Q1) Why did the Germans bomb the major cities of Britain in 1940-1941?

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Q1) Why did the Germans bomb the major cities of Britain in 1940-1941?

While the Munich Crisis of September 1938 prepared Britain for war, the violation of the Munich Agreement in March 1939 when Hitler occupied the entire Czechoslovakia and   Britain’s defensive alliances with Romania and Poland, resulted in Britain declaring war against Germany on 3 September, 1939 after Germany invaded Poland on 1st September, 1939 following the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 24th August, 1939.

Initially, Hitler put Britain into complacency during the “phoney war” when Germany fully focused its attention on annexing Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France by successfully using the tactics of Blitzkrieg. The Battle of Dunkirk in June 1940 and the fall of France on 21 June, 1940 brought the Germans to the shores of Britain.

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Buoyed by hitherto easy success and having failed to win Britain as a friend, Hitler turned his attention now on Britain and launched an attack on 1 July, 1940 when 617 fighters escorted by 348 bombers crossed the Channel and dropped bombs on The London Docks, the Woolwich Arsenal and the armament factories at Silvertown. He knew that to win the war against Britain he had to weaken the superior British naval force by crippling the RAF, which would make their ports, dockyards and navy vulnerable to attacks by German planes. Hence, he started “Operation Sealion” by bombing ...

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