feasible, while General Alfred Jodl, deputy to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OBW), the high command of the German armed forces, advised Hitler that invasion should only be contemplated when Britain was paralysed and ‘practically incapable of fighting in the air’. On 12 October Hitler postponed ‘Operation Sealion’, the planned invasion of Britain, and in January 1941 effectively cancelled it. But at the time, of course, no one in Britain could be sure that this was the case, and that the blitz was not the final ‘softening up’ prior to an invasion. A state of alertness was maintained, and would be reactivated on occasions both as a defence and to encourage the war effort.
London was not alone in those dark days of September and October 1940 in experiencing death, injury and destruction from the air. There were spasmodic raids on the Home Counties, Liverpool had been attacked sixty times by the end of the year, and German bombs had also fallen on the Midlands, Scotland, Wales, the south coast ports Southampton and Portsmouth, the West Country and the North-East. But the capital took the brunt of the Luftwaffe attack, with 27,500 high-explosive bombs and countless incendiaries and parachute mines dropped between 7 September and 13 November.
In those two months London became a city pockmarked with ruins and rubble, its streets assaulted, private spaces ripped open to public gaze, landmarks that had stood for centuries instantly made jagged and fragile, the aftermath of the previous night’s onslaught evident in the pall of smoke and dust that hung over the capital, the smell of burning that lingered in the autumn air, roads closed, the snaking coils of fire hoses, the weary, soot-blackened faces of the firemen, the ARP wardens, the heavy rescue squads, the numbing sense of exhaustion. Vere Hodgson, a Birminghamborn woman living and working as a social worker in west London, had come back to the capital ‘to face the blitz’, as she put it on 10 September 1940. ‘This was the night the anti-aircraft barrage took on a formidable tone, and gave Londoners some satisfaction. They had more to listen to than bombs falling one by one. I shall never forget the next fortnight as long as I live … sleepless, terrified nights, and days when you could fall off your chair with weariness, and yet somehow held on … the tense look on the faces of the inhabitants of Notting Hill Gate – for of course I ventured nowhere else!’
With newspapers forbidden to mention the precise locations of bomb damage, Londoners discovered the topography of destruction for themselves. Anthony Heap, a local government official living with his mother not far from King’s Cross station,
heard of all sorts of places near us which were supposed to have been bombed but on walking round this afternoon, observed that it was the usual pack of false rumours. With one exception Harrington Square where we used to live … I could see that two houses on the north side of the square had been completely demolished and a bomb had dropped in the roadway and blown a bus up against them. The bus was still there standing lengthways against the ruins. Furthermore the roofs had been blown off two houses on the corner of Lidlington Place and thirteen houses in Eversholt Street … Most of the square’s inhabitants had been down the shelter and escaped injury but one or two people had been killed and they were still trying to get out someone buried in the basement.
The volume of gas in our stove very slight today. Presumably some of the borough’s supply is being transferred to other districts where the mains have been hit.
I heard that Tussaud’s cinema caught a packet last night. So as soon as the All Clear went at 6.25 [on 9 September] I dashed along to see. And by gosh it had too. Only the front of it in Marylebone Road and the proscenium was left standing. The rest was completely demolished as were some buildings behind it as well … not a single window in any building in the vicinity remained intact. Huge crowds thronged along the Marylebone Road to see the ruins. It was one of the sights of London today.
10th Spent entire afternoon going round sightseeing in the raid devastated areas … Holborn was easily the worst of the lot. Most of the centre between it and Chancery Lane and Red Lion Square was laid waste …
‘Only two theatres kept open last night – the Coliseum and the Criterion. The West End and local cinemas kept open but hardly did any business,’ reported Heap, who by 16 September had got a job in Finsbury Council’s Borough Treasurer’s Office, and reported that ‘Every time anyone in the office goes out wage paying or rent collecting they come back having witnessed some fresh scene of devastation.’ Over the next few weeks he chronicled the damage to central London: St Paul’s Cathedral, where
broken masonry was still piled up in front of the altar and sun streamed in through a hole in the roof; Temple Bar, St Clement Danes Church, the statue of Richard 1 (‘only the sword bent on this’) outside the House of Lords … the whole area around Cambridge Circus on the south side is in a terrible state now. Practically every street is blocked with debris which the Army Pioneer Corps have now been detailed to clear away. Next week 5,000 of them start work on this all over London … Bomb almost demolished 145 Piccadilly the house in which the King and Queen used to live when they were Duke and Duchess of York … London Palladium burnt inside nothing visible outside. St James Church, Piccadilly partly demolished. The Fifty Shillings tailor opposite burned down … The Carlton Club in Pall Mall stopped a direct hit. Also Carlton House Terrace … opposite the former German Embassy … Bomb in Blackfriars Bridge Road hit five trams held up by traffic lights during the rush hour. Many casualties … Looked at bombed out theatres Brewer Street, Saville Theatre, Drury Lane theatre only just missed a bomb, alleged Queen’s Theatre bombed.
But on 10 November Heap was able to report that just a week after London’s first raid-free night since 7 September, ‘no raids at all today – till evening. Some people inclined to link this with [Neville] Chamberlain’s death’ – since ‘the now-derided champion of peace died today [in fact the previous day] a broken and disappointed man’. Though in Heap’s view, ‘Whatever the bellicose little upstarts in power today may think of him, history cannot but judge him as a fine statesman and a great gentleman.’
Lambeth Palace, which was perilously close to the river, had received a direct hit on 20 September. Alan Don recorded:
Bomb entered roof just above large drawing room window – drawing room, parlour, little drawing room are wrecked and bedrooms above are a mass of ruins, the pantry etc. a mass of rubble. Four airmen sleeping under a table in the knife room next to the coal hole were only saved by the fact that they had a table over their heads, the contents of the drawing room fell on top of them, but they crawled out unhurt … the people in the basement passage were covered with dust and got a severe shaking but were uninjured … the crypt was full of people, some 200 of them: had the bomb landed on the other side of Cranmer’s Tower they would have received the full force of the explosion. That no one was injured is a miracle. The force of the blast was terrific – the furniture, panelling etc. is reduced to matchwood, the shutters were lying in fragments on the lawn, some of the pieces landed beyond the terrace, the wall of the house is bulging dangerously and great blocks of masonry fell onto the grass … a gaping hole in the roof yawns above the landing … the whole place is covered in white dust and much of the glass is broken.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was not in residence that night, but when Canterbury Cathedral was bombed for the second time in October, Don began to wonder, ‘Are the Germans deliberately trying to kill the Primate? They have had shots at the King and the Prime Minister and they doubtless have no love for CC [Cosmo Cantuar].’
By mid-October ‘the Bishop of London reported that between 20–25 of his churches have been put out of action entirely while another 250 have been more or less damaged. St James Piccadilly is a serious loss … There is scarcely an historic building in London that remains entirely unscathed and yet we are told that three years of such bombing would be needed to destroy a quarter of London!’ wrote Don.
The sight of their ravaged city would imprint itself forever on Londoners who lived through that intense time. On 26 September Phyllis Warner went shopping in Oxford Street: ‘I almost wish I
