After opinion polls, the rest of the evidence for public opinion on reprisals is more impressionistic. I’ve already noted the conclusions of those who have plumbed the Mass-Observation archives (and Tom Harrisson didn’t just plumb the archives, he ran Mass-Observation during the war), and as I haven’t done that myself I’ll let them stand. But
Let’s tackle the question of public opinion head on. Did the British people want reprisal bombing to be carried out against the German people? How can we tell? Can we even tell? If we wanted to gauge public opinion on a particular question today, we’d carry out an opinion poll. As luck would have it,
Shortly after the Blitz began in earnest, Conservative MP Victor Cazalet wrote to the editor of The Times to urge that the RAF carry out reprisals against German cities for the ‘indiscriminate bombing’ of London.1 ‘The attack on the civil population is a military weapon’, he argued. ‘Can we possibly afford to give Germany a
This photo appeared on the front page of the Sunday Express on 6 October 1940, a month into the Blitz. A caption explained, or rather asked: WHO PUT UP THIS POSTER? This mystery poster has appeared in the streets of London. It is about six feet high and ten or twelve feet across, and bears
I noted in a previous post that the debate about reprisal air raids during the First World War largely revolved around two questions: are reprisals moral? and are reprisals effective? The same was true in the Second World War. Taking the question of effectiveness, how this was answered by participants in the debate depended partly
In May 1941, after nine months of German bombing and the evacuation of yet another British army from Europe, the Daily Mirror printed a fascinating little piece of futurism, in the form of a letter written as though it was May 1944, with Britain victorious and Germany prostrate. The headline itself gives some idea of
But sometimes, it rhymes. The above map, accompanying an article entitled ‘BOMB THESE TEN TOWNS!’, was published on page 4 of the Daily Mirror on 29 August 1940. It rhymes with this map published in the Daily Mail twenty-three years before:
Previously, I identified a comparison between the reprisals debate in the First World War and the reprisals debate during the Blitz as something I could do that previous writers have not (except in passing, or implicitly). I won’t have time in my AAEH paper for a full-blown comparative approach, or for that matter time before
On 23 April 1918, this brief article, filed from Melbourne, was the lead story in a number of Australian newspapers: Within the past 48 hours information has come to hand which points to the probability that the realities of war will soon be brought before Australians in a most convincing fashion. Steps have been taken
At the end of March 1918, the NSW Minister for Education, Augustus James, gave a speech at North Sydney Boys’ High School’s prize day. No doubt with an eye on the press, he spoke rather gloomily about the war situation, especially in light of the continuing German offensive on the Western Front: “We know to-day,”
