The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940

This book goes beyond other histories of the Blitz that I have read. It is essentially a history of how the British people--well, Londoners really--reacted to the first massive bombing raid of the Blitz that targeted the city of London. As such, we don't get up in the air with the RAF and the Luftwaffe, but instead see how the people on the receiving end dealt with--successfully or less bravely--a massive case of terror bombing. The book, therefore, raises interesting questions about the ability of any terror campaign to successfully cow a broad population. The events of September 2001 are not far from Stansky's mind here, and I think his conclusions are persuasive and relevent to today. In the end, I think that the author strikes a sound balance between heroic narratives that have previously suggested that Londoners reacted with universal aplumb and the more recent suggestions that all of that was patriotic twaddle and that the "real" story was of cowardice and looting. Londoners here come through as real people, with understandable reactions. One more point. Finally, someone has suggested to me a plausible answer to why Britain turned to Labour and ousted Churchill in the 1945 elections. Stansky's answer is too subtle for me to give fully here, but for me that was the real kicker of the book: the Blitz essentially made people realize both the worth of all classes of people and also the need for a central government to manage affairs correctly and smoothly. Yes, there are parallels there to hurricane Katrina, and Stanky talks briefly about them. A really good, quick read.

If you want to understand the role of tea drinking in the British psyche this is the book for you. Seriously, eminent historian Professor Emeritus Peter Stansky has created a highly readable, well-researched account that draws on personal experiences of the first day of the Blitz. He draws from the working poor, professionals like George Orwell, government documents and the press. I had seen bombed out areas, even 30 years after the Blitz, heard of people having bomb shelters in their back gardens, and listened to tales of people taking cover when hearing air raid sirens. This book brings you even closer to the action. Peter Stansky takes you to the hearts and minds of those who suffered and those who observed the German bombers and fighters descending over London. There are analyses of Jewish suffering, media censorship and government preparedness. Stansky positions the Blitz as a terrorist activity, comparing and contrasting it with the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. The interesting tidbits - like the fact the government insisted photos of the Blitz showed a standing building - make this book worth reading by both history buffs and the curious consumer.

Professor Stansky looks at the initial raids on the city and the country as a whole, and compares it with the myths that later accumulated around the event. Finally he draws an analogy with 9-11 in New York. There are many lessons to be drawn from the London Blitz. In comparison with the cities of Germany and Japan it was lightly hit. That is, it remained mostly intact. Yet those things lay in the future and at the time London was the most heavily bombed city in the world. * The authorities were unprepared although they had been preparing for a year, knowing war was coming and that terror raids would be a part of it -- they prepared for mass death rather than mass homelessness. * The raids failed to terrorize the population, brought them together in fact. * War production continued almost unabated and ordinary life carried on. The Western Allies also found these things to be true of enemy cities after they had been bombed. I suppose Hiroshima and Nagasaki are exceptions as they were completely destroyed. The 62nd anniversary of the bombing of Dresden is tomorrow -- February 13th. The firestorm there consumed maybe 35,000 people. What prevented such a firestorm from starting in London? Great fires were started of course, but they did not come together in the manner of Dresden where a huge tornado of fire was described. The weather on Sept 7th was sunny in London with south winds and warm temperatures. This suggests a high pressure area centered over the continent with south winds on its western flank, bringing up warm dry air from say Spain and Morocco. given the cloudless sky, static stability was high. This affected fire behavior. Updrafts were suppressed and inflow was reduced. East winds would have been funnelled up the river valley into the flames whereas the south winds were impeded by the rough cityscape. So perhaps the weather saved many lives; only 400+ deaths were recorded that day. Alternatively, the Germans' aim was bad. Their formations were engaged by fighters and they flew high, evidently, so there was much scatter. Using first-person accounts the author draws us a picture. But the book would have been greatly helped by a few maps and tables. Show us the approach routes of the bombers; the orientation of their bombing runs and when and where they dropped their ordnance; the airfields used by Fighter Command and locations of engagements; tabulate OB's and strengths and losses; provide detailed street maps with the homes and movements of the participants he quotes. In passing the book compares the event to 9-11 in New York and to hurricane Katrina. New York brought the U.S. together and we swore vengeance on our attackers in the same way as did Londoners. "Carry On" was the order of the day here as it was there and then. "If we change the terrorists win." This is a valid comparison I think. It just shows the futility of terror bombing. Katrina is a more important comparison. In New Orleans as in London, the authorities we