this country is at war with Germany. We shall go under the end. I remember the

sheets of plane which came up and almost blinded us for my guns.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War Two podcast. I'm

Wallace. As attacks on London by the Luftwaffe became a reality in the summer of 1940,

Londoners needed somewhere to shelter from airweds. So during the blitz and through to the end of

the war, deep-level tube stations of London Underground were utilised sheltering thousands

every now. But the role of the underground is much more complicated. In 1939, the station

platforms were never expected to see civilians sleeping there, but rather they were to be kept

clear from emergency transportation use. Today I'm joined by Nal Devit. Nal is the author of

Underground Railway, a new history which is due to be published by Penn and Sword.

Thanks for joining me now. I wonder if before we get to the Second World War, we should start with

the First World War. London was targeted by the Germans. Was the underground used? Did this

provide a blueprint to work with in 1939? Well, basically, the first raids of London are

of Zeppelin raids, about 1915. In fact, up the road, it captained on the first deaths

from a Zeppelin raid. After Hartley Paul and other places had been raided and so on, there's

a fear of the beastly hum. And this genuinely shock and horror that it can come over and they can

hit us. Britain is no longer an island. So the real moment for the underground, people start

going down to the tube. You've got to be on the tube, but this point is much smaller than

the one underground we have today. So entry, particularly in the east end, which naturally the

Germans target, is at Liverpool Street. There's no point in hiding on the metropolitan line. It's

not deep enough. You've got to be deep level or deeper. It may be that's often sometimes psychologically

the case, because actually the times of action has proven tragically at examples of bounce green

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