The History of... The Blitz

Welcome to the history of podcast where the theme is popular misconceptions of historical events. The first episode is about the Blitz, a massive topic in England during World War II. The hosts discuss their family's involvement in the war and their limited knowledge of the Blitz. They also mention the myth of the Blitz and the romanticized idea of the Blitz spirit. They plan to follow a loose structure for the podcast and include Coral's understanding of each topic. Welcome to the history of podcast. I'm here with my wife Coral. Hi. And I'm Luke and I am a master's history student. And what do you do? I'm a student teacher doing the PGCE at Canterbury. And she's agreed to help me thankfully with my assignments. This is my submission for our podcast assignment and it is to be themed around building and producing and making a real history podcast. So the theme of this podcast is to be around popular misconceptions of historical events. And the idea is that it would be entertaining. It won't be deep-diving a history. It won't be boring to listen to. Hopefully not. Hopefully not because I have listened to enough history podcasts to know what I do and don't like. And all I have ever listened to is entertainment podcasts. So that is what this is going to be themed on. Yeah? Yeah and I don't listen to podcasts at all. And I've listened to thousands. So hopefully we will make a great pair. Hopefully. As long as you can fill the space. So what this podcast is going to be called is it's going to be called the history of and then blank. So the history of whatever the topic is going to be. And this week and this exact podcast if it ever continues is the history of the blitz. That wasn't my idea was it? No that was mine. Because you like blitz. I like the wars. And it's perfect because in class we've been talking about popular misconceptions of history and where these ideas come from. And that's perfect for the blitz. Because the blitz is a massive topic in England. Or Britain. You know it's better to say Britain for this reason. And then we'll try and get into why you would say Britain there and not England. In all of culture you cannot exist in this world without hearing of the blitz. Especially if you're in England. Do you know about your grandparents at all? Did they fight in the war? No. It would have been my great-grandparents. But I don't know anything about them. Okay my parents are older. Oh no you don't know anything about them? No. Well all of my grandparents are involved in the war. In some capacity. I don't know about my grandmothers. But both my grandfathers thinking through that fought in the war. I do know one person. I don't know if it was in the war though. They were about to get on a ship. They were told to get off that ship and change to a different one. I've never heard this. It's a good thing they did get off that ship. Because that ship blew up. Who is this person? I don't remember. My granddad told me about them. Someone in my family. Not him. He was not involved in this boat. But someone in your family. Yep. Why did he get off the ship? He was told to. He was an older. Get off the ship. Okay Sarge. Well a couple of people had to come off the ship. Okay. And he was one of them. Lucky him. Yep. And he survives us? I don't know. I know nothing else about that story. You need to... I don't know who you'd even ask. You need to find more about that. My granddad. Your granddad. All right get him on the phone. We've got some more mics. So my... one of my grandfathers came home when my dad was six years old. My dad was born in 1940. And I don't exactly know how that year... those years line up. But he said he was six years old. Year of the Blitz. Let me tell you. My dad didn't live in London. And he has told me stories about that. But my Nan was in London during the Blitz. In London while it was happening. She was in a building. Now I don't know how true this is. I want to believe it. I'm told the story goes. My Nan says that she was in a building when a bomb hit it. As a very small child. And her mum grabbed her like a bag. And just bolted out the door. Like life depended on it. Because it did. And I just think that's crazy. My dad lived just north of London during it. Because obviously he was an infant born during World War Two. And then my Nan was slightly older. So they were both involved in it. Both my grandparents fought in it. And we've all grew up hearing stories of it right? Not me. Not you? No. Well I've heard a little bit. I never really met my grandparents. But my dad told me a little bit about it. The theme of the podcast overall will be that we follow a very loose structure. Or as much as I can remember to include within the entire time. And it will always start with Coral's understanding of a particular topic. And where you know things from. Because we met during history A level. Yep. So we both have an interest in history. But I did it at degree level. And then you immediately vetoed out of that didn't you? You like the stories. Yeah I like history. But not enough to pursue it. Do you like history films? Some of them. What some? Like the popular ones. The popular ones. The popular ones. Safe and Private Ryan? Never seen it. You've never seen Safe and Private Ryan? Nope. Unbelievable. This is a podcast about World War Two? Yep. Okay so Coral's understanding. What do you know about the Blitz? Now I've specifically said not to look anything up on purpose. Because that's the point. Well I looked a little bit up just to remind myself of the year. Okay. Just because I couldn't remember the year exactly. Which as we said was 1940. September the 7th 1940. I didn't know that off the top of my head I've got that written here. This is great. Go on. So all I really know about it. Germany bombed London. I know there's some other places but mainly London. Sturry Road right? The story of the bus. We'll get to that. Okay. You don't know the story of the bus? No. Okay carry on. And everyone would go down when the sirens would go off they'd go down underground. Everyone would go underground. Or into basements to protect themselves. I know the London Underground was used quite a lot. They've still got the giant vault doors. Because they've seen the doors. Those doors. They're nuclear bunker doors. They're terrifying to look at. Because you think why are they still there? They could have took them out years ago but I don't know if they've left them there for tourists to look like we did when we saw them. A bit jarred by the fact these giant 10 feet wide steel doors are still in the London Underground. I remember learning about the blackout as well. The blackout so you don't know what a hit. So at night time you'd blackout everything. But how do you know any of this? I was taught it in school. So you were taught it in school? Primary school. Any in secondary? Because you said you did a lot of World War II history in secondary school. In secondary school we mostly focused on Germany. Didn't really cover England because that was the only thing we typically did in primary school. All we did was England. It was very patriotic. You either learnt what your grandparents did or you did nothing else. Most history in secondary school was about this country apart from when we looked at World War II and the Cold War. I learnt about Henry VIII and Jack the Ripper. Yeah I remember Jack the Ripper. We did the Titanic in history. I still think that's really funky. You learn about a boat that went across the North Atlantic and crashed. Yep and I haven't seen the film. One day. Maybe. Right so you said some interesting points that everyone would go underground and the blackout was. What's your interpretation? It's night time. You're in a plane flying over what you hope is London. I think you wouldn't be able to see anything. You'd enter the void. Yeah so you wouldn't know what you're bombing. So the idea that everyone would blackout all of a sudden. Every single person would hurry together. It's the reason we have blackout blinds now. Is it? Yep. At least that's something I read online once. I hope that's true but I don't know if that's true. I just don't like waking up in the morning because of the sun. We'll have to look at that after. We'll look at what after sorry? See if that's true. I will look that up after. We don't have time now. But yeah the idea that everyone would go underground I think is quite interesting because that was my understanding of it as well until I was in some history classes and then someone tried to really emphasise that point with the lecturer and he shot him down so hard he was like no not everyone got underground and then he had to explain himself because everyone looked a little bit confused. The idea that everyone went underground, the idea that everyone turned off every light and blew out every candle is the idea that it's you know as I've got right here the myth of the Blitz. The Blitz spirit is where it's coming from right? The idea that Britain huddled together in a time of adversity. France had fallen. Germany took over you know all of Europe was the idea. Who's the only person left against the evil tyrant of Nazi Germany? Us. You know Britain. So when Britain are getting bombed to pieces who have you got on the radio telling you it's going to be okay? Britain. Churchill would have been on the radio telling everybody it's going to be okay we can get through this. Now I don't know about what it was like at the time but it's a very romanticised idea you look back thinking we fought you know the devil and come out the other side but. Some people might feel like that. Or they might feel like that definitely. Now. Now yeah if you if you if we had someone here that'd be a very different story I'm almost glad we don't. Yeah. But it's the idea of the Blitz spirit and there are many historians who have gone into the Blitz spirit and the myth of the Blitz. Now I thought the myth of the Blitz was an interesting phrase because I didn't like that it just feels insulting doesn't it? Go on say the words myth of the Blitz. Myth of the Blitz. It just sounds so wrong doesn't it? It sounds like it didn't actually happen. You know we're making it up about all those veterans that genuinely did die but it's not that it's it's the it's the myth of the Blitz from what I could gather in prep for this is it's like the legend of the Blitz that we all share and it doesn't matter if how you learn it we all have the shared collective understanding of it as if we were there. It's part of us as if we had just walked out of it. Does that make sense? Yep. And films reinforce this. You can't see it in the podcast but look at that picture and to describe the picture it is a... I've seen that picture. You've seen this picture. I think a lot of people have seen this picture. Rubble on the ground after the bombing and this milkman is just delivering glasses of milk like nothing's going on. That is a hundred percent encapsulation of what is meant to be the Blitz spirit. You know stiff upper lip and just get on with it. Yeah I think quite a few people might have seen that. Not everyone wanted to go underground. Not everyone wanted to turn their lights off. Some people just didn't want to and it's a complete fabrication and lie that everyone just got on with it. It's a complete fabrication lie that everyone wanted to fight for their country. Some people just didn't want to. Some people hated Britain. Some people wanted to run away but that's what we tell ourselves that everyone just got on with it. They got on with it or they were cowards. That's what we were told. But no white feather. That was World War One. Was it? That was just World War One. Very exclusive World War One thing. I knew it happened in World War One but I didn't know it was just World War One. So the next thing I wanted to ask was why did the Blitz happen? I don't know. Give me an idea. Why do you think the Blitz might have happened at all? What was the point? Why didn't they just invade Britain from the sea? Because from what I know Britain has got like the best navy in the world. I generally don't know what state it was in at that exact point in 1940. The idea that Germany could invade Britain by sea sounds hilarious. So much as hilarious as them invading Russia during the winter. You know it just doesn't sound possible. No and I don't know how strict this is but I know in World War One there wasn't really like bombs as much. It was like from like planes sort of thing. So maybe that was like a newer thing that they wanted to use. So bombs were invented. Bombs as an explosive device that could be dropped from a plane did exist before World War One. There was much less of it. World War Two took it global. They took it to the end. It's World War but World War Two took it to the next level you know. Ended off with a bomb that could destroy the entire world. Probably quicker as well to do it by plane. World War One had zeppelins. Germany would send over zeppelins. They were very unsuccessful. They were the giant balloons. The hot air balloons and the biggest problem of a giant hot air balloon full of air is they're very easy to hit. They're very slow and they're very vulnerable to fire. World War Two you can send bombing runs, bombing runs from the base of France which you now have complete almost complete control over. It's not a good picture but you don't know why it happened. I can't remember what was going on in a war at that point of time. From all my research if you just go through Wikipedia articles which is what I attempted to do, the Blitz, you know you look up history of the Blitz, buildings and all this. You just hear about it happening but you never hear why it started at all which I thought was interesting. It was probably already in the plans. It was probably already in the works anyway but a big reason it happened is because Britain decided to do an aerial bombardment of Berlin prior to the Blitz. I didn't know about that. They targeted people. Berlin's full of people. Yep. It's very unpopular to just decide let's target some people as opposed to works and Berlin has a giant cathedral. In response Germany decided that they would take their retaliation obviously on London the capital but also on other cities all over the country. Now what do you think all of those cities had in common? Cathedrals. They all had cathedrals. I'm probably guessing that though because you were looking cathedrals up the other day. I was looking cathedrals up the other day. So the most heavily bombed cities outside of London were Liverpool, Birmingham, other targets included Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry and Southampton. They all share cathedrals and most of them are obviously on the east coast but not all of them. Yeah. But I missed one over there didn't I? What other place has a cathedral? Very close to France. I'm assuming you're meaning Canterbury. Canterbury. And the good thing about Canterbury is that it has a massive history of being bombed and the other misconception is bombed to pieces, right? The idea that it was just flattened. There was nothing left. There is no cathedral remaining but that is a very popular misconception is that everything was flattened. It wasn't. Massive damage was done but we're still here. All of these places were bombed. Coventry was probably the biggest bombed location out of all of the cities other than London itself. Coventry was levelled. It was a massive historical period for them to go through. It still is a massive history for them. Everyone else shared their own bombings and history and stories of it. Canterbury has the story of the bus which I alluded to at the very beginning. Now if I'm retelling this correctly, there was a bus going up Sturry Road in World War II and these two, one or two, German bombers were in the area. I don't understand the context. I don't remember the context but they were in the area and they decided they're just going to, you know, have a little swing around the coast to see what they see and then they, broad daylight, saw they just come over Canterbury and they were going up the road. These two bombers are coming over. This doesn't normally happen midday. This is very uncommon and then they just saw this bus going up the road and then they just let loose and it just blew up right down the road, right up Sturry Road. Have I told you that story before? I don't remember it, probably not. And all the pictures. Have you seen the pictures of Canterbury? No. As walking into the university, the gate to the very front door, right outside there, right where the King's School is. Completely, almost flattened. All those buildings look, the way they do, it's because they were just rebuilt. They're not old. A lot of Canterbury remained or it ain't like it's old history but a lot of it was completely flattened and the people that stayed on the cathedral to keep the cathedral safe were called fire watchers. They've got a little plaque. They do. As you walk in to the cathedral. And I never noticed it before. Maybe I did and I forgot but when I was looking this up I saw the fire watchers plaque. I pointed it out to you I think the second or third time we were in there. And I thought it was really interesting, the story that there were people on the roof during the raids and I think the idea is that they would drop incendiary devices so it could burn the roof of the cathedral and then the whole thing and they would just kick them off of the roof. The library got bombed, like blown up, didn't it? And then that's just one small piece. Roughly 60,000 people died in London or in total during the Blitz I think I've got here on the Imperial War Museum website. 43,500 civilians were killed over nine months during the Blitz. And what is interesting on the Imperial War Museum website is that they don't do the Blitz of London. They do the Blitz around Britain which is very interesting because it leans into what we're doing here trying to break the idea that it wasn't just London that was bombed. It was a lot of Britain and I'm not going to say it was entirely England's fault that this happened but the night raid on Berlin definitely wasn't a popular decision that they took lightly and that is a factor, not the answer, not the reason, but definitely a factor that is missing from the story is that this attack wasn't unprovoked. It was very much, look what we can do. Yeah, even when we learned it in school there was no why it happened. It was just one day Germany decided to bomb us. Which is what we're going to get to. Why are Britain the good guys all the time? Even though there are many horrific stories of Churchill, there are many horrific stories about World War I in the interwar period, but you always got to learn that Britain is the good guys, right? You have that in most countries. Of course. They will portray themselves as the good guys. I have always wondered like how the countries that were very clearly were doing very bad things. Learning about German history about World War II in general, not everyone during World War II was a Nazi, not everyone during World War II was anti-semitic. A lot of people endured, a lot of people just got on with it. You definitely got to be careful though because someone told us a story about how a teacher was teaching a class about Stalin. Okay, what in World War II? I'm probably not too sure. Okay. And there were some Russians in the class and the Russians were like, no, Stalin was a good guy because... Sorry, I didn't mean World War II, I meant secondary school. Yeah, this is in secondary school. Yeah, okay, that makes more sense to what I said now. Stalin the hero. Yeah, Stalin the hero because... How do you respond to that? They didn't, they really didn't. What do you say at that point? You're learning about the evil Nazi Germany and then all of a sudden some people stand up and say, well, he's a hero. Yeah, he's a good guy. And that would be a very unexpected turn of events. What would you do? How would you respond to something like that? I really don't know how I would respond. I'd probably just try and stick to facts that we know and we have evidence of. But it's different when the country that you're from won the war. Yeah. It's different when the meat, when the idea, the legend, the myth that around us is built up is that we're heroes and the Blitz spirit lives with us. So a lot of films that we will watch focus on London during the Blitz. Almost all media that we ever consume will focus on London during the Blitz. Now, we don't have the time to go through loads, but tying this back to category a little, Narnia starts with London during the Blitz, the scene of them running from their house to their little bunker in the garden. This little metal shed would protect them from a bomb hitting them. But that, I wanted to mention that because that's probably one of the most popular World War II depictions in children's film, right? Narnia, at least for us, I don't know about now. Not sure. I worked at the hotel called the Ebrie Hotel. Now, during World War II, that has an interesting history, that hotel. It was not a hotel. It was a boarding school. And that boarding school was, actually, it was two boarding schools split in half. I don't really understand how that works, but it was a boarding school nonetheless. And in the garden at the bottom was a giant tree. This thing must have been 50, 80 meters tall. Really, really big tree. And underneath that tree somehow was a World War II bunker. Tiny little corridor. It's still there. As you're looking in the garden, there's just this mound, right? This hill. And you think that looks a little bit weird. It looks like a bump. But when you go over, there is a door that's been filled in so it doesn't collapse after the last 70 years. But I just think that's really interesting that this school had the capacity and the capability to build that in the garden. And that is just the hanging over effect of it, right? I have been in a bunker before. In England or abroad? Yeah, in England. Okay. It was a secret bunker. A secret bunker. That is what it's called. It's not secret. But yeah, it's called the secret bunker. And I've been there a couple of times. So where do you think you get all your Blitz knowledge from? Your World War II knowledge? If you've got nothing about the Blitz specifically, where do you get your idea, your information from that people would consume normally? Just, I'd Google it. You would look it up normally? Yeah. You get other films like, what are your most popular films like, and everyone banding together, getting on with it. A big one for me, I watched in school, which is relevant to where we're going, was Goodnight Mr. Tom. I don't remember the film perfectly, but it was an old man and a young boy and they would go underground at night and they would come up during the day and then I'd lose a lot of the plot. But that is where the film's focused. It's focused on World War II. And I remember watching that in school. I remember learning about the Blitz in year seven. I think it was year seven. So as soon as I got to secondary school. And that just becomes part of your life, doesn't it? You feed everyone this information, like you must know this. I was probably year four or five when I learned it. Yeah, we were learning a lot about Kings. So many Kings. We only touched World War II when I got the secondary. I don't remember learning that much about Kings, but then I don't really remember much about history in primary school. Let's move on to what I was hoping would be the last part, because we are getting on with time then, is learning in school. We haven't had the time to go into everything. It's crazy the idea that you can cover everything. But London is not the only victim of the Blitz. It's probably the biggest misconception that I can find, as well as the fact that it was instigated to a level. How much you agree with that and where that goes is a whole different discussion. The facts are that Berlin was bombed by Britain before the Blitz commenced. And you have now been tasked with teaching a Blitz lesson. You've now been told, right, you've got to teach a lesson on history, and you chose the Blitz. What does the National Curriculum say about that? What part of this history does the government say these children need to learn? So when it comes to what the government say, the Blitz would fall under the section that's about a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends people's chronological knowledge beyond 1066. And schools can pick any event or anything that happened after that year. And most schools do tend to pick either World War One or World War Two. You think that's because it's easy? Probably. Or because there's more underlying factors involved? I'm not too sure why people would pick that, but I probably would as well. Why? Why would you pick? It's something I'm interested in. It's something I was taught. So a lot of schools have that in their policy to teach that. You kind of don't have a choice. Would you agree that everything we learn in school is half a story? Do you feel like everything we learn, we teach kids in school is the whole story is good enough? I don't know. Where do you sit on that? I think it would give them the basic knowledge. So it does say in the curriculum that they should, in QCH2, people should continue to develop a chronological secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study. So they... It's like an overview. An overview. But specifically picking periods which cover national pride. Yeah. And there's the national pride part that I want to land on a bit. You could cover anything. It's from 1066 specifically. Yes. I like that. I love that marker though. Anything beyond that is too far. We've gone too far. But it's the point of national pride, the films we make, the stories we hear from our grandparents. And the idea that when people say England and Britain during World War II, they say we. A 30-year-old woman would say, we won the war. Did you? Yeah. You weren't there. No one, almost no one alive today had a role in World War II. They're almost all gone now, which is actually quite crazy because I remember when I was in primary school and I was the final veteran of World War I behind me passing away. And we're going to be getting to that level with World War II quite soon. Very soon. Very, very soon. Looking at the national curriculum, most of the stuff that children are taught in Key Stage 2 specifically is ancient history. We did so many Egyptians. So we've got ancient Greece, the Egyptians, the Roman Empire, the Stone Age, the Iron Age. We didn't go that far. We did the Egyptians. Yeah. With this new 2014 curriculum, you do go quite far back. We're old now. Yeah. You left school when that came in. Yeah, I know. I've got the old stuff. Henry VIII from Jack the Ripper for me, please. All I ever want to learn about. God, I hate it. I hate history in school. Yeah. I don't know what the national curriculum says for Key Stage 3 because that's not where I want to be. I'm in primary. All right. So bringing this to a close because we are close to the end now. What do you think the impact of popular culture is? Combining the popular culture, why do we land on these national pride events? Combine it all together, what do you think that creates for a country of people? Everyone's learning the same stuff, roughly. Everyone's watching the same stuff. Everyone's listening to the same stuff. What do you think that does for a nation? It means that everyone, at least most people, are going to know the same things. Especially in schools, until you get really past your GCSEs, you're all learning the same stuff. And it enforces. It's enforced. Obviously, your A-levels still follow the national curriculum. It's when you get to uni, there's no set curriculum. And then you can break away. That's when you start deep diving into certain things. You start learning why. So not just what, you start learning why. A lot of the stuff in the curriculum is what. There are a couple of maybe why's to start looking into in Key Stage 3 and 4, but until then, not really. We didn't have enough time to really get into everything, but the books I've used to go through this are called The Myth of the Blitz by Angus Calder, and then We Can Take It by Mark Connolly. They both discuss the Blitz in a way that is living memory. And then what we attempted to do during the podcast was talk about some misconceptions of it, confronting the idea that we all know the Blitz as if it's something we personally live through, and then come to the reality that it's a more complicated story than it is. Which is essentially what we do in history. And then in the final little part that I wanted to do in the wrap-up is I just wanted to generally ask you, what is real history as opposed to popular history? Not too sure, but I would probably say that popular history is more what we're taught in schools. And because of that, it becomes popular, because that's when people are going to start to learn and gain interest in certain parts of history. So they're just going to know the basic facts. But then true history is when you're starting to look into it more, you're finding out what happened, why it happened, and that sort of thing. That's interesting, because I think what we got to in class was that popular history was films. You know, it's things people will not make up, but stories that are made about something, and podcasts. And this is, we had to create a popular history product, which is what this exact podcast is. So I think that's interesting, because you're coming from a very school-focused perspective, and you haven't watched many, I didn't actually realise this, but you haven't actually watched many World War II films. No, I think a lot of the films I've watched have been World War I, the Cold War. What about books? Very quickly. No books, no books. The Buffalo Lion stands out for me. I've never read a book. I loved that book growing up. It was so warm and comforting. How is that possible? It's a World War II book about a lion and someone that went to war. I've seen Dunkirk. Yes. The Face of D-Day. Yes. So that, along with the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, they are three iconic events that almost no one knows any details about, but they all act like they're masters and they lived it. And that was the point. That was the point of the podcast, to try and confront the national pride of the Blitz, the myth of the Blitz, the construction of it. I think D-Day is definitely another good topic to go into. Yeah. If we were to try and do this again, we would discuss a little bit of D-Day, put up maybe two or three popular parts of D-Day. What do we know about D-Day? How many people? Bring in the film. Yep. How many films are there of it too? I know Dunkirk. We know the Christopher Nolan ones. We saw it at the cinema together. And I think that's really about it because we only have 50 seconds left. Oh no. So thank you very much. Thank you. This was fun. This was interesting. So I'm going to stop it here and that'll be about it. Thanks very much. Thank you.