SIX MONTHS OF BLITZ

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 16, 28 February 1941, Page 2

SIX MONTHS OF BLITZ

FAILURE OF HITLER'S PLANS

BRITISH QUALITIES STRENGTHENED

BOMBS TO BE RETURNED WITH INTEREST

LONDON, February 20

What did Hitler set out to achieve when six months ago he turned the full strength of his Acr Force against Great Britain— against her towns and people, her

harbours and her countryside? In brief, his aims were as follows:

To plunge the British people by means of hammer blows into a panic that would fill them with longing for peace at any price. To disorganise their communications by rail, road and over the air, leaving them without food or news—without the sheet anchor of usual happenings. To; destroy their harbours and factories and nullify their war effort.

To deal them the knockout blow that would mean a German victory. Seen through German binoculars from the French coast, this lusty sequence did not look immodest. He was nearer to success than anyone since Napoleon, and Napoleon had not (had access to the air. ...

* + Why the Lightning Failed What has Hitler achieved in six months of the blitz he ordered? He has caused much suffering .to individuals. He has destroyed thousands of cherished homes. He (has obliterated many fine buildings— the Guildhall, Coventry Cathedral, Bristol University. He has reduced to rubble or ashes some valuable property. He has at various times caused a slowing-up of services on one or other of our main railways. He has at times temporarily dislocated sections,of local telephones, gas and electric light. He has deprived a township for a day or two of the power that it needs to turn its lathes or to bake its bread. But apart from griefs and inconveniences, he has caused none of the effects on which he counted. He made one of his big mistakes when —faithful to his .technique of assailing the weakest point—he took Ribbentrop's word for it that the modern Briton was flabby, and when he, therefore, entered the British people as objective No. 1 on the brief he handed to his bomber pilots. . . . ♦ ♦ Profit and Loss Account "Is it better or worse than you thought it would be?" is our first question to the newcomer who stalks out to see for himself. I

"Having- been prepared for a shock and having looked at London during a ten-mile walk on my own," replies staff writer Ernie Pyle of the New York World-Tele-gram (January sth, 1941), "I can truthfully answer that it is better than I expected. It's just a patchwork of damage and not total destruction by any means." Patchwork is the word for it, even in jour more compact provincial cities. j Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff or Southampton, are proof that knocked about is not knocked out. And the Coventry story—now public property—lends point to our statistical estimate that at Germany's present standard of bombaiming, Britain is good for at least another century. (New York "PM", January 20th, 1941). Checks there are, but still our mills and railways continue to deliver .the goods. Shells, ships and spitfires, foodstuffs and export goods come pouring out, and when Hitler tots up his blitz accounts he must enter on the debit side, along with our fighter defence and anti-air-craft batteries, the ingenuity of our local reconstruction panels. These unsung services supply brains, men and tools to take the spanners out of our works as quickly as Hitler throws .them in and send our wheels spinning on with the minimum of delay. ...

The main debit item more than offsets the modicum of damage done to our war strength. That item is the unity of purpose forced by the blitz among our people. It is Hitler who has brought to the surface the qualities that Mr Willkie

labelled as "Oneness" and that Mr Hopkins described as "Tough." It is Hitler who has endowed us with the power, at a stroke, to relinquish all side issues and to work for one end alone. None of us enjoys being bombed, but following the experience each one of us— men and women—knows what it is like to be more angry than afraid.

Will .the balance alter in Hitler's favour if a new and bigger Blitz is in store? We believe not. We have confidence, not only in our growing Air Force, but in our own nerves. We know now that the drone of a night bomber always sounds just overhead and that we need never again feel the chill that struck us when the first alarm of the war signalled the approach of the unknown. Having faced the realities of danger we now know that we have in ourselves the strength and stamina to meet it respectively. ...

♦ + Make land Mend We know, too, that however hard the drubbing, we have endless recuperative power. Egged on by the arrival of the milk and .the newspaper—neither of which in London has ever missed a morning — we find ourselves ticking over by day whatever the night may have brought. We know that the shop that is blitzed will open up round the corner and .that the street which is tinkling with swept-up glass will also be resounding* with hammering.

"Hitler can break our glass," reads the matchboard that dojes duty for windows, "but he can't beat our furnishing values." He can't beat our habits either. On the morning after <Jh.e of London's biggest bombs a pressman visiting the Square in which it fell saw two men intriguingly pegging the earth. "What are you doing?" he said. One man straightened his back to reply: "It's them durned sparrows. We're fixing thread so as they won't thieve the grass seed we've just sown for the spring."

Other Assets for British "Only about five per cent of all persons if incapacitated by air raids suffer from shock or psychological disturbance and of these the majority are back at work within a! week or two. The percentage of shock cases in December was half the September figure. They are actually becoming a decreasing disability." (Report of Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, February 19th, 1941). We have Hitler to thank for other assets which, when he ordered our "final destruction," he certainly never intended his bombers .to convey. First among them is homogeniality—or the new neighbourliness which has arisen out of experiences shared. We meet it when a motorist, instead of flashing by as he used to do, stops to offer a lift, or when the "lot next door" whom we used not to know, turn' out to be the brains of our fireM squad or the backbone of our shelter.

Another asset is the spirit of initiative which, emerging when we organise our own fire-fighting procedure, reminds us that the genius of our pioneering forebears has not been suffocated by the softer living conditions of later generations. A third—which will leave a permanent mark —is the benefit brought to our stock by the evacuation of children from town to country districts: "The fresh air has strengthened their bodies, country pursuits have broadened their minds. They are a superior generation to what they would have been without this experience. ... It is a seasonal migration which has come to stay." (The British Minister of Health, 1941). Seen from a Nazi angle, all these improvements .to an alien race are without doubt unrehearsed effects ♦ ♦ Home Front line

Would we change our lot for the different conditions of, 1914-18, for a war in which our young men earned us comfort by standing between us and a far more withering fire? In six months of blitz our civilian casualties have been 24,----000 killed and 34,000 wounded. The figures are grave but they pale beside the 453,000 casualties which in 1916 were the result of a bare three months of fighting on the Somme. .

"In the mercy of God," said the Premier (January 22nd, 1941) "we

have this time had no slaughter or wastage." With Him we choose without question the modern rather than tiie ancient experience. ... All told, the high spot of our experience is the knowledge that Hitjler would have finished us if he could. He has tried a variety of gambits, we suspect that he has others up his sleeve, but we take courage from the fact that he has so far failed because he has so thoroughly misjudged our nature. His day raids failed because he misjudged the stuff of our fighting pilots. His terror blitz, because he misjudged our stamina. His third device—the threats of destruction with which lie is punctuating the present lull misjudge our intelligence. For where a deathknell rung once might sound alarming, rung nightly it seems to us to smack of desperation rather than of strength. Lastly our role is no longer more pounded against than pounding. The time is passing when the enemy can drop his three or four bombs to our one. "We are arranging"— Eie comforting phrase is Mr Churchill's—"that presently this will be rather the other way round. Before long the enemy will be tasting the full dose which !he thought to administer here,"

An old gun, nearly 50in. long, and with a barrel lin. in diameter, Jias been found rln a cave on the banks of the Limpopo River, in the Pieteraburg district of South Africa. Made in London, the gun was found with others during a search for the remains of a party whdch vanished 50 years ago.