I’ve now finished my (somewhat piecemeal) post-blogging of the Blitz. It’s time to step back and see if there is anything to made of the whole thing. I’ll start with the things I wish I’d done differently. I had intended to use a greater diversity of sources, especially the Popular Newspapers during World War II […]
For the first time in a while, The Times and the Manchester Guardian differ in their lead stories. The latter (above, 5) focuses mainly on the surrender of seven thousand Italian soldiers in northern Abyssinia, but also notes a repulse of German armoured columns near Sollum and a new RAF attack on Vichy aerodromes in
Ten aircraft failed to return from Bomber Command’s operations over Germany on Thursday night. Those losses are quite small in relation to the number of British aircraft involved in the raids on Hamburg and Bremen, between three and four hundred, ‘certainly the largest number ever used in one night’ according to page 7 of the
The title of this post is something which Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris did not say. There are an uncountable infinity of things Harris didn’t say, but this particular one is of interest because during the Second World War it was widely believed that he did say it, and was taken to represent his aims
The Mediterranean theatre of war has seen a lot of action in recent days, as these headlines from The Times (4) show. While the Italian outpost at Bardia is besieged from land, sea and air, British armoured units are approaching Tobruk, 70 miles to the west. On Monday night, Italian warships at Taranto were bombed
I was going to end this section of the post-blog with yesterday’s post, but who could resist a front page like this? It’s so emotive and manipulative. The scene itself is tragic enough: the mass burial and funeral of 172 men, women and children killed in the blitz on Coventry last Thursday night. Another seventy
I have an embarrassment of Sunday papers now: the Observer, the Sunday Express, News of the World and The People. The last named (which has sales of more than 3 million per issue) has Coventry on the front page, but halfway down and underneath a photograph of a pig (I couldn’t say why). US-British cooperation,
The word ‘reprisals’ popped up during my 1940 post-blogging quite frequently. After one post I had the idea of checking whether it could be used as an index of British attitudes towards the bombing of Germany throughout the rest of the war. The short answer is: not really. But it was still worth trying. With
‘RAF PREPARING A GREAT NEW BOMBING OFFENSIVE’, Daily Mail, page 1: POWERFUL new R.A.F. bombers now being produced in great numbers and an amazing new long-range fighter are likely to be used, in the immediate future, for a greatly intensified bombing offensive over Germany. Hitler’s people can look forward to more than a taste of
Politics intrudes onto the front page of the Daily Mail today, in the form of a Cabinet reshuffle. But this being wartime, people are perhaps more likely to invest these normally mundane ministerial changes with great significance. The Mail certainly does, leading with the story that Sir John Reith, former Director-General of the BBC (and
