The First Day of the Blitz [Hardcover]

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.

Disappointing, this subject held so much potential but is so pedantic as to be almost un-readable. There is no fault here with the research or the information, just with how its written up and presented.

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 were unprepared although preparations in general had been long underway. The Blitz led to greater social involvement on the part of the British government, the realization that government had a responsibility toward the citizens and the growth of the Welfare State. Here it all seems to have been swept into the memory hole. We made a few new appointments and held congressional hearings but I do not know of any major changes in our disaster apparatus, and I am a part of it being a government meteorologist. This is in keeping with our national character as was that of Londoners. They kept a stiff upper lip while muddling through and then afterwards quietly saw to it that matters were rectified. Here we made a big to-do, lots of noise, and then promptly forgot about it as though it were a 60-second commercial on our televisions.

I enjoy the new style of first-person history and I recommend the book.