Why did hitler bomb british cities?

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The Blitz:

Why did Hitler bomb British cities?

Part way through the Second World War Hitler occupied nearly all of   Europe, including France. He decided to take Britain next. His first plan failed. So he resorted to the blitz.

The blitz was the constant bombing of major cities in Britain, along with other targets such as food and railways. But this wasn’t Hitler’s ideal way to take Britain. But to understand why this and everything else previously occurred, we need to go back to the end of the First World War, when the allied countries, Italy, America, France, Britain and Belgium put together the treaty of Versailles. This treaty blamed Germany for the war, and made them pay compensation to the allied countries for the cost and damages expenses of the war. Their army was reduced to 100,000 men and 10% of their land was taken away. Soon after the end of the war came the Wall Street crash, this came as a result of the treaty of Versailles. The German people were in a mess, as was their country. They were looking for a strong leader who felt the same way as they did, and would promise them improvement. Hitler fitted the bill. In 1933 Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, and from then on he worked solely for war. He even went behind the backs of the allies to do so. He wanted to regain the land that had been taken from them, and he wanted to take extra to make room for his “perfect race.” So, in short, he built an army and marched to war. Hitler developed a tactic known as ‘Blitzkrieg’ which means ‘lightning war’. This was a two way attack that surprised the enemy into submission. He would bomb the city he was advancing on at the same time as advancing on foot, then moving onto the next target very quickly. This resulted in a large amount of Europe being taken very quickly with these tactics. But the beginning of the Second World War was only signalled when Hitler decided to invade Poland, as Poland was allied with both France and Britain. The rest of Europe soon fell to the Germans, and now only two countries remained to be taken; Britain and Russia. Hitler chose Britain, as he had already made an agreement with Russia that stated that they would not attack each other. This meant that Hitler would only be attacking one country at once as Russia would not attack, just so long as he didn’t invade them.

Hitler’s approach to invading Britain was slightly different to his approach with the rest of Europe, as the British channel separated Britain from him. So he decided to put into action ‘operation sea lion’. Operation sea lion required the Luftwaffe to bomb the British air bases, thereby gaining air superiority, and thus being able to cross the British channel safely. And so ‘The Battle of Britain’ began. Over a period the Luftwaffe were defeated, due partly to the superiority of the British aircraft, such as the supermaire spitfire and the hawker hurricane. The invention of radar also played a big part, as it allowed British aircraft to see the Luftwaffe in advance. This forced Hitler to change his tactics and so he decided to use ‘the blitz’. On the 7th of September 1940 the continuous bombing of all major cities and some other targets began. On the first night alone over 2000 died or suffered from injuries. By doing this, Hitler aimed to shock Britain into surrender, as he believed that Britain didn’t want a war. So his targets were designed to cause as much damage and unrest as possible, aiming for densely populated areas, such as cities, (but especially ones with ports) food supplies and factories. The blitz only stopped after the d-day landings, so Britain was bombed for 8 months. In which time many children had been evacuated, gas masks handed out, shelters had become many people’s second homes, and 40,000 men, women and children had died. 2 million were homeless.

        In bombing Britain, Hitler concentrated on several targets. A port, railways, food supplies, factories, etc. any city by the sea was heavily targeted, as they had every single one of the above. Coventry, Plymouth and Bristol were three heavily targeted cities. Coventry was bombed because it was the centre of Britain's arms trade and machining industry. As it was quite a small city, the 450 German bombers in the raid caused enormous damage, totally demolishing the majority of the city centre. 554 people were killed and 865 were seriously injured. ’30,000 fire bombs fell’ cut from the daily verald. This counter propaganda was released along with ‘RAF Strikes Berlin’ and ‘Coventry, Not a mortal blow’. 450 bombers, and yet the factories were back to full production in only 6 weeks. Several other major attacks on Coventry took place, such as the one on November 14 1940. On this day, the Luftwaffe had pulled all the stops out. The raid was made by 515 German bombers, two thirds from Luftwaffe 3 and the rest from the pathfinders of Kampfgruppe 100. The attack, code-named Operation Moonlight Sonata, was intended to undermine Coventry's ability to supply the Royal Air Force and the British Army by demolishing factories and industrial infrastructure, although it was clear that the damage to the city, including monuments and residential areas, would be considerable. The initial wave was of 13 specially modified Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgruppe 100, which were equipped with X-Gerät navigational devices, accurately dropping marker flares at 19:20. The British and the Germans were fighting the Battle of the Beams and on this night the British failed to fully disrupt the X-Gerät signals. However, the cathedral was heavily bombed, which enticed Britain to retaliate by bombing Berlin, a very historical city in Germany. Plymouth was one of the United Kingdom's principal naval dockyards. The city was extensively blitzed during the Second World War, to the extent that approximately twice the amount of housing stock that existed prior to the war was destroyed during it (as a consequence of rebuilt houses being successively hit). Although the dockyards were the principal targets, civilian casualties were inevitably very high. The first bomb fell on the city on Saturday 6 July 1940 at Swilly, killing 3 people. The last attack came on 30 April 1944. Altogether 1,172 people were killed and 3,269 people were injured - these figures do not include the many service casualties. At one point the population fell from 220,000, at the start of the conflict, to 127,000. Probably the worst single raid of the blitz was on a central area of the town called Portland Square. On the evening of the 22 April 1941 the communal air raid shelter took a direct hit, killing 70 people. As a result of one of the first raids, 26 people were killed, 60 houses demolished, 400 houses seriously damages and 2,000 slightly damaged. The city’s electricity was restored in the afternoon, but gas was not available until 3 weeks later. After raids, locals teamed together and sang the national anthem as they dug out survivors. As this helped maintain and lift moral, it was strongly encouraged. On Monday 6th January meat rations were reduced from1s 10d to 1s 6d. Then on the Thursday of the same week, their majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited Plymouth and toured the service establishments. Then, the very next day, Mr Winston Churchill visited Plymouth and Britain's reconstruction chief recommended they ‘plan boldly, and plan now!’

        To conclude, my answer to the question ‘why did Hitler bomb British cities?’ is Hitler bombed Britain to try and force them into surrender. Because he couldn’t risk sending his fleet across the British channel he tried to take out our air bases, but because he failed to gain air superiority he changed tackics. He was hoping that the British civilians could be so demoralised by the relentless dropping of bombs that they would force Churchill to surrender. But he failed.

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What effect did the blitz have on Britain?

In the summer of 1939, the British government were making plans. Hitler was still making threats and war seemed imminent. And so they began to plan for the event of war, majoring on air defences. And so, when the attacks did come, the nation was prepared.

Taking into account that aerial attacks would, undoubtedly kill many civilians, the government began to evacuate children out of the cities, thereby protecting the future generations. Many young children were evacuated prior to the first bombings. The government had portrayed the idea that when ‘your’ children ...

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