'The impression that the British faced the blitz with courage and unity is a myth.' Use the sources, and your own knowledge to explain whether you agree with this statement.

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Study all the sources and use your own knowledge.

‘The impression that the British faced the blitz with courage and unity is a myth.’

Use the sources, and your own knowledge. To explain whether you agree with this statement.

In this question I am asked if I agree or disagree with the statement ‘The impression that the British faced the blitz with courage and unity is a myth’ by using the sources and my own knowledge. I disagree with this statement to a certain extent because there is many useful sources telling me how well the British people worked together as a nation against Germany. However there are a few sources that tell me how the British people were panicking and the government was loosing control of the people.

The Blitz was on the 7/9/1940 the German air force had bombed the main places like east London. The main aims of the Blitz were to break the morale of the British people by destroying their homes and to destroy transport and industry. The effects of the Blitz were blackouts, bombings, people dieing, evacuation and gas masks. The blitz was period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. For the next consecutive 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night. Residents ran to shelters wherever they could find it and many fled to the Underground stations. Londoners and the world were introduced to a new weapon of terror and destruction in the arsenal of twentieth century warfare. The Blitz ended on May 11, 1941 when Hitler called off the raids in order to move his bombers east in preparation for Germany's invasion of Russia.

Source A is a book from ‘Waiting For The All Clear’ to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the blitz. This tells us information about the blitz and how the British people faced it with courage. This source also tells us that British people were all involved together and that the British did not have to be in ‘uniforms to be heroes’. This shows the whole nation worked together and didn’t show any cowardice towards Germans. The British people had also kept their ‘sense of humour’. This suggest although people were scared of the bombings they had high morale and attitude. This source obviously disagrees with the statement. However this source is one sided because it’s written to ‘celebrate’ the blitz. This shows that this source is biased. They don’t tell us about the bombings and peoples deaths. Also it was written in ‘1990’ fifty years after the war, which tells us there are no facts about the blitz and is only for memories. This means we cant trust this source to tell us about the Blitz.

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Source B is a picture taken at the time of the blitz dated 21 January 1943, catford girls school was hit and children were killed. I can infer that many other buildings were destroyed.  This shows 3 ARP wardens showing bravery by picking up dead bodies of young children in a bombed area. I can infer that the government didn’t deal well with the evacuation of children. APR wardens (air-raid-precautions) risked their lives to save others by getting people out of the ruins this shows a lot of courage. Most of them were volunteers, doing this work ...

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