Battle of Britain and the Blitz

Abstract

The Battle of Britain and the Blitz were two central moments in the British war effort during World War II. They have usually been treated as distinct campaigns, but they are linked by the fact that the German Air Force conducted a continuous eleven-month offensive against Britain from July 1940 to June 1941. Historians nevertheless have persisted in separating them, and the structure of the bibliography here reflects that distinction. Both topics have generated serious academic interest only since the 1990s; prior to that the literature was dominated by popular accounts and memoirs and by the official histories, written in the 1950s. Popular accounts, memoirs, and picture books still predominate The Battle of Britain is of more limited interest historically than the Blitz, though the reasons for German failure have generated considerable debate. The battle, however, has come to play a central part in British memory of the conflict as the moment when Hitler’s Germany was defied and invasion averted. The Blitz is a more complex story. German strategy in pursuing the long bombing offensive against British ports and industrial cities has been examined less carefully than other strands of German strategy, partly because its achievements were modest, partly because historians have focused far more on the preparations for the large war against the Soviet Union. The Blitz history focuses instead on the British social, cultural, and political experience under the impact of bombing, and on the significance and effectiveness of British civil defense. Bombing in the Blitz and elsewhere in Europe symbolized the conduct of total war, in which civilian communities were in the front line as much as the armed forces. The ethical implications of this change in the character of modern war and the limits of legally permissible violence are a significant aspect of the study of wartime bombing. Historians have also been interested in this case in more fundamental questions about how civilian society coped with the social, material, and psychological impact of bombing and what averted more serious political crisis. In particular, the so-called myth of the Blitz, which since the war maintained that British society pulled together, eroded class differences, and withstood the damage with a collective stoicism, has been subjected to careful critical scrutiny. The last section in the bibliography deals with the development and function of the “myth” since 1945 as an important element in British historical identity and public history.