In what ways did the government attempt to hide the effects of the blitz from the people of Britain? Between the 7th September 1940 and the summer of 1941 Hitler ordered for a prolonged series of night time raids

would do this by removing text and images from newspapers and instead replace them with government approved articles. The sort of text they would remove would be anything containing looting, children’s deaths, destroyed houses and any other demoralizing texts or images. An example of an image that would have been censored is a photograph of a Catford girls school that was hit by a bomb, it was taken on 21st January 1943 and was removed from newspapers because it would have been very demoralising to have seen the bodies of dead children stacked high, items like this would have been censored, due to the governments laws on censorship whereby everything published in the media had to be approved by the ministry of information. However in an attempt to boost morale the government would also employ Propaganda, as a replacement to the filtered articles, propaganda was where the government placed images and text that would boost morale into the media, the government would use images such as the photograph taken on the 15th September 1940 (see back), the image shows people whose houses had been destroyed in the previous nights bombing, showing the British Grit. This is one such example of propaganda, where the government replaced a previous article with morale boosting articles. Images showing happy people and people determined to beat the Germans and defy Hitler were highly promoted by the government, as a means to boost morale. The government also used a few smaller less used tactics to boost morale, and these tactics tried to put a spin on people’s views on war life and made them believe that it wasn’t so bad after all, one of these things was the Government issued Recipe leaflets, these were important as during the war the government had to issue rations, meaning that goods such as Sugar and other flavourings were difficult to get, so the government issued some new supposedly better meals that had a nice taste and were designed to use very little or none of hard to come-by ingredients such as sugar, milk etc. This was important has diet has a big effect on people’s mood and well-being, so if people were eating healthier, tastier foods then they may have higher morale. Another technique that the government used was the doctoring of photographs, this involved the government dramatising images, one such example is the image of St Paul’s cathedral surrounded by smoke and flame where smoke has been added to make it seem more perilous but the Government has also made the Cathedral very bold and outstanding giving us it an air of defiance, as though the Cathedral itself is defying Hitler. The doctored photographs allowed the government to put a spin on events showing the ‘plucky Brits’. The final techniques that the government used were Radio humorists and Cartoons, the idea was that employing humour would boost the morale of people, however out of these two the radio was much more effective as the radio at the time was a very popular medium for news, as everybody had been issued with one at the start of the war and at the time it would have been considered hi-tech.   So in conclusion the British Government used two main techniques in order to try and hide the effects of the Blitz from the British people, these were censorship and propaganda. The ministry of information was able to use these two techniques to great effect, as by censoring items such as the dead children in the Catford girls school photograph, the government hoped that it would able to protect the public from the more morbid and disturbing information that would have been quite depressing and de-moralising. The ministry of information also used the technique of propaganda to great effect, as they could not completely hide the effects of the war, this technique allowed them to distort the war events by putting a spin on them like the photograph of the people whose houses had been destroyed in an air raid on the previous night (see back), and yet were still happy, determined to pull through and displaying the British grit , the government managed to put a spin on the events, by saying that although the peoples homes had been destroyed it had only made them more determined to continue the struggle against Hitler and defy him, they hoped that censorship coupled with the propaganda would help to boost morale. The ministry of Information also employed recipe leaflets in an attempt to boost morale and show people that life in the war wasn’t so bad; the ministry also employed many radio humourists, as this was a good way of boosting morale. I believe that after employing all these techniques the government was able to maintain British morale quite effectively, the techniques made people feel that the war wouldn’t be so bad and seems to have had a long-lasting effect as many people still believe in the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and the ‘plucky Brits’.