The Blitz | Facts, History, Damage, & Casualties - Britannica

Preparation

The British government had anticipated air attacks on its population centres, and it had predicted catastrophic casualties. A Luftwaffe terror bombing attack on the Spanish city of Guernica (April 26, 1937) during the Spanish Civil War had killed hundreds of civilians and destroyed much of the town. On September 1, 1939, the day World War II began with Germany’s invasion of Poland, the British government implemented a massive evacuation plan. Over the course of three days, some 1.5 million civilians—the overwhelming majority of them children—were transported from urban centres to rural areas that were believed to be safe. The mass relocation, called Operation Pied Piper, was the largest internal migration in British history.

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Authorities quickly implemented plans to protect Londoners from bombs and to house those left homeless by the attacks. The national government also provided funds to local municipalities to construct public air-raid shelters. The Air Raid Precautions (A.R.P.) department distributed more than two million Anderson shelters (named after Sir John Anderson, head of the A.R.P.) to households. These shelters, made of corrugated steel, were designed to be dug into a garden and then covered with dirt. While Anderson shelters offered good protection from bomb fragments and debris, they were cold and damp and generally ill-suited for prolonged occupancy. Because basements, a logical destination in the event of an air raid, were a relative rarity in Britain, the A.R.P. devised the Morrison shelter (named for Home Secretary Herbert Stanley Morrison) as an alternative to the Anderson shelter. This type of shelter—essentially a low steel cage large enough to contain two adults and two small children—was designed to be set up indoors and could serve as a refuge if the building began to collapse.

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During the first year of the war, “behind-the-lines” conditions prevailed in London. In spite of blackouts, ubiquitous shelters and sandbags, the visible effects of mass evacuation, the presence of A.R.P. wardens, and members of the Home Guard drilling in the parks, life went on much as usual. The winter of 1939–40 was severe, but the summer was pleasant, and in their leisure hours Londoners thronged the parks or worked in their gardens. Several theatres and many cinemas were open, and there were even a few sporting events. Apart from one or two false alarms in the early days of the war, no sirens wailed in London until June 25. The sense of relative calm was abruptly shattered in the first week of September 1940, when the war came to London in earnest.