My grandmother was a little girl in London during the blitz. One of the first things I learned about it was that at one point my great-grandfather, then a police officer, had seen a child's hand sticking out from under some rubble, and went to pull the child out - but the arm simply came away in his grip. He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards. My great-grandmother once felt the need to take her daughter aside and tell her that if there was a situation where it was a choice, she would save her husband and not her children, so my grandmother needed to be ready to fend for herself. 'Cases of neurosis' may not have been diagnosed and attributed to air raids at the time, but just by looking at my own family I'm pretty sure that's just because anybody who was up and walking was considered 'fine' and not because of a genuine lack of lasting trauma among the population.
@sweetlorikeet Definitely. Also what a horrible and traumatizing thing to say to a small child. I wonder what her thinking behind that decision was. "He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards." : yeah sudden changes in personality are either the result or illness or (when no illness is present) trauma.
My grandmother was a little girl in Hamburg when the allied bombers came. She doesn't really tell much about it, as it is a hurtful memory. I hope children never have to experience something like this again.
My mum was born in 33 in South London. Her and her sisters were evacuated a number of times but eventually stayed at home. They stopped going dow the shelters because they were so bad. They slept in one room so if a bomb hit them they would all go together.
Funnily enough my mother was born in 1933 in south east London. She had two younger brothers, they were moved to a place i spent 13 years in outside London to the south, and returned home. They had an anderson shelter in the bottom of their garden. Survived the war. But as she lived on what would have been a flight path to the docks, they had a fair few stray bombs and one tkme a close near miss when a German fighter flew over her school did nit touch it, and then flew over a boys school down the road and fired at the kids at play during their lunch break.
I had the same experience with tornado shelters in Oklahoma sit in there with a neighborhoods worth of crying kids no thanks I’ll take the shrieking winds and sideways rain
I'm on the autism spectrum, thankfully not non-verbal, but still enough to have great difficulty understanding the bonds in the family unit, but even through that Indiscrepancy in my brain functions, I would still choose to be with all my immediate family should we we be faced with the threat if imminent death.
@@mistersir3020 "more nuanced". Comparative. Mainstream perception of events will always be simplified and skewed. Doesn't mean you can't improve it at all by offering more nuanced analysis to the mainstream public.
My paternal Great Grandfather was a Canadian (Well, Newfoundlander at the time, NFLD hadn't joined Confederation yet) Merchant Marine (An Engineers Mate) and between 1939 and 1943 made 84 crossings and survived two sinkings by U-Boat. My maternal Great Grandmother, a British Ex-pat who emigrated to the US after the war, lived through the Blitz, and stories of how her millinery shop in the east end was looted and on another night, narrowly survived one air raid by running to a tube station, are still shared at family gatherings today, years after her death. This is one Canadian who was taught the truth about what happened in WWII, not in school, but by those that lived through it.
My grandmother was moved *to* London and was convinced the "Blitz Spirit" shit was accounts of bombings in other parts of Britain retold in London. Not that she didn't have stories of good happenings and people pulling together in London but my extended family still has bad views of Londoners to this day because of the difference in stories we heard from there compared to other places.
"Kitty Vitty" or "Qwy-dah Vie-dah"? My branch of folks from pre-Canadian Confederation Nfld were "over there" too. Unfortunately they wouldn't talk about that part of their lives. But I remember when planes were diverted to Gander on 9/11, several older family members + friends referenced Blitz spirit, which after watching this video makes me wonder even more, bc in hindsight it's clear the events brought up some buried recollections.
The only thing my grandfather would tell me about the blitz was that it became painfully boring after a while, he just wanted a nights sleep without the air raid going off I think after the lockdowns I understand him, the end of the world is slow, painful and we eventually all just get used to it. I know he was an evacuee but he would never speak about it, and it all got so awful that his mother moved the family back to Ireland.
My Nana said she spent countless hours at cat's cradle because you could play it in a dark shelter, and it was easy enough to always have a piece of yarn or string about you in case the sirens went off. One time I was watching a documentary with her, and they played the sound of a V1 'doodlebug' bomb. She went paper white and started shaking, she tried so hard to recover her equilibrium in front of me but she was tremulous for hours afterwards.
@@sweetlorikeet It is really strange and scary how history repeats itself now. I can undertstand very well how your grandma felt. I am scared of drums because they remind me of rockets exploding; my good friend finally managed to get a small bus tour after living in constantly bombed Kyiv and had a half-an-hour panic attack when she heard fireworks nearby.
My mum was a London teen in WW2. COVID came along. No fuss, got her jabs and wore a mask. The Luftwaffe didn't get her at 16 so she wasn't going to let a virus get her at 96! As ever, no grumbles, kept calm and still carrying on.
my great grandfather had poor eyesight (something we have all since inherited, thanks grandpa) so he wasn’t drafted into the war. however, he was allowed to be a firefighter during the war. the blitz caused him to see horrors he’d never seen before. my great grandmother and their daughter (my great aunt) were evacuated, but he stayed and saw multiple people who’d refused to leave their houses crushed from bombs in their homes, often trapped in their bedrooms. children, babies, parents all dead. it was extremely harrowing for him. very occasionally he would find live children with deceased parents and he would always choose to adopt them. despite the horrors he had seen, he remained just as kind and gentle as he had always been. when my grandpa was born in 1945, he grew up around multiple adopted siblings which he is still close to. one of them named lillian i met, and she was still afraid of loud noises even in her old age before she passed. balloons terrified her. my great grandfather’s father was a jewish immigrant from lithuania who had escaped during the pogroms so they grew up in abject poverty. after the war finished he became a barber and used to cut my great grandma’s hair- she still wore finger waves into the 1960s because that was the only style he knew how to do on women lol. im very proud of him and to be his descendent.
I’m a history teacher in England but I’m Spanish and have had a very continental European history training in Spain and France. Some of these nationalistic topics are difficult for me because as some of the narrative sounds very propagandistic, but I want to be respectful as an outsider. I’m finding your videos incredibly useful to inform me for my lessons and make sense of my reads. Thanks so much for your amazing videos and all of the sources that you always add too and that allow me to do further reading on the topics. You’re amazing, thanks so much.
I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state. If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely ( google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
@@matthewclaridge8063 While I don't disagree there would be those willing to be puppets. There is plenty of evidence they were in a extreme minority. When you know (as I do) that my uncle (inlaw) who grew up in London during the Blitz (he was 8) in the East end was taught by his father (along with all of his siblings) how to use hand grenades. Along with all the other kids in all the neighbouring houses. Every house have several boxes of grenades the father's brought home from working in the munitions factories. They had no intention of surrendering to the Nazis. They were going to go down fighting as both a family and a neighbourhood. That is just once example I know of. The Blitz spirit (propaganda version) did not really exist in my opinion, but that does not mean there was not a grain of truth to it (I believe there was, just nowhere universal as the typical version as it as).
@@matthewclaridge8063 uhhhh where on earth do you get the idea that the upper class and nobility preferred a fascist state to a “true democracy”??? Please, let’s tone down some of this ‘rich man bad/autocratic/fascism’ nonsense
I've seen videos about Mosely and I also read about him. His wife was upper class and a fascist enthusiast. Yes there were some British upper class individuals who were sympathetic to fascism.
This is so interesting! I'm Dutch, and as a child I always heard stories of my grandfather 's heroic fighting in resistance groups. Now that me and my dad are actually doing the research, we're finding out that it was much more about helping people in hiding and avoiding German labour drafting then actually fighting the occupation. It wasn't really about the Dutch resistance fighters being morally against the Germans, they were just helping people out who were getting screwed by them.
Interesting. My mother lived through the blitz in Belfast, which occurred over a much shorter period. I think she told me the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of her siblings and relatives old enough to serve served in WWII save an older sister, who served by making military uniforms. She talked about sheltering a few times and how people pulled together (yes, they sang, etc.)-perhaps they, not having endured so much for so long, maintained their spirits. She put out incendiary bomb on the roof of her home because her father was disabled and her mother too heavy to climb the ladder to throw sand on the bomb. She reported walking home past a bombed out area and seeing a woman’s head and another time seeing a pair of women’s shoes as if they had been set together in a pile of rubbish on purpose. When she told the last two stories you could see the trauma on her face. 100,000 people were left homeless after one of the bombings and her family took in a couple-the couple they took in later stripped the family home of all of their possessions when she and her mom and dad went on holiday, which included all of the family photos. She later saw a photo of herself in a pawn shop window. She ended up with PTSD from the sound of the bombs and after moving to the US, would hide in the closet every time there was an electrical storm. No one in our family takes sugar in our tea as a left over of our parents’ given their sugar ration to their parents during the war.
my great grandfather grew up during the blitz in Belfast too. he had a few stories about nearly being bombed i just cant remember them off the top of my head.
The education in the UK is very carefully curated parts of history that can be made to portray Brits as being victors, survivors, and defenders, never showing we have instigated wars, stole from other countries both minerals and money, and enslaved people. I'd love to see the way we teach history improved to include true accounts of events and not hide the bad stuff we have done.
@@emmarainbow9557 I'm rather ashamed of our past, but nothing like the shame of leaving school realising how carefully we were taught about success and how wonderful we are, not how we raped and pillaged our way through the world and overthrew governments to steal assets and minerals, still doing it today under the guise of fighting terrorists and people with WMD. When we do learn about these things you realise how helpless you are to do anything about it. Ask a child who the terrorists are and they might tell you it's the people who bombed their town, and if that child is the from certain parts of the world we are the terrorists. But you'll never hear this in school, just a carefully whitewashed history.
I understand that this narrative (because that is what it is) is important to you, but you have extrapolated pretty far from the original video, in order to make your point. The lesson we should be drawing from this is not the generic modern obsession with the evils of empire, or the purported rewriting of history to obscure them, but the fact that, among the instances of heroism, bravery, and communal spirit, you will always find cowardice, selfishness, and hatred, no matter how rose-tinted your history books. This is not peculiar to the British, or the Blitz, and neither is it unexpected, or even unethical, not to loudly trumpet it, either in classrooms or books, decades later. It is, rather banally, just human nature, and it happens just as much now as it did 80 years ago. People, unfortunately, have a history of behaving horribly to each other, and until we can reverse millions of years of evolution, they will continue to do so.
Almost every nation was done the same or worse. Britain ended slavery. We fostered the age of industry and though our empire brought it to every corner of the globe. Places like India for the first time in thousands of years where United and free from corruption and division (something they can’t claim to have today), places in Africa saw prosperity and quality of life they had never seen before and many places wish they where still a colony like Guyana. We also taxed (perhaps you prefer the term stole) we stated wars for our own benefit and we indeed benefited from slavery. But as someone who has claimed to have learned the truth that schools hid from us, perhaps you will be willing have an open mind to the truth of our world. Do not be ashamed of our history, rejoice in it. For you owe it the luxury’s you have today and ultimately the empire certainly did more good then bad to the world, whether she is underappreciated or not.
My grandmother lived in London through the blitz. She said she didn't feel the spirit in the way it was portrayed, she was constantly terrified and saw some horrific sights. But she did say there was a great sense of community in her local area (Putney) and people helped one another - everyone was scared, so people had empathy for one another. But there were also times when it was not like that, and it was everyone for themselves, especially in the earlier days when there was more panic. She worked in a munitions factory manufacturing bullets, and said there was a lot of camaraderie amongst the workers, but not because of "high morale" - because everyone was scared, stressed, missing loved ones, uncertain about the future, and traumatised. She was certainly traumatised herself. She didn't speak about it until she reached 90 years of age. I was privileged enough to have a full conversation with her about it (initiated and driven by her, I was scared to push her too far...) Thank you for this ❤️
I'm a teacher in Canada. Born and raised Canadian. Where I teach, we get a lot of students who have emigrated from the U.K to here, especially it seems from metropolitan areas such as London, Manchester or Birmingham (West Midlands). I am shocked that they have no idea that Canadians fought in WWII !!!
American here, former history teacher. When I taught kids about how, during D-Day as the USA was getting slaughtered at Omaha Beach, the Canadians had already cleared their beach so they offered to come help out, but the American Army refused all help so they wouldn't look weak (the US Army was extremely self-conscious in the face of the Marines getting all the glory in the Pacific Theater, declaring Europe was THEIRS and "no Marine shall set foot on European soil") I was amused as the teens shouted out, "Wait, CANADA was in the war too???" Ooh boy, they were in for a lesson!
A friend told me that he went from the US to Canada before 1940 so he could enlist to fight as he wasn’t sure the US would join the fight. That’s how I learned about the Canadian contribution.
@@nickdanger3802 I tried to find which book I read that in. I'm going to guess it's not one I own, but one I checked out. It was around 2014-19, I was doing a lot of research during those years into 1944 France. I even tried to search online, but it's not the sort of story Americans like to admit happened. Heck, I learned from my dad (a Marine) about the Army at Omaha Beach turning down an offer of help from the Marines on the ships, who tried to demand to go ashore and take the lead as they saw the chaos getting men killed. George Marshall declared that no Marine shall set foot on European soil as long as he was in charge, because they felt the Marines were getting too much of the glory in the Pacific. So the Army refused help from the Marines and the other Allies and would rather have 2400 dead than swallow their pride and ask for aid. (Okay, that last bit is kinda unfair, they had to keep up appearances for morale back home. The war was NOT popular, and many Americans felt we shouldn't bother with Europe. Many like Charles Lindbergh supported a truce with Hitler.)
When I was at school in the seventies, I was told in my English book, that Great Britain stood alone against Germany for a whole year (? can't remember the time given) - and I thought, they were tough. I was flabbergasted when I found out much later that, lo and behold, a significant part of the planet stood by their side and helped with men power and goods. So yes, propaganda going strong there!
I love the Parallel between the blitz and lockdown you show because in my opinion the best way to learn about historical events is comparing them to stuff that happens in modern day
My father was born in Kent and was sent to Wales as a young boy! He was lucky because he went to live with a district nurse. His younger brother had an awful time the people took away his clothes and he wasn’t fed properly! Eventually my grandmother took him home! My father didn’t see his parents for five years! Sadly he never talked about his experiences - he was so traumatised!!!
One of your videos just got shared on Reddit. I'm happy to discover you as a result, and your speaking style and explanations are wonderful. Subscribed to this channel and Minuteknowledge too! This documentary is enlightening. The writers of history love to lath and plaster over the actual circumstances. The parallels with our current situation (minus the shoveling up of neighbours) show that people really aren't that different in their selfishness from then until now.
I remember phoning my Dad early on during lockdown, "I keep hearing about the 'great British blitz spirit". You lived through the war Dad. When the German bombers turned up, did people rush out and buy up as many toilet rolls as they could find?" He informed me that they did not.
There was lots of talk about the run on toilet paper at the start of the pandemic, and how previous generations would be outraged, but every country in WW2 had rationing in effect, as far as i know. They knew they couldn't leave it up to people's sense if duty, to only buy the prescribed amount of things. You had to have a ration card. Everything but the most common items, would be stripped from the shelves, without rationing. It's similar to the economic principle Tragedy Of The Commons.
Thank you for mentioning the colonies! I am currently studying the Life in the UK in order to become a British citizen and am on the part how "The British army have defeated the Japanese at Burma", where in reality it was Nigerians. As part-Nigerian, that made me quite annoyed to be fair.
@@wingnut71 Sure, but god forbid anyone recognize that the soldiers could also be Nigerian... Not every country or individual under British rule was proud to be a colony
British is not an ethnic group. British simply means part of the British empire. Nigerians were part of the British empire, and it was because of British logistics, training, and politics that those Nigerians ever saw combat outside their own borders.
Seeing as Canadian forces were often mentioned I agree it would have been logical AND good for moral to mention other specific peoples of the Empire/Commonwealth.
Never heard this side of The Blitz. This seems like a more realistic depiction of what was really going on. Loved you getting into character, added to the story. I was surprised by your reaction to T and defaulting to a monster, those thing tear me up! ( coffee for me)
I’m Australian. Two of my great uncles were lost in the war. My grandfather survived, but not for long. Britain didn’t stand alone. We do have a similar lionisation of this time, though. Hearing the stories from my grandmother have a much clearer picture of the truth. How could moral have been high when their world was falling apart and, even in far Australia, the war was cutting holes in families while old prejudices suddenly seemed even more important. You don’t see people who lived it hankering for that time. If it was so rosy surely they would.
Us Australian's gave so much. My Grandfather point-blank refused to talk about the war, and it wasn't until after he died that we found out he had received 2 medals. His Sister married 'her boy' the day of his 18th birthday and he joined up the next day and didn't come back. She never remarried.
I attended a boarding school in East Anglia for a year in 1988-89, and based on my experiences there, I'm not at all surprised. The casual xenophobic, ablist, classist, and other discriminatory cruelty, combined with a weird sense of national superiority, I experienced and witnessed daily still baffles me to date.
From my point of view, you hear all those stories about the British being multiculti, openmided, interested in world cultures, knowledgeable, .... and then you find out the truth. And the "classiness" which you do not expect because of the mixture of US and British E. background most foreigners get with E. You need some time and strong will to see it and understand the Brits' POV and not starting to hate them. And being in a boarding school which means among kids that person must have got the essence of the worst.
The tea violation is the way of making tea I assume? I watched you preparing it and thought "this must taste like tar with milk, who would want to drink st like this?" well, you didn't, obviously 😁
Tea bags weren't a thing back then, of course. It was LEAF TEA wot won the War!! And its demise is the sole cause of our subsequent decline and let no-one tell you otherwise!
So relatable! Thanks! My grandmother, in rural Leicestershire, took in a Jewish girl and her young son from Berlin. She had aunt in London, hence she gained entry, but the aunt wouldn't house her, and come the blitz, they were evacuated.
I was taught about the war like you were, This is an interesting video. . . Thanks for putting the parallels on there too about todays current situations of the world.
Mum keeps telling me things were better during her childhood - I keep reminding her bombs were dropping (at least three of her neighbours killed on first air raid on London and more subsequent, while she didnt have official evacuation - her dad was too old for war duties (+injured in WW1) but worked on a road making gang and they were sent to Cornwall to lay aircraft runways etc in prep for D-Day, her mum and her went down too for what should have been a two week visit . they stayed for six months and mum was a pupil teacher to younger evacuees from east london, so she never got a school leaving certificate !.
My great grandmother lived through both world wars. She was in her 20's during the second world war, and would tell me of how bad the bombing in Bristol was. I remember one time she told me a tale of the one time there was a air raid, her husband wanted to go to the local comunity shelter, but she was a bit nervous about going. So they took sheler else where. She then told of how the shelter had a direct hit, and nealy all the inhabitants perrished. She said they managed to get ahold of a anderson shelter, and set it up at the bottom of their guarden after that.
As a German I really don't know how different or alike the experiences of people were on these two opposing and certainly ideologically very different sides of the war, but living through having your city bombed every night must have been traumatic for the people on either side. My dad used to work in a nursery home and he told me of some old people who still get traumatic flashbacks every time they hear a siren or a firework. Sadly the bombing of cities, especially Dresden, far too often gets utilized by right wing extremists and Nazis to make some kind of claim that we were the victims after all.
Do you know in which city he was working? Of course, we are all people; no matter whether we are British, German, Chinese or whatever, our responses to crisis are very similar. It is a uniting factor for humanity in a way. It is always a shame when a terrible historical event, like the bombing of Dresden or any other place, gets hijacked by political extremists and other unsavoury groups. But I find it beautiful that the new cross on top of the rebuilt Frauenkirche was given to Dresden by the British and that Dresden and Coventry are twin cities.
There was a Polish woman that worked for my parents in the 80s. Whenever there was a big thunderstorm she had to leave due to PTSD from shelling she experienced asva child during the war.
I'm American but my mother had a wonderful older married couple from the UK that went to church with us and through them and their stories I learned about the Blitz and the War long before I learned about it in school. I also learned about tea time which I loved. I am a historian myself now, I was originally in law enforcement but I'm not being shot at now but I credit the stories of Britain in the War with what I became.
My goodness, what a little gem your channel is! Your discussions about history are very unique and insightful. I shall be binge watching all your videos tonight! As for the topic of this video, I have read in various history books little hints that the reality of the blitz was very different. The maintaining of class bondages was very true, which is why the bombing of Buckingham Palace was such a PR win for the King. The Queen famously said "I can now look the east end in the face".
Im a Coventarian who walks past the bombed-out ruins of our cathedral practically every day. The British govt's catastrophic failures in preparing for war enabled so much more destruction than fascist bombers could have inflicted on a prepared country One example: Demands in pre and early war to move water hydrants below ground were routinely ignored by British govt who had more than enough manpower to carry out the work. So when the Germans bombed and burned cities, these 4ft-tall hydrants were instantly knocked out and left firefighters with little chance in controlling fires that claimed horrifying amounts of historic wooden buildings, preciously few of which still survive today in Coventry I spoke to an 83yo woman at a 75th anniversary ceremony outside the cathedral in Nov 2015 who had actually been in the cellar of the cathedral when it went up in flames. Afterwards she fled to a cellar in a nearby shop which wasnt even a public shelter but allowed by the shop owner. The emotion in her eyes was so intimate and real Im so glad ppl are finally looking past the leftover propagandistic narratives that are used to reinforce modern nationalism. Best vid on this topic that I've yet seen. Blessed
just thinking the same thing. An excellent series, showing some of the less “honorable” behavior that happened routinely, especially the differences between the classes in how they were affected by the war.
My great grandmother was a teen in the blitz, her house was bombed out twice as it was near Fulham gas works, she was moved to the Leeds, where she was a land girl later on. Then she was posted to the South Wales, thats how she met my great grandfather. An excellent video as always
I grew up on war stories from my Dad who was 10 at the outset of the war. He grew up in Derby and was camping with his class and saw Derby bombed, went to school part time via 'shrapnel alley' (forbidden obviously), was dragged into the shelter because he was hanging round outside watching dog fights in the sky. There were lots of child centric stories which made war sound terribly exciting to me. My Mum had quite considerable anxiety which we managed as a family and I later understood her to have had PTSD. All she said was listening to the china rattling in the kitchen above the shelter, and once she mentioned empty chairs at school after a bad raid.
There are so many things I love about this video! 😍 First, the dedication to a truthful representation. Also, the careful exploration of nuance. The way you connected it to current events. THE FUN of it. You rock, J Draper!
Very brave intro, half expected the comments to go "how dare you imagine our plight of having to wear masks to a time where people had no choice" unironically. Also, a channel celebrating British history and admitting tea is not your cup of tea? Heroic.
On the general theme of war-time spirit, there is a book that I read a few years ago that I still think about often. It's called "War's Unwomanly Face" by Svetlana Alexievich, and it is a collection of first-hand accounts of women who were fighting on the Eastern Front in WWII (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). The author won a Nobel Prize for her work. The accounts range from heroic to mundane to heartshattering (heartbreaking didn't seem strong enough a term). It is well worth a read, though, proceed with EXTREME caution because the book is very traumatizing. I also feel like we need more books like that, with firsthand accounts of major events in history, not just the official government stories.
I remember my Nan talking about a family friend that came back from a shelter to find not only their home was bombed, but the place had been looted. Her war experience was odd as she travelled around the country with her Brother (an Air Duct engineer) who was shuffled around the country to sort out ventilation in factories (because without it, cloth mills go boom! No Luftwaffe needed). Even so, like her sisters, the nervous anxiety turned her to smoking.
@@kahkah1986 Pretty much so, Grandad was sore that his Father was an abusive drunk, only after his fathers death did he find out his fathers health/lungs were wrecked by Gas in the German Spring offensive of 1918 and came back "wrong" and took to drink. Other family were convinced that "the gas killed him, just took almost 20 years to finish the job". I've worked with the homeless and sooo many of the known drug addicts/alcoholics turned out to have previously undiagnosed mental issues, ADHD or Asperger's and it really looks like most of them were self medicating.
My Nan lived in Poplar, (Grandad worked on the Docks) and she was advised to take up smoking by her doctor to help with the stress! May not have been diagnosed with PTSD etc but a lot of that generation seemed to 🎉smoke or drink themselves to death 😔
Great video. In Germany we have a similar story concerning the months after the 2nd world war ended. It is told, that Germany was re-built by the Trümmerfrauen, by women, who worked in the rubble of destroyed cities to manually clean brick of mortar for re-use. There is a historical truth to this, as this did happen in Berlin for a short period. But they mostly didn't do it on their own accord - they were recruited by the Allied forces as workers. They were paid for their work. The vast majority of the rubble however was removed by male workers using heavy duty machines. The picture of the Trümmerfrau was often used for political reasons. To show how heroic female workers (and working mothers) are in the former DDR. To show that these women were not Nazis but rather victims themselfes and selfless heros. A picture that is much more agreeable and palatable.
This was long, but very well put together. Thorough and profound and a decent model for examining the "myths" of any nation. I'm surprised and pleased that youtube listed this in my feed. You all rock!
Thank you for this video. My mother was born in London, and lived and worked there through the entire war. My knowledge is based in what she told me over many years (I came along in 1949). She said that her formal schooling (at the Dame Alice Owens School) ended the night a 500 lb bomb came down the main staircase of the school. After that she worked as a machinist for the duration. She told me a fair amount about that time, but I know she also repressed a lot. Almost certainly because of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - something I am personally familiar with from my later experiences. She mentioned an anti-aircraft battery on the green in front of her parent's home. She told me that the V-1 flying bomb was not a threat as long as you could hear it. The time to take cover was when the engine stopped. The V-2 however, since it was a ballistic missile, you did not know it was coming until a city block was suddenly obliterated. She told me about witnessing lots of different and weird blast effects. Her father did not take the war very well - he was in the Royal Artillery during the First World War. He was probably re-living that in his mind during every bombing raid. In the late 1960's I was in the US Marines, and spent some time in Vietnam. Since then, I have considered my mother to be just as much a combat veteran as I am, the only difference being that she was not allowed to shoot back. My father was somewhat younger. During the war he was busy growing up in the Cotswolds. But his father served in the RAF fron 1917 to 1947 - he spent the war years serving in the Middle East.
I shake my head in wonder that England endured so many months of air terror by Germany. The resilience and courage of the English people should always be remembered and admired.
Excellent presentation of how really "messy" and complicated real history is and why it is so often easier for both "sides" of any debate to paint it all wonderful or all evil. As an American I realize that is part of our struggle with a war that ended, not 78 years ago, 158 years ago.
Excellent balance! My Austrian Jewish grandmother fled Vienna where she had lived her whole life as a reasonably wealthy family to come to Britain and go into service, for 6 years she didn’t know if her parents or brother were alive - she never saw her father again. She experienced much racism etc - her family were not even practicing Jews, only of Jewish descent but it didn’t seem to matter 🤷🏼♀️
I thought it was very interesting to hear about anti-Semitism in Britain during the war. My Great-grandma was in love with a Jewish man before the war, but we found while doing family research that he didn't actually marry her until the war ended. I wondered if he was afraid it might put her in danger? Especially if the Nazis won?! Anyway, although her family disowned her, they ended up happily married ❤
I loved the glitch/transition between world war era clips/posters and modern day ones. Really interesting and a good way for us to walk in the shoes of our ancestors who went through similar circumstances. A truly interesting perspective.
My journey of where I am today, started when I watched Midwives. To discover there is a world beyond what we were taught sent me on a trek of discovery to learn ALL I could about the Human experience and development. What I found was that we are the real stories behind history, that are worth uncovering. We must always challenge ourselves to go beneath the surface so as to not remain shallow, 😉.
An elderly neighbour of mine was a young woman in WWII. She had a nervous breakdown and spent six months in a "mental hospital". She worked in dangerous conditions in munitions manufacturing and lived in a hotspot for the Blitz, half of her road was destroyed by the attacks. She was ashamed she ended up in hospital. I am amazed she was there for only six months, I suspect that many of us would have lived out our days there subject to such conditions.
Thank you for a very interesting programme. You, have talked about things my husband and I have discussed about the blitz sprit, that we have very rarely heard else where.
My grandfather was an ARP warden, he was in a protected occupation so did not fight. He often heard people shouting that things we’re missing from relatives of the deceased. He once came upon 3 wardens taking the rings off a dead woman and he reported it to his superiors, he was told to keep quiet because he might end up underneath the next roof that collapsed. It really was a dog eat dog world back then.
I live in Western Canada and training pilots for Britain for WWII can still be seen. We have hundreds of "airports" that are remnants of this. There was a British pilot school set up outside of the town of Caron - called Caron airport. Today Caronport (the air was dropped at some point) is a town with schools, gas station, doctor, etc and Caron is a hamlet that will soon be a ghost town.
My (long dead) grandfather was in the US air force and spent the first few years of our involvement in WW2 up in Canada as a flight instructor before finally being shifted to the Pacific theater, where he mostly wound up on garrison duty, eventually ending up in the Japanese occupation force until 1947. He always said his Canadian students were some of the best aviators he'd ever had the pleasure to work with, and I can recall going to graveyard outside Montreal with him to visit the graves of a couple of his students who'd died in combat over Europe.
I've often wondered about the housing. Were homes usually rented or privately owned? Would people have had mortgages to pay on properties that had been destroyed?
Britain was pretty much near the end of its tether, when Hitler had to turn his attention to Russia coming at him from the East. That's not to denigrate the amazing and heroic actions of our RAF, but the fact is, it is rarely mentioned that Hitler had to rally his forces to fight a new foe and that was at least partially responsible for Britain holding on during those grimmest of years. That take may upset the purists, but it is a factor nevertheless - it just doesn't get mentioned very often in the 'accepted narrative'.
My nana was a teen during the Blitz, and she and her family were bombed out three times during the blitz. Their neighbours looted their home whilst her mum and younger siblings sheltered, and she worked as a fire watcher. Lots of kind and generous things did happen, rather like during the pandemic lockdown - my grandad had experienced neglect at home, and when he was sent away to live on a farm, he experienced some of the best years of his life. He stayed connected with the family for years after. But also, in the same way as during lockdown, lots of very shocking things happened. Blitz spirit is a nice way of compartmentalizing a harrowing period for many people.
An excellent video. For anyone interested in watching a fictional but accurate representation of what life was like during WW2, I recommend the TV programme, Foyle's War which illustrates the many experiences covered in the video.
It's good you mentioned Jewish German refugees. My great grandmother was a German jew. She survived the starvation in Germany during ww1, the rise of the nazis, and when she moved to London to escape the nazis she was viewed with extreme suspension, and only the Jewish community in London really helped her and her children. Edit: it's important to note that despite that she was forever grateful to the UK for saving her and her children. The UK might have had some problems, but Germany was way worse.
The “Zadok the Priest” bit is just epic. :) Bit late to the party-I know this is an older video-but I’ve been watching and thoroughly enjoying your videos, learning stuff and being entertained, as well. Can’t wait til my next trip to London!
I could relate to the story in a number of ways. Here. First, of course we had a similar narrative. Of a People's War against Nazis IN Soviet Times and even after Ukrainian independence. The complex history of WWII still has to be properly analyzed and understood. But I also can relate to the history of London in the Blitz because for instance my city, Kharkiv, was bombed almost. Every day (or night, whatever Russians fancied) for. Months. It was both for the terror purposes, as people could not sleep due to the sound of explosions, in order to destroy infrastructure, factories and homes. Our East End was Saltovka, a huge area with high houses. Every house with multiple. Families and no proper underground nearby and most bomb shelters going to ruin. Thousands of people homeless. And we had looters, and pretenders who dressed as volunteers and policemen too. And also my family did not go to shelter because our own cellar had been spoiled by sewage water and it was too far from the underground, so we also huddled together with our dog and cat in one room. And the struggle to achieve blackout when my daughter was so afraid of the dark, and no real. Resources to really re- enforce windows. And treatment of the refugees varied too. So really in some cases you could feel you traveled in time. It is still. Like WWII repeats all over again. I can believe it all happened because it also happens now. If you do not understand history properly it does repeat. Unfortunately.
This is proper researched and thought out content. Unbiased, even, honest. I saw the tiktocs and the pretty, bright presenter with the cheekbones but I'm staying for the quality historical content 👍
Many years ago when I was about 12 years old my mom took me and my brother to London. We were walking down a street and saw all the buildings had chips in them. It looked like the sort of damage that happens when heavy equipment throws chips to the side and damages the walls (Something I had seen before) but the pattern was all wrong. I asked my mom what was up, and an old Gaffer (I think that's the right term) told me "The Germans". I looked up and down the street and saw the damage as far as I could see. As an American it was a bit of an eye-opener.
You're right about not being taught about the negatives during the Blitz. When I was being taught about WW2 in my American highschool (early 1980's) we were taught about the atrocities of the concentration camps, but never about the interment camps of our own citizens, simply because they looked like the people who bombed us. Ironically, the most decorated units of the US military during WW2 were units composed of soldiers of Japanese descent. My mom was a little girl during the war. As she lived in the middle of the country, her only connection was that her brother was serving in the US Navy in the Pacific theater. Her thinking was that he was gone, he wrote some letters from far away and then he was home. We were talking about her experiences a few months before she died, and she said she didn't realize until she was an adult, how much danger her brother had been in during the war.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! We need more people like you who are simply stating what really happened and showing the complexity and various nuances that we were never taught. You are so correct that THIS honors the remembrances of those who lived through all of this! Again, thank you!
A lot of that “Bomb damage” was the result of our own anti aircraft fire. AA shells exploding in the air blasted out chunks of shrapnel - designed, of course, to destroy or damage any enemy aircraft nearby. What goes up however must come down, and a large number of deaths and a great deal of damage was caused by huge lumps of metal falling onto buildings and into the streets from a great height.
Thanks for your video. Funily enough my boyfriend was very defensive about your comments. I had to tell him some of the stories my parents and their friends used to tell about the war, much of which you covered in your video. However, there was also stories of people taking in their bombed-out neighbours, dating guys from Europe and the West Indies or pitching in sandwiches for a wedding party. I think my uncle even paid a fine for shooting pidgeons for an engagement party when he was home on leave. So, its always best to get all the history rather than a curated one. Thanks again.
There's good and bad in all wars, people tend to only remember the good, and bury the bad. I would like to see this lady turn her excellent critique to some of the good. I know that the so called blitz spirit exsisted, as my parents both lived through this period, I hold that ther was more good going on than bad. For example, contra to asserttaions of racisim, which btw I don't deny happening. I would like to see her do a piece on the Battle of Bamber Bridge.
My father was a soldier in BAOR in the early 1960s so I spent time in Germany. When I returned to England in 1964, I was stood against a school wall and shot as a Nazi because I could speak German. In 1964.
Yes and the same happened on pur school exchange in 1993. Brits are entirely too self impressed with themselves. This fake pride for sth that didn't even happen made them arrogany and it hurt everyone.
As a parent, I'm finding a lot of my kids schooling hasn't changed since I was in school and still has a lot of pro-colonical, jingoist ideas about 'Great' Britain and the notably glossing over some of the...murkier parts of our history. Like yourself, I don't want to discredit the individual heroism and successes of individual people's lives but I also think it's worth my children understanding that while there are many privileges to the fluke of where you are born, it doesn't mean a nation itself is spotless or that history is without nuance. In fact, what I really want, is for them to be excited to learn more about history. When my son had to learn about how 'Captain Cook discovered Australia' he ended up concluding that 'Captain Cook didn't discover Australia as there were already people living there for a long time and he found his way around because Tupaia showed him where to go. He and his also killed lots of people.' That's what he found when we started our new game of looking for 'secret history'. So I really appreciate these videos as it teaches me the secret history of the topics we think we know and will enable me to steer my kids to actually find joy in researching off their own backs the topics school dips its toes into.
Excellent presentation. The first casualty of war is the truth. My mother and her sister were evacuated, but the couple they lived with were unkind, strict and hated children 😰😮☹️
My family came from Croydon. One of my uncles, RAFVR Sgt pilot P.R.C. McIntosh trained on Hurricanes. He was shot down and landed in Kent on 12th October 1940, was left by the 'grateful' British public in his plane, dead, for 5 days on a golf course. My grandfather and another uncle had to drive around Kent until they found him. We still have a piece of his Hurricane with its number on it. ALL members of my family served, including my grandmother who was a nurse in WW1. My father was a Lanc. pilot and after one raid had his tail gunner hosed out of the remains of his turret. The mid-upper was wounded. I have a photo of the 5 remaining crew sitting on the fuselage above several large holes. Another uncle, RAFVR F.O. Julian Macdonald, flew reconnaissance Spitfires that they took the armour out of to make it faster. He was blown to pieces over Italy and nothing was ever recovered. We think his name might be on a memorial in Malta but there is nothing else.
Color me shocked that rich people treated others (especially poor people) like shit... there's nothing quite like Christian values when it comes to helping others.
I can't think why a TV channel hasn't talent spotted your quality work. I'm glad I did. So much better than visiting the tate modern or seeing Asteroid City! 🙂
I just adore seeing tea being made for minute after minute. If that sequence didn't last a minute, just allow me to say it seemed to last an eternity. An excellent demonstration of ennui and of what it might have been like at the time
The one thing that I got from all the stories from grandparents growing up in London was that they all had a sense of community in the streets that they were born. They all knew each other, they all played in the streets together and they were tight-knit. That has been lost now.
Bravo, One of the BEST history videos I've seen on youtube. Thoughtful comprehensive, nuanced, and balanced. This video should be required viewing for all A-level and undergrad student. Your narrative was crisp, clear and engaging. Despite the one quibble I have - that you did not mention India's contibution to the British war effort - this video is EXCELLENT!
Actually I have a question. How did Britain deal with the Spanish Flu? I always hear about the wars, admittedly a monumental “scar” (both literal, mental, emotional, financial, and so on) but I very rarely hear about how more accurate comparisons to our modern day plague such as the Spanish Flu, small pox, yellow fever, even the Black Death left scars on Europe in general let alone Britain. Was Spanish Flu only a massive thing in North America? Or did it and others like it leave “visible” scars that can be seen or felt into modern day? My personal research is inconclusive and would appreciate other takes on a more human level as opposed to “this is just what we know from historical accounts.”
Didn't hear much from my family, they were a music hall family but one ran away in the early 1910's and joined the Royal navy Marines (pre war), went through the Siege and evacuation of Antwerp, Jutland, the Zeebrugge raid, got demobbed in 1919, went on a fortnights holiday to the south coast. Fell ill after a week and was dead from the flu by time his holiday was up! What did seriously impact that generation of my family was seeing whole branches of the family die from TB in the 20's and 30's. It was a slow constant attrition that when it got into a household, it would devastate. One relative lost his wife, his only and new born child and his mother in law to it. That's right, he was the ONLY one to survive from that home. And that, that is why that generation wanted to bequeath us something like the NHS.
I believe, in most countries, it was almost forgotten about quite soon after. It sounds unlikely, if you read about how bad it was, but a similar thing happened after the polio epidemic in the fifties. I remember it. Saw lots of kids at school with braces on their legs. I know my parents kept a lot of it from us, but I picked up enough to know about the people in Iron lungs, and the cripples. You certainly don't hear about it now, or for many decades. I believe there are still a couple of people who are still in Iron lungs since the fifties.
One thing I loved was listening to my grandfathers "war stories", him winning the war, rescuing people, escaping by the skin of his teeth, all amazing stories, all as silly as the last 1, as he was not even a teenager during the war, he collected bomb shrapnel but he was a great story teller and I would always ask what he did during the war.
I'm a fairly new subscribee; I've been enjoying gradually going through your videos. This one, in particular, was &*@#ing brilliant. Thank you so much for working on this; it was rational, provocative, and remarkably thoughtful.
As an Anglophile and almost futile, faithful follower of the Mod movement, I’ve noticed that the blitz certainly had its impact on the whole generation of British rock ‘n’ roll stars of the 1960s. John Lennon was born during one of the bombing raids of the blitz. Keith Richards house got hit by a bomb, and while he was at home, bricks landed in his bed, where he would’ve been laying. Roger Daltrey’s mother used to take shelter in tube stations while still pregnant with Roger & father received a massive injury on D-day that almost killed him. The guilt and bitterness of the postwar period that influenced Pete Townsend to write Tommy. And Roger Waters sure does love reminding us that his father was a pilot who was shot down and killed in the war. And the blitz spirit I truly believe was more than a war time phenomenon for England in the 20th century, but a defining cultural pinpoint in the narrative of England’s artistic history
John Lennon's father apparently was on the North Atlantic convoys with them U-boats about. He survived, unlike many others. Merchant Navy man. Roger Waters,' father was in the army, officer, killed at the Italy Anzio landings in 1944.
You gave me some more pride to sing 'O Canada's ! Blessed are my ancestors who fed British stomachs (and did many other things as well)! Jenny, your treatment of that complex subject was simply remarkable. I would love to support your channel if I were wealthier. You're so great at instilling life and even humor into the most difficult and tragic topics. As usual, care for historical truth/reality is always more rewarding for an audience. Your professionalism and the experience you gathered from years of guiding visitors while listening to their inquiries, regardless of how bizarre they might sound, all of that precious capital is making each of your contributions to English (esp. Londonian) history education a precious gem. Long life to your channel!
Nice work! Thank you for showing history as a process of narrative construction and storytelling. But most importantly who or what decides the story told and how popular it would be. As today new and different stories and narratives are being constructed such as Covid and brixit. I think this to be fundamental of human society, but l think the worse of it is I hardly thinking about stories and narratives that I believe in. Doing so could be hard as I think, good stories could offer so much comfort that I don’t want to break my illusion/ ideal.
Hello Ms Draper. Very well done. I'm London born and bred (20 years an expat now). My UK grand-parents (other grand-parents from N.Africa) lived in India/Burma until the WW2 outbreak. My grandmother spent the whole time in a japanese prisoner of war camp with her three sons. I heard my grand father was given a gun and told to run all the way home to Britain! I never got to ask him about this time as he passed away when I was still very young. Reunited after the war, they were reunited and came to live in London in very precarious conditions where my father was born and raised.
The red box type of Yorkshire tea tastes better, or typhoo. I am much more fond of strong tea than of the weaker varieties though so they might not be universally palatable and the quality of the water does effect the taste of the tea a great deal.
My uncle was born in London in an underground shelter during the blitz. He said his mom never talked about it so he knew knew his birthday and that he was born in London, but he didn't know the details until right before his mother passed. They immigrated to Canada shortly after the war, and then he to the US.
Thank you for this. Too often it seems we are too fearful to face the complicated human responses to events. For example, here in the US we're struggling with telling the whole story of enslaving others and the continued economic and political realities of that "peculiar institution." We need more balanced models such as yours to provide the experience of history as messy and complicated and sometimes even inspiring in order to truly learn from it and maybe even make better responses when we face challenges.
I remember my granny telling me about the Clydebank Blitz. She lived in Govan, which is on the opposite river bank of the Clyde from Clydebank. She could vividly remember her mum waking her up, so that they could go down to the nearest bunker. Her dad (my great granda) refused to leave his bed. As far as he was concerned, if the Nazis were going to kill him, they could kill him in his bed. My granny also remembered the skies being orange, because of the flames.
As an American (with British Parents) the closest I've come to understanding this is when I discovered the artist Henry Moore's blitz sketchbook. They're visceral . Another experience was visiting Coventry Cathedral with the hulk of the old cathedral left intact and easily observed through the huge clear glass wall with monumental angels etched upon them.
As a French Anglophile, I found this video fascinating. We have somewhat comprarable myths about the Résistance. De Gaulle practically built his political carrer on them. It tkes generations to deconstruct the narratives we were fed as children... And your conclusion is just perfect.
I'm a francophile i even like to think that De Gaulle was right about us. But hearing someone French commenting on the resistance is strange to me. I question the blitz spirit but I have never questioned the actions of the French resistance. I wouldn't have the heart to be honest. But fair play to you it's not easy to question ones history.
@@roberthodgkins-pv3ve The Resistance was absolutely a thing, and we do have genuine heroes (Jean Moulin anyone ?), but it is a myth to believe that the whole country resisted against the nazis. As in the UK, we were more preoccupied by day-to-dahy survival.
My grandmother was a little girl in London during the blitz. One of the first things I learned about it was that at one point my great-grandfather, then a police officer, had seen a child's hand sticking out from under some rubble, and went to pull the child out - but the arm simply came away in his grip. He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards.
My great-grandmother once felt the need to take her daughter aside and tell her that if there was a situation where it was a choice, she would save her husband and not her children, so my grandmother needed to be ready to fend for herself.
'Cases of neurosis' may not have been diagnosed and attributed to air raids at the time, but just by looking at my own family I'm pretty sure that's just because anybody who was up and walking was considered 'fine' and not because of a genuine lack of lasting trauma among the population.
A fascinating perspective... certainly full of trauma.
@sweetlorikeet Definitely. Also what a horrible and traumatizing thing to say to a small child. I wonder what her thinking behind that decision was.
"He became unpredictable and often cruel afterwards." : yeah sudden changes in personality are either the result or illness or (when no illness is present) trauma.
Just the arm...damn...what...a...visual...
My grandmother was a little girl in Hamburg when the allied bombers came. She doesn't really tell much about it, as it is a hurtful memory. I hope children never have to experience something like this again.
Some “Mother”! 😡
My mum was born in 33 in South London. Her and her sisters were evacuated a number of times but eventually stayed at home. They stopped going dow the shelters because they were so bad. They slept in one room so if a bomb hit them they would all go together.
Funnily enough my mother was born in 1933 in south east London. She had two younger brothers, they were moved to a place i spent 13 years in outside London to the south, and returned home. They had an anderson shelter in the bottom of their garden. Survived the war. But as she lived on what would have been a flight path to the docks, they had a fair few stray bombs and one tkme a close near miss when a German fighter flew over her school did nit touch it, and then flew over a boys school down the road and fired at the kids at play during their lunch break.
I had the same experience with tornado shelters in Oklahoma sit in there with a neighborhoods worth of crying kids no thanks I’ll take the shrieking winds and sideways rain
@@jimbo6059 oh my thats horrible. Kill the bloody children! Ugh just horrible.
I'm on the autism spectrum, thankfully not non-verbal, but still enough to have great difficulty understanding the bonds in the family unit, but even through that Indiscrepancy in my brain functions, I would still choose to be with all my immediate family should we we be faced with the threat if imminent death.
@@nothanks9503 Username comment synergy 10/10
Genuinely excellent critique of a narrative which deserves more nuanced mainstream analysis. Thanks for sharing.
nuanced mainstream
oxymoron
Exactly. Well said.
@@mistersir3020 no it isn't
The editing was really powerful, too.
@@mistersir3020 "more nuanced". Comparative. Mainstream perception of events will always be simplified and skewed. Doesn't mean you can't improve it at all by offering more nuanced analysis to the mainstream public.
My paternal Great Grandfather was a Canadian (Well, Newfoundlander at the time, NFLD hadn't joined Confederation yet) Merchant Marine (An Engineers Mate) and between 1939 and 1943 made 84 crossings and survived two sinkings by U-Boat. My maternal Great Grandmother, a British Ex-pat who emigrated to the US after the war, lived through the Blitz, and stories of how her millinery shop in the east end was looted and on another night, narrowly survived one air raid by running to a tube station, are still shared at family gatherings today, years after her death.
This is one Canadian who was taught the truth about what happened in WWII, not in school, but by those that lived through it.
My grandmother was moved *to* London and was convinced the "Blitz Spirit" shit was accounts of bombings in other parts of Britain retold in London. Not that she didn't have stories of good happenings and people pulling together in London but my extended family still has bad views of Londoners to this day because of the difference in stories we heard from there compared to other places.
"Kitty Vitty" or "Qwy-dah Vie-dah"?
My branch of folks from pre-Canadian Confederation Nfld were "over there" too. Unfortunately they wouldn't talk about that part of their lives. But I remember when planes were diverted to Gander on 9/11, several older family members + friends referenced Blitz spirit, which after watching this video makes me wonder even more, bc in hindsight it's clear the events brought up some buried recollections.
The only thing my grandfather would tell me about the blitz was that it became painfully boring after a while, he just wanted a nights sleep without the air raid going off I think after the lockdowns I understand him, the end of the world is slow, painful and we eventually all just get used to it.
I know he was an evacuee but he would never speak about it, and it all got so awful that his mother moved the family back to Ireland.
My grandad's mum used to shove him under the stairs and go back to bed rather than putting him in the bunker
Dad hated his evacuation - in part he was separated from his older brother , (the younger stayed at home with his mum and his sister joined the WRAF)
Dude, lockdown are always better than bombs over your head.
My Nana said she spent countless hours at cat's cradle because you could play it in a dark shelter, and it was easy enough to always have a piece of yarn or string about you in case the sirens went off.
One time I was watching a documentary with her, and they played the sound of a V1 'doodlebug' bomb. She went paper white and started shaking, she tried so hard to recover her equilibrium in front of me but she was tremulous for hours afterwards.
@@sweetlorikeet It is really strange and scary how history repeats itself now. I can undertstand very well how your grandma felt. I am scared of drums because they remind me of rockets exploding; my good friend finally managed to get a small bus tour after living in constantly bombed Kyiv and had a half-an-hour panic attack when she heard fireworks nearby.
My mum was a London teen in WW2. COVID came along. No fuss, got her jabs and wore a mask. The Luftwaffe didn't get her at 16 so she wasn't going to let a virus get her at 96! As ever, no grumbles, kept calm and still carrying on.
As long as she didn't insist on anyone under 70 getting jibbed - especially children! We saw enough adults hiding behind children during the mild flu.
lights on but no ones home here @@garyphisher7375
my great grandfather had poor eyesight (something we have all since inherited, thanks grandpa) so he wasn’t drafted into the war. however, he was allowed to be a firefighter during the war.
the blitz caused him to see horrors he’d never seen before. my great grandmother and their daughter (my great aunt) were evacuated, but he stayed and saw multiple people who’d refused to leave their houses crushed from bombs in their homes, often trapped in their bedrooms. children, babies, parents all dead. it was extremely harrowing for him. very occasionally he would find live children with deceased parents and he would always choose to adopt them. despite the horrors he had seen, he remained just as kind and gentle as he had always been.
when my grandpa was born in 1945, he grew up around multiple adopted siblings which he is still close to. one of them named lillian i met, and she was still afraid of loud noises even in her old age before she passed. balloons terrified her.
my great grandfather’s father was a jewish immigrant from lithuania who had escaped during the pogroms so they grew up in abject poverty. after the war finished he became a barber and used to cut my great grandma’s hair- she still wore finger waves into the 1960s because that was the only style he knew how to do on women lol. im very proud of him and to be his descendent.
what a lovely story!❤
That is an amazing tale
what a wonderful man. definitely someone to be proud of :)
your great grandfather was a legit hero for those kids
What a true hero ! May His Memory Be Blessing. 👌🏻
I’m a history teacher in England but I’m Spanish and have had a very continental European history training in Spain and France. Some of these nationalistic topics are difficult for me because as some of the narrative sounds very propagandistic, but I want to be respectful as an outsider. I’m finding your videos incredibly useful to inform me for my lessons and make sense of my reads. Thanks so much for your amazing videos and all of the sources that you always add too and that allow me to do further reading on the topics. You’re amazing, thanks so much.
I feel it should be noted that. The "blitz spirit" was much more of a patriotic sentiment then a anti fascist sentiment. Although it would be unfair to describe the British upper class (or nobility for lack of a better word) and the wealthy British middle class (or bourgeoisie for lack of a better word) as fascist sympathisers . The fact is that the "nobility and bourgeoisie" were extremely autocratic. If given the choice they would have definitely preferred a fascist dictatorship over a true democracy or god forbid a communist state.
If Britain fell to the Nazis it would have been a rather straight forward process to find support for and setup a "Vichy Britain". Probably with someone like Oswald Mosely ( google if you haven't heard of him) as head of state and with all the upper crust that wished to remain in power quickly falling in line.
@@matthewclaridge8063 While I don't disagree there would be those willing to be puppets. There is plenty of evidence they were in a extreme minority. When you know (as I do) that my uncle (inlaw) who grew up in London during the Blitz (he was 8) in the East end was taught by his father (along with all of his siblings) how to use hand grenades. Along with all the other kids in all the neighbouring houses. Every house have several boxes of grenades the father's brought home from working in the munitions factories. They had no intention of surrendering to the Nazis. They were going to go down fighting as both a family and a neighbourhood. That is just once example I know of. The Blitz spirit (propaganda version) did not really exist in my opinion, but that does not mean there was not a grain of truth to it (I believe there was, just nowhere universal as the typical version as it as).
@@matthewclaridge8063 uhhhh where on earth do you get the idea that the upper class and nobility preferred a fascist state to a “true democracy”??? Please, let’s tone down some of this ‘rich man bad/autocratic/fascism’ nonsense
@@jamiengo2343 Most of the 'ruling class' don't care who's in power, only who sets the best economic circumstances for their wealth to accumulate.
I've seen videos about Mosely and I also read about him. His wife was upper class and a fascist enthusiast. Yes there were some British upper class individuals who were sympathetic to fascism.
This is so interesting! I'm Dutch, and as a child I always heard stories of my grandfather 's heroic fighting in resistance groups. Now that me and my dad are actually doing the research, we're finding out that it was much more about helping people in hiding and avoiding German labour drafting then actually fighting the occupation. It wasn't really about the Dutch resistance fighters being morally against the Germans, they were just helping people out who were getting screwed by them.
Helping people avoid Nazi work camps sounds pretty heroic. That’s definitely part of the resistance.
That's still well and truly resisting the Nazis.
Interesting. My mother lived through the blitz in Belfast, which occurred over a much shorter period. I think she told me the good, the bad, and the ugly. All of her siblings and relatives old enough to serve served in WWII save an older sister, who served by making military uniforms.
She talked about sheltering a few times and how people pulled together (yes, they sang, etc.)-perhaps they, not having endured so much for so long, maintained their spirits. She put out incendiary bomb on the roof of her home because her father was disabled and her mother too heavy to climb the ladder to throw sand on the bomb. She reported walking home past a bombed out area and seeing a woman’s head and another time seeing a pair of women’s shoes as if they had been set together in a pile of rubbish on purpose. When she told the last two stories you could see the trauma on her face.
100,000 people were left homeless after one of the bombings and her family took in a couple-the couple they took in later stripped the family home of all of their possessions when she and her mom and dad went on holiday, which included all of the family photos. She later saw a photo of herself in a pawn shop window.
She ended up with PTSD from the sound of the bombs and after moving to the US, would hide in the closet every time there was an electrical storm.
No one in our family takes sugar in our tea as a left over of our parents’ given their sugar ration to their parents during the war.
My mother was a child during the war in Belfast, too. She didn't talk about it much.
my great grandfather grew up during the blitz in Belfast too. he had a few stories about nearly being bombed i just cant remember them off the top of my head.
That’s so fucking cruel that they took family photos.
The education in the UK is very carefully curated parts of history that can be made to portray Brits as being victors, survivors, and defenders, never showing we have instigated wars, stole from other countries both minerals and money, and enslaved people. I'd love to see the way we teach history improved to include true accounts of events and not hide the bad stuff we have done.
Oh yes, I learned about how Britain "stopped the slave trade" at school, but nothing about empire...
@@emmarainbow9557 I'm rather ashamed of our past, but nothing like the shame of leaving school realising how carefully we were taught about success and how wonderful we are, not how we raped and pillaged our way through the world and overthrew governments to steal assets and minerals, still doing it today under the guise of fighting terrorists and people with WMD.
When we do learn about these things you realise how helpless you are to do anything about it. Ask a child who the terrorists are and they might tell you it's the people who bombed their town, and if that child is the from certain parts of the world we are the terrorists. But you'll never hear this in school, just a carefully whitewashed history.
So agree!!! we learn from our mistakes and history, but if that history isn't told how will we learn from it.
I understand that this narrative (because that is what it is) is important to you, but you have extrapolated pretty far from the original video, in order to make your point. The lesson we should be drawing from this is not the generic modern obsession with the evils of empire, or the purported rewriting of history to obscure them, but the fact that, among the instances of heroism, bravery, and communal spirit, you will always find cowardice, selfishness, and hatred, no matter how rose-tinted your history books. This is not peculiar to the British, or the Blitz, and neither is it unexpected, or even unethical, not to loudly trumpet it, either in classrooms or books, decades later. It is, rather banally, just human nature, and it happens just as much now as it did 80 years ago. People, unfortunately, have a history of behaving horribly to each other, and until we can reverse millions of years of evolution, they will continue to do so.
Almost every nation was done the same or worse. Britain ended slavery. We fostered the age of industry and though our empire brought it to every corner of the globe. Places like India for the first time in thousands of years where United and free from corruption and division (something they can’t claim to have today), places in Africa saw prosperity and quality of life they had never seen before and many places wish they where still a colony like Guyana. We also taxed (perhaps you prefer the term stole) we stated wars for our own benefit and we indeed benefited from slavery. But as someone who has claimed to have learned the truth that schools hid from us, perhaps you will be willing have an open mind to the truth of our world. Do not be ashamed of our history, rejoice in it. For you owe it the luxury’s you have today and ultimately the empire certainly did more good then bad to the world, whether she is underappreciated or not.
My grandmother lived in London through the blitz. She said she didn't feel the spirit in the way it was portrayed, she was constantly terrified and saw some horrific sights.
But she did say there was a great sense of community in her local area (Putney) and people helped one another - everyone was scared, so people had empathy for one another. But there were also times when it was not like that, and it was everyone for themselves, especially in the earlier days when there was more panic.
She worked in a munitions factory manufacturing bullets, and said there was a lot of camaraderie amongst the workers, but not because of "high morale" - because everyone was scared, stressed, missing loved ones, uncertain about the future, and traumatised.
She was certainly traumatised herself. She didn't speak about it until she reached 90 years of age. I was privileged enough to have a full conversation with her about it (initiated and driven by her, I was scared to push her too far...)
Thank you for this ❤️
I'm a teacher in Canada. Born and raised Canadian. Where I teach, we get a lot of students who have emigrated from the U.K to here, especially it seems from metropolitan areas such as London, Manchester or Birmingham (West Midlands). I am shocked that they have no idea that Canadians fought in WWII !!!
American here, former history teacher. When I taught kids about how, during D-Day as the USA was getting slaughtered at Omaha Beach, the Canadians had already cleared their beach so they offered to come help out, but the American Army refused all help so they wouldn't look weak (the US Army was extremely self-conscious in the face of the Marines getting all the glory in the Pacific Theater, declaring Europe was THEIRS and "no Marine shall set foot on European soil") I was amused as the teens shouted out, "Wait, CANADA was in the war too???" Ooh boy, they were in for a lesson!
@@rhov-anion Source?
A friend told me that he went from the US to Canada before 1940 so he could enlist to fight as he wasn’t sure the US would join the fight. That’s how I learned about the Canadian contribution.
@@nickdanger3802 I tried to find which book I read that in. I'm going to guess it's not one I own, but one I checked out. It was around 2014-19, I was doing a lot of research during those years into 1944 France. I even tried to search online, but it's not the sort of story Americans like to admit happened. Heck, I learned from my dad (a Marine) about the Army at Omaha Beach turning down an offer of help from the Marines on the ships, who tried to demand to go ashore and take the lead as they saw the chaos getting men killed. George Marshall declared that no Marine shall set foot on European soil as long as he was in charge, because they felt the Marines were getting too much of the glory in the Pacific. So the Army refused help from the Marines and the other Allies and would rather have 2400 dead than swallow their pride and ask for aid. (Okay, that last bit is kinda unfair, they had to keep up appearances for morale back home. The war was NOT popular, and many Americans felt we shouldn't bother with Europe. Many like Charles Lindbergh supported a truce with Hitler.)
When I was at school in the seventies, I was told in my English book, that Great Britain stood alone against Germany for a whole year (? can't remember the time given) - and I thought, they were tough. I was flabbergasted when I found out much later that, lo and behold, a significant part of the planet stood by their side and helped with men power and goods. So yes, propaganda going strong there!
I love the Parallel between the blitz and lockdown you show because in my opinion the best way to learn about historical events is comparing them to stuff that happens in modern day
My father was born in Kent and was sent to Wales as a young boy! He was lucky because he went to live with a district nurse. His younger brother had an awful time the people took away his clothes and he wasn’t fed properly! Eventually my grandmother took him home! My father didn’t see his parents for five years! Sadly he never talked about his experiences - he was so traumatised!!!
One of your videos just got shared on Reddit. I'm happy to discover you as a result, and your speaking style and explanations are wonderful. Subscribed to this channel and Minuteknowledge too!
This documentary is enlightening. The writers of history love to lath and plaster over the actual circumstances. The parallels with our current situation (minus the shoveling up of neighbours) show that people really aren't that different in their selfishness from then until now.
Man this is genuinely the most interesting video I have watched in awhile. My mind is blown to be honest. Thanks for this video!
Absolutely brilliant analysis. Splendid work.
I remember phoning my Dad early on during lockdown, "I keep hearing about the 'great British blitz spirit". You lived through the war Dad. When the German bombers turned up, did people rush out and buy up as many toilet rolls as they could find?" He informed me that they did not.
Well most people used old bits of newspapers in those days… :)
Probably because
a) the pandemic was not a world war
b)the quality of the average British citizen has dropped significantly
there were probably some people hoarding food or trying to get around the food rationing system.
@@dariusanderton3760 That would be rich people and criminals. :)
There was lots of talk about the run on toilet paper at the start of the pandemic, and how previous generations would be outraged, but every country in WW2 had rationing in effect, as far as i know. They knew they couldn't leave it up to people's sense if duty, to only buy the prescribed amount of things. You had to have a ration card. Everything but the most common items, would be stripped from the shelves, without rationing. It's similar to the economic principle Tragedy Of The Commons.
Thank you for mentioning the colonies!
I am currently studying the Life in the UK in order to become a British citizen and am on the part how "The British army have defeated the Japanese at Burma", where in reality it was Nigerians.
As part-Nigerian, that made me quite annoyed to be fair.
Weren't they in the British army though?
@@wingnut71 Sure, but god forbid anyone recognize that the soldiers could also be Nigerian... Not every country or individual under British rule was proud to be a colony
British is not an ethnic group. British simply means part of the British empire. Nigerians were part of the British empire, and it was because of British logistics, training, and politics that those Nigerians ever saw combat outside their own borders.
@@greyfells2829 you say this like they should be grateful to get dragged into a European war
Seeing as Canadian forces were often mentioned I agree it would have been logical AND good for moral to mention other specific peoples of the Empire/Commonwealth.
Never heard this side of The Blitz. This seems like a more realistic depiction of what was really going on. Loved you getting into character, added to the story. I was surprised by your reaction to T and defaulting to a monster, those thing tear me up! ( coffee for me)
I’m Australian. Two of my great uncles were lost in the war. My grandfather survived, but not for long. Britain didn’t stand alone.
We do have a similar lionisation of this time, though. Hearing the stories from my grandmother have a much clearer picture of the truth. How could moral have been high when their world was falling apart and, even in far Australia, the war was cutting holes in families while old prejudices suddenly seemed even more important.
You don’t see people who lived it hankering for that time. If it was so rosy surely they would.
I am Australian as well and I never new my grandfather due to "Shell shock" and I see the respect of the Narrative.
Us Australian's gave so much. My Grandfather point-blank refused to talk about the war, and it wasn't until after he died that we found out he had received 2 medals. His Sister married 'her boy' the day of his 18th birthday and he joined up the next day and didn't come back. She never remarried.
I attended a boarding school in East Anglia for a year in 1988-89, and based on my experiences there, I'm not at all surprised.
The casual xenophobic, ablist, classist, and other discriminatory cruelty, combined with a weird sense of national superiority, I experienced and witnessed daily still baffles me to date.
why baffles you?, the same has happened in every big European nation and in the states
From my point of view, you hear all those stories about the British being multiculti, openmided, interested in world cultures, knowledgeable, .... and then you find out the truth. And the "classiness" which you do not expect because of the mixture of US and British E. background most foreigners get with E. You need some time and strong will to see it and understand the Brits' POV and not starting to hate them. And being in a boarding school which means among kids that person must have got the essence of the worst.
@@Vanda-il9ul well put.
What’s wrong with having a sense of national superiority.
@@J-678hdj every country has it in some way, but if England has it, despite having accomplished many more things than most, its apparently wrong.
Good video, very informative. I'm glad I watched despite the tea violation. ;)
The tea violation is the way of making tea I assume? I watched you preparing it and thought "this must taste like tar with milk, who would want to drink st like this?" well, you didn't, obviously 😁
Tea bags weren't a thing back then, of course. It was LEAF TEA wot won the War!! And its demise is the sole cause of our subsequent decline and let no-one tell you otherwise!
So relatable! Thanks! My grandmother, in rural Leicestershire, took in a Jewish girl and her young son from Berlin. She had aunt in London, hence she gained entry, but the aunt wouldn't house her, and come the blitz, they were evacuated.
I was taught about the war like you were, This is an interesting video. . . Thanks for putting the parallels on there too about todays current situations of the world.
Mum keeps telling me things were better during her childhood - I keep reminding her bombs were dropping (at least three of her neighbours killed on first air raid on London and more subsequent, while she didnt have official evacuation - her dad was too old for war duties (+injured in WW1) but worked on a road making gang and they were sent to Cornwall to lay aircraft runways etc in prep for D-Day, her mum and her went down too for what should have been a two week visit . they stayed for six months and mum was a pupil teacher to younger evacuees from east london, so she never got a school leaving certificate !.
My great grandmother lived through both world wars. She was in her 20's during the second world war, and would tell me of how bad the bombing in Bristol was. I remember one time she told me a tale of the one time there was a air raid, her husband wanted to go to the local comunity shelter, but she was a bit nervous about going. So they took sheler else where. She then told of how the shelter had a direct hit, and nealy all the inhabitants perrished. She said they managed to get ahold of a anderson shelter, and set it up at the bottom of their guarden after that.
As a German I really don't know how different or alike the experiences of people were on these two opposing and certainly ideologically very different sides of the war, but living through having your city bombed every night must have been traumatic for the people on either side. My dad used to work in a nursery home and he told me of some old people who still get traumatic flashbacks every time they hear a siren or a firework.
Sadly the bombing of cities, especially Dresden, far too often gets utilized by right wing extremists and Nazis to make some kind of claim that we were the victims after all.
Do you know in which city he was working? Of course, we are all people; no matter whether we are British, German, Chinese or whatever, our responses to crisis are very similar. It is a uniting factor for humanity in a way.
It is always a shame when a terrible historical event, like the bombing of Dresden or any other place, gets hijacked by political extremists and other unsavoury groups. But I find it beautiful that the new cross on top of the rebuilt Frauenkirche was given to Dresden by the British and that Dresden and Coventry are twin cities.
There was a Polish woman that worked for my parents in the 80s. Whenever there was a big thunderstorm she had to leave due to PTSD from shelling she experienced asva child during the war.
My German friend simply says, "They were different people. Thats not who we are". Good.
I'm American but my mother had a wonderful older married couple from the UK that went to church with us and through them and their stories I learned about the Blitz and the War long before I learned about it in school. I also learned about tea time which I loved. I am a historian myself now, I was originally in law enforcement but I'm not being shot at now but I credit the stories of Britain in the War with what I became.
My goodness, what a little gem your channel is! Your discussions about history are very unique and insightful. I shall be binge watching all your videos tonight!
As for the topic of this video, I have read in various history books little hints that the reality of the blitz was very different. The maintaining of class bondages was very true, which is why the bombing of Buckingham Palace was such a PR win for the King. The Queen famously said "I can now look the east end in the face".
Im a Coventarian who walks past the bombed-out ruins of our cathedral practically every day. The British govt's catastrophic failures in preparing for war enabled so much more destruction than fascist bombers could have inflicted on a prepared country
One example: Demands in pre and early war to move water hydrants below ground were routinely ignored by British govt who had more than enough manpower to carry out the work. So when the Germans bombed and burned cities, these 4ft-tall hydrants were instantly knocked out and left firefighters with little chance in controlling fires that claimed horrifying amounts of historic wooden buildings, preciously few of which still survive today in Coventry
I spoke to an 83yo woman at a 75th anniversary ceremony outside the cathedral in Nov 2015 who had actually been in the cellar of the cathedral when it went up in flames. Afterwards she fled to a cellar in a nearby shop which wasnt even a public shelter but allowed by the shop owner. The emotion in her eyes was so intimate and real
Im so glad ppl are finally looking past the leftover propagandistic narratives that are used to reinforce modern nationalism. Best vid on this topic that I've yet seen. Blessed
In “Foyles War” a lot you have touched on was portrayed. Your postings are always so entertaining and educational, thank you
just thinking the same thing. An excellent series, showing some of the less “honorable” behavior that happened routinely, especially the differences between the classes in how they were affected by the war.
Fabulous and informative as always. I loved the little edits to show the parallels.
You are wrong about tea though.
My great grandmother was a teen in the blitz, her house was bombed out twice as it was near Fulham gas works, she was moved to the Leeds, where she was a land girl later on. Then she was posted to the South Wales, thats how she met my great grandfather. An excellent video as always
I grew up on war stories from my Dad who was 10 at the outset of the war. He grew up in Derby and was camping with his class and saw Derby bombed, went to school part time via 'shrapnel alley' (forbidden obviously), was dragged into the shelter because he was hanging round outside watching dog fights in the sky. There were lots of child centric stories which made war sound terribly exciting to me. My Mum had quite considerable anxiety which we managed as a family and I later understood her to have had PTSD. All she said was listening to the china rattling in the kitchen above the shelter, and once she mentioned empty chairs at school after a bad raid.
Very well put. At first I was put to argue but I listened and you made good solid points. History & people repeat themselves.
Yes. The more things change the more they stay the same.
There are so many things I love about this video! 😍 First, the dedication to a truthful representation. Also, the careful exploration of nuance. The way you connected it to current events. THE FUN of it. You rock, J Draper!
Very brave intro, half expected the comments to go "how dare you imagine our plight of having to wear masks to a time where people had no choice" unironically. Also, a channel celebrating British history and admitting tea is not your cup of tea? Heroic.
It did looked a bit like a weak tea 😬😬😬
On the general theme of war-time spirit, there is a book that I read a few years ago that I still think about often. It's called "War's Unwomanly Face" by Svetlana Alexievich, and it is a collection of first-hand accounts of women who were fighting on the Eastern Front in WWII (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia). The author won a Nobel Prize for her work. The accounts range from heroic to mundane to heartshattering (heartbreaking didn't seem strong enough a term). It is well worth a read, though, proceed with EXTREME caution because the book is very traumatizing. I also feel like we need more books like that, with firsthand accounts of major events in history, not just the official government stories.
I remember my Nan talking about a family friend that came back from a shelter to find not only their home was bombed, but the place had been looted. Her war experience was odd as she travelled around the country with her Brother (an Air Duct engineer) who was shuffled around the country to sort out ventilation in factories (because without it, cloth mills go boom! No Luftwaffe needed). Even so, like her sisters, the nervous anxiety turned her to smoking.
oh yes, I think a lot of people of that generation developed addictions as coping mechanisms, they didn't necessarily realize that's what it was
@@kahkah1986 Pretty much so, Grandad was sore that his Father was an abusive drunk, only after his fathers death did he find out his fathers health/lungs were wrecked by Gas in the German Spring offensive of 1918 and came back "wrong" and took to drink. Other family were convinced that "the gas killed him, just took almost 20 years to finish the job". I've worked with the homeless and sooo many of the known drug addicts/alcoholics turned out to have previously undiagnosed mental issues, ADHD or Asperger's and it really looks like most of them were self medicating.
My Nan lived in Poplar, (Grandad worked on the Docks) and she was advised to take up smoking by her doctor to help with the stress! May not have been diagnosed with PTSD etc but a lot of that generation seemed to 🎉smoke or drink themselves to death 😔
Great video. In Germany we have a similar story concerning the months after the 2nd world war ended. It is told, that Germany was re-built by the Trümmerfrauen, by women, who worked in the rubble of destroyed cities to manually clean brick of mortar for re-use. There is a historical truth to this, as this did happen in Berlin for a short period. But they mostly didn't do it on their own accord - they were recruited by the Allied forces as workers. They were paid for their work.
The vast majority of the rubble however was removed by male workers using heavy duty machines.
The picture of the Trümmerfrau was often used for political reasons. To show how heroic female workers (and working mothers) are in the former DDR.
To show that these women were not Nazis but rather victims themselfes and selfless heros. A picture that is much more agreeable and palatable.
This was long, but very well put together. Thorough and profound and a decent model for examining the "myths" of any nation. I'm surprised and pleased that youtube listed this in my feed. You all rock!
Thank you for this video.
My mother was born in London, and lived and worked there through the entire war. My knowledge is based in what she told me over many years (I came along in 1949).
She said that her formal schooling (at the Dame Alice Owens School) ended the night a 500 lb bomb came down the main staircase of the school. After that she worked as a machinist for the duration.
She told me a fair amount about that time, but I know she also repressed a lot. Almost certainly because of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - something I am personally familiar with from my later experiences.
She mentioned an anti-aircraft battery on the green in front of her parent's home.
She told me that the V-1 flying bomb was not a threat as long as you could hear it. The time to take cover was when the engine stopped. The V-2 however, since it was a ballistic missile, you did not know it was coming until a city block was suddenly obliterated.
She told me about witnessing lots of different and weird blast effects.
Her father did not take the war very well - he was in the Royal Artillery during the First World War. He was probably re-living that in his mind during every bombing raid.
In the late 1960's I was in the US Marines, and spent some time in Vietnam. Since then, I have considered my mother to be just as much a combat veteran as I am, the only difference being that she was not allowed to shoot back.
My father was somewhat younger. During the war he was busy growing up in the Cotswolds. But his father served in the RAF fron 1917 to 1947 - he spent the war years serving in the Middle East.
I shake my head in wonder that England endured so many months of air terror by Germany. The resilience and courage of the English people should always be remembered and admired.
Well said Antonio,very well said👏
Excellent presentation of how really "messy" and complicated real history is and why it is so often easier for both "sides" of any debate to paint it all wonderful or all evil. As an American I realize that is part of our struggle with a war that ended, not 78 years ago, 158 years ago.
Excellent balance! My Austrian Jewish grandmother fled Vienna where she had lived her whole life as a reasonably wealthy family to come to Britain and go into service, for 6 years she didn’t know if her parents or brother were alive - she never saw her father again. She experienced much racism etc - her family were not even practicing Jews, only of Jewish descent but it didn’t seem to matter 🤷🏼♀️
I thought it was very interesting to hear about anti-Semitism in Britain during the war. My Great-grandma was in love with a Jewish man before the war, but we found while doing family research that he didn't actually marry her until the war ended. I wondered if he was afraid it might put her in danger? Especially if the Nazis won?! Anyway, although her family disowned her, they ended up happily married ❤
I loved the glitch/transition between world war era clips/posters and modern day ones. Really interesting and a good way for us to walk in the shoes of our ancestors who went through similar circumstances. A truly interesting perspective.
My journey of where I am today, started when I watched Midwives. To discover there is a world beyond what we were taught sent me on a trek of discovery to learn ALL I could about the Human experience and development. What I found was that we are the real stories behind history, that are worth uncovering. We must always challenge ourselves to go beneath the surface so as to not remain shallow, 😉.
An elderly neighbour of mine was a young woman in WWII. She had a nervous breakdown and spent six months in a "mental hospital". She worked in dangerous conditions in munitions manufacturing and lived in a hotspot for the Blitz, half of her road was destroyed by the attacks. She was ashamed she ended up in hospital. I am amazed she was there for only six months, I suspect that many of us would have lived out our days there subject to such conditions.
Thank you for a very interesting programme. You, have talked about things my husband and I have discussed about the blitz sprit, that we have very rarely heard else where.
My grandfather was an ARP warden, he was in a protected occupation so did not fight. He often heard people shouting that things we’re missing from relatives of the deceased. He once came upon 3 wardens taking the rings off a dead woman and he reported it to his superiors, he was told to keep quiet because he might end up underneath the next roof that collapsed. It really was a dog eat dog world back then.
I live in Western Canada and training pilots for Britain for WWII can still be seen. We have hundreds of "airports" that are remnants of this. There was a British pilot school set up outside of the town of Caron - called Caron airport. Today Caronport (the air was dropped at some point) is a town with schools, gas station, doctor, etc and Caron is a hamlet that will soon be a ghost town.
My (long dead) grandfather was in the US air force and spent the first few years of our involvement in WW2 up in Canada as a flight instructor before finally being shifted to the Pacific theater, where he mostly wound up on garrison duty, eventually ending up in the Japanese occupation force until 1947. He always said his Canadian students were some of the best aviators he'd ever had the pleasure to work with, and I can recall going to graveyard outside Montreal with him to visit the graves of a couple of his students who'd died in combat over Europe.
I've often wondered about the housing. Were homes usually rented or privately owned? Would people have had mortgages to pay on properties that had been destroyed?
Good point! I'm very curious about this as well.
"And he gave up on Britain and went to take on an easier project instead... like Russia" 🤣🤣
Britain was pretty much near the end of its tether, when Hitler had to turn his attention to Russia coming at him from the East. That's not to denigrate the amazing and heroic actions of our RAF, but the fact is, it is rarely mentioned that Hitler had to rally his forces to fight a new foe and that was at least partially responsible for Britain holding on during those grimmest of years. That take may upset the purists, but it is a factor nevertheless - it just doesn't get mentioned very often in the 'accepted narrative'.
@@jamesbarbour8400 I was laughing at the fact that they said Russia was an easier project...
4:13. The 2 and a half minute tea making sequence, followed by what comes after might be the best expectation subversion I've seen in media
My Grandfather being Italian was interned in the Isle of Man 🇮🇲 Keep meaning to investigate it myself.
My nana was a teen during the Blitz, and she and her family were bombed out three times during the blitz. Their neighbours looted their home whilst her mum and younger siblings sheltered, and she worked as a fire watcher.
Lots of kind and generous things did happen, rather like during the pandemic lockdown - my grandad had experienced neglect at home, and when he was sent away to live on a farm, he experienced some of the best years of his life. He stayed connected with the family for years after. But also, in the same way as during lockdown, lots of very shocking things happened.
Blitz spirit is a nice way of compartmentalizing a harrowing period for many people.
An excellent video. For anyone interested in watching a fictional but accurate representation of what life was like during WW2, I recommend the TV programme, Foyle's War which illustrates the many experiences covered in the video.
Love that series! I agree. Have watched Foyle’s War at least twice, and learned a lot.
It's good you mentioned Jewish German refugees. My great grandmother was a German jew. She survived the starvation in Germany during ww1, the rise of the nazis, and when she moved to London to escape the nazis she was viewed with extreme suspension, and only the Jewish community in London really helped her and her children.
Edit: it's important to note that despite that she was forever grateful to the UK for saving her and her children. The UK might have had some problems, but Germany was way worse.
This video is absolutely terrific. Interesting and informative. Thumbs up.
The “Zadok the Priest” bit is just epic. :)
Bit late to the party-I know this is an older video-but I’ve been watching and thoroughly enjoying your videos, learning stuff and being entertained, as well. Can’t wait til my next trip to London!
I could relate to the story in a number of ways. Here. First, of course we had a similar narrative. Of a People's War against Nazis IN Soviet Times and even after Ukrainian independence. The complex history of WWII still has to be properly analyzed and understood. But I also can relate to the history of London in the Blitz because for instance my city, Kharkiv, was bombed almost. Every day (or night, whatever Russians fancied) for. Months. It was both for the terror purposes, as people could not sleep due to the sound of explosions, in order to destroy infrastructure, factories and homes. Our East End was Saltovka, a huge area with high houses. Every house with multiple. Families and no proper underground nearby and most bomb shelters going to ruin. Thousands of people homeless. And we had looters, and pretenders who dressed as volunteers and policemen too. And also my family did not go to shelter because our own cellar had been spoiled by sewage water and it was too far from the underground, so we also huddled together with our dog and cat in one room. And the struggle to achieve blackout when my daughter was so afraid of the dark, and no real. Resources to really re- enforce windows. And treatment of the refugees varied too. So really in some cases you could feel you traveled in time. It is still. Like WWII repeats all over again. I can believe it all happened because it also happens now. If you do not understand history properly it does repeat. Unfortunately.
This is proper researched and thought out content. Unbiased, even, honest. I saw the tiktocs and the pretty, bright presenter with the cheekbones but I'm staying for the quality historical content 👍
Many years ago when I was about 12 years old my mom took me and my brother to London. We were walking down a street and saw all the buildings had chips in them. It looked like the sort of damage that happens when heavy equipment throws chips to the side and damages the walls (Something I had seen before) but the pattern was all wrong. I asked my mom what was up, and an old Gaffer (I think that's the right term) told me "The Germans". I looked up and down the street and saw the damage as far as I could see. As an American it was a bit of an eye-opener.
You're right about not being taught about the negatives during the Blitz. When I was being taught about WW2 in my American highschool (early 1980's) we were taught about the atrocities of the concentration camps, but never about the interment camps of our own citizens, simply because they looked like the people who bombed us. Ironically, the most decorated units of the US military during WW2 were units composed of soldiers of Japanese descent. My mom was a little girl during the war. As she lived in the middle of the country, her only connection was that her brother was serving in the US Navy in the Pacific theater. Her thinking was that he was gone, he wrote some letters from far away and then he was home. We were talking about her experiences a few months before she died, and she said she didn't realize until she was an adult, how much danger her brother had been in during the war.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! We need more people like you who are simply stating what really happened and showing the complexity and various nuances that we were never taught. You are so correct that THIS honors the remembrances of those who lived through all of this! Again, thank you!
A lot of that “Bomb damage” was the result of our own anti aircraft fire. AA shells exploding in the air blasted out chunks of shrapnel - designed, of course, to destroy or damage any enemy aircraft nearby. What goes up however must come down, and a large number of deaths and a great deal of damage was caused by huge lumps of metal falling onto buildings and into the streets from a great height.
You had me at the Boris voice over. 🤣🤣The Gollum is a very nice point.
Honestly have to give you credit, that is probably the most thought provoking video I’ve ever seen on this subject. Really well done.
Thanks for your video. Funily enough my boyfriend was very defensive about your comments. I had to tell him some of the stories my parents and their friends used to tell about the war, much of which you covered in your video. However, there was also stories of people taking in their bombed-out neighbours, dating guys from Europe and the West Indies or pitching in sandwiches for a wedding party. I think my uncle even paid a fine for shooting pidgeons for an engagement party when he was home on leave. So, its always best to get all the history rather than a curated one. Thanks again.
There's good and bad in all wars, people tend to only remember the good, and bury the bad. I would like to see this lady turn her excellent critique to some of the good. I know that the so called blitz spirit exsisted, as my parents both lived through this period, I hold that ther was more good going on than bad. For example, contra to asserttaions of racisim, which btw I don't deny happening. I would like to see her do a piece on the Battle of Bamber Bridge.
Jenny, the production quality of this video is truly amazing, I am so impressed. You make me feel patriotic even though I'm not British.
My father was a soldier in BAOR in the early 1960s so I spent time in Germany. When I returned to England in 1964, I was stood against a school wall and shot as a Nazi because I could speak German. In 1964.
@tinwatchman FW
Yes and the same happened on pur school exchange in 1993. Brits are entirely too self impressed with themselves. This fake pride for sth that didn't even happen made them arrogany and it hurt everyone.
As a parent, I'm finding a lot of my kids schooling hasn't changed since I was in school and still has a lot of pro-colonical, jingoist ideas about 'Great' Britain and the notably glossing over some of the...murkier parts of our history.
Like yourself, I don't want to discredit the individual heroism and successes of individual people's lives but I also think it's worth my children understanding that while there are many privileges to the fluke of where you are born, it doesn't mean a nation itself is spotless or that history is without nuance. In fact, what I really want, is for them to be excited to learn more about history.
When my son had to learn about how 'Captain Cook discovered Australia' he ended up concluding that 'Captain Cook didn't discover Australia as there were already people living there for a long time and he found his way around because Tupaia showed him where to go. He and his also killed lots of people.' That's what he found when we started our new game of looking for 'secret history'.
So I really appreciate these videos as it teaches me the secret history of the topics we think we know and will enable me to steer my kids to actually find joy in researching off their own backs the topics school dips its toes into.
Excellent presentation. The first casualty of war is the truth. My mother and her sister were evacuated, but the couple they lived with were unkind, strict and hated children 😰😮☹️
My family came from Croydon. One of my uncles, RAFVR Sgt pilot P.R.C. McIntosh trained on Hurricanes. He was shot down and landed in Kent on 12th October 1940, was left by the 'grateful' British public in his plane, dead, for 5 days on a golf course. My grandfather and another uncle had to drive around Kent until they found him. We still have a piece of his Hurricane with its number on it. ALL members of my family served, including my grandmother who was a nurse in WW1. My father was a Lanc. pilot and after one raid had his tail gunner hosed out of the remains of his turret. The mid-upper was wounded. I have a photo of the 5 remaining crew sitting on the fuselage above several large holes. Another uncle, RAFVR F.O. Julian Macdonald, flew reconnaissance Spitfires that they took the armour out of to make it faster. He was blown to pieces over Italy and nothing was ever recovered. We think his name might be on a memorial in Malta but there is nothing else.
That tea was made so badly, Britain is ashamed of you. 🤣
Not enough milk?
@@hektor6766 didn't do the standing spoon test
This is so brilliant, also loved all the effort you put into the entertainment aspect as it gave it a layered meaning.
Color me shocked that rich people treated others (especially poor people) like shit... there's nothing quite like Christian values when it comes to helping others.
Yup. Don't want those smelly peasants ruining the furniture. But we continue to accept it for some reason
I had just gotten back from 3 years in West Germany. For me watching the excellent British TV series "Danger UXB" was the Blitz!
I can't think why a TV channel hasn't talent spotted your quality work. I'm glad I did.
So much better than visiting the tate modern or seeing Asteroid City! 🙂
I just adore seeing tea being made for minute after minute. If that sequence didn't last a minute, just allow me to say it seemed to last an eternity. An excellent demonstration of ennui and of what it might have been like at the time
The one thing that I got from all the stories from grandparents growing up in London was that they all had a sense of community in the streets that they were born. They all knew each other, they all played in the streets together and they were tight-knit. That has been lost now.
Bravo, One of the BEST history videos I've seen on youtube. Thoughtful comprehensive, nuanced, and balanced. This video should be required viewing for all A-level and undergrad student. Your narrative was crisp, clear and engaging. Despite the one quibble I have - that you did not mention India's contibution to the British war effort - this video is EXCELLENT!
Actually I have a question. How did Britain deal with the Spanish Flu?
I always hear about the wars, admittedly a monumental “scar” (both literal, mental, emotional, financial, and so on) but I very rarely hear about how more accurate comparisons to our modern day plague such as the Spanish Flu, small pox, yellow fever, even the Black Death left scars on Europe in general let alone Britain. Was Spanish Flu only a massive thing in North America? Or did it and others like it leave “visible” scars that can be seen or felt into modern day?
My personal research is inconclusive and would appreciate other takes on a more human level as opposed to “this is just what we know from historical accounts.”
Didn't hear much from my family, they were a music hall family but one ran away in the early 1910's and joined the Royal navy Marines (pre war), went through the Siege and evacuation of Antwerp, Jutland, the Zeebrugge raid, got demobbed in 1919, went on a fortnights holiday to the south coast. Fell ill after a week and was dead from the flu by time his holiday was up!
What did seriously impact that generation of my family was seeing whole branches of the family die from TB in the 20's and 30's. It was a slow constant attrition that when it got into a household, it would devastate. One relative lost his wife, his only and new born child and his mother in law to it. That's right, he was the ONLY one to survive from that home. And that, that is why that generation wanted to bequeath us something like the NHS.
I believe, in most countries, it was almost forgotten about quite soon after. It sounds unlikely, if you read about how bad it was, but a similar thing happened after the polio epidemic in the fifties. I remember it. Saw lots of kids at school with braces on their legs. I know my parents kept a lot of it from us, but I picked up enough to know about the people in Iron lungs, and the cripples. You certainly don't hear about it now, or for many decades. I believe there are still a couple of people who are still in Iron lungs since the fifties.
One thing I loved was listening to my grandfathers "war stories", him winning the war, rescuing people, escaping by the skin of his teeth, all amazing stories, all as silly as the last 1, as he was not even a teenager during the war, he collected bomb shrapnel but he was a great story teller and I would always ask what he did during the war.
I'm a fairly new subscribee; I've been enjoying gradually going through your videos. This one, in particular, was &*@#ing brilliant. Thank you so much for working on this; it was rational, provocative, and remarkably thoughtful.
As an Anglophile and almost futile, faithful follower of the Mod movement, I’ve noticed that the blitz certainly had its impact on the whole generation of British rock ‘n’ roll stars of the 1960s. John Lennon was born during one of the bombing raids of the blitz. Keith Richards house got hit by a bomb, and while he was at home, bricks landed in his bed, where he would’ve been laying. Roger Daltrey’s mother used to take shelter in tube stations while still pregnant with Roger & father received a massive injury on D-day that almost killed him. The guilt and bitterness of the postwar period that influenced Pete Townsend to write Tommy. And Roger Waters sure does love reminding us that his father was a pilot who was shot down and killed in the war. And the blitz spirit I truly believe was more than a war time phenomenon for England in the 20th century, but a defining cultural pinpoint in the narrative of England’s artistic history
John Lennon's father apparently was on the North Atlantic convoys with them U-boats about. He survived, unlike many others. Merchant Navy man. Roger Waters,' father was in the army, officer, killed at the Italy Anzio landings in 1944.
You gave me some more pride to sing 'O Canada's ! Blessed are my ancestors who fed British stomachs (and did many other things as well)!
Jenny, your treatment of that complex subject was simply remarkable. I would love to support your channel if I were wealthier. You're so great at instilling life and even humor into the most difficult and tragic topics. As usual, care for historical truth/reality is always more rewarding for an audience. Your professionalism and the experience you gathered from years of guiding visitors while listening to their inquiries, regardless of how bizarre they might sound, all of that precious capital is making each of your contributions to English (esp. Londonian) history education a precious gem.
Long life to your channel!
Honestly the bravest choice in the video was to show the making of a cup of tea. On the internet. Well done you, facing the haters. Do it your way.
Nice work! Thank you for showing history as a process of narrative construction and storytelling. But most importantly who or what decides the story told and how popular it would be. As today new and different stories and narratives are being constructed such as Covid and brixit. I think this to be fundamental of human society, but l think the worse of it is I hardly thinking about stories and narratives that I believe in. Doing so could be hard as I think, good stories could offer so much comfort that I don’t want to break my illusion/ ideal.
Hello Ms Draper. Very well done. I'm London born and bred (20 years an expat now). My UK grand-parents (other grand-parents from N.Africa) lived in India/Burma until the WW2 outbreak. My grandmother spent the whole time in a japanese prisoner of war camp with her three sons. I heard my grand father was given a gun and told to run all the way home to Britain! I never got to ask him about this time as he passed away when I was still very young. Reunited after the war, they were reunited and came to live in London in very precarious conditions where my father was born and raised.
The red box type of Yorkshire tea tastes better, or typhoo. I am much more fond of strong tea than of the weaker varieties though so they might not be universally palatable and the quality of the water does effect the taste of the tea a great deal.
My uncle was born in London in an underground shelter during the blitz. He said his mom never talked about it so he knew knew his birthday and that he was born in London, but he didn't know the details until right before his mother passed. They immigrated to Canada shortly after the war, and then he to the US.
Conditioning is so weird.
The moment she put the kettle on, I had to pause the video and make a cup of tea for myself. 😅
The TV series "Foyle's War" show nearly all of these facets of the Second World War, as it happened in Britten.
Thank you for this. Too often it seems we are too fearful to face the complicated human responses to events. For example, here in the US we're struggling with telling the whole story of enslaving others and the continued economic and political realities of that "peculiar institution." We need more balanced models such as yours to provide the experience of history as messy and complicated and sometimes even inspiring in order to truly learn from it and maybe even make better responses when we face challenges.
I remember my granny telling me about the Clydebank Blitz. She lived in Govan, which is on the opposite river bank of the Clyde from Clydebank. She could vividly remember her mum waking her up, so that they could go down to the nearest bunker. Her dad (my great granda) refused to leave his bed. As far as he was concerned, if the Nazis were going to kill him, they could kill him in his bed. My granny also remembered the skies being orange, because of the flames.
As an American (with British Parents) the closest I've come to understanding this is when I discovered the artist Henry Moore's blitz sketchbook. They're visceral .
Another experience was visiting Coventry Cathedral with the hulk of the old cathedral left intact and easily observed through the huge clear glass wall with monumental angels etched upon them.
As a French Anglophile, I found this video fascinating. We have somewhat comprarable myths about the Résistance. De Gaulle practically built his political carrer on them. It tkes generations to deconstruct the narratives we were fed as children...
And your conclusion is just perfect.
I'm a francophile i even like to think that De Gaulle was right about us. But hearing someone French commenting on the resistance is strange to me. I question the blitz spirit but I have never questioned the actions of the French resistance. I wouldn't have the heart to be honest. But fair play to you it's not easy to question ones history.
@@roberthodgkins-pv3ve The Resistance was absolutely a thing, and we do have genuine heroes (Jean Moulin anyone ?), but it is a myth to believe that the whole country resisted against the nazis. As in the UK, we were more preoccupied by day-to-dahy survival.