Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the German's in 1940-41?

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Sarah Higgs

11.4

29th September

  1. Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the German’s in 1940-41?

The Blitz was actually derived from the German word Blitzkrieg, which means “lightning war”. The Blitzkrieg was when the German’s attacked from both land (tankers) and air (fighter planes). The lightning war itself was actually when Hitler overtook most of Western Europe between April and June of 1940, including France, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg. The Blitz was the bombing attack from the German’s on England’s major cities, starting on the 7th September 1940, and continued almost every night for seven long months. Hitler had one aim for the Blitz, which was to force the British to surrender to him, as most of Europe had already done so.

He had three reasons for choosing bombing. The first of those reasons was that he felt that bombing the people of Britain would break the British morale, hopefully driving the British people to force the government to surrender to the German’s. After the Battle of Britain failed, which was an attack from the German’s to try and defeat the British Air Force, they realised that if they stood any chance of defeating Britain, then they would need to change their tactics; hence the Blitz. Between July and September 1940, Britain suffered air attacks, mainly on military targets, although this was not part of the Blitz because they occurred during the day. In connection to this, after “Operation Sealion”, an attempt to invade Britain using land and air forces in September 1940, was postponed by Hitler due to the failure of the Battle of Britain, he again needed to alter the direction he was heading in order to be triumphant. In fact, the German generals completely opposed Hitler’s ideas of invasion due to the fact that many of the German ships had been lost during prior invasions into Norway. These ships would have been needed to travel land armies across from Germany to Britain, although the people of Britain didn’t know that they didn’t exist. During the Blitz, Hitler attacked specific areas and targets in Britain, such as the major cities of Britain (London, Birmingham, Manchester, etc), railways lines, ports, military targets, etc. His intention was to both wipe out the major cities of Britain and to destroy British industry, again in the hope that it would force the British to surrender out of both desperation and the lack of military resources.  

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Hitler was aware that to defeat the British, he needed to assistance from the British. After conquering most of Western Europe he was not expecting such a great opponent in Britain, and so creating an environment where the British people would want to surrender seemed to most reasonable idea. His logic in these attacks to come was that if the British people witnessed their homes destroyed and their loved ones killed, then they would surely force the government to come to terms with Hitler’s demands. Although he claimed that his targets were industrial areas and places where weapons were ...

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