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Warfare

The Secret History of the Blitz

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5943 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, Joshua Levine provides us with an in depth account of the German offensive against Britain's moral. The actor, barrister and historian offers a study of the whole of the UK in discussion with Dan Snow. Together they explore the sense of community which emerged from the Blitz, as people who previously had no contact with one another were forced to share lifechanging experiences and confined spaces.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, welcome to the history hit World Wars podcast. I'm James Rogers, and in this episode first recorded for Dan's

0:05.5

nose history hit, Dan talks to Joshua Levine, author of the secret history of the Blitz.

0:11.6

Now in my own work on the bombing of Britain I've looked

0:14.3

into how the luffwaffe went from targeting Ari F bases and important coastal

0:18.5

regions like Grimsby to try and shut off that vital food supply, but in Joshua's work he takes this one step forward

0:26.0

to show how they started to target the morale of the British people themselves.

0:30.7

From the Blitz on London through to Coventry and places like Hull in fact across the entire United Kingdom

0:36.5

Joshua provides us with a compelling narrative of how the Blitz unfolded across the UK and how Britain fought back through this vital period of the Second

0:45.8

World War. September 1940 to May to May 1941 is I about right?

1:05.6

Yeah officially that's that's the case it's it's September the 7th through to May 9th

1:10.1

and May 10th of 11th of May of 1941. So it's a period at 8 and a half months. You know that is the

1:17.8

official period that's gone down but of course you know there was bombing

1:20.6

outside of this. I went to Cambridge recently, for example,

1:24.8

and met people who had remembered bombing in June 1940

1:29.3

before the Blitz had officially begun.

1:32.1

You know, nine people were killed there, including a girl who'd been evacuated

1:35.1

away from London to be safe. So it's actually quite vague. The whole period, even though that's

1:40.4

officially what it was, and there's no doubt that September the 7th was the day that that that

1:45.0

Herman Goering changed his focus from bombing the airfields and the Battle of Britain

1:51.0

to bombing the cities.

1:52.8

The fact is that people died outside of this period.

1:55.2

So you can't necessarily say the Blitz ran from day X to day Y.

...

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