofannihilation. Adolf Hitler and commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (German AirForce) Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, sanctioned the change in emphasis on 6September 1940.
From 7 September1940, just over a year into the war, London was systematically bombed by theLuftwaffe for 56 out of the following 57 days and nights. On 15 September 1940, a large daylight attackagainst London was repulsed with significant German losses. Thereafter, theLuftwaffe gradually decreased daylight operations in favour of nocturnalattacks, to avoid RAF defences. The Blitz became a fundamental night bombingcampaign after October 1940.
Ports andindustrial centres outside London were also attacked. The main Atlantic seaport of Liverpool was bombed. The North Sea port of Hull, a convenient andeasily found target or secondary target for bombers unable to locate theirprimary targets, was subjected to raids in the Hull Blitz during the war. Otherports including Bristol, Cardiff, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton and Swanseawere also bombed, as were the industrial cities of Birmingham, Belfast,Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield. More than one million Londonhouses were destroyed or damaged and more than 40,000 civilians were killed,almost half of them in the capital.
By May 1941, thethreat of an invasion of Britain had ended, and Hitler\'s attention turned toOperation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The bombing failed todemoralise the British into surrender or significantly damage the war economy.The eight months of bombing never seriously hampered British production and thewar industries continued to operate and expand. The German offensive\'s greatest effect wasforcing the dispersal of aircraft production and parts. British wartime studies concluded that citiesgenerally took 10 to 15 days to recover when hit severely but exceptions like Birminghamtook three months.
The German airoffensive failed for several reasons. In particular, the Luftwaffe High Command(Oberkommando der Luftwaffe, OKL) did not develop a methodical strategy fordestroying British war industry: German effort was diverted and dispersedagainst several sets of industries instead of maintaining pressure on any ofthem. Discussions in OKL revolved around tactics rather than strategy. Poorintelligence on British industry and economic efficiency was also a factor.
London had ninemillion people— one-fifth of Britain\'s population— living in an area of 750square miles (1,940 square kilometres), which was difficult to defend becauseof its size. Based on experience with German strategic bombing during World WarI against the United Kingdom, the British government estimated after the FirstWorld War that 50 casualties— with about one third killed— would result forevery tonne of bombs dropped on London. The estimate of tonnes of bombs anenemy could drop per day grew as aircraft technology advanced, from 75 in 1922,to 150 in 1934, to 644 in 1937. That year the Committee on Imperial Defenceestimated that an attack of 60 days would result in 600,000 dead and 1,200,000wounded. News reports of the Spanish Civil War, such as the bombing ofBarcelona, supported the 50-casualties-per-tonne estimate. By 1938, expertsgenerally expected that Germany would attempt to drop as much as 3,500 tonnesin the first 24 hours of war and average 700 tonnes a day for several weeks. Inaddition to high explosive and incendiary bombs the enemy would possibly usepoison gas and even bacteriological warfare, all with a high degree of accuracy.In 1939 military theorist Basil Liddell-Hart predicted that 250,000 deaths andinjuries in Britain could occur in the first week of war.
Civilians wereaware of the deadly power of aerial attacks through newsreels of Barcelona, theBombing of Guernica and the Bombing of Shanghai. Many popular works of fictionduring the 1920s and 1930s portrayed aerial bombing, such as H. G. Wells\' novelThe Shape of Things to Come and its 1936 film adaptation, and others such asThe Air War of 1936 and The Poison War. Harold Macmillan wrote in 1956 that heand others around him \"thought of air warfare in 1938 rather as people thinkof nuclear war today\".
Government leadersfeared mass psychological trauma from aerial attack and a resulting collapse ofcivil society. A committee of psychiatrists reported to the government in 1938,that there would be three times as many mental as physical casualties fromaerial bombing, implying three to four million psychiatric patients. Winston Churchill told Parliament in 1934,\"We must expect that, under the pressure of continuous attack upon London,at least three or four million people would be driven out into the open countryaround the metropolis\". Panic during the Munich crisis, such as themigration by 150,000 people to Wales, contributed to fear of social chaos.
The governmentplanned the Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II with theevacuation of four million people—mostly women and children—from urban areas,including 1.4 million from London. It expected about 90 percent of evacuees tostay in private homes and conducted an extensive survey to determine the amountof space and detailed preparations for transporting the evacuees weredeveloped. A trial blackout was held on 10 August 1939 and when Germany invadedPoland on 1 September a blackout began at sunset. Lights would not be allowedafter dark for almost six years, and the blackout became by far the mostunpopular aspect of the war for civilians, more than rationing. The relocationof the government and the civil service was also planned but would only haveoccurred if necessary so as not to damage civilian morale.
Much civil-defencepreparation in the form of shelters was left in the hands of local authoritiesand many areas such as Birmingham, Coventry, Belfast and the East End of Londondid not have enough shelters. The PhoneyWar and the unexpected delay of civilian bombing, meant that the shelterprogramme finished in June 1940, before the Blitz. The programme favouredbackyard Anderson shelters and small brick surface shelters; many of the latterwere soon abandoned in 1940 as unsafe. Authorities expected that the raidswould be brief and in daylight, few predicted that attacks by night would forceLondoners to sleep in shelters.
Very deeply buriedshelters provided the most protection against a direct hit. The government didnot build them for large populations before the war because of cost, time tobuild, and fears that their very safety would cause occupants to refuse toleave to return to work, or that anti-war sentiment would develop in largegroups. The government saw the Communist Party\'s leading role in advocating forbuilding deep shelters as an attempt to damage civilian morale, especiallyafter the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939.
The most importantexisting communal shelters were the London Underground stations. Although manycivilians had used them as such during the First World War, the government in1939 refused to allow the stations to be used as shelters so as not tointerfere with commuter and troop travel, and the fears that occupants mightrefuse to leave. Underground officials were ordered to lock station entrancesduring raids; but by the second week of heavy bombing the government relentedand ordered the stations to be opened. Each day orderly lines of people queueduntil 4:00 pm, when they were allowed to enter the stations. In mid-September1940 about 150,000 a night slept in the Underground, although by the winter andspring months the numbers had declined to 100,000 or less. Noises of battlewere muffled and sleep was easier in the deepest stations, but many were killedfrom direct hits on several stations.
Communal sheltersnever housed more than one seventh of Greater London residents, however.[56]Peak use of the Underground as shelter was 177,000 on 27 September 1940, and aNovember 1940 census of London found that about 4 percent of residents used theTube and other large shelters; 9 percent in public surface shelters; and 27 percentin private home shelters, implying that the remaining 60 percent of the citylikely stayed at home. The government distributed Anderson shelters until 1941and that year began distributing the Morrison shelter, which could be usedinside homes.
Public demandcaused the government in October 1940 to build new deep shelters within theUnderground to hold 80,000 people but were not completed until the period ofheaviest bombing had passed. By the end of 1940 significant improvements had beenmade in the Underground and in many other large shelters. Authorities providedstoves and bathrooms and canteen trains provided food. Tickets were issued forbunks in large shelters to reduce the amount of time spent queuing. Committeesquickly formed within shelters as informal governments, and organisations suchas the British Red Cross and the Salvation Army worked to improve conditions.Entertainment included concerts, films, plays and books from local libraries.
Although only asmall number of Londoners used the mass shelters, as journalists, celebritiesand foreigners visited they became part of the Beveridge Report part of anational debate on social and class division. Most residents found that suchdivisions continued within the shelters and many fights and arguments occurredregarding noise, space or other issues. Contrary to prewar fears of anti-semiticviolence in the East End, one observer found that the \"Cockney and the Jew[worked] together, against the Indian.
Although theintensity of the bombing was not as great as prewar expectations so an equalcomparison is impossible, no psychiatric crisis occurred because of the Blitzeven during the period of greatest bombing of September 1940. An Americanwitness wrote \"By every test and measure I am able to apply, these peopleare staunch to the bone and won\'t quit ... the British are stronger and in abetter position than they were at its beginning\". People referred to raidsas if they were weather, stating that a day was \"very blitzy\".
According to AnnaFreud and Edward Glover, London civilians surprisingly did not suffer fromwidespread shell shock, unlike the soldiers in the Dunkirk evacuation. Thepsychoanalysts were correct, and the special network of psychiatric clinicsopened to receive mental casualties of the attacks closed due to lack of need.Although the stress of the war resulted in many anxiety attacks, eatingdisorders, fatigue, weeping, miscarriages, and other physical and mental ailments,society did not collapse. The number of suicides and drunkenness declined, andLondon recorded only about two cases of \"bomb neuroses\" per week inthe first three months of bombing. Many civilians found that the best way toretain mental stability was to be with family, and after the first few weeks ofbombing avoidance of the evacuation programs grew.
The civilians ofLondon had an enormous role to play in the protection of their city. Manycivilians who were unwilling or unable to join the military became members ofthe Home Guard, the Air Raid Precautions service (ARP), the Auxiliary FireService, and many other organisations. The AFS had 138,000 personnel by July1939. Only one year earlier, there had only been 6,600 full-time and 13,800part-time firemen in the entire country. During the Blitz, The ScoutAssociation guided fire engines to where they were most needed, and becameknown as the \"Blitz Scouts\". Many unemployed were drafted into theRoyal Army Pay Corps. These personnel, along with others from the PioneerCorps, were charged with the task of salvage and clean-up.
The WVS (Women\'s Voluntary Services for Civil Defence)was set up under the direction of Samuel Hoare, Home Secretary in 1938specifically in the event of air raids. Hoare considered it the female branch ofthe ARP. They organised the evacuation of children, established centres forthose displaced by bombing, and operated canteens, salvage and recyclingschemes. By the end of 1941, the WVS had one million members. Prior to theoutbreak of war, civilians were issued with 50 million respirators (gas masks).These were issued in the event of bombing taking place with gas beforeevacuation. PaymentBack to TopI accept the following forms of payment:
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FRONT LINE 1940-1941 WW2 CIVIL DEFENSE BRITAIN LONDON BLITZ PORTS PROVINCES ARP:
$29.95