The Blitz

Why were the major cities of Britain bombed by the Germans in 1940-41?

The Germans did not have only one objective during the bombing raids, they had a set of objectives which were each accomplished by different raids. There were thousands of raids carried out during the war. The main goals of the German raids were to disrupt Industrial production (including that of weapons) so that the British would not be able to reinforce their planes and tanks to defend themselves. The Germans also wanted to close down communications within Britain, which, if successful, would easily bring Britain under the control of the Germans. This is because if the army did not have any means of immediate communications (e.g. telephones or telegraphs) they would not be able to coordinate their defence and therefore fall.

Factories were one of the main targets of bombing because they were an indispensible part of the infrastructure of the country. “Terror bombing” was also carried out in order to suppress the British citizen’s morale, and in order to terrorise them and make them put pressure on the government to withdraw. The civilians would protest against the government and cause turmoil in the society. A government cannot possibly wage war if there is total chaos at home.If people’s homes were destroyed, they would have lost most of their possessions, and if factories were also bombed, Britons would lose their jobs as well as their homes, this would create anger and unrest and eventually put pressure on the British government.Hitler wanted to show that the Germans were more powerful than the British and that if the British continued to war against the Germans, defeat was inevitable. Hitler’s aim was to make Britain surrender; this was because he believed the British to be close to the Germans and also close enough to the Aryan race to be accepted, another reason was that he wanted to secure Western Europe before attacking the Soviet Union, so that he would not have to wage a war on two fronts and so be weakened by it.

The Germans had launched “Operation Eagle” to destroy the RAF and let the Luftwaffe have total air dominance over Britian and allow ships going across the Channel to Britain in “Operation Sealion” to have air support. Operation Sealion’s objective was to invade Britain and subdue them. This failed because the Luftwaffe made a mistake and allowed the RAF to gather their forces and fight them. Nearly every British plane was in the sky trying to fight off the Luftwaffe, but both the British and Germans were stretching themselves, and just in time, the Luftwaffe turned back as the planes did not have sufficient fuel to fight on. This was a major event, which meant that Germany would not be able to gain control of the British skies and so increase the amount of bombing which was already taking place. Hitler had taken a hard blow and had all but lost the Battle of Britain.